The Mystery of Crop Circles and Nazca Lines

I have always been fascinated by Crop Circles, the strange symmetrical patterns created by flattening of crops in farm lands. Crop Circles have been found world wide, majority of them have been sighted in UK. More than 80% of them are known to be man-made hoaxes, while the remaining seem to be totally unexplainable naturalistic or supernatural drawings. Frankly to me, most of these Crop Circles look so complex and symmetric to be made by humans. But there are people who make crop circles, surely they must be a talented lot. Some people believe Crop Circles to be made by UFO's while others believe it to made by geological anomalies. People like to believe in the supernatural when they see a phenomena that they cannot explain. In the movie "Signs", director M. Night Shayamalan did a splendid work in convincing people that Crop Circles were signs made by Aliens (or Extraterrestrials) to convey to other aliens to make an attack on Earth.

Another Mystery is the geoplyphs (lines made on the ground by removing rocks and sand) located in the Nazca Desert in Peru. These geoglyphs were believed to be created by the Nazcan Indians between 200BC and AD700. The Nazcan lines have been recognised as UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Nazcan figures are of animals, birds, insects and humans and these figures are so huge and cover hundred of metres and can only be seen as a complete figure from the air. The mystery in these drawing is that, how did the Nazcan's draw these figures without even seeing the whole image? and why did the Nazcans use the Nazcan desert as their canvas? Historians have been scratching their head for some time now, nobody has a clear idea. Some believe they drew big pictures to impress their gods so that the gods could see them from the heavens. Others believe these pictures show the direction of water in the Nazcan desert where water is scarce and then there are others who claim the figures to align to some celestial bodies. Some say that the Nazcans knew the science of flight - maybe a hot air balloon, which helped them to draw these large figures. As for me, I am confused as to how the Nascan's knew about animals and birds that didn't exist in a desert. There are lot of unanswered questions, the Nazcan mystery died with the Nazcan people. Fortunately the Nazcan lines remain to this day as the Nazcan desert doesn't receive any rainfall. As Climatic changes happen around the world and if rain were to fall in the Nazcan desert, experts say the Nazcan lines wouldn't stand a heavy downpour.

Movie Review: Jab We Met

In one word - "A superb bollywood movie". Its been a long time since I have seen a good hindi movie, but then - I don't watch that many bollywood movies. Usually I don't watch Hindi movies unless I get a "good movie to watch" certificate from my trusted friends (why waste time watching movies that have no point to it). Firstly, I had no plan to watch this movie because I'm not a big fan of both Shahid Kapoor and Kareena Kapoor (the lead actor's). Why?? I thought of both of them as total showoff's. Some years back when these actors where brought out by the media as being a love couple in real life, I thought "why not? they are a perfect match".

Last week my brother downloaded a mp3 song called "Mauja Hi Mauja" from this movie, I liked the song and it got me intrigued in "Jab We Met". Luckily, I got my chance to watch this movie today. The movie starts with a sad and disappointed rich buisnessman, Adithya (Shahid Kapoor) walking about Mumbai city pointless and without any hope. He enters a Delhi bound train and meets Geet (Kareena Kapoor) a talkative girl who is very energetic and full of love. In the middle of the night Adithya gets off the train at a random station and walks his gloomy walk, on seeing this Geet also gets off the train to persuade him to get back on the train and she herself misses the train. Adithya feels responsible and escorts Geet to her house in Punjab, where he also gets to stay as her friend. From there they runaway together to Manali to meet Geet's boyfriend. The journey with Geet brings back hope into Adithya's life and unknowingly he falls for her. The rest is for you to watch. I was captivated by the scenes from Manali and Simla. Couple of songs in the movie were also really good. I feel both Shahid and Kareena gave a good performace in this movie, one could really feel a chemistry between them (there was something original about their french kiss at the end of the movie). I liked Shahid in this movie, he is a good looking chap and a good actor. I feel bad that I judged Shahid even without seeing a single movie of his.

Red Arrows

Yesterday morning I happened to read in the newspaper that the Red Arrows were performing in the Doha Bay area. The Red Arrows are the Aerobatics team (part of British Air Force, BAF) from Britain. Some years back I had been to their airshow and this time I might have been a little negative and didn't expect their show to be much different from the previous one. Anyway I was determined to go to the bay area to see them in action.

I was a little late to start from my house. As I was driving along, out of nowhere the Red Arrows Jets blazed past right over my car. I was late! I was just 2 - 3 kms from the bay area. The crowd was huge at the bay area and there was no parking space available for me to park. The traffic on the roads had come to a standstill and luckily I found a small space to park my car and got out to see the spectacle. The stunts were awesome with last minute splits and manoeuvering. They filled the sky with smoke of the British tricolour. You could feel the crowd was enjoying it with the occasional claps and loud Wows! The formation and splits was like watching a beautiful syncro dance. I especially liked it when 2 planes made the shape of a big heart in the sky with a third plane piercing right through it like an arrow. Surely they caught our hearts. I was glad I made the decision to come and watch the Red Arrows.