----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Disclaimer: This blog was written purely for fun (at least for the author), so take it in that spirit alone. I didn’t intend to hurt any religious (existing or ancient) beliefs or sentiments, so there is no need to read in between the lines and take any other meaning.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The other day I was watching this program in History Channel, about the Mayan apocalypse. All religions have some direct (or indirect) mention about doomsday, so much so you think it is some kind of masochistic pleasure to fantasize about the world coming to an end! Or, it is a way devised by the devious ‘wise-men’ to scare us ‘sinners’ into being reasonably good people! Whatever it is, the list is endless – From the ‘sky is going to fall on our heads’ of Asterix’s religion (whatever that was) to the ‘Kalki avatar is coming soon to slay us all’ (of course with numerous ‘God-men’ proclaiming that they are the chosen ones, providing us with comic relief in otherwise drab proceedings) to ‘Judgement day is approaching soon where non-believers will be judged and damned to eternal hell, so you better embrace..’ – You know the works!

But this Mayan prediction intrigued me – mainly because they were able to give an accurate date for doomsday – December 21, 2012. That takes some guts, I bet. Remember, these are the blokes that built the great pyramid in Chichen Itza, which is considered to be some kind of 3 dimensional solar calendar, many centuries ago, which must have involved complex mathematics as well as a great knowledge of structural Engineering (here I was, struggling through high school calculus and trigonometry) so they knew their stuff, all right! True, they had their ‘moments’ when in the name of religious sacrifice they ripped their victim’s heart out while it was still alive and beating, but hey, everyone’s got their dark side! I started counting – 2012, that leaves just about 5 years for all of us! (That much arithmetic is well within my reach). I got so depressed at first, 5 years from now, I would still be a youth (well, sort of!) and I never envisaged that I would die so young.

But it soon hit me –the key to all these predictions, right from the famous Nostradamus’s predictions to our very own ‘Naadi Jodhidam***’ predictions is INTERPRETATION. All these predictions are written in some complicated and twisted word play (something like the puzzles explained by Dan Brown in his famous book, Da vinci code, though that was much simpler) – The same sentence can be interpreted either as “You would be king of the world one day” or “Your pet dog will die of diarrhea”. So, you see, the end of the world need not be taken literal, it could be the end of the world AS WE KNOW IT.

Now this seems good- Instead of picturing dreadful things like the whole earth left completely barren after being bombarded by an evil asteroid, which chose this exact trajectory towards earth when it could have chosen any other path or the whole planet being plunged into eternal nuclear holocaust (which is more likely than the asteroid theory anyway), we can safely assume that the world as we know it is going to change, and we’ll go back to a sort of stone-age. That won’t be so bad; in fact, it can work out to our advantage; Eternal optimist that I am, I decided to see the silver (probably gold) lining. Living in a sort-of Stone Age will prove to be much better than living in this techno-crazy world! And, after so many centuries, human kind will have the golden opportunity to experience true FREEDOM.

Freedom from complicated gourmet cooking: This is for all those women (and men) who indulge in complicated gourmet cooking, spending hours in the kitchen grinding, peeling, and cutting to satisfy the individual food preferences of their children, spouse, parents & parents-in law. Somehow I think in Stone Age days a simple barbecue on the outdoor is all that takes for cooking a fine meal.

P.S: If anyone is interested to know more about the Mayan prophecy, here are some links, and you can see that in some of these links, they are questioning the theory (Tell me one theory that doesn’t have its detractors). Also, the less-harmful interpretation that the world as we know it is going to end is also floating around a lot in the net.

http://www.2012endofdays.org/general/2012-end-of-days.php

http://www.diagnosis2012.co.uk/5thsun.htm

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-03-27-maya-2012_n.htm

*** Naadi Jodhidam is a form of astrology where with just a thumb impression taken from a person; his past, present and future are predicted – in the form of ancient Tamil couplets, allegedly written on palm leaves by various rishis like Agasthiar and Vashistar.

I