Monday, 08-Jun-2015
-
So this is how it ends. A dark ghat road on the Kerala-Karnataka border. A speeding car. A huge elephant looms up right in front of my car's windshield. Death by a magnificent lone tusker is a spectacular way to go.
-
31. The age by which one would have everything figured out. Career. Ambition. Direction. Or so I thought when I was 21. Today at the doorstep of that number, I am not so sure and quite happy for the fact. Knowing everything would be a little bit scary. No such problems here.
-
31 undeniably feels 'old'. But then 41 will feel even older. Much to my surprise, 'old' is not a bad feeling at all. It's rather fun to look at the young 'uns and all their plans with a "Tumhein kyaa pataa" smugness. This, however, does not extend into forgiveness to Yo Yo Honey Singh for what he did to "Dheere Dheere Se". On a side note - Hrithik, seriously dude, what is your problem - do you really have to d-a-n-c-e t-o e-v-e-r-y s-o-n-g?
-
31 has been quite the journey, especially post the 18 years of incubation in a little town by the banks of the Narmada. A different life I do not wish for. Getting here via Bharuch, Kurukshetra, Kolkata and Taunton has given so much food for thought and so much variety of company that any more would just go unutilized.
-
Books. Maps. Motorcycles. Family. Friends. Freedom. Pets. NGC/Discovery/Animal Planet/BBC/History. A generic Ph.D in Geekery. Space and time have intersected in the most fortuitous manner to make the preceding the dominant themes of my life. A lot of lives, due to various circumstances, have been driven by other people's "You should"s. I can't complain about any such compulsions.
-
As it happened, the driver of my car that night in Kerala swerved, like Alladin on his magic carpet.... swerved just enough to avoid the charging elephant, half dangling the car out onto a chasm hundreds of feet deep. As surprised as us when we turned around the hairpin bend at speed, it had decided to do something about the puny little Tata Indigo that dared challenge him. We of course had no such intentions and made our escape.
-
One of the reasons that I am agnostic and not yet a committed atheist is in memory of incidents like that night's. I don't know how I am still here but I am here. Maybe, just maybe, someone is watching [in a non-creepy way].
-
That thing about your life flashing before your eyes... it's for real. In the couple of seconds that it took for me to see the elephant towering over the windscreen of my rushing car (it will redefine your definition of big), realize that it was all over and then realize that it was not all over, I saw a teaser.
-
A teaser which ended with ... "You lucky bas***d"
-
No comments:
Post a Comment