Mind Maze, The

Hating to wake up every morning. Its a nightmare opening the paper and reading mood-spoiling news. I still do it. I still read it. The sickness sets in immediately. The mind goes into a maze.

What all should I do today? What all can I do today? Can I step onto the street and come back home safely? I'm taking a risk with this one. What if some stupid guy draped in 'pink' misses his shopping-mall-window-pane target and breaks my head with a stone? What if I meet a friend on the road and some cop comes and arrests us for forming a 'group' on the road? What is happening to the city I only just began to explore and love?

I gotta buy some stuff. I gotta get some vaccinations done. I need to rush to the bank to finish up the financial stuff. I need to meet my friends before I leave the country. I need to meet relatives/family. I need to step outside home for all this. When do I do all this? Life cannot afford to go out of gear because of some stupid 'pink' guys who are lead by lying Pinocchios with noses so big that the point is way too obvious!

I go out to buy stuff. I go get my vaccinations done. I reach the bank amid all worries about closing... oh! And the bank is another whole new problem at hand. We have these 'bankers' to deal with! The T issue is nothing before this. Applying for a loan for the first time? Aha! Enjoy the ride of your life! You ask what documents you gotta bring to finish up the process, and they lazily say, "Ah! Your usual visa, passport copies, stamps, BURP! (no "excuse me" follows), and yeah.. that's it". And you go there the next day with the required documents and the lady at a counter gives you a letter and says, "Get a Rs.10000 registrar stamp on this". Bam! They mention docs but not the money? And here comes the tighter slap. She gives me a draft with recipient as the bank itself and the value on that? "Rs 1,21,583 /-" "Pay that downstairs and come back now". NOW? What do you think I'd carry that amount in my pocket and walk around??? That 'simple' thing cost us a whole day.. how very appropriate when time's happily running out! The next day, another bandh. Tell me something new...

These frustrations piled up so bad, my head got jammed for a few hours! I entered the mind maze. Trying to find a way out. Every turn seemed to lead me only deeper and deeper in but never out. The walls were getting higher, darker and creepier. The self-confidence was ebbing. It was matter of holding on to the last fragments of confidence.

Somehow I held on and things got clearer. Some quick calculations led us to understand why we were expected to pay that amount in the first place. What lessons for first timers!

Reached the end of the maze at least! The cup was there, gleaming in the darkness. Is this another Harry Potter plot? Will this portkey transport me to a darker, creepier, more dangerous place after all this struggle i went through? I just hope not. But it may well be so.. only the next year will tell...

Send off #2

Its actually supposed to be the third (possibly fourth). Yesterday I saw off Chakydhar at the airport. And I'll be following suit pretty soon. Another 15 days for me to take off. I gotta rush and finish up all the remaining stuff that's necessary. The drive to the airport was fun. Taking the new 11.6 KM Expressway on which I never travelled before, we reached the airport much sooner than usual. The ride was definitely bumpy and sometimes scary with the sharp curves and sudden narrowed down roads, but overall it was acceptable. An achievement I must say!

The send-off crowd at the airport was Extreme to be understating. We couldn't stand straight for a few minutes and talk to Chakydhar before his final steps into the terminal. After some hurried talking and interruptions (between which I managed to give him a contact number of my cousin), we decided it was time to move. 5 minutes passed after we met, and we were already leaving. It felt odd. We spoke to Yaseen for so long while he was leaving to the UK. Anyway, once back in the car, we zoomed our way back. A small hint at hitting Hard Rock Cafe was trashed after coming to know of some disturbance on the roads regarding the sickening Telangana Issue (80% of which is highly exaggerated by News Channels!!). No Risk, No Pain. Our motto was simple and we headed home quickly.

That brought my day to a close and set in the emptiness. Things are beginning to happen. After Yaseen, Sudershan and now Chaky, all left, the city of 8.5 million feels only half full. There's a small hope that i'll be back among friends once I take off too. Till then.....

2012: Future is Past

Ok. This is one of the hottest topics of 2009. 2012. And why was it the most talked about thing? Not because people believed or did not believe in it. It was mostly because of the movie that was released. It was a self igniting fire. The movie was helped by the rumours and the rumours were spread by the movie. In the end we don’t know who started it all but the filmmakers made big bucks after finding a nice reason to exploit the effects of multiple destructive forces of Nature all acting at once. Sounds like the perfect disaster movie. Disastrous in both ways? Probably yes, probably not.

 

I heard and read so much about this movie that I found myself left in the dark while everyone else talked about it. I just heard a single sentence review mostly: “Awesome graphics (everyone uses it now), illogical story-line”. Ok. In one of the most unplanned plans of my life I rushed to this movie almost a month after release and still found myself sitting 2 rows from the bottom! Tickets selling like hot cakes? Hardly any doubt. Is it innocent curiosity about the world coming to an end, or is it ignorant over-confidence to only check out the “awesome graphics”? I would definitely put myself under the second category. Basically no one was interested in the logic of the plot. Good. First thing before watching a Disaster Movie, leave all feelings, emotions, humanity, etc back at home. You’re watching 2 hours of pure destruction and death. Merciless filmmakers and helpless audience. It’s illogical to include logic here. What happens when Godzilla smashes its tail carelessly into an NYC building? Hundreds die, but did we care? No. We couldn’t wait to see its eggs in Madison Square Garden.

 

First of all the movie starts of with a scientist in the Department of Astrophysics, University of Chennai detecting some “neu-thingies” from a mega solar flare causing some kind of action under the earth. Ok catchy stuff there. And what do we see next, leaking rooftops, weird elevator. I didn’t get that. And once they enter the lab, crazy gadgetry, high-tech equipment, what not. Why the stark contrast between inside and outside? And why was an actor with an American accent being forced to speak English with an Indian accent? And also forced to speak Hindi when he clearly couldn’t!! Did the film makers expect no Indian to watch this movie? At least 15 Million people might have watched it in the initial days it self. Alright, he warns this guy and suddenly things fly over board because it’s happening faster than they imagined. And soon California starts disappearing and wheel sets into motion. The end of the world was only days away. It took some time for me to get accustomed to the ‘good luck’ of the main characters. That’s where ‘logic’ comes into play and I began ignoring their good luck. From here I only concentrated on the VFX that everyone was so happily praising.

 

True to their word, I was blown. A plane lacking enough lift flies in between cracks created when the Earth breaks open, and a subway train just flies out of the tube? Ok. I was shocked by the idea, but god, it was awesome. In spite of having quite a good idea about how most of these ‘unbelievably believable’ things are done, I was forced to believe. And the story went on and on and on. Everywhere we find millions just disappearing into deep cracks, under volcanoes, under tsunamis, and what not. The ones being secretly escorted to ‘Arks’ are the high profile guys who got enough load in their pockets to buy the costliest thing on Earth, Life. Until I saw that movie, I never thought Life was for sale. But apparently it is and you got to be filthy rich to buy a ticket to Life. What a destination! Meanwhile the rest of the world doesn’t even know anything until the brave US President stays back and lets the world know. And in between the contrasts, come the ‘normal’ guys who have nothing short of an adventure to crash land into China and Zip off on a Bentley that starts on Voice Command. Somebody finally thinks more ‘human’ and makes an attempt to go rebel. Obviously it’s too late to save the 6 billion people that included the Indian scientist who detected it all. The lead characters in the movie were just those toys that got lucky every time. Somehow they just escaped everything, almost entirely unscathed! Miracle. Either people get killed brutally or are totally safe with their tuxes and leather boots still shining. Finally the drama seemed to come to a close after the ship with a jammed door finally gets sealed. Lives are actually saved from peril and there’s a hero for the first time in the movie. That had to happen or else it would have played to empty seats.

 

Like the other science fiction movies, you’re made to feel awestruck! “Oh! The new south pole is at Wisconsin”. “Oh! They just crashed into Mt. Everest”. “Oh! Hollywood just sank and took with it all the actors and studios and directors, producers, stuntmen, CG FX, etc. but I’m still able to watch a movie”.

 

Nice. I must say I enjoyed the experience. Somehow I couldn’t accept the fact that billions of humans were left to be taken by the Earth while the rich enjoyed Life. The end of the movie didn’t feel like a new beginning, it just felt like The End despite thousands of ‘costly’ lives being saved. The end of human dominance over the world. Is that good or bad? Judging by the current punishment we humans are giving to the Earth, maybe the end of human dominance would be a good thing. Obviously then I wouldn’t have enough freedom to write this post. Probably come 2012 I might be washed away by a NW heading wave as mercilessly as it would wash away my computer. So at least till then I hope to continue.

 

P.S: I didn’t understand why they released this in 2009. Probably they felt these 3 years will give us enough time to build our own ‘arks’ or to earn enough to buy a Ticket to Life.