The day i almost found the sherlock in me part 2 (read part 1 first)

I climb. one step at a time. my phone screen reads 100. my thumb on the green call button. As they old say, "its always better to be prepared".

i had reached the last step, i turn to my right and my left expecting lizards to fall on my immensely attractive frame.

i see only a Panicker Travels office. my mother and my sister quickly enter one of the cloth shops at the end of a corridor. i decide to give up the relative safety of the shop and look around. the place was dinghy. one of those places where the wall-paper has "this is crime zone" watermarks.

i walk along the left corridor. my hands in my pocket and casually whistling a melody. ( i cannot whistle, but i was trying very hard!!). as they teach in school, to play it cool is the whole point.

i casually peek through the shop windows. An angry female face greets me back. i quickly look away. then i realized that i was peeking into a lingeree boutique. (funny how the mind works!)

there was a beauty parlor, a gift shop, a couple of travel agencies and a chinese feng shui shop. i was just about the give the place a clean chit, when i saw two young men.

two 'chinese' young men.

two 'chinese' young men wearing green v neck t shirts and extraordinarily faded jeans.

two 'chinese' young men wearing green v neck t shirts and extraordinarily faded jeans and white sports shoes.

two 'chinese' young men wearing green v neck t shirts and extraordinarily faded jeans and white sports shoes and a weird spiky hair style.

two 'chinese' young men wearing green v neck t shirts and extraordinarily faded jeans and white sports shoes and a weird spiky hair style and 2 wristbands.

two 'chinese' young men wearing green v neck t shirts and extraordinarily faded jeans and white sports shoes and a weird spiky hair style and 2 wristbands and a dog chain.

"two 'chinese' young men wearing green v neck t shirts and extraordinarily faded jeans and white sports shoes and a weird spiky hair style and 2 wristbands and a dog chain!!!!!!"

Cmon people! Even a blind dude can see they have drugs written all over them!

This place had to be some sort of a vital link in an international drug chain running from china to india and then to europe. imagine good ol' Prince Plaza on Pantheon road, egmore being responsible for the destruction of millions of young people across the world!

my "its time to get cracking" vein was about to explode.

i had to save millions of young lives in europe. the girls there are too hot to die of drug abuse!

i follow the two guys. i am sure they were the personal body guards of a drug overlord who i am sure lived in the top floor of that building. someone's gotta meet the lion in the eye!

i follow them. they start climbing the stairs. why climb the stairs when the place has got lifts? the only reason could be that they were suspecting the cops of placing recording devices in these lifts by means of which they can eavesdrop on all the drug-talk.

i move in closer. i HAVE to eavesdrop on the drug talk.

i catch a few words. i hear green somewhere. hah! green ->plant -> weed ->marijuana!

i also hear drink somewhere. simple! drink->cold drink->coca cola->coke->cocaine!!

i hear shah rukh. Elementary, My dear watson! Shah Rukh->Hero->heroin!!!

it looked like i had stumbled upon the drug capital of asia!

i follow them up the stairs. they stop at the fourth floor, the employee residence area. i must not be seen there. i crouch behind a board. i have to have a plan.

i quickly go over my plan. all indications were pointing towards a possible multi-million dollar drug deal taking place right here. i had to catch the whole thing on my 3.2 megapixel Nokia camera and then fly to the police station across the street and help the cops nab these criminals. then of course there would be a national award, a few advertisements, a movie, a few talk shows, Internet sensation....life will be good. :)

my intense planning was disrupted by the sound of a door opening. i quickly take out my phone and start the camera.

a lady walks out.

a 'Chinese' lady walks out.

a 'chinese' lady walks out wearing a red t shirt and denim bermuda.

a 'chinese' lady walks out wearing a red t shirt and "tight" denim bermuda.

a pretty 'chinese' lady walks out wearing a red t shirt and "tight" denim bermuda.

a pretty 'chinese' lady with awesome stuff walks out wearing a red t shirt and "tight" denim bermuda.

a pretty 'chinese' lady with awesome stuff smelling of the lady equivalent of "Axe Chocolate"walks out wearing a red t shirt and "tight" denim bermuda.

there are moments in life when some hard decisions have to be taken. decisions which will influence our lives forever. decisions which we will look back at on our death-bed when the imaginary noose is being tightened. decisions which will be celebrated and spat at simultaneously. decisions which act as a door between two extreme possibilities. possibilities which promise so much. It all depends on which way we swing the door. push or pull. push or pull. push or pull. thats all it boils down to.

this was one such moment in my life.

the beautiful girl with a nice backside or busting an international crime racket worth millions of dollars and thereby saving the lives of millions of youngsters!

the beautiful girl with a nice backside who walks with a most delightful swagger or the international drug people.

the beautiful girl with that tight red awesome shirt and with a nice backside who walks with a most delightful swagger or solving crime.

the beautiful girl with that tight red awesome shirt and with a nice backside who walks with a most delightful swagger and who could notice my most attractive self or some ....what was i doing there?

i get up and run behind the girl.

she was nowhere to be found.

so folks, that was the day i almost discovered the sherlock holmes in me. my logical reasoning, my fearless approach to combating crime and my dogged persistence amaze me even now. but it was destroyed by a girl.

a beautiful girl.

a beautiful 'chinese' girl.

a beautiful ' chinese' girl with a nice backside.

!@$#@$

don't get me started on that again!!

The day i almost found the sherlock in me part 1

A few days back my mother wanted me to come along with her and my sister to egmore to buy some cotton material. it seems pantheon road in egmore is famous for its material shops. finally it took a promise of dinner outside to convince me to sit in the car.

we went to this place called "prince plaza"

now before i go to what happened in this Prince plaza, i will give the reader a small bit of wisdom on the "plaza phenomenon" in chennai.

in the early 90s the government of tamil nad gave a number of construction companies, approvals to build smaller version of malls which have the dubious name plaza(except of course spencer plaza which is monstrously big). all these plaza's have a very similar structural plan.

a flight of stairs leads to the ground level which has shops along two corridors of the rectangle. on the side opposite to the entrance there are a couple of lifts. all of them have an atrium and a basement which has predominantly eatery joints. most of these plazas have two or three floors above which there is one floor for the accommodation of its workers, shop employees etc.

now these plazas instantly became a craze with the then youth population of the city. the pink shirt-green pant and maroon salwar clad love birds flocked to these Establishments to relish each others company and the one rupee ice creams. unfortunately for the shop owners, our love birds were severely constrained on the financial front. imported perfumes and pure cotton home decor products were leagues out of their pocket depth. so there was little or no business happening in these 'plazas'.

that is when these plazas fell over to the dark side. they embraced crime and anti-social activities to make ends meet.

now we fast forward a few years.

av is now a class 4 student of kendriya vidyalaya ashok nagar. the video game bug which had bit all his class mates had finally become strong enough to infect his extraordinarily strong mental frame. he coaxes his mother to take him to a "raahat plaza" to buy the latest video games.

there he meets a line of young ugly women decked to their noses with make-up. their haughty appearance and bad make-up affect the nervous system of the young man and he asks his mother, "who are those girls?". one of the decked lizards turns her head and gives av a big smile.

my mother never took me to raahat plaza after that.

this incident early on in my life made me avoid these plazas for the rest of my life (except of course Spencer plaza where the choc fountain cake thing is AWESOME). so this "PRINCE PLAZA" is the first plaza i was about to visit after that lizard experience.

i was apprehensive. i geared myself to meet crime in the eye. the plaza criminals might have got the better of class 4 AV, but college second year AV is an altogether different ball game!

we reach prince plaza.

i look around. recon. most essential.

the trademark flight of stairs leading to the ground level.

i go up the stairs. one step at a time expecting the line of lizards to greet me with their bad make-up and scaly looks, any moment.

i never knew that that day, i will almost discover the sherlock holmes gene in me.

Who is Morgoth?

LOTR is undoubtedly one of the best stories that has ever been seen in the literary world. it has all the elements essential of a classic, war, drama, emotions, courage, valour etc. but very few people know that LOTR is just one small incident in the history of the fictitious universe that Tolkien invented. it happens over about 20 years, a speck of sand comparing to the timeline of Middle Earth.

So i read up a lot (A lot lot) and here i am writing an article about how things started in this world.

Many many many millenia ago there was a God named Eru Illavatar. he is the all powerful one in this universe. how he came into being is not known. he was known to exist in the outer void between matter and he has no physical shape. he is like a thought.

he decided to create a universe which he called "Ea". he created this universe by composing a song called "Music of the Ainur". he did not physically create the planets, stars etc but instead created angel like spirits called "Ainur". the job of the Ainur was to go to each and every planet, star etc and physically create trees, mountains etc according to their intepretation of the music. hence Eru just gave a sort of an instruction manual. the ainur intepreted the verses of the Music in his/her own way.

to aid the Ainur in their work, Eru then created weaker spirits called "Mair"

Now most of you guys must have heard of the biggest bad guy in this story, a creature called Morgoth. in LOTR it is once said that Sauron himself was just a servant to Morgoth.

so who is this guy?

The first Ainur that Eru created was called Melkor. At that time Eru made a mistake and granted this Ainur all his powers. whereas for the other AInur he gave only a few of his powers. so Melkor was the most powerful Ainur ever created. but Melkor soon realised that he has all the qualities to be another Eru. but that was not accepted by others. so he fell over to the dark side. Melkor was the first Ainur to come to Earth and on Earth he started intepreting the Music in his dark and evil ways. so started creating orcs, dragons, balrogs etc. using these creatures he started attacking the other Ainur who came to Earth.

So melkor became the bad guy on Earth. now initially he was just a thought like other Ainur and he could take up any physical shape that he wanted. but as started using more and more of his powers to corrupt the very fabric of Earth, he became weaker and was forced to take up a physical shape(see diagram)

Melkor was the strongest creature on Earth. so many animals and spirits came to his side. one of the Mair who was seduced by the dark side was Sauron. Sauron soon rose to be the principal lieuphtenant of Melkor.

so how did Melkor come to be called Morgoth?

now when the elves had just come into existence, the good Ainur created two large trees. one in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern hemi. these were the only sources of light then. the sun was yet to be created. now Melkor destroyed these trees and the world was plunged into darkness for a long time. now one elf cleverly captured some of the light of these trees into three jewels(gems) called "The Silmarils". the Silmaris became the most powerful weapons and source of energy in the world. Melkor stole these gems with the help of traitors and wore them on his dark crown. the elves then called him "Morgoth" which means Black Enemy in the Elf-tongue.

Many centuries later Morgoth was finally defeated and he was cast into the outer void. that means that he can never return into this dimension. his servant Sauron then took up the mantle as the Dark Lord.

Morgoth was destroyed because of his own actions rather than the powers of his enemies. unlike Sauron who wanted to just control the actions of all creatures in Middle Earth, Morgoth wanted to control their very existence and their thoughts. he used all his powers to corrtupt the Music and this led to a gradual decline in his powers till the point where others could defeat him in war.