Alladin and his cramp

One of the most loved stories of all time and an extremely successful movie of Disney is Aladdin. This is the rags to riches tale of a street urchin and how he comes across a wonderful lamp that changes his life forever.

So Aladdin lucks out and gets this brilliant lamp from which comes a genie who gives him 3 wishes; the catch being he can not wish for someone to fall in love with him, or a dead person to be reborn, or wish for more wishes.

When I first heard of the three wishes, all I could think of was that my first wish would be to ask for a thousand more. But unfortunately, the genie was clever (all credit to him for that!).

Now Aladdin promises the genie that he would be freed with his last wish; so assuming that Aladdin is an honest and compassionate human being, he effectively has only two wishes.

Two wishes.. TWO whole wishes to ask for anything in the world!!

Let's forget Aladdin for a while and think of what a common person like any of us would do with two wishes.

The most obvious wish for any person on earth would be to ask for wealth. We are all a money-minded people and riches would truly be on the top of our priority list!
Now now, I can hear all those 'Miss World wannabes' reading this article think that they would wish for World peace and Elimination of disease etc. etc. etc. Trust me people, all that works fine in a beauty contest but when it comes to making such a choice, you will definitely think of yourself first.

The thoughts that would play in your mind are quite clear- "I still have one more wish, I can ask for doing good to the world with that"... "Let me become rich first, I'll help the world with my wealth then".
All these thoughts are definitely tonic for a person's conscience, while hiding the true fact that most of us would actually be thinking- "F*** the world, it was my good fortune that I got these wishes, I'll use them to my advantage"

Now getting back to Aladdin, what did our favourite hero do? He was a commoner just like us and probably would have thought along similar lines. But I forget, there was another factor in this, Aladdin was in love!

He was in love with the Princess Jasmine and the law stated that the princess could marry only a prince. So what does our poor lovestruck hero do? He wishes to become a prince!!
So my commoner theory is indeed correct. Prince = Riches! But no, Aladdin didn't do it for riches, did he? He wanted to marry Jasmine and hence he became a prince.

This decision leaves commoners like me fuming because it oddly seems noble, and there are very few princesses around now who marry only princes! Not fair, I cry!! I want my riches and I want to be noble getting those, just like Aladdin! So where do I get a princess now!?
Hmm huge technical difficulty... can we rewind a bit and correct these difficulties?

a) Find a princess (who marries only princes)
b) Fall in love with her (hope the reverse happens too)
c) Find the lamp (luck out again!)

Ok, now we can wish for riches and feel noble doing that. Yay!

So now all of us would take an end with a 'Happily ever after' line anyday, especially with a wish to spare, and a princess and the riches of the world in the bag!
But STOP! it doesn't end there, does it! This is after all, a love story! (Ok, love for nobility's sake in our case, but let's talk of Aladdin here) And any love story has to have a villain who also wants to marry the princess. A villain who would stop at nothing to get what he wants.

So Aladdin gets conned and trapped by the villain who throws him into the ocean in a barrel, but funnily enough, with the lamp in his possession! And not surprisingly, Aladdin uses his second wish to save his life.

So there we have it, our hero's saved now and can go confront the villain and win back his girl. Basically the same old good wins over evil stuff.

But wait, did anyone notice!? Second wish!! HE USED HIS SECOND WISH! There are no more wishes now! Doomed!

Now, any of us would have a strong urge to go back on the promise to the genie and use the third wish for our purposes. But let's give us some credit, we did make a promise after all, so we shall free the genie.

So after all these incidents, the damages are

1. Riches
2. A princess
3. A villain who unfortunately did not get killed when Aladdin got back
4. No more wishes (let's not free the genie just yet though!)

Now whatever happened to world peace and elimination of diseases? Whatever happened to the true nobility that we promised? What went wrong?

Aladdin had a wonderful lamp but he also had a cramp to go with that. It was the thing that made him act in the ways that he did and so he could not fulfil the true potential of his lamp. He could have done wonders with the lamp and become great but instead his actions were governed by this cramp.

Maybe he was right in doing what he did, and any of us in his plave would have done the same when experiencing this cramp.

Maybe this is just another pointless article.

Love was Aladdin's cramp!

A Pointless Article

So I was travelling from Bangalore to Chennai, and was as usual lost in a maze of thought when I decided to write. Not the first time I decided to do this and not the first time I'm acting on this decision. This time though, I decided I would publish my writings, and this time, in my name. Anonymity is really boring and hardly motivating so finally my blog goes public!!

Anyone reading this article will guess that my style is very 'amateurish' and hardly grammatically correct. So this is a strict warning to purists to keep off! This is a very dangerous grammatical landmine you are trodding!

So what do I write about? The most obvious beginning of a blogger would be to write about him. So here I go, writing about me. Me and the 20 years that have made me what I am. Me and what I have achieved. Me and my greatness. Me the genius! Me the supreme! me! Me! ME!

Hmmm... yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn!!! Anyone still reading? I would be really surprised if you are! How boring, writing about myself, I can imagine the pain any reader is undergoing now. So I shall digress. Enough of myself, let me write about something interesting.

At the moment of me penning this article, the most interesting thing in the world is obviously the FIFA World Cup. That's a nice topic to write on. I could go on for hours discussing the cup, my favourite team, my favourite players etc. etc. etc. But then, aren't there enough analysts on TV to discuss the cup? What more of an 'expert' opinion can I add? It is really pointless writing about football now. So I'll close this pointless topic with just one advice to my fellow Indians. If you are a recent football convert due to the cup and think that Brazil had a God-given right to win the cup, then please get a life! Football's not cricket and Brazil's not Australia.

So what's next? As I think of what to write next, I can't help but feel that I have already lost two-thirds of my readers- half of them to the football digression (why don't women like sport?!) and the rest to the part on myself.

The remaining third of you who have still stuck with me might have realized that I am trying really hard to drive you away! If you still don't get the point, stick on at your own risk!

I'll put an end to this torture by writing on one final topic- the Spotlight.

The spotlight is one that we all seek, one that we all feel a need for, one that makes us jealous, one we would do anything for; It is one that gives us joy, that gives us acclaim, and gives us satisfaction. When it burns too dim, it makes us sad; When it burns too bright, we loathe it; When it turns off, we give up our hopes.

We all need a spotlight, one that burns just right it doesn't hurt. We need one that has shades in it where we can hide when the light's too painful.

If most of my readers do not understand the spotlight, I totally empathize with them. I do not either. I just search for my shades and hope not to be engulfed by them.

Well... THE END!! Told ya not to risk it....!!