Guess whoz back...

...No prizes for guessing. Had an interesting week off DA-IICT. Went to Jaipur, thinking I'd go to Delhi. Ended up staying there and watching two movies, and reading two books. The movies I'd rather not talk about and initiate another ceaseless bout of trauma. The first book I read was Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan. This 'satire', is science fiction only in name imho. it's about God and our purpose vis-a-vis that God. According to one theory proposed by a very important character in the book (who incidentally is trapped forever between the solar system and Betelguese due to his sojourn into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum), on a faraway planet, there was a race of people searching for a purpose to life. Whenever they found one, it was deemed too lowly for them and was assigned to machines made for that very purpose, who of course fulfilled that purpose better. Eventually having found no purpose befitting their existences, they decided to kill everyone without a purpose (read themselves). And for this too they built machines, since they did this job too better. Needless to say, these creatures were wiped out from their home planet, and only the machines remained. Numerous millenia ago, a candidate representing the cream of these machines was sent towards a particular galaxy with a very important message, only to be opened on delivery. But unfortunately, his ship broke down, and he had to crash-land on Titan (one of Saturn's moons for the uninitiated). Now all that the ship needed to take off and continue the journey was a single spare part. Phew! Now comes the actual "theory" part of the theory: The purpose of all intelligent life on Earth (read doped dolphins & castrated bloggers) was to get that spare part to that creature ASAP !!!

Sounds a lot on the lines of Hitchhiker's doesnt it? I guess it must have been an inspiration for the latter. But I'm pretty sure this stuff goes a lot deeper: read it to believe it.

Not content with a minor regional skirmish involving a superpower and a wannabe (Dragonstrike), and annihilating two perfectly innocent nuclear babies (Dragonfire), Humphrey Hawksley, the renegade BBC correspondent with a penchant for writing history before it occurs, gives us a ringside view of what apocalypse would be like in The Third World War. Make no mistake: as the title would have made it clear, there is no escape: Thou art nuked, and nuked wilt thou remain. This time though, Mr. Hawksley has attempted to portray characters instead of just a sequence of events. But it rings hollow for some reason. Maybe he should stick to what hez good at: annihilating millions in the name of realpolitik. And yes, the novel is packed full of post holocaust/biological attack images (its a doomsday novel!), special forces missions, diplomacy (?), the works. The biggest question that was bugging me throughout the whole gore trip was what is he going to write next ? He's done with the whole world now! After finishing I realized that there was always the scope for the unavoidable "sequel". Man I wish he'd killed off every human on the planet! (Maybe sci-fi would have followed...eek!)

Just returned from Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Just watch it for the visuals. The rest of course, is all comic book stuff (read crap); except Padme (Natalie Portman who kept reminding me of Garden State), Yoda, and a host of animated characters and droids, who showed better acting and modulation skills than some actors playing primary characters. All the same: thank god its over!

N.B. - For those nosy bastards who have nothing better to do than mind other people's business, I watched Jo Bole So Nihaal and Waqt in Jaipur. The latter was tolerable in parts; the former I wouldn't recommend to a sworn enemy.