Ab le bhi jao....I wanna be Taken

The space and the stars had always fascinated me as a child. I was very happy reciting "Twinkle twinkle little stars" till I realised somewhere in Class 10 that the nursery poem was nothing more than a big cover up for something that was absolutely horrendous for my brain. My IQ level just did not permit me to appreciate the difference between a white dwarf and a pulsar and such similar comparisons between a supernova and a black hole. Seeing the question paper of physics in the final exams, the one which seemed to be some kind of a script written in some alien language I had actually contemplated writing down my favourite poem that I had memorised so hard during my nursery days but thanks to a kind hearted fellow who sat right beside me and did not have the heart to complain, I passed with flying colours finally being able to write something about what the Doppler Effect actually was.

After that disastrous rendezvous with a subject like astronomy, I came face to face with it when I bought a book seeing Akshara buy one called "Taken". It was a scientific fiction about something related to outer space and our cozy little planet earth. Normally, my book reading habits rise and fall the same way as an economy springs between boom and depression. For the last 3 years or so it has been steadily hanging on to the recessionary phase with me not even finishing even a half a dozen of them. The sole motivation for buying the book was that it seemed to be a new copy with a flashy cover page and I was only getting it for Rs.90. At one point of time a capital expenditure of Rs.9 also would have made me think three times. But after getting a job, shelling out Rs.90 doesnt seem that difficult. No doubt am not one of the persons whose name Dhirubhai or for that matter Gurubhai wrote on his will but still sometimes its good to splurge. After all according to Keynesian theory spending means doing good to the economy.

So there I was trying to struggle through the pages of Taken all through the week and the more I read it the more it seemed that aliens had actually found our planet and that finally the likes of me whose genetic constitution was more like that of an alien than human could be united with our brethren. So there I was doing all sorts of things to find out if I could see some signs that they were interested in me being Taken by them.

I got the first sign when I realized that people at my office were looking at me with an alien look. For a split second my happiness knew no bounds till I realized that it was more of a sign of disgust seeing the terribly torn shoes that I was wearing to office one fine Monday morning. Alas the looks forced my room mate to drag me to the nearest Bata and there was where I gave divorce to my two and a half yr old shoes with a heavy heart.

The second and the biggest sign that I got was something related to electricity. The other day I was happily moving down the stairs of my office at breathtaking speed as if to catch a plane that was taxing down the runway leaving me behind, I tripped and I had to hold on to the railing to avoid a fall that would have given me all the more reason to make my medical insurance company pay. The moment I held the railing I felt a sudden shock as if I had touched a live wire. Now there was no chance of any electricity leakages happening from a railing and it seemed that I had developed some kind of an electric field around me thanks to the aliens that induced shocks the same way that Gods in mythological series are shown developing some kind of a halo behind their gold clad helmets of yesteryears called mukuts. When I told one of my colleagues about this incident and the way I was getting signs that the aliens were trying to contact me, he lauged it out saying that it was merely a case of a build up of static electricity in my body that had given me the rude shock. The colleague of mine happened to be an electrical engineer and from then on I have decided not to talk about my dreams of being taken to any electrical engineer.

The last of the clues came in the form of a boon today. Friday is always the last day when anyone would like to put in extra hours at their workplace. After all arent friday's meant to be partied away? So there I was in the morning balming and cribbing the whole world on my way to office desperately trying to connect with the aliens to make sure that there was no work when I reached office today. Sure enough my wishes came true when the mailbox stopped working. The system error was that of some server errors caused due to an ALIEN exception. The word alien in the error message finally made me realise that they were surely here trying to help me out and take me and accept me as a brethren and lead me to a better life that was free of curry pattas, one and half meter rates, Hosur Road jams and much more.

Lets see if I am Taken, I have my high doubts because the last time I volunteered to be taken somewhere I landed up in the police station for playing loud music. After that even the police does not want to take me again. That is why my hope has traversed from the humans to the aliens.