Whims published... It's not an expert's opinion, It's not an online diary, It's not a web journal... It is just my whims published

My original plan was kinda too ambitious to try in hot Sun. The plan was to peddle till Nandi hills and return! Though its not an impossible task, but wud be too much for amateur bicycle enthusiasts like us. Bhai’s absence also made our long drive cut short till our good old college, gr8 Sir MVIT, which is 20+ kms from my home.

Pujar n Me left sharp @ 6 from my home. Byre had told us dat he wud join us near Hebbal. Pujar n Me reached Hebbal @ 6:35. Then 3 of us started peddling towards our college. It was fun to peddle in the morning sun. After peddling almost for an hour, we felt the need for a pit stop n do some pet pooja. We stopped @ Yalahanka, had fairly tasty Idli-vade. We bot some apples for munching in future pit-stops. I have heard people saying about plantains as energy booster, but its always pain to carry plantains. It gets pilpila very easily no matter how carefully you pack/keep it. That’s why its our usual practice to carry apples as natural energy boosters.

Peddling, panting and making fun of myriad of things on the way we reached our college around 8:30 AM. The ride was not @ all a problem except for our paining bums. Lemme boast about my coll now. It is spread across 130 acres of vast land. Hence it was easy for us to get lost if we come out of our class rooms. The road to our college also leads to a village named SuggaTTa in the backyard of our college. Many transport vehicles, BMTC bus and vehicles of villagers pass through the compound of our college. That could be a reason for the security guard of our college for letting our 3 bicycles inside the college compound without verifying our identities.

After giving a brief visit to SuggaTTa we came to the college premises and to our favorite aDDa, the foot ball cum cricket ground. We rested for a while there. It was really nostalgic to sit in the same place where we spent most of our time lazing around during our BE days. Nothing seems to have changed in the college, the mud path towards the ground, the trees, the somari kaTTe around the trees, the good old football ground. Its quite an irony that whenever we think of college we get the picture of football ground in mind but never a classroom or a single lecturer :-)

Since it was SAT, there was not much of crowd in the college.

Our college has a pretty decent facility to host inter collegiate/inter club cricket matches in the grounds. And there was a match about to begin in few minutes and we decided to add to the finger count of spectators. It was quite painful to park our already paining asses on the stone seats near the boundary. The stones underneath showed no mercy on our asses. We sat there for more than an hour cheering the players occasionally but often inventing new positions so as to apply less thrust on our asses. We decided to leave from there as the match was boring. We visited another endearing place of ours in the college. Yes the rest room :-) During our days in the college we used to claim it to be the best rest room, we also had names like Taj Mahal [no offense meant to ny one] and White House referring to the white marble and white paint on the walls of the rest rooms. After using the rest rooms we felt it was not well maintained compared to our time. And felt those days of glory will never return ;-)

We munched some thing in our college canteen, and headed back. On the way back the scorching Sun made us drench in sweat. But we dint have to peddle much, as we got many slopes.

Reached Hebbal around 12, the point where we had begun the crazy adventure. Byre peddled straight but Pujar and Me took a deviation towards the ring road which connects to new BEL circle, from then on towards IISc via Ramiah College. Despite the hariyaali of Ramiah College, the stretch proved to be strenuous in hot Sun. what seemed like a cake walk in the morning, now the same Rd seemed like an eternity. At last I reached home around 1.

Now sitting on a properly cushioned chair and composing dis post. May our asses rest on ice :-)

Went to the DVD library, started glancing @ the new Eng releases neatly kept aligned in the shelf. I had no particular movie in mind. A movie called ‘Into the wild’ caught my eyes. The DVD cover contained the picture of a young guy sitting on the roof of a maxi cab, staring at the horizon with his baggage lying beside him and a clear sky in the background. Quite an interesting pic isn’t it? I told the boy in the DVD shop to get me that DVD to have a look @ the theme of the movie. Boy reached out to the shelf and handed over the DVD to me n said some thing funny. He said, “Sir, this movie is about life..”. It was queer to hear that from a lad like him, he must be some 11-12 years of age. I contained my laughter and smiled @ him. Reading the brief plot of the movie on the hind cover of the DVD, I was quite impressed about the plot of the movie. I dint bother to see the director’s name, lead actor seemed like a new guy. Many a times the movies which I have watched/bought by mere gut feelings have turned out to be gr8 movies. Pinning on the same gut feeling I borrowed that DVD.

Now lets talk about the movie. The movie is about a guy called Chris McCandless who is just out of his college. Tired of his parents’ troubled relationship and in an attempt of soul-searching he leaves his home, parents and a younger sister, donates his fairly huge amount of savings money to charity and heads towards west coast. When he wanders around the states of USA, he indulges in many professions, masquerades under a pseudo name called Alexander Supertrump, gets lost in the wilderness, canoes down Colarado River crossing the border of USA illegally! In course of his sojourn, he meets variety of people, some nice men who offer Chris a job, some wanderers like him, some gentle men who question his purpose of wandering, some naturists etc etc. As the last phase of his travel he heads towards a region of Alaska, where there is no trail of humans around. He finds an abandoned maxi cab and starts living in it.

The movie unfolds in its own pace, with no hurry of what so ever; after all, the protagonist has all the time in the world right..? The movie has two interlaced narrations by both Chris, the man himself and his sister Carine. Mostly narrated by the latter.

There are moments in the movie when Chris burns his currency, when he refuses to settle down with a wanderer couple, when he turns down the offer of a teenage girl to bed her, when he aimlessly stares at nothing, u might get frustrated and feel like shouting WTF this guy wants in life? But what I admire the most about the movie is this movie is like reading a fine book. I think that’s a great compliment on its own for the movie. Whether it’s the alphabets of Chris’s letters/diary which marquees along on the fore ground or the way Chris’s journey is divided into chapters like ‘Birth’, ‘Childhood’, ‘Adolescence’, ‘Manhood’ and the last chapter ‘Getting of Wisdom’. The camera captures the finest details of the nature, emotions of Chris n his parents, as would have penned down meticulously by a writer.

The movie is based on a novel by the same name by Jon Krakauer and directed by Sean Penn [yes ur rite, academy award winner for his role in Mystic River]. Actors have done a gr8 job, kudos to Emile Hirsch who plays the role of Chris in the movie.

One last thing about the movie is u may get disappointed if ur expecting the story to be some serious soul searching one would do fleeing away from home. I was stunned when I found ‘Into the wild’ is based on a true story! I would still reco u this movie, if you enjoy ‘reading a book’…