There’s a part in it about geology and the cataclysms that shook earth …. and I was trying to imagine what would happen on ground zero today … not the hollywood ground zero … it looks too contrived … the brave people running and saving lives … the sermons by the President … the all faithful military putting up a valiant front in the face of extreme adversity … well as I said it sounds contrived.

But let me imagine the ground zero today … let us for the sake of self-comfort assume that a chunk of asteroid the size of a mountain is headed for the north pole ( the location gives me comfort – its reasonably far from any populated place and its quite cool in there to sort of temper the heat – a very childish assumption indeed) … let us also assume that after all our valiant efforts ( with and without n-bombs ) , we were unable to stop it in due time … and the last couple of days are spent in anxious anticipation of the inevitable …

I will skip the part about the cults and pop/urban reaction and the usual variety of emotions shown in movies depicting these events …. none of those movie makers saw such events … neither does our history justify that we will be able to send something like a bunch of lunatics (headed buy our mighty Bruce Willis ) to dig a hole on an asteroid … no … none of that will possibly happen …

So on the last day … as the population on earth notices the first clear unaided image of a black dot in the sky … the reality sinks in … the first crisis i presume will be of faith … almost everyone among us has faith in “something that nurtures life” … given various names and incarnated as various gods … we also have faith in knowing that nothing like “this” is ever going to happen in “my” lifetime …

We all watch as the dot grows larger … the reality sinks in … we could do nothing … our governments have failed us … our famous bombs failed us … the fabled secret weapons failed us … the alien technology failed us …. “how cruel can god be” … “why would he want to build all this and destroy it in a flash “… there is no end to this paranoia … and paranoia coupled with a crisis of faith is a heady cocktail.

However intelligence i believe is more powerful than the atoms that make it … once all hope is lost … we become gods ourselves … we relieve ourselves of our burden of existence … some choose death ahead of the event … others feel free and unfettered …. as if the ropes that bind us to be “ourselves” are suddenly gone … some of the depressed start feeling happy … they suddenly don’t feel unjustified … some with extraordinary faith will never loose it … knowing that dead or alive doesn’t matter as long they are happy …

There will some of us who will head for the liquor store ( especially in Delhi ) … and some of us will head for our near ones … some will hide in deep bunkers with timers in their hands … continuously checking the dials to make sure the life support systems are all working … TV crews will have various levels of coverage .. Barkha Dutt will probably fly close to the action on a chopper … she always “has it in her to do that kind of thing” … Charu Sharma will put a brave smile and take it in his stride ( i mean really !! .. the guy can take his dads demise , bad performance of his “team” as well as getting kicked out of his post at IPL all in a months time ) … anyway he will blabber away at the studio all the while wishing he was with his wife … a very painful scenario of bone-headedness i might add …

To continue …. now its visible to everyone … some of the people will start singing together … the “common intelligence” taking over the individual “mind” … the religious will pray and wish for miracles …. the drug addicts will get “high” …. the boozers will get their “buzz” … celebs will take barbiturates … Britney Spears (in dowdy midriff revealing sweatshirts) will break car windows with umbrellas and other assorted items – as a mark of her individuality ….

The first world countries will have the biggest crisis of faith … its almost like they are so dependent on the “government” to solve all their miseries … like noisy but faithful kindergarten kids … checking their blackberries nervously … others will load their best guns with the best bullets … or fire up their favorite Mozart piece (depending on which side of the Atlantic) … a great majority will “wager” …

“In other Asian countries people have started looting stuff from the big shops …” – kind of summaries the evergreen images of the Asian outback … well in reality people here will handle it much better …. they are more used to such failures of the government ….

Well … the thing hits the ground …. the streak of light across the sky ends over the horizon for most … we were “told” that the shock wave is to be expected at “x” time in our area … and we wait … in absolute awe … the first pics of the impact will come in soon ( an interesting question would be – will the tv images reach us before the shock wave or vice versa ? ) … a brilliant flash in the distance …. people doing “aahhhs” and “ohhhs” in the background of the tv feed …. the iconic mushroom cloud but this time larger than anything ever before …. the immense waves traveling at breath taking speeds on faraway shores … the shudder as buildings are toppling one by one … people becoming hysterical … the lonely musician playing a guitar on the sea-shore … enjoying the music as he waits for the “wall of water” …

The shock will soon reach the mantle and then the liquid outer core …. and then their will be fireworks …. as the magnetic field running this planet changes orientation in seconds …. small changes in magnitude but immense in effect … the pent-up pressure under various tectonic plates will start releasing … dormant volcanoes open up like dragons spewing mile high streams of rushing super hot magma … the surface shock will crumble most high rises for many thousands of miles around the zone of impact …

Then there will be the “black cloud” … the Queen’s men will not rue the weather … theres normally very little sunlight they see anyway …. the Mediterranean shores will see the most drastic changes … from good sunny blue sky to dark thunderstorm like scenario in a few hours …

Well i fear to imagine what comes next … other than a whole lot of death among the mighty humans … there might be survivors till a few years later … but most of us are going to perish in the first day itself … as a flicker of hope some of us may get free of our mother Earth and head to space in ramshackle rockets … knowing all too well that only some alien can save us …. our technology being totally incompetent at preserving life outside earth for prolonged periods …

Some of us will send movie cds and other data in satellites so that some other “intelligent being” will get to know about us … someday … maybe billions of years later …. when they get to load our USB drives ..

In the parlance of cosmic space, this event would be called a firecracker going off next to an assortment of exploding nuclear bombs …

Well thats how fragile we are …. and yet how sure we are that nothing like “that” is going to happen in “my” lifetime …. and we go through the grind of our daily routines … with a nonchalance of diabolical proportions.

*************

Note : Please feel free to add other effects you can imagine in the comments below… taking care to leave out the usual stuff that has been shown in detail in hollywood movies. It would be very nice if you can give me some humorous instances of our celebs going nuts. Like Rajni’s reaction …”if Rajnikant then nobody can ….”

Later, we may discuss how a bollywood “end of the world” movie will look like ….