The Lost World

A few days back i happened to read this article in TOI of how a new scientific research has blamed the loss of all dinosaurs & species of Mesozoic era on us i.e. Indians. {Is there any necessity to say the nationality of this report???? Yes, you guessed it right! It is Uncle Sam’s job. You know…this is the foremost problem with the developed countries. They have plentiful of time for such futile studies and examinations. I have never, in my life so far, met or heard of any Indians doing or have done their doctorates in Sleipnir (i.e. some mythological eight-legged horse), or haplology (i.e. course of action of deleting two almost identical syllables in a word. If you ask me, i will be deleting this entire word!), or Ornithopters or some things even remotely similar to these all. But forget it! This can be a whole new blog by itself some day. Let’s get out of these curly brackets now.} It puts forward the theory of how the volcanic eruptions in South-Asian subcontinent, i.e. India, formed an olympian cloud of smoke, ash and all trash blocking the sunlight for a long time to result in alteration of climatic conditions and finally the end of Hollywood’s National Animal.

Before this day it had never occurred to me that these archosaurs had once inhabited India also. I know that my history stands weak with arranging events chronologically. But what i can remember is that there were gods living in India (Why i don’t know! When the whole planet belongs to you, why not stay in Switzerland forever????) And there were some devils also who were always killed by these gods (If not gods, they could go to Switzerland!!!!! There were no VISA interviews in those days!!!) And then there is a huge time skip & my memory lands me in Harappa, Mohenjodaro, Mauriyas, Cholas, Magadhas, Nandas, Guptas, Mughals, Nizams, Peshwas and finally the East-India Company. Now this is a very big lapse of time not accounted. How this period was not registered anywhere, i don’t know. Maybe that’s why all the great leaders in this world have always & has at least given us one “thought” emphasizing importance of time, punctuality and such things. And it is due to these guys only that we have to give account of our 40 hrs spent every week in office (@#$%&*@*%#%#&#@!).

But imagine if this chain had all its beads in place and if this whole thing had a perfect continuity, India would have been so different with just the knowledge that we inherit the land once owned by dinosaurs!!!!

India being the largest producer of cinema, the impact on film business cannot be deserted. We Indians pour in heaps to movies featuring dinosaurs, anacondas, giant gorillas and such (once-up-on-a-time) living things. In fact, my first English movie is Jurassic Park itself. We Indians can’t keep ourselves far from such fantasies. And hence, i am quite sure that, we wouldn’t have needed to turn to Steven Spielberg for them. We would have had many such movies from Satyajit Ray. (I don’t know the authenticity of this but i have read somewhere that the famous ET was a plagiary of one of the Satyajit Ray’s ideas.) Salim-Jawed would have written larger than life scripts (this phrase aptly suits dinosaur movies) on how the carnivorous dinos would kill herbivorous dinos & then the kids of herbivorous dinos would take the “hamari maa ki maut ka badlaa”. Karan Johar would have made dino romantic fables. Dinosaurs hopping around hillocks (they won’t fit behind the garden bushes), shouting (equivalent with talking), shouting (equivalent with singing), shouting (equivalent with laughing) and again shouting (now equivalent with crying). (Gawd! It is going to be a tough job for vocal artists to give so many expressions by just shouting). There would be wedding-videos type movies on them. Action packed “Khiladi” type is never to be forgotten too. To cut this whole thing short, let’s just say, the landscape of the Indian Cinema would have been very different.

Another great change would have been in our childhoods. We would not have had all those toys of just horses, dogs or elephants. I am sure our parents would have got us some long necked simple and mild looking herbivorous dino toys. For soft toys lovers there would also be teddy-dinos. Our childhood stories wouldn’t just have ended with donkeys and monkeys. May be, we would be giving a break to ant and elephant and would be cracking jokes on Epidexipteryx (the smallest dino) and Spinosaurus (the largest dino). Our Panchatantra stories would also need editing to change the king of jungle. Jungle Book would have had a small cute ummm…dinolet (what do we call a baby dino???) as Mowgli’s friend. Our museums would have been containing beautiful fossils of long tails and sharp teeth of these animals. And now, i would call these fossils as the real fossils worth any museum. (I detest those earthen one-armed-lady statues & bullock carts. Oh come on! Anyone can in their own backyard make them, bake them and start their own small museum.) Our education systems would have been somewhat different. Instead of mugging the dates of Chauri Chaura Movement twice in school life, one year they would have taught us about these creatures. Who knows, i would have been a paleontologist now. Digging earth somewhere for more and more bones! Oh wow! That would have been so much better....

Going many steps ahead, i would also say that, may be this small alteration would have made a vast cultural change montaging the whole of the Indian image. The whole persona of Indians would have been poles apart. We would have been bolder, antagonist, valiant, fearless and hence may be much more developed. Coming back to the topic of development, may be it would have been like this that we Indians would have put forward this new “scientific research” blaming them and then some American guy would have scratched his head and would have come up with this blog...... :)