Dos Goals

I have two goals in life. Well I have many goals, many missions and achievements to make before them, but at the very end, it is these two goals that will eclipse the others because of their scale and repercussions.

The first is at the same time noble, vain, naive, ambitious and impressive. The second is just narcissistic, vain and laughable and somebody should slap me for being so ignorant. The first one first, naturally. I want to build a city. A city on the western coast of India, somewhere between Kerala and Karnataka, for their lush green forests, but closer to Karnataka for the western ghats. We will call it Indraprastha. Now there is already a suburb of Delhi that's called Indraprastha, but when we (I, my billionaire buddies (who meet every weekend for a game of squash) and a conglomerate of MNCs) are done with the city it will be The Indraprastha. Now what we will do is build a city with an artificial history. The beaches will be littered with unfinished mammoth sculptures, The forests with dilapidated ruins of temples and palaces. The city itself will be built part old world style and part skyscrapers and all that. There will be cobbled streets winding through narrow lanes amidst old havelis and villas. And there will be eurpoean style squares. Roundabouts, lots of them. Statues. And I can't emphasize the statues enough. There will be one at every junction telling the story of the ancient king Sanghamitra who ruled over Indraprastha, statues from the indian independence movement, famous Indian and world authors, religious figures , The world's largest standing and sleeping buddha, A statue of Christ that will dwarf the Redeemer, and of course The largest Arjuna-Krishna- crisis of conscience in the middle of Kurukshetra statue. Also a huge central park-ish park filled with references to the greatest and most beloved movies of all time. And of course there will be the mystery trail ala Davinci Code that runs through the city and with clues embedded everywhere. Aquarium with singapore style shows. Done. World class transit system - Done. Can you say LEED certified city?- Done. A huge SEZ around the city to bring in people.The world's largest renewable energy plants. Double done.We will even import Chinese, Polish and Jamaican people to develop encalves in the city to add an intl character to it. And imagine all this in India.

The Second one. When AXN first came out in India, they would show all these movies at 1pm weekdays that would have decent production values but no known actors. It was only later that I realized most of these were Direct to Video flicks or Canadian and Australian films. Now I remember 2 of them that had plotlines set in the near future in which the hero is on the run from the authority for various reasons only to realize in the end that he was cloned/ pulled from time to act as a vessel for an old rich man who wants to transfer his soul into the Hero's body. Freejack with Emilio Estevez and Mick Jagger was actually one of the better ones and I think I saw it on Star movies. Anyway, that's my second goal in life. I want to be immortal. There I said it. Its the saddest thing in the world that we age, wrinkle, whither and die. Laugh all you want, but I actually think it could happen. The Feb 21 Time magazine cover story proclaims 2045 to be the year when Man becomes immortal. Now I haven't read the story yet, but I am guessing its something like Freejack. Now either you could clone a human vessel for you to transfer into or you could build an android and transfer your essence into it. Or we find out how to turn off the aging button in our bodies. If everyone starts doing it I guess that means the end of human reproduction since no one is dying anymore , and if people keeping on making babies, you are going to have very crowded planet . So everyone accepts that or we decide to populate other planets and moons.

Now I saw some movie that said humans appreciate life more because we know how ethereal it is. I see myself as more of a Angel/Wolverine-type living through the ages until I get tired of it and disconnect the cord kind of guy.

That's it. Those are my two primary-have to do it before I die goals in life. Oh, Not dying is the second one.

Trivia:

Has anyone heard of the Gladiator 2 script that was commissioned by Russel Crowe. It had the Maximus character being resurrected by Roman gods as an immortal and we see him live through humainties biggest events. The film ends with him facing off a gorde of alien ships in a robot suit. The script was written by Nick Cave, the Aussie singer, and it supposedly it works very well as a tragedy about one man's loneliness.