Nandan, Blogged!

Warning: LOTR (That’s Lord of The Rings) spoiler ahead. Please do not read more if you do not want to know how the story ends.

The LOTR trilogy is one beautiful story. It has everything, right from the normal good versus evil to environmental awareness. Of course, many people have complained about the fact that there are too many ‘three page descriptions of a single tree’ and I wholeheartedly agree with that.

But what I simply love about the LOTR is the ending, more specifically, how the ring is destroyed. It is so arbitrary, so random, that one cannot but marvel at it. The scene is: Frodo and Sam are standing on a precipice over a river of lava in the womb of Mt.Doom. The Ring can only be destroyed if it is thrown in that lava and nothing else can destroy it (But of course.) Frodo is overpowered by the Ring and his ring-lust makes him change his mind. He refuses to throw it in the lava. (The small fact that he and Sam have overcome unbeatable odds,as read by yours truly in the 1000 odd pages before, does not stop him, such is the power of the Ring. I really felt sorry for Sam when I read that. If I were Sam, I would have pushed Frodo into the volcano, no questions asked) Sam, the patient one, tries to persuade him to do the right thing. The sub-villain, a cute, bonny looking creature (hey, don’t judge him by his appearance) gets really pissed off at this, because Frodo and Sam, those little lying runts, had taken his help as a tour guide without telling him that they intended to destroy his preciousss ring. So Gollum takes a jump at Frodo and Frodo puts on the Ring. Gollum manages to locate the invisible Frodo and jumps on his shoulders  and manages to bite his finger off, the very same finger that has the Ring. A 1in 10 shot and this guy gets it right! What a winner! 

So far, so Hindi Filmy. Then comes the twist. Our bonny Gollum, reunited with his ring after a few thousand years (it must be a few thousand years. LOTR operates on a geological time scale, not a human one), throws away the finger and starts dancing wildly, Ring in hand. As he dances, he loses his balance and falls into the lave along with the Ring. And the Ring is destroyed.

And that, my friends, is that.

Tell me, what sort of sadistic genius comes up with an ending like that? A thousand odd pages, all made from precious trees (each of which deserve a three page description for their futile sacrifice), all for a random ending where one guy (surprisingly!) loses his balance while dancing on the edge of a hill and falls to his death? Wow.

Conspiracy Theory Alert: I suspect there is a strong link to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution here. Just look at the connections: Weird creatures, half men, half Hobbits, biodiversity of monsters (from a Balrog to an err…Olliphaunt), operates over geological time, random path of storyline, the Race of Men becoming the dominant race- it is all there. The implications are clear: LOTR must be banned in USA or alternative explanations must be given to the way the story ends, otherwise the Intelligent Design lobby will be up in arms.

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All the cities that I have lived in for more than a month have now been the target of bombings. Not just bombings, serial bombings. Nothing seems to have changed since I read out the horror of the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts to my grandfather, sitting beside his hospital bed. The perverse novelty and audacity of the attack have dimmed. The twist in the stomach, when the news hits, still remains. Places which I have walked, passed through, looked at, bought stuff, watched moives : Century Bazaar, Plaza Cinema in Mumbai, Forum Mall in Bangalore, Maninagar in (or near) Ahmedabad-I have been there.

There are many reasons to justify violence. And there is one reason to justify peace: We have our lives to live. Carrying the spectres of the past on your shoulders, like King Vikramaditya, has the same danger as seen in Vikram and Betaal: the spectre does not allow you to keep quiet, threatening to blow off your head if you do . If you manage to speak wise words to the spectre, it flies away, setting you back into your quest. The solution , very probably, is to not go after the spectre, at all. How many wrongs of history can we right? How many spectres can we carry on our back? And how many people need to die and turn into spectres - faint wisps of memory, painful to recount- for us to realize that we are really of the same blood, same species and have the same desires,  fears and aspirations?

This does not mean that the perpetrators shall go free. They have committed a crime that cannot but  be punished. There can be no justification for the misdeeds of the present in the mists of incidents gone by. Indian mujahideen or whoever they are, will face the wrath of the majority of a billion Indians, Muslims and Hindus alike The tragedy is that it was preventable. If only the brainwashing and the passionate appeals to religion are stopped. We need some anti virus software that can stop stupid ideas passing unnoticed in the guise of religion. The less of organized religion, the better it would be, generally, is my frank opinion. And we need a Government machinery that anticiptes these issues, that goes beyond ration cards, elections and caste/religion politics. A State that is humane to its people and unforgiving to terrorists.

This was an emotional, meandering post by me, not lucid, more coming through in fits and starts and certainly, not impartial. But how else could I have written this? They were (and are) all my people.

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The painful news. That lurch in the stomach and a feeling of slight nausea. The mind immediately flying to the well being of your own people. It was happening all over again. Those lists, with names  that could very well have been people you knew. The pain again. And a group of people (among many) who tried, in their little way, to help perfect strangers get some information about their near and dear ones. Proud to have done whatever little that I could. Wishing I could have done much much more, had more courage to bear the sights, go to the bloodbank and donate.  Sad that the pain does not, will not go away. For hundreds of ordinary people.

In remembrance. In peace.

http://mumbaihelp.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_archive.html

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