How my worst nightmares become reality

I personally believe that one's worst nightmares become reality sooner than one expects. It happens with very often. Whatever I considered to be a nightmare for me becomes reality the next day. Something similar happened two months ago. Its not like that this happened to me for the first time but it was one of the worst!

The latest example of this fact is my Mumbai arrival. I always used to tell my friends, family and all that Mumbai would be the last place I will prefer to work in and within a few months I am here in Mumbai. I am still not able to digest that I am in Mumbai, Mumbai??? Firstly I left my home when I was selected in Navodaya school. I studied there only one month before I called my papa and asked him to take me back to home. I was too young to live separately. It's not that I was the first who went to a boarding school in age of 12 but I simply didn't find the environment friendly and I had to leave it within a month. Again I left home in 2000 when I had to prepare for engineering entrance test. Then onwards I couldn't get chance to go back home. Gwalior, Bhopal and now Mumbai.

Bhopal was second home to me. I consider myself one of the most fortunate persons on this earth who get this comfort and love away from home. In Bhopal, I didn't realize for a day that I am not at home. I entered D-12, Patel Nagar, Raisen Road, Bhopal - 462021 as paying guest and became part of family in no time. I lived in that house for 6 long years, exactly one-fourth of my life today! I got there every relation, elder and younger brothers, bhabhi, father in terms of Uncle and above all, mother in terms of Auntie. Everybody so caring, loving, respecting. Auntie used to say, "I won't let you go until your marriage. After marriage you will have to buy a house closer only so that I can come down to talk to your wife or invite her in here for a while". I never ever intended to leave any of them but what happened at last? I left them on a short notice of eight days! Life takes terrible turns, very true!

People say, Mumbai is the city of opportunities (pardon me if this term is used for some other city!). Maybe there are correct, I might agree to them but for me these opportunities are coming at very high price. A price that I wasn't about to afford!

My second month in Mumbai has just passed and I have a lot of to talk about. Will write sometime in details. I hope you are not wondering why Mumbai is a nightmare to me? Now, I am living in the most advanced, most costly and fastest city on India. I am not able to decide whether its a matter of happiness, excitement or sorrow

Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown/Ron Howard

Finished reading this wonderful book last week and the within next two days watched the movie as well. Book is simply awesome. I liked Brown's simple way of story-telling and his depth of knowledge. Cryptography, Code-breaking, symbology, art, history and religion, whatever he covered in the book was fantastic. Dan Brown's research on these various topics wondered me, very vast and very accurate.

Being an software engineer, I can understand what he talked about Cryptography and all. And I found that part of book not only interesting but also very informative. Arts, symbology et al meant nothing to me but after reading a very comprehensive description of symbols, paintings I must say they meant too much. I always used to wonder why paintings are sold for some million dollars, what do they have apart from being a creativity of a ultra-popular artist. I can well say that those guys were geniuses and their creativities were no ordinary, simply masterpieces!

However I didn't give a damn to what he told about Christianity, Jesus, Mary Magdalene their relationship, their successors and all but whatever he presented sounded convincing. Story was fantastic and was flawless. Characters were limited but were well elaborated. A good quality suspense was created and was broken in decent and convincing manner. After reading merely fifty pages I was deep into the story.

The film on the contrary didn't convince me. First of all it skipped all of important (at least for me) incidents like code-breaking, symbol descriptions, suspense and so on. It simply presented the religion part but did it well. Some tempering with original story was done which seemed unwanted and unnecessary to me, it could do if it could have been presented as it is. Since length of the story was pretty much it wasn't possible to depict each and every scene but yes, I think people who didn't read book prior to watching movie may have found them lost at places. Direction, presentation, acting was good, actors did justice to their roles and didn't leave any flaw for me to point at.

At the end the book gets 4/5 and the film 3/5 from me.

Book Details:
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Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown,
Publisher: DoubleDay
Binding: Mass Paperback
Pages: 489
Price: INR 230

Movie Details:
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Da Vinci Code by Ron Howard