This post is my take on what Thanai had to say here.
As a kid I used to (and still do) love reading Mickey Mouse comics. But for some strange reason me and my brother din't own too many of these. It used to be mostly from the library or borrowed from cousins. I remember one comic, that we did own, very distinctly. It was a story set in the future. In the story characters live on tree houses and each of them move about in a kind of one seater, oxygen capsuled flying machines. That was my vision of 2010. LOL.
I somehow always believed 2010 would be drastically different in terms of environment and life itself. Maybe that's one reason I did not give much importance to learning to drive properly cuz I always thought that skill would become obsolete soon! That "soon" hasnt happened any sooner. We are 3 years from the magical year and am still caught in the same bus in the same traffic jams as I did 3 years ago.
There was another event which made a profound (I always use this adjective with the next word) impact on my outlook towards life. Reading Nostradamus' book. Rather a translation by an Indian author. It made me very pessimistic about history and future. I somehow understood from this book (You should remember I was 11 years old at that time) that the world would come to an end after 2010 or so. That was very bad for the world but if you see it from a student's (my) perspective it was pure joy. I realised that I might burn the midnight oil today and top all the rank lists but tomorrow the world would come to an end anyway! What's the point? So much of my 7th standard(grade) in school was spent in the illusion that I dont have to study because the world would not exist long after. This illusion was broken (by my mom) when final exams were approaching and I was not prepared in the least.
And here we are, so close to the timeline and yet so far from all the images I conjured up!
3 comments:
Very interesting blog Siri ! It triggered a interesting series of thoughts ! Yup, we are in our "fantasy" future ! Right from 2001 : A Space Odyssey to the little gadgets that come in Start trek, I guess we had very high expectations of ourselves a few decades ago ! And our fantasy future looks gloomier and lot more duller than what we had imagined !
BTW, so you back in hosur road traffic jam ? or you are just referring to it ?
Hi Cheti, you are right our future looks dull but my imagination is painting orange on it to keep me going :)
Traffic jams I get caught in are mostly on airport road and the infamous Marathalli bridge! I am not back yet there but will be in 12 days!
Why 2010? 1999 was believed to be the year deluge, death, destruction and doom for the entire world. The world was to come to an end. Somehow its probably there in the human species to speculate confidently about the future to such an extent that we start believing that our speculation is the future. Funny.
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