I hope you are all counting down. To the end of the world that it. As I write this on 12/12/12, there’s exactly 9 days before the world is toast or the Titanic; or maybe even sucked into a mammoth black hole. Whatever spectacular visual effect (no thanks to CGI) is in store for this big blue marble, it leaves us with just 9 days to set our affairs in order before chaos erupts.What? You don’t believe me? The Mayans came up with this date. And do you know what Mayans are good at, besides sacrificing virgins to Kukulkan and building pyramids in breathtakingly exotic locations that were guaranteed to draw tourists centuries later? Crunching astronomical numbers and coming up with freakishly accurate results! They were off about the length of the lunar year by just a few negligible seconds and they did the math thousands of years ago. So you might want to believe them on this one too.
Even otherwise, the 650,000-year timer of the super volcano lurking under Yellowstone National Park stopped ticking long ago and the volcano is due to blow anytime now. We’re talking about a tsunami of ash here, capable of blotting out the sun. I am sure you all remember your primary school lessons about the sun being the source of all life on earth.
As for the dire consequences that have been promised to rain down in divine retribution on humankind gone rotten, our number is up on that front too. Have you taken a look at the newspapers these days? They read like sleazy bestsellers that you read when travelling, hidden behind the intellectual newspaper, pretending to do the crossword, so that no one will know that you read smut.
So any which way you look at it, the world’s been sitting around long past its expiry date.
So what do you do? First of all, catch up on all those disaster and end of world flicks so that you will know what to do in an emergency. They will be your crash course on how to deal with trigger-happy aliens, waves that toss around the Statue of Liberty, super intelligent monkeys, deadly viruses that escape sterile labs, rogue asteroids that make a bulls eye for earth, a wrong switch at a nuclear center and greedy squirrels with a thing for acorns.
I’ve seen them all and I know what to do – run for it, get out of town. And do not worry even if the highway is caving in right behind you. You will always be one step ahead of it. And the people you care for would appear miraculously, right in your path, even if they had no business being there. Gather them together, along with a bunch of misfits who would eventually be the heroes that save the world. And if you are lucky, you will run into Will Smith. If you’ve kept up with your disaster movies, you’d know that there’s no better person to run into when the world ends. The guy knows exactly what to do. Of course, this scenario holds true only if you are supposed to be among the 1% of humanity that survives. Otherwise, don’t bother.
Just make your To Do List or is it a Not To Do List? Now that the world is ending, there are so many things not to do. I have made mine. I have already thrown whatever existed of my so-called diet out the window, maxed out my credit cards, written my last column, said my good byes, ate a raw oyster right off the shell, made myself an eighteen egg omelet and have been lounging around like there’s no tomorrow –literally.
Oh and I did consider repairing some broken bridges. But then I gave up on the idea. Why repair bridges when there’s going to be no one to walk across?
I just wish there was someone around to ask me if I had any last wishes. But I know that I can’t really expect it, with everyone going around fulfilling their own last wishes. But here are a few things I hope will be resolved before we all become human crisps.
I wish they’d just open up that Nuclear Power Plant in Koodankulam. Come on, what is the whole point in protesting against it now? You are going to save yourself from the nuclear radiation and be in the prime of health for the imminent apocalypse? We’re all going to be blown up anyway, nuclear reactor or not. Might as well enjoy the last few days with 24-hour power supply. Come on, it is the least that can be done for the people of Kanyakumari district, long suffering in silence and darkness with 18 hour power cuts!
And that serial on a certain Malayalam channel where everyone and their uncle knows about some girl’s parentage except for the girl and her parents …
Will someone please tell them about it and put an end to the misery of all the people sighing over it every evening. None of them are going to die happy without the resolution of that particular problem.
And topmost on my mind? I wonder if Google has a special doodle to mark the occasion.
Once I check that out on December 21st, I am going to grab my favourite chair, make myself some popcorn, douse it in butter and sit back and enjoy the show till it’s time for me to run! Who knows, I might actually run into Will Smith.
Read as originally posted in www.yentha.com
