When Murugan opened his eyes, he felt a strange sensation on his body. He felt nauseated; his head seemed heavy as if he was carrying a mountain over his head. He wondered "Where am I? In heaven or hell"...Slowly he looked around. He saw a familiar place... The TV was switched on and he saw the plastic cups and the unopened whiskey bottles. He was alive... His brain picked up speed and started functioning...

Murugan always wondered about the mystery called life... He cursed it. He always thought that life was unfair to him never giving him what he wanted... He knew he was on the losing side, in the game called life... He came to the big city, Chennai with lots of dreams...Murugan was always fascinated by machines... He thought had the skills and the talent to become a good mechanic... But even after 5 years he was still staying in the same old mansion in Triplicane.His life had not progressed a bit... He found tough to meet his ends with his daily income... He left his love life in the village, promising her to be back after 5 years and marry her. But when he got the letter from his friend that she was going to get married and could not wait any longer, he felt he was standing at the edge of his life... He knew that he had failed and saw no hope. That’s when he decided to end his life...

He headed straight to Thiruneermalai, a temple on a mountain... He planned to marry her in the same temple. He thought it would be poetic if he ended his life by jumping off the cliff of the mountain... His mind was racing with thoughts. He relieved of his past memories... The movies that he saw with her, the plots he devised to meet her. She too was a kamalahasan fan... They never missed a movie of his... As he was nearing the edge of a cliff, a thought flashed in his mind...Was his idea fool-proof? What if he survives the fall and hangs on a tree branch as kamal survived in the movie punnagai mannan? No. He knew that life derived a sadistic pleasure by making him fail in his attempts...He changed his mind and thought of a new plan...

Murugan switched on the TV in his room... He removed the plastic cups and the whiskey bottles that he bought from the nearby TASMAC shop...He read somewhere that taking sleeping pills along with alcohol would put him into permanent sleep... He bought 4 bottles of alcohol and he knew it would take a big effort from him to finish off 4 bottles. He had only tasted beer in his life... He opened the first bottle and started his ritual...

That's the last thing Murugan could remember. He woke up to find 2 bottles of whiskey still unopened... The sleeping pills were scattered around him. He couldn’t believe what was happening to him... Obviously he must have passed out before completing his task... Life was not letting him to live or die... He had to somehow make the last plan work...He was not going to take any more failures... He looked at the time. It was 7:30 AM on that beautiful Sunday...He sobered up and started off towards the Marina beach...

Murugan cursed himself for not trying out this plan first... All he had to do was keep walking towards the beach and finally into the water... The rest would be taken care automatically... He knew that the beach would not be crowded on this Sunday morning... He saw the regular joggers, a group of people practicing karate and a few kids playing cricket... He scanned the beach for a while and decided on the spot from where he was going to step into the water...

He stepped on the sand and started his final walk with his head down...He must have walked a 100 feet but the sea still looked far off. As soon as he crossed the group of kids playing cricket, he heard screams around him... Murugan lifted his head and couldn’t believe what he saw...A huge wave of about 15 feet high was coming at him... He felt as if the God of death finally took pity on him and was greeting him with its huge arms... The next moment the wave hit him. He was completely drowned and his mind went blank. There was complete darkness for almost 15 seconds. He knew that he was riding on the wave but he feared that the wave was carrying him towards the shore...

When the first wave dropped him, he was hardly 10 feet away from the shore... He couldn’t understand what was happening. It was not the same marina beach that he knew of. The first wave has almost left 5 feet of water and he was barely able to stand... He was not going to give up at any cost. He decided to let the sea take him and decided to move forward. He felt someone was holding onto him... He noticed a kid, tightly holding on to his belly... The kid gagged as soon as his body hit the air...He must be one of the kids from the cricket group...

Just as Murugan placed the kid on his shoulder, he saw the second wave coming towards him...He saw a tree hardly couple of feet away and ran towards it... It was not easy running in water and with a kid on a shoulder. He mustered all his energy and leapt towards the tree. As soon as the kid, by his instincts, got hold of the branch of the tree, the second wave hit them. Murugan failed to catch hold of the tree branch and the wave carried him. Murugan saw debris around him before he passed out.

When Murugan opened his eyes, he felt a strange sensation on his body. He felt nauseated;his head seemed heavy as if he was carrying a mountain over his head. He wondered "Where am I? In heaven or hell"...Slowly he looked around. He saw a familiar place... The TV camera was zooming on him. There were people around. He was alive. His brain picked up speed and started functioning...He had survived the Tsunami and saved a kid...

From then on, Murugan became the local hero. He was considered as the bravest, strongest man who could handle any situation and never give up.

Murugan wondered about the mystery called life...

This is my first attempt at writing a story...So E & OE

Deshpande finally got his onsite opportunity. This was the one he was eagerly waiting for. These kind of onsite assignments does not come to everyone in his organisation. Only the most talented and selected few gets the privilege. He worked hard for his selection. The selection process was very gruelling. But he cleared all the tests successfully.

Deshpande came from a remote village in Maharashtra. He toiled hard to get this job. He was well built and brave. Bhagat singh was his role model but Deshpande believed in GOD. Lord Rama was his favourite deity. He always felt an invisible hand guiding him throughtout his life..And now after hearing the good news of his selection he headed straight to the nearby temple to offer his prayers and thanks.

At the same time, thousands of kilometers away in a small city in the province of Baluchistan, Muhammed received a telephone call. His joy knew no bounds when he heard the news that he was selected for an assignment away from his country. Muhammed was as talented as Deshpande. He too survived the selection process. Just as he received the news, the loud speaker at the top of the minaret came to life. He thanked Allah for providing him the opportunity and rushed to the nearby mosque for his afternoon prayers.

Major Deshpande and Major Muhammed were selected to serve, in the UN peace keeping force,in Kosova. They would be posted in a town where the civil war was at its worst.

Both Deshpande and Muhammed prayed that the next century would be a peaceful one. The 20th century has already witnessed 2 world wars and was very close to having a third one. Just 10 more months were remaining for the dawn of the 21 century.

*****To be Continued********

P.S: The characters and the events in this story are fictious. Any resemblence to persons living or dead is pure unintentional. 

"How much blood will you shed to stay alive"

I like movies that make me think. Movies should not spoon feed with the story and the plot.. It's been almost two days since I watched SAW and I can get it out of my mind.. Don't get intimidated by the picture above.. The movie is a good thriller and I always wonder why Indian movie makers are not exploring the thriller genre.

The plot of the movie SAW is very simple.. Two guys wake up and find themselves shackled at opposite ends in an old stinky-looking restroom.. They find a dead body, clutching to a gun and a tape-recorder, between them.. They have no idea why they are tied up and what's happening to them.. And slowly the puzzle unravels.... It's a great movie with minimum characters and it seems the whole movie was shot in 18 days!!!

If you can sit thru some gory scenes, this movie is for you...

At last Yahoo is waking up from its slumber. Yahoo email is moving away from its "old" look & feel to catch up with Gmail. The new yahoo! Mail beta's user interface looks cool.. It closely resembles Microsoft Outlook. It also has an RSS feed. To try this out follow the steps given below.

(steps taken from here)

Login to Yahoo
Click on My account
Edit Member Information
In the General Preference Section, change  your  "language & Content" to "English - UK".
Save your preference and Exit.

The next time when you login you will get an invite to try out the new Beta.

You can always switch back to the old UI if you want.

Of late, there are lots of emails & articles  floating around ridiculing "Captain" Vijaykanth...Most of them are criticism of his movies, some are spoofs of movies with vijaykanth as the lead etc. Some of them are fun to read until the email that I received today morning... I received this email forwarded from more than one person... The email was supposed to be funny but eventually made me feel uneasy and rant about it..

The subject of the email was "IF U R WEEK HEARTED, PLS AVOID SEEING THE BELOW SNAPS. PLZZZZZZZZZZ"... The email had pictures of vijaykanth and his family with the comments for each pic from the author of the original email...Below are two pics with the comments that showed a bad taste of the author.

"Reason for poverty in India !!"

"See his kid's size....."

I assume that the author is not aware of the charity deeds that vijaykanth does..Below is a list from wikipedia.