The Visitor- Part 3

“Mind-voice?” I asked again.

“More like telepathy. When I mentioned my planet’s name did you feel any slight throbbing in your head?”

‘You bet it did!’ my mind-voice was listening intently now and I replied to Paul, “Yeah it did hurt a bit but I thought that was the uncomfortable frequency of your voice”

“That’s because I said the name in our language which includes transmission of mental ideas along with the usual air vibrations. Humans can’t process incoming telepathic signals efficiently yet. But we can receive your mental signals very well”

‘Oops. Time to go mute’ my mind-voice declared and Paul smirked, “Going mute won’t help kid. 

You see, thoughts are not necessarily just the words and sentences in your mind. Mental images, ideas, anger, love. You humans send it out continuously. There’s no easy way for you to truly mute that. Just like you can’t consciously listen to others thoughts, you can’t consciously stop sending out your thoughts either.”

“Oh! I should stop thinking then?”

 “Hmm, but having an open heart is not a bad thing. Sending your thoughts out for someone is a very compassionate way of touching someone’s soul. There must have been days when you suddenly felt loved and days when you felt all alone? That’s your body tuning in to the thoughts around you. This is why you feel comfortable at home with family even if nobody’s talking. One person’s state of mind can impact others around him. You humans are still in baby phase, kid.”

“Hey I’m not a kid” I inflated like a hot balloon.

“Don’t get angry at me for saying the cold hard fact, kid. Your species is really in a kiddie phase. And if there’s anything against you humans, it’s the time.”

“What time?”

“Your average life span. Do you think humans could’ve achieved anything if their life span was about that of a cat? Like 20 years at max? Almost all great achievements were done by people above that only. Imagine what Einstein could’ve done if he had lived just a few more decades. You get smarter as you age and then you die, with all those ideas that were never expanded or implemented. When your medical growth prevented several diseases from being fatal and the average life expectancy was increased you saw tremendous growth in science. There’s no wonder humans have achieved so much in the last two centuries, far more than they had achieved in the previous two millenniums. It’s really impressive. But our kind live long, several centuries. I’m about 90 of earth years old but back home I’m still considered an adolescent, a mad youth who gets kick out of driving to the far corners of galaxy.”

I sensed him getting personal now and something seemed to hurt him, so I tried to move on from the topic “What else do we need to be as smart as you? What makes you so smart?”

“Brain to body ratio, dude. Brain to body ratio.” He said waving his hands up and down his skeletal frame, seemingly happy at boasting about his superiority.

“What does that mean?”

“Look at other animals. Their brains are used for mostly controlling their body and preserving it, running around, hunting, surviving. But human brains are bigger when compared to their body weight. Big enough to control your body and still have space for other stuffs like thinking. And since you people stopped leading a hunter’s life and settled down farming, your lives became much simpler and were able to do things like sitting and pondering under an apple tree. Suddenly humans had all the time in the world to use that brain for tasks other than thinking about food and reproduction.”

I blushed, “We still do that… a lot”

Paul laughed. “I know. We do too”, he winked “But our brains are big enough to think about other important tasks at hand too. Remember that scene from ‘Watchmen’ where Dr. Manhattan is making love to his girlfriend and he conjures up a body double to carry out scientific experiments in the next room?”

I giggled like a girl, “Oh yeah! She storms out of the room when she finds out, as if she has caught him cheating on her”

“Science being the second girlfriend” he chimed in. I was starting to like this alien, I mean extra-terrestrial visitor.

“Well, the point is that we have much bigger brains and tiny body.” He said coming back to the topic.

“But we will too. Humans didn't always have big brains. We evolved.”

“Yes, you will. If time permits that is.”

“What does that mean?”

“If you don’t destroy each other before then. Your economic system is designed such that everyone has to do something- a job, no matter how boring- to feed yourself. A system where eveyone’s in debt, debt to his stomach, his family, his employer and you try to pay that off by working and earning wages. A system where the one with a lot of bank balance gets interest and the one below minimum balance is fined, perpetuating the “rich get richer and poor get poorer” setting. A system where someone with money has to do very little to earn more but someone with not enough money has to toil to get nearly enough before running out of money again. A system where people are slaves to the paper-bonds.”

“That’s true, but I don’t see how we could do it any differently.”

“You can if you put aside your differences.”

“How can that be done?”

“See, in our world we act like one huge family. There’s no currency and so nobody’s pressured to earn. Everyone’s allowed to do what they love and contribute to society in their own way. If someone is interested in making spaceships he will join others of similar interest and they will request raw materials from someone who is fond of making metals, promising him some of the working ships. He will give gladly since it’s only for the betterment of the community. Someone whose love is in cooking will spend all day cooking to his heart’s content and distribute it among the neighbours, supplying food in essence. Someone whose dream is teaching will teach the colony’s children and so on.”

“But in such an impartial system won’t there be lazy bones like me who’ll waste time doing nothing.” I said.

“There could be, and there are kids like you too, but seeing everyone around them contribute something to the society they feel guilty and start doing something. Have you seen an ant in an ant colony lazing around? It’s in their nature to act as one big family. That colony won’t survive if every ant saved food only for itself. Much like individual families here on earth. Your dad won’t scold you if you spent a couple days in home being sick. They’ll take care of you. Ants do that too and so do we in our planet.

‘But humans don’t care about anything that is outside his field of vision. You make walls for the house, dividing yourself from the ‘outside’, make borders between countries, states, towns and then fight for your own states. And then you divide yourselves based on dumb concepts like religion, language, caste, race etcetera etcetera. Of course, it is only practical in this system where ‘profit’ is the only goal. It requires a drastic change in views of everyone at once to make any progress.”

“So you think we have no hope?”

“You have potential. That is, like I said, if you don’t destroy yourselves into nothingness first. Like a bright sun collapsing into a black hole.”

I stared at him mouth gaping with awe (or was that the sound I made? ‘Ah’), “How do you know so much about Earth when you just fell here on my balcony?”

“Of course I know so much. I've been studying you people.”

“Ah, there you go” I laughed, “So your kind is actually interested in our progress. You said they are not impressed by our technology.”

“Yes they’re not. But I don’t have a choice. You think I fell in your balcony from outer space?”

“What else?”

“I've been living on earth for several decades now.”

(--To Be Continued--)

The Visitor- Part 2

I stared blankly back at it. The sound seemed to be coming from the creature, but in a very human-like voice. I managed to sit straight.

Sensing that I was too shocked to reply, it spoke again “I heard you from outside. Why on earth were you talking to yourself?”

“Uhh…” I just sat there motionless frozen to sub-zero.

“Because you cannot go to Mars and then talk to yourself, that’s why” it said and fell on my bed laughing.

I looked in disbelief at the thing rolling on my bed. Was that a genuine laughter? It sounded so. It got up and looked at me. Maybe I should call it a ‘him’ seeing that he introduced himself as Paul and sounded like a male.

“Get it? ‘Why on earth’… ‘Mars’…  I’m taking a jibe at your astronautic capabilities. Get it? Oh come on!” he genuinely looked disappointed, and looked at me apprehensively.

“Oh! I forgot” something seemed to have occurred to him, “I’m in India. Do… you… speak… Engliiiishh?” he said slowly.

“Uhh?” even my mind-voice was awestruck.

“How do I make a connection with you if you don’t understand me” he said it more to himself than to me, “Oh wai-wai-wait I know an Indian song. I hope that’ll ease you up”

As I prayed against any “yo-yo Honey Sing” he started singing “Why this kolaavery kolaavery kolaavery dee”

“Oh please kill me already” my mind-voice shut its ears.

“See? I’m friendly. Don’t be afraid.” he, the thing, said to me now stopping the song.

“What are you?” I managed to speak at last. He stared at me as if offended.

“I mean, who are you?” I corrected myself.

“So you do speak English. Man, you made me show off my singing skills” He said.

‘Really?? Singing skills?’ I shushed my mind-voice trying to think straight, “You didn’t answer me”

“Boy, you’re demanding.” He snickered “Okay take a guess. Look at me and tell me you haven’t seen me before.”

“No I haven’t. I don’t know who you are” I lied. I had indeed seen something like ‘him’ before. But only in the movies.

“Oh, I’m sure you know” he wasn’t giving up.

“You’re an alien” I guessed. That must be it. The other guesses in my list were Yeti, Chupacabra and Loc Ness monster but I didn’t think those would be smart guesses.

“No YOU’RE an alien” he hissed, his smile fading for a few second and then he recovered, “I’m sorry. Don’t say the A-word. I find it disturbing.”

“But you are an alien right? You’re not from this world” I asked.

“And you’re an alien to me. How does that feel huh?” he spat back. Honestly I didn’t feel as offended as he did, but then people have their preferences of offensive words.

“Okay okay sorry. No A-word” I apologized feeling a little confident now and I got up from the floor. He was hardly up to my shoulder height. But there was still something daunting about him, perhaps the balloon head.

He looked up to meet my eyes, “That’s good” and then he sat on my bed, “I’m hungry. Do you have something to eat?”

“You still haven’t told me what you are” I pressed. He raised the skin above one of his big eyes where people usually have eyebrows and I corrected myself “… who you are”

“Well I’m an inhabitant of &^%#$%*@”

“Um… what?” I felt lost because he had just made some strange noise, a throaty gargle mixed with a nasal sound and just hearing it made my head heavy.

“Never mind. I don’t know how to say it in English. It’s how we call our planet. It’s in a galaxy far far away.”

“Did you just quote Star Wars?”

“Yep” he grinned. I wanted to ask how he could’ve seen the movie but I let it pass.

“So you are really an ali-” I was going to say it again and then corrected it, “You’re an A-word”

He laughed loudly, a hearty laugh, “You make it sound like a curse word. Yeah, I’m an Extra-terrestrial… to your planet.”

“E.T?”

“Yep”

“And calling you an E.T is fine?”

“Yeah it’s fine” he said shortly and didn’t explain further, “So can I get something to eat?”

I passed him the plate of Murukku that I had brought back from my vacation to home. He chewed on it with surprising efficiency “Mmm, crunchy. As much as I feel sorry about your species I enjoy your food. That’s the one thing you’ve done good. Food in my planet is bland. We don’t have spices you see.”

“Sooo…” I thought of a reply to give “take some spice from here with you”

‘What? Ask him how he knows so much about us’, my mind-voice was back, now that there was no danger.

The E.T that called himself Paul chuckled “I wish!”, but didn’t explain further and munched on some more Murukku.

“Sooo…” I pondered over what to ask him, “What are you doing here?”

“Nothing. Just traveling.” He said looking at the snacks and not me, but again didn’t explain further.

“You can travel planet to planet, I mean… galaxy to galaxy just like that?”

“Yeah, pretty much” still not looking at me but the snacks and then his big fluorescent eyes turned towards me, “Oh I’m sorry. Where are my manners? You see, I didn’t simply land here because I wanted to. My shuttle broke down. So I had to park it outside your house.”

‘Oh that’s what the bright light outside the window was’, my mind-voice put two and two together.

“So you crash landed on earth? You found lights on in my room so thought you’d come say Hi” I tried to make it sound formal all the while my mind-voice was shouting ‘Cliché! What a Cliché’

“Well, there was a lot of stuff that happened in between but that’s a fair statement which explains how I got to be sitting here” he said having almost finished eating the snacks.

I nodded and tried to make more conversation before he got bored and left my house, “So… Paul. If you guys have been out there for so long, I mean your species as a whole, why haven’t we heard from you before? You know there are satellites listening to radio frequencies from outer space.”

Paul seemed hesitant at first and then spoke, “Well kid, I belong to a highly intelligent species. There are only a handful of such elite species in the universe. Our people didn’t see it worthwhile to contact you humans.”

“What do you mean?” I said it a little too loudly than my usual self.

“I’m sorry if that offends you, but that’s the truth. We usually keep it to ourselves. Like the secret societies in your world. We are like a gang of Ph.D graduates.”

“So you don’t hang with us kindergarten folks.”

“Umm, more like primates.”

“Okay” I didn’t like that I was agreeing to him, “What makes you think you are so smart?”

He kept his cool, “I travelled several galaxies to get here in less time than light takes to travel from Sun to Mars.”

“Oh” was all I could manage.

“The deepest into space you’ve gone is to your own moon and the farthest you’ve sent anything is the Voyager, that that has gone just a little a bit farther than Pluto.”

“And it’s still going.”

“Yeah yeah, Very impressive. You know where I’m getting at. How are you supposed to go ‘To Infinity and Beyond’ with such speed?”

 “Point taken” I couldn’t argue with that, and my mind-voice said ‘He’s quoting Buzz Lightyear now’.

“That’s why I said I don’t want to offend you. It’s a decision taken by powerful people that Earth is not yet ready for our contact.”

“We can be taught”

“There are limitations. Even if we dumb it down from our end, the technologies are way out of your understanding. You see, your communication skills are not yet developed to match ours. Just like maths has to be taught in numbers and not English, our technology needs a very high level language.”

“Like Java?”

He chuckled, “Something like that”

“We can learn that language”

 “You can teach sign language to a Gorilla or Orang-utan but will you go about teaching sign language to a cat? Java is a high level language for computers. But it’s made on top of low level languages which are made on top of binary language. In the end the bits and bytes are what make the difference, but they are nothing on their own. You need to arrange them as per the rules of a language. Can you write a Java program in Zeroes and Ones straight from memory? It’d need a powerful mind to do that right? That’s how our language is. Language makes difference”

“So you’re saying that language has the power to make people smart?”

“Yeah, your languages are stupid. Just 26 letters and a handful of grammatical rules that people are too cool to follow. But Chinese, now that’s a language. Took me almost a month to learn”

“A month?”

“Yeah, can you believe it? So long for one language.”

I was going to say that that was not what I meant but he continued, “An average Chinese or Japanese is smarter than an average person elsewhere. That’s because their minds are moulded to process more information per symbol than other languages do.”

“So why can’t we process your language? You can teach it to those smart Chinese or Japanese people.”

“There’re still limitations” he grinned, “We use more than just sounds to get our thoughts across, and that’s not something you can do yet.”

“Like what?”

“Just like how you use vocal sounds along with your body language to get a point across effectively, we use vocal, nasal and mind-voice.”

“Mind-voice?” I was shocked to hear the name I had been using all this while to refer to my inner thoughts.

(--To Be Continued--)

The Visitor- Part 1

I was sitting alone in my room, in front of my laptop, fingers twitching, eager to type. But my brain sent out no signal, no idea, no command, and no nerve impulse in the form of electrical signal that could run through my arms and make my impatient finger muscles to hit on some very specific keys that would in turn send electrical signals through the thousands of logical gates of the multiple core CPU, the result of which would finally turn off some very specific pixels on the otherwise white lit background of the LED screen forming ‘Words’.

I had logged into Cognizant blog and after reading hundreds of blog posts I decided to write something on my own. Enthusiastically I had turned on my laptop which I use these days only to watch movies and play games, pressed the Winkey+R and quickly typed ‘Winword’ and hit enter (Too cool to use mouse/touchpad). I don’t remember when was the last time I had used this command, probably during the long holidays after 10th class exams when I was enrolled to the computer course where I was taught this shortcut. But once the empty document had opened welcoming me to colour the emptiness (or defile the purity) of the page with my thoughts, my fingers that had typed the commands so swiftly now failed; the blank virtual page on the screen being the visual representation of my mind.

I don’t know how long I sat in that position and it’s very much possible that I had zoned out. I winced at the sudden blinding flash of light through the windowpane.

What? Is the exam over? I thought coming back to the reality and immediately getting the perception of time too as I realized I’m not a college student anymore. Not for the last three years.

The world outside the window was dark now, as it should be at 1am. There was only a huge backyard beyond the window so it couldn’t have been a car passing by since the road was in the front of the house.

Was it a dream? I wondered, ‘Or was it a flash of idea?’ my mind-voice asked me, ‘You know, for the blog post’

I hoped it was true but it ‘sounded’ too stupid. Do people really conjure up a flashing bulb over their head when they’re struck by an idea?

I chuckled at the thought.

“I wouldn’t even need flashlight when going out in the dark” I mused, speaking to myself or perhaps to that mind-voice of mine, “I can just come up with a few stupid ideas while walking in the dark.”

I got up from my bed, not noticing that my laptop had gone to ‘sleep’, and walked towards the window all the while thinking of some ‘ideas’ I could come up with if I ever got lost in the dark. I had gone from ‘looking-for-ideas-to-write-a-blog-post’ to ‘looking-for-ideas-to-light-up-imaginary-hovering-bulbs-over-my-head’.

“Ok so to get a flashing bright idea I have to come up with a simple problem first. Let’s see… Come on mind-voice, quiz me”

‘Okay’, said my mind-voice ‘So you’re at a mall and there a cute looking girl in front of you. How do you get her number?’

“Hah, that’s easy. I’ll take out my mobile and set my message tone as that whistle sound I downloaded and play it ‘accidentally’. She’ll get offended and turn towards me and say ‘Hey! You whistled at me?’ and I’ll say ‘Oh no no that was my message tone’ and then she’ll say ‘I don’t believe you’ and I’ll say ‘Well if you don’t believe me send me a message from your phone and see for yourself if my phone whistles or not’. I’ll give her my number to try it out. She’ll apologize when my phone does ring, and that will lead to small talks. So now I have her number as a message and she has mine.

‘But you’d never have the guts to pull that stunt with a girl. I know you too well’ said the mind-voice.

I frowned “Well the point of this exercise is to get an idea, not to implement it. Huhuhahaha!!”

I tried to sound maniacal with that supposedly evil laugh but by that time I had reached the windowsill and the darkness outside made my laughter come out timid like a puppy’s bark. I mustered up some courage and distracted myself “So ‘ting’ that bright idea will light up a 120 watts bulb over my head lighting the grounds all around me”

I imagined myself in that impenetrable darkness that had claimed the backyard and I still found it hard to imagine a bulb bright enough to light up the expanse.

‘But the light fades out within a few seconds’ my mind-voice said and I couldn’t help but visualize myself getting consumed by the darkness slowly as the light dimmed.

“You Brutus” I scowled at my mind-voice, “ok quick, give me another problem”

‘Here you go. You’re up against Cyclops from X-men, you know- the one with ‘laser’ sharp eyes *wink* How do you protect yourself from his killer eyes *wink wink*?’

“Oh come on”

‘The light is fading’

“Ok ok… So Cyclops eh? I once made plans to survive any superhero. But I don’t remember Cyclops. Hmmm… Let’s see… Cyclops emits high intensity laser beam from his eyes and that can pierce through almost anything… how do you protect yourself from a beam of light that can dig through anything?... dig through anything… Yes! Anything but that!!” I exclaimed.

‘What?’ asked my mind-voice although it already knew what I was thinking.

“What did Cyclops did to protect others from his killer glare? He wore sunglasses. The only thing that seems to keep the laser beam dammed. So I will cover myself with the material of those sunglasses.”

‘Whoa!’ my mind-voice faked a surprise.

“So ‘ting’, the light is back on again.” I again imagined myself in the backyard being showered with the bulb’s light.

‘Walk carefully now, the light is going to go out soon’ as the mind-voice said it my thoughts suddenly went back to the horror movie ‘Saw’ that I ‘saw’ few years back. The protagonist of the movie goes through something similar. He gets stuck in his apartment alone, in pitch black night without electricity in the house, sensing some strange presence looming in the darkness. In order to see what’s in front of him, he uses his camera’s flash to see but unfortunately the flash lasts only less than a second. As he walks around the house making the camera flash go off timed well enough to get a sense of his surrounding and to make sure no one is in front of him, his final flash reveals something very scary. Something like a monster. He’s frozen at the sudden sight leaving him vulnerable to the predator’s attack.

That was it. Now my sporadic imagination pictured me standing in the pitch black not knowing for a second that I’m standing face to face with a monster and the bulb over my head going ‘ting’.

Something moved in the dark, startling me to a mild quiver.

I’m imagining stuff again, was my first thought, always living in a dreamland.

‘No, there was definitely something there’ whispered my mind-voice too scared to say it aloud.

I squinted at the darkness. ”Nothing’s there, and why are you whispering?” I replied, “You’re a voice inside my head”

“But I did see something” I found myself whispering, “Something gray-brownish… Probably a dog… Yeah that must be it”

I leaned in further looking straight outside the window, my nose touching the glass and my breath fogging it. I could see the partial reflection of my eyes in the glass looking back at me. I dared imagine myself standing outside the glass looking inside in the same fashion, me being the reflection that was now looking at me.

Something moved behind the fog on the glass and the colour of my eyes’ reflection shifted to a fluorescent blue.

My heart jumped to my throat effectively blocking and muffling any scream I could’ve mustered. It wasn’t just my heart that had jumped but I was myself lying on the ground now scrabbling to get as far as possible from the window, for peering through the clear glass pane, un-fogged now, were two huge bulbous blue eyes fixed on a shiny head shaped like an inflated balloon. The eyes moved to meet mine and I saw a thin cut near the bottom of the balloon curved like a smile. There was no apparent nose.

But that was not it. As my limbs failed me and I lay on the ground as if lying motionless would render me invisible to ‘it’ I noticed that ‘it’ was more than just a huge head. It had a thin long neck and it seemed like it had a human like skinny torso and hands too. The long scrawny fingers felt around the glass as if surprised by the transparent shield separating me from it. For a second I felt safe inside the four walls. But only for a second. Because I realized that it was not feeling around the window with awe but looking for a way to open it. The fingers soon found the grip at the bottom and heaved the window up, letting in a gush of cold wind bringing down the temperature of the room, just like my chance of survival.

There was something about the face. It didn’t look maniacal or threatening in any way. The smile was obvious but that made it even more discomforting. It slid in the head first slowly and I prayed that the huge head should get stuck in the window. While most primitive animals would be deciding by now whether to fight or take flight, my mind was imagining this visitor’s head getting stuck in the window. But the visitor slid in completely and gracefully as if its body had not even scratched the frames of the window. It turned to look at me the inscrutable smile still etched like a cut on a smooth stone. It stood like a very slim humanoid robot less than five feet tall. Now I saw that ‘it’ was wearing a big blue shorts, like that of Hulk but this creature was exact opposite of Hulk. While the Hulk looks like a small head on a bulldozer, this little thing looked like a bulldozer head parked over a Tata Nano.

It opened its mouth, the smile unwavering, and said-

(-To be Continued-)

Guardians of the Galaxy- Review

Yes, I’m still alive!

Back with a movie review, after more than a year of being in hibernation. So naturally it comes with a warning. Here goes-

Warning: Long post ahead!

I mostly wrote stories or wrote about stories (movies i.e.). There had been several superhero movies since my last review, and believe me I wanted to write about them but being in Production support, I could only afford time to watch the movies and not write about them.

There were Thor 2, Captain America 2, Amazing Spiderman 2, Godzilla (2? Or x+2?), Hobbit 2, Hunger Games 2, Kick-ass 2, X-men (god knows which part, it being the mash-up of prequels and sequels), and then there was ‘Dawn of the Planet of Apes’ which was the sequel of the prequel of the reboot of the original Planet of Apes movie (which was based on a novel). I thought I should write a post and then left it there. Meanwhile in Bollywood Sunny Leone acted in three movies and I thought “Man, I haven’t written a post in a long time”. See, the problem was all these movies were prequels and sequels and reboots, and although good were pretty generic, movies that feed on our nostalgia for the familiar characters (and I’m not talking about Sunny here. grow up, sheesh!). Enough about me.

‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ was a fresh change in the action/sci-fi genre. It was quite risky of Marvel studios to make a movie on not-so-well-known characters, but they pulled it off really well, connecting them with people from the ‘post-credit’ scenes of other Marvel movies (giving us something to relate with) meaning these characters live in the same age and universe as our other heroes and can very well join the Avengers in the future. Character development is done really nice and these characters will stay with you for a long time.

The thing about the characters is that they are some of the most unconventional heroes around; ‘An alliance of misfits’ as described by IMDB. None of them are heroes by themselves, and they meet in strange circumstances like while stealing, hunting for money and in the prison. But you know how chemistry works, Hydrogen and oxygen both friends of fire can combine to make water. Without disclosing the story let me dive into the characters.

Characters:

Gamora is the typical warrior princess… except… she works for the bad guys. Adopted by Thanos (that guy from the Avengers post-credit scene) and sent to do internship with Ronan (another baddy) all she does is doing their bidding. Gamora is played by Zoe Saldana, a lady who loves playing alien gal. From being Blue in Avatar to Brown in Star Trek and then Green in this movie, it seems she won’t stop until she has covered the whole rainbow spectrum.

Peter Quill a.k.a the ‘Star-Lord’ is the most notorious, most wanted outlaw in that quadrant of the galaxy. Or at least that’s what he says. He steals precious objects for a living. If that doesn’t sound heroic enough, he was born to a human woman and ‘some supreme being’. Come on! We’ve had enough Hercules movies this year already.

‘Drax the Destroyer’ is a big bulky wrecking machine. With the body of a wrestler (Batista), the immaculate vocabulary of a British novelist and brain of an ostrich, this is a very confusing character. More like ‘Drax the Dumb Destroyer’. But big body guards do come in handy. ‘nuff  said.

‘Rocket’, my second favourite character, is a very talented bounty hunter. Result of some genetic experiment on a racoon he can talk, work with any piece of machinery and make it a weapon, and doesn’t know what a racoon is. Although small in stature he’s not afraid of anyone. Why would he be since he has his buddy, my favourite, Groot.

Groot is a humanoid tree that can walk and talk. Well, he can talk enough to introduce himself. Well, actually he can ONLY introduce himself because “I am Groot” is all he can say. I suspect he’s a Pokemon. You thought Ironman and Batman were egotistical referring their own names? Wait till you meet Groot. Some of the most memorable quotes made by Groot include that time he made some pretty good argument against Rocket and exclaimed “I am Groot!” or that time when during a motivational discussion he added “I am Groot” and so much more but I don’t want to spoil anything for you. Although from his limited vocabulary it may sound like he’s too self-centred but he’s immensely generous, loving and ready to do anything and everything for his friends, just like any other tree in this world that only give and give and never ask for anything in return. His smile made me fall in love and made me appreciate the real non-walking trees around us. Oh, and he’s a bounty hunter too.

Do any of these characters look like they could be a team? Of course they don’t and they beat each other up real good to prove that. What follows is a roller coaster ride, through the stars. It’s a fun filled ride, totally crazy and hilarious, and will be entertaining to people of all ages. Take a break from the brooding serious superheroes and indulge in some madness. I hope if anyone has not seen the movie yet, I have piqued their interest by now. (psst, Go watch it for Groot at least).

Another marvellous movie from Marvel.

P.S- Post credit scenes are a specialty of Marvel movies, but you may want to skip this one. But if you insist on keeping seated till the very end of credits and keep your eyes open you might catch a disclaimer- “No Racoon or tree creatures were harmed during the making of this film.” Phew! And I was going to call the Blue Cross and Green Peace in a conference call.

P.P.S- Here’s a baby Groot I sketched on my desk board.