The Room: My first serious effort at short story writing.

I tried to open my eyes but veil of darkness shrouding my eyes won’t lift up. I realized my mind is working in its regular thinking rhythm, my limbs were bit stiff but still I could feel them. Still, Somehow I couldn't open my eyes, it’s like omnipresent darkness just pressing the leads of my eyes tightly shut with so much ferocity so as not a single little photon of light could creeps past it. I knew I was relieving from adverse effect of nightmare, but general experience says that in nightmare you awoke suddenly, with a shock. In my case that was just not happening at all, defining logic, in fact reversing the logic on its head.

I tried again. And again. And again…..And at that precise moment I realized there was something not right. My eyes felt like red giant bursting with force but to only diminish its existence either through irrevocably collapsing to black hole or bursting out of eye-sockets like supernova, in both cases, leaving only the darkness behind, trapping me in it forever.

I thought I could use some effort with my fingers to pry open the eye-leads. As I tried to feel my eye-lead with my finger, I just came to shocking realization that it was not there at all. I tried my second eye. Same result. God, my eyes were already open. I felt my leads with my fingers easily perched atop my eyes like owl steadily waiting for its prey in utter darkness. Hadn't I blinked all this time? I poked my fingers deep down my eye-ball, swelling it with pain and tear to guarantee the presence of darkness. Moreover, to feel alive.  What’s happening? Why couldn't I trace anything in my room? Is it my room at all or I was somewhere else, somewhere god-forbidden black hole of eternal darkness?

No, it was my room. I could feel it. Anyhow I decided to get up and drew curtains away from the windows to allow some faint light to come in, but to no avail. There was no light source out there somewhere. What happened to the moon? And the stars? Might be it was that no-moon night, major inspiration for all those ghost stories to come into existence. I tried to go for my water bottle, scrambling my way to find it which usually resides besides my bed. But it was proving difficult to get along easily with no faint outline to perceive anything. Were my eyes still not used to darkness? But real threatening question was that that the only reason I was unable to see anything?

All these questions arousing in my brain like a full-moon tide; I found my water bottle, rolled away somehow only to be stopped by my computer desk, sitting there in the corner of the room since years with composure of “King Vikram” bearing the load of “Betal” perched atop its shoulder: my high-end powerfully configured gaming desktop. Water smelt rancid somehow or did it really smell? Better not to drink this and bring the fresh one, I tried for the door of my room which luckily I knew in which direction lies as the exercise of finding water bottle had pretty much given me the idea of layout and spread of the room. After all I had spent large amount of my life in the same room. My room, built along with other floors of the house and allocated to me by my parents during my collage days, became alter of study and then became alter of everything for me. I was so attached to it, spending so many years in it creating ideas, building career, partying with friends, parting with special ones, musing alone, escaping from outer world, day-dreaming about future and what not. The room ceased to be the non-living entity and became my living breathing friend, accomplice in all my deeds and in all my sins.

I was aware of another side-quest of getting to light-switches lays in path of main quest of reaching the main door. With a little effort I was able to find the switchboard. My fingers played on all switches like an accomplished piano player, but the only sound I could garnered was “tic-toc” out of it, with darkness remaining as it was. Might be the power outage? I don’t understand why power-outage occurred always on this kind of incidental-heavy nights. Only option left for me now was to go for door and check out. I fumbled initially then contemplated and calculated where the door-knob might be with reference to my height. To my surprise, there was nothing there but a stub to indicate the signs of door-knob existed before it was pried out of its position. Should I call out to somebody in the midst of this frightful night? No, what would others think of me if it would turn out to be case of misinterpretation on my side. People already conceived me as secluded lost soul living in my own imaginary world by locking myself in the room all the time. They would be sure by this incident that I lost my mind completely now. They were never going to understand that their own incompetency to cope up with my emotional level had pushed me away from general social attachments. Their hypocrite way of socializing had set me apart and took shelter to only available safe zone to me: my room.

Suddenly there was a loud rap on the door, shaking whole door-frame. I was stepped away from the door with utmost fear. I was scared to approach the door as if it was surged with electric current. Silence following the loud rap was so thick that I could hear my heart pumping liters of blood through my veins just to keep me alive and to face my deepest fears. I heard dogs barking somewhere upon seeing something which was not meant to be seen by human, baby crying in anticipation of food, late night TV show running with background laughter sound effects. Who the hell was running TV in power-outage? Before I could conceive something, there was second loud thud, than there was third, fourth…..It was kind of beating of big drum with large bamboo sticks. Suddenly there was flash of brightness like lightning in the storm, but I heard no sound of it or might be its sound drowned into cacophony of drumming on door. There was second flash and from corner of my eye I saw something crawling on wall opposite to my gaming desk. It was kind of a bug of fist size. Then I realized they were everywhere in the room, crawling on all walls, forming the shape of large face sticking on walls. With raping on door continued I had vague feeling of room was getting alive and laughing at me for some unknown reason.

It came suddenly to my mind, a faint remembrance, happened yesterday, might be before that somewhere in the past, but I knew for sure that was the only reason describing these weird incidents.A remembrance where my friends had called me to go with them on outing just for the sake of fun and I choose my room over them. A remembrance where invitation from my sister to simply come to her house following festival ritual was refused so as to spend more time in Gaming and reading and being there in the room. A remembrance where my parents were pursuing me just to set up a meeting with future prospect partner but my low self-esteem along with my bad social attachment history had compelled me to reject the offer without second thought. There were so many remembrances like these, pointing to me that I always had chosen my room over everything else. I never left my room for others and now the room had decided not to allow me to leave.

Like realization was somehow known to it, the Room, it was bathed with white clinical light, stabbing my eyes with shear white pain. As my eyes adjusted to sudden brightness, I saw my own reflection laughing at me from full-size mirror on the wall besides the door. Drumming had stopped. The room looked like more of a surgical room or operation room from where one could only come out least with limb or blood sacrifice and worst as dead. I felt something retching under my face-skin. As I tried to satisfy the retch, my skin suddenly peeled out. Unknowingly, I held one end of it with my fingers and slowly started scraping out the skin from my face. It was as easy as peeling of a boiled potato. I didn't feel pain, just the tingle of needles pinching my tissue underneath. Surprisingly, there was no blood. Might be somehow I could remove only epidermis and not puncturing blood vessels below. After some time, There I was standing with my white face devoid of any skin in front of mirror, having my dead face in one of my hand containing holes where the eyes and nostrils and mouth had been. I poked the white tissue of my face. It felt like sushi. Suddenly, a blood vein embossed out of my temple imitating lightening out of the sky; both in look and speed. And then more veins embossing, creating bloody web all over my stark white face. I could feel and see blood flowing through web of pulsating veins. I screamed with all the strength which only had adverse effect of straining and puncturing all the veins at the same moment, showering my face and mirror in Niagara of blood and…………………….

I found myself sweating profusely in the bed. It looked like it was rare kind of lucid dreaming what I experienced. Sunshine was wrestling with window curtains to brighten my room. First time ever I thought about drawing the curtains right away and let the light fill my hollow, empty room. My CPU was blinking in LEDs, requiring my attention on downloaded material which I kept running whole night. I heard my parents asking me weather I want to attend social gathering held by relative, with pure selfish reason of getting me introduced to “future prospects”. To their surprise, and also to mine my mind triggered my mouth with a reply “Just wait, I’ll be ready and come”. As I left my room to freshen up, I noticed beams of sunlight spreading on the walls of my room giving the feel that room was smiling with joy and happiness.

Fcuk the Indian Censorship

                       Frankly speaking, I was compelled to run spell check on the title so as to remove my obscene little wordplay and put the original word there to show my true feeling against Indian censorship and peoples' hypocrisy by evil part of my mind ( believe me, this part not having that much dominance over my brain than its counterpart, but nowadays its changing and capturing as much area of my mind as possible whenever opportunity arises ). Anyhow I don't  want to offend my readers (if there are other than me) at the start and make them read more so I can give them more acidic pills later on.
                    First thing first: why I'm so enraged ? If you belong to specific class of people who usually follow quality movies than you already knew whats all these is about. But if you belong to that general class which occupies major piece of cake in the representation of Indian mass population of moviegoers as a pie chart, than its  possible that you don't care at all about what's going on ( please stop reading this now and go watch some latest Salman khan movie. You deserve it.)
As we all know that major work of Indian censorship board comprises of giving suitable viewership certificate to the movies belonging to Bollywood as well as Hollywood. But from last few years it's doing more than that. Indian censor board is robbing us from great Hollywood movies in the name of moral system and cultural values and what not. Its been evident that most of hyperviolance and nudity scenes had been cut even though movie was given 'A' rating. I don't  understand what government is proposing by these kind of "offending" maneuvers ,that Indian viewers are still not mature enough to digest this kind of stuff or they are just dumb enough to be inspired by it and commit themselves to petty values after watching it. All these precipitates to one and only one conclusion that major portion of Indian people love to be hypocritical. May be it's too much generalization on my part, but I am so much frustrated from last few incidents that I better choose to asphyxiate my self from dipping my head into liquid Nitrogen than see one more Salman khan carbon copy movie.
Here's few points vindicating my frustration...
- A dark,bleak and solid crime thriller "The girl with dragon tattoo" by well known and talented director David Fincher (se7en,zodiac,the social network and much more) is not going to be released in India. Reason: it has some explicit violent scene and full nudity. I doubt censor board members have taken little care at least to read the source material i.e. trilogy by crime journalist Stieg Larsson. What they are expecting , That David Fincher will show kissing of stigmas of two flowers replacing all sex scenes like in old Hindi movies ?
- Oscar nominated classic 3D movie "Hugo" will not have screening in India having some farce reason. Viacom18,being distributor in India, said that it will not have enough theatre run as people will not appear to see it as it does not have major star cast. Frankly I agree with the statement to some extent as most people are busy supporting some hopeless Bollywood movie. But what about Viacom18's own production Blood money or say, Bitto Boss (what is this ?) ? It's pity that the movie Hugo which was lauded by none other than James Cameron as having best use of 3D technique than Avataar, is out of the grasp of Indian viewer.
- I still remember that I went for John Carter and during that movie, entire absolutely hilarious conversation about getting "high" was edited from the new trailer  from MIB 3. (I knew as I already watched that trailer on net the same morning).
Is it what the meaning of being mature in India ? Are we living in democratic country or some totalitarian George Orwellian state ? We all to blame for this (including me) as we have been taught to adapt and make ourselves self-satisfied, with whatever provided to us. That's why most of us find fun and happiness in movies and stuff which never challenge us in intellectual way. We just want to escape ourselves from trouble of thinking and find solace by projecting ourselves in place of "Hero", doing all the fighting in some "masala" Bollywood movie for us and feel satisfied.
Compromise and adjustments are virtues of the weak....... You get what you support....

Skyrim Diaries Part 1 (me,myself & Skyrim)

What do you call a beast, who, with single swift swipe could destroy social lives of the millions instantly and simultaneously. Who could devour millions of so called "useful" and "valuable" hours of mankind without a belch and nobody ever noticed it. For me that beast is called Bethesda, a degital entertainment media development company residing at, ofcourse, Bethesda in US of A. And it's latest weapon in this mass social life deatruction is called, mighty and the magnum opus, Skyrim.

I'm in no position or Its never my intention to present review of Skyrim here through this article. Its just the way to show my homage-cum-love towards open world games like Skyrim. There are lot other RPGs out there but why I specifically choose Skyrim is that it gives you so much content and sandbox gameplay that your lack of imagination only can restrict you to enjoy and play as you like.
I was never into fantacy setting or RPG untill I came in "radiative" touch of Fallout 3 (also by Bethesda). Its post apocalyptic backdrop attracted me so much that I couldn't resist myself to give it a try (my first full fledged RPG). I still remember my first moments of introduction to absolutely open wasteland of Washignton DC. I litteraly run around in crazy manner around vault 101 for about 15 minutes in all directions to testify that there is no invisible wall out there, that I can go anywhere I like where my eyes can see, that this game is something different than norms.
Even though Bethesda games are riddled with bugs and glitches in all the weirdness, dedicated RPG fans have taken up it as one more quest to solve for unimaginable "quest reward" of open world choose-as-you-like immersive gameplay.
Skyrim may not have as big map to play on as Oblivion or Morrowind, but its just fill to the brim with lots and lots of contents as well as quests. Sometimes it ceases to be the game, converting itself to that unforgettable experience which you will remember as mementos. Skyrim gives each player the freedom of forging their own adventure and foraging to their will. The best part of Skyrim is this urge to share your own story, quests, weird bugs, encounters, findings, mystery, inventory to all. And that specific urge itself proppeled me to go for blog on Skyrim defining my own experiences with the game.
I intended to write some good parts about my own Skyrim adventure, but may be in other blogs or diaries.
There is still lot to talk about such as Armors, Bards, Conjuration, Dragons, Elves, Frost, Gears, Headless horserider, Inventory, Jarls, Kills, Loots, Mountains, Nordic environment, Open world, Potions, Quests, Rings, Spelles, Tombs, Undead, Vegetation, Wabbajack, Xperience points, Yngol, Zombies, like a to z, alpha to omega. But it will be next time........till than fus-ra-doh...............

Structures are so massive and impressive

Beautiful Aurora Coriolis

Skyrim is all about breathtaking beauty

The Uncanny Valley

At last I happened to watch movie Tintin last to last week. As it was major venture from two "biggies" of Hollywood, Steven Spielberg & Peter Jackson, I was already prejudiced with the wellness and greatness of movie. Ultimately I experienced the same feeling which is always there with Speilbergs' movies : disappointment. No.. No before you go for some misunderstood meaning, I'll clear myself. Tintin as a movie is amazingly fun and enjoyable. It's definitive Speilberg adventure and must watch. But again I was compelled to think that we as a audiences are not fit enough to appreciate it.

We Indian people as audiences had developed very careless approach of watching the movie. For people who use to see bollywood, its just process of watching and nothing else. And it works fine for most bollywood " senseless" movies and also with some summer Hollwood blockblusters. But sometimes it is required to get to know the source upon which movie is based so that it can be put to proper context and views and also movie can be appreciated in its right manner. I had experience of same when people just expected "War of the worlds" to be some kind of superhero flick or second part of Independence Day without having any knowledge of H. G. Wells and its classic sci-fi novel with same name on which movie was based. Even I had not read it then, but before going for some criticism, I found it, read it, and than again I watched movie. ( in fact after that I saw it too many times ). And believe me it was brilliant and faithful adaptation. Not the same case here with Tintin but still I heard some people buzzing with negative views. Who is going to make them understand that in movie there are so many deft touches which were incorporated with ease that you as a audience just failed to understand it and enjoy it. For example a classic opening credit which is pure homage to the Tintin comics and its creator Herge. I can write whole new blog on this but right now I dont want to go in that direction as the topic of the blog is entirely different. Though it is some how connected with Tintin movie. Tintin was filmed with very lifelike animation by Mo-cap technique and with this surfaced the well-known problem of "The Uncanny Valley".

Now if you feel like more attached, emotionally, to animation movies which are more close to comic or surrealistic representation of characters rather than absolutely real and life like animations than you are nothing but following the principle of "The Uncanny Valley".In short, if you prefer movies such as The ice age, Kungfu Panda, Up, WALL-E etc. over Beowulf, The polar express or final fantasy series, than its nothing but work of "Uncanny Valley". This principle which was first termed by robotics professor Masahiro Mori states that in terms of AI or robots or animations we are more akeen to attach ourselves as the animations moves towards reality. As animations closes its gap towards becoming real, we like it more. But only up to the point or say, peek point. Aftet that, even though animations are absolutely real, we feel revulsion towards them hindering the ability to close the gap to attach ourselves emotionally. Once this curve move away from reality, we begin to like them again. This gap is called "Uncanny Valley". 

There have been many theories proposed responsible for such kind of cognitive behavior ranging from mortality salience to evolution to sexual preferences. Anyhow I'm not going to much detail about them as you can have better idea from other internet resources. Main purpose of writing this blog is to introduce the idea of "Uncanny Valley" to those who don't know this principle so as next time when you watch animation movie which has far greater resembles to real people and still somehow you could not able to connect to them than you perfectly know the reason why.

Last note: "Uncanny Valley" or not, Tintin is far more entertaining movie than average flick. Just give it a chance and fall in love of old adventurism.

OGD-Obsessive Gaming Disorder

Obsessive Gaming Disorder – I read these words somewhere on the online gaming magazine some times back and I immediately liked them (& make an entry in my vocabulary journal). I seriously believe that these three words (OGD) themselves can so profoundly and strongly represent and define entire hard core gaming community, comprises of fanatic gamers like me, in a way that no other lengthy introduction is required. OGD is not a word but identity. And I am sure that all the patients suffering from this disease will take proud of it.

First of all, I’m not talking about only gaming here (casual gaming & occasional gaming is no symptom of it, so if you are like that, be happy and go marry with your usual ordinary life). I’m talking about people who eat, sleep (actually not sleep), drink and have sex with gaming (OK, last one is far too imaginative).Point is you just don’t play games; you live games, than you most probably suffering from OGD.

Why one becomes obsessive about something? (I don’t want to go in details about effect of chemical composition Serotonin on our mind which is prime suspect for obsessive behavior). I believe its gradual process from first impression to liking, enjoying, contemplating, passionate liking and obsession, just like Love (People say that love is obsessive, I prefer the other way, if it’s obsessive, it must be Love)

I still remember my first divine touch with gaming medium when I was a child, traveling to north India with my family and only attraction for me was to have a handheld electronic device from Delhi marketplace which allowed me to have singular gaming experience. The idea of moving something on the black & white pixilated screen with a press of a button was so much fascinating to me at that time. I had bought one with maximum buttons on the panel (four: two on each sides excluding “start” button). I still remember the premise of the game where a bird shooter had to shoot as many goose as possible coming from four different directions (top-left, bottom-left, top-right, bottom-right). You just had to press appropriate button to shoot and kill in particular direction with precise timing. If 3 gooses escaped, it’s game over. Thing is it was so much difficult to kill 1000 gooses (that was my target at that time) as after crossing the score of 600 to 700, you had to work so fast that it looked impossible to reach 1000 without having an alien hands with four thumbs and a brain induced with super power chip, working and acting and responding with teraflops of calculations per seconds (I still remember, my high score was 950).

Then I came in touch with retro gaming legends and similar sprit-ed games like Mario, Contra, Pac-man, Bomberman, Space invaders, and lot others, eating away my summer vacations like piranhas eating their prey. Then came period of time, during start of my secondary education, when I happened to shy away from two of my likings: comics and games. These were mere hobbies that time, still not converted to passion. Here I should make clear the difference between hobby and passion. I have a very simple idea for testing: What you do in free time is hobby and for what you free the time from your busy life is passion. So I had to move away from my gaming so as I could satisfy the expectations of the surrounding to be grown up, to rake higher up in the rank, to concentrate on study, to get selected in good carrier and thereby making bright future. Now looking back, I can do nothing but laugh at the irony of my life as after following so called “ideal-path-to-success”, after getting myself better and better over others’ expectations, getting into the grooves of set carrier and social status and earning hefty amount of money, what I’m doing to satisfy my urge of happiness: Gaming and reading Comics (Life is really a circle).

After completing my secondary and higher secondary education, There came a point where my ideal study-and-make-bright-carrier route allowed me to get myself admitted to well known collage with computer engineering as major. Anyhow, I liked the idea of having personal computer just because of that. My parents bought me new PC with same notions as every parents in the world would have when they buy personal computers for their child for first time like PC would help to learn and make study smother, somehow it makes child more intellectual and clever. To me, it’s absolutely wrong notion (somehow I believe that parents also know this). I can firmly say that PC is going to be used up to or more than 90% for gaming, multimedia, movies and for lot other things rather than study for boys (I can not say the same for girls as I believe girls are far more sincere and studious in that regard and also I’m not having demographic data for that part).

I got PC in the year of 2002. Four years before i.e. 1998, the newly found corporation called Valve by two former Microsoft employee (Gabe Newell & Mike Harrington) had released it’s first product which was going to revitalize and direct FPS gaming to new heights and branded me with so deep impression of gaming that I could not make myself free from web of computer gaming whole of my life. That product is called Half-life and that was the first game which I played with my new PC. I never heard the game’s popularity before. I just picked up and played by impulse of playing something horrible and weird. I always thought of how I can get forward and what to expect next in Half-life during whole of my days: during lectures, playground, at collage, everywhere. Next gaming session would not satiate my hunger but add fuel to it for more play (to this day).                       

From than on, I just played on, never looked back. Gradually but certainly my passion turns into addiction and than an obsession. I tried to play every genre (TPS, Action-adventure, RPG, Hack & slash). Even I made a list of all the played games till date (don’t know why someone is interested in it except me). I had upgraded my system (along with higher end GPUs) thrice so that it is capable of playing all games there in the market with all the glory (& gory) details. I can not muster enough time to go home and play like old days as I’m working in different city and I deliberately avoided taking my Gaming rig with me with fear that I may loose my grip completely over reality and real life problems. But still I bought whatever new game in the market without contemplating how I’m going to play and finish it. And whenever I’m away from playing games, I read about games, think about games, want to know about gaming technologies, collect games and lot more. Games just stop being portal to lose myself in another world; it just becomes my world blurring the line between real and surreal.

 I don’t know why I’m writing all this stuff, why somebody really wants to read about my obsessive gaming journey. But may be I need a kind of valve to let my emotions and feelings out to something, same as Valve has done to me with Half-life years ago. At least games give me worlds and environments which based on some concrete values and rules. In games, I can prove myself worthy and can get rewards for my values and character development (it’s not as random and undependable as real world). May be games give me more freedom to explore and imagine (now I have idea why people get addicted to drugs). May be games give me courage to face my fears and live up to expectations. May be games give me notions that actions and traits matters more than your physical appearance (that’s why I like FPS more). In short, I love to be obsessed with computer gaming, I love to save the world again & again & again.

“A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?” – Einstein.

More Reads :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_addiction

http://addictions.about.com/od/videogameaddiction/f/is_video_game_addiction_real.htm

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2007/11/12/what-is-the-truth-about-gaming-addiction/

Books:

Game Addiction: The experience and the Effects by Neils Clark and P. Scott

If your ethical model defeats you........

“If your ethical model defeats you, change the model “– DBC Pierre in “Lights out in wonderland “

Moral values, ethical choices, good vs. evil, black or white – these all are topics of deep discussion and vary from person to person depending on their own perspective and views.  Still sometimes it drives me crazy that what should be the ideal structure to believe in. May be there is no ideal model of values as it has been taught to us as a child.

I happened to come in contact of a novel by DBC Pierre, titled “Lights out in Wonderland “. I’m an impulse buyer. As I gone through beautifully bleak and weird cover graphics and cryptic, allegorical excerpts, my impulse to read this novel goes sky high and I bought it. It’s about a guy who decides to cut short his life but before that he wants to indulge in decadence. Yes, novel is all about decadence in its purest form. (Still I went through few chapters only :). It raises so many questions about the validity of values and ethical model. Why we are so much rigid in accepting any new perspective? Why we strictly stick to model where everything we want to be divided into black and white only? Why we really don’t have any freedom of choice to live on our own way and make decisions on our own?  

In India (yes, I deliberately opt for India and also some “so called” traditional stats like Gujarat), idea of these moral values and ethical structure is so forcefully imbued into mind of a child so that as one grows up, this entire model cemented it’s place with so much ferocity that it becomes indestructible and rock-solid. And when time comes to test it against real world scenarios, it will attribute, person having it, with zeal of resistance and rigidity. It becomes so much difficult for the person to embrace the change that he/she outright rejects it without any proper notion and reason (even though change is good one). I believe that with too many social interactions we are losing individualism. We are losing right to live on our own notions and hence for our own happiness. Please bear in mind that I’m not indicating to severe social ties and relationships (in fact they are the most beautiful things that can happen to you in this hopeless era). It’s about choosing what you feel right without any interruptions. It’s about getting free reign to take decisions for your own life(of course after maturity) .It’s about constructing your own model and changing it whenever you feel right as per basis on your lifetime learning experience(good or bad, whatever).

If you really want to have a feel of choices and its consequences, you should opt to play good RPGs (Role Play Games).Even though most games provide you very broad line choices between good and evil, sometimes they really test you with moral choice which is falling into dark grey shade. One such incident I can remember is with Fallout 3 (my most favorite post-apocalyptic game with retro-futuristic environment).

There is one quest in the game where you caught between struggles of two extreme socially distanced groups. One is composed of civilized and well mannered people who had maintained there high living standards (even in the nuclear desolate world), residing in Tenpenny tower (a high rise structure still intact in the city).Other one is composed of  radiation infected and mutated ugly people who are living with very low life approach, called “Ghouls”. As you can expect that this big social chasm leads to conflicts between the two and the later one wants to take control of tower which represents dominance of richer life over others, while the former one wants to defend it and not to share their wealth with low lives as they dare to maintain their values intact in this devastated world. Now you had to take side and take moral decision to support one of them. Leader of the “Ghouls” (the mutated people) asks you to open secret passage in the tower so as entire of his army can ambush and capture the tower. On the other hand protector of the tower gives you the assignment to assassinate leader of the “Ghouls” to end the conflict and rebel. (There is one peaceful solution also where you can avoid the violence la “Mahatma Gandhi” style. If you had developed your speech skill proficiently, you can convince both sided to live together in unity. That’s where RPG really shines J ) . First I decided to help the ugly Ghouls as I sympathized with them on living a better life. But as soon as I opened the gates for them my decision proved flawed to me as ghoul army just destroyed everything in the tower and killed and slashed all the people in the tower, bringing down the civilization to their own low, savage level. So I decided to load previous save game and this time I supported the residents of Tenpenny Tower by executing the Ghoul leader with slipping a live grenade in his pocket while he was sleeping. But again I felt betrayed by my moral decision as just because ghouls are ugly and savant didn’t mean to end their rights to lead good life.

What if this is the real world scenario (not just the game) where any decision you make will have deep percussion s on the various aspects and lives of others and you can not reverse it. In Joker’s words “you changed it everything forever.“ (In The Dark Knight to Batman). One thing is for sure: You can not make everybody happy. And that’s why we better not strongly stick to our ethical values and give some space to ourselves as well as others to experiment and hence learn from it.

There is no right, there is no wrong there are only consequences.         

The Biggest RPG ever played.....

The famous poet and playwright Shakeshpeare had said that Life is a big stage and we are just characters playing various roles. Agree , totally agree with him. Even I can twist it a little bit to say in computer gaming jargon that Life is one of the biggest RPG ( Role Playing Genre ) Game ever and we are nothing but playing character whose only desire to gain level cap, thereby gaining experience and to build a character which has a conceivable effect on surrounding open world. 

First of all , let me give you insight to what actually RPG is.  ( If you are not into computer gaming , then it's possible that you have never heard it before.) .Even though I call myself hard-core Gamer ( If I can trust my memory then I'm playing computer games since 7 years  ,say from 2002 ) , still I just started to pay attention to RPG since last year only. ( Fallout 3 has done it ) . I must say that if after spending ( wasting in terms of other people who are not willing to play it :) 75 to 80 hours in barren wastelands of Fallout 3 , it still manages to attract me to play it , wander about in open post-apocalyptic retro futuristic environments then Fallout 3 must be a hell of a good RPG ( and now i'm  looking forward to Fallout:New Vegas )Then I go through other RPGs also like Mass Effect 1 , 2 and Dragon Age . I don't meant to list down what I played and not played by ranting all this stuff. Point is, As I started to superimpose my "in game" fantasies to real world ( as most gamers do ) ,I realized that this world is nothing than the biggest RPG ever we played all along our lifespan, the only difference is "game of life" never allows you second play-through.
 
In general all RPG's have basic structure consisting mainly of experiences or Level Caps,Stats,Perks and character development.You start with very basic features which are mostly incompetent in brutal game world. so you have to learn the things fast and try to gain as much experience points as you can to take on the fight against monsters or evils or ogres or  dragons or whatever it is. Your ultimate goal is to solve the quests ( thereby earning more XP :).  The best part of RPG is you choose to build a character as you like and still continue to go for various quests with different approaches.Either you can build a all trigger-happy killing frenzy or  silent shadow follower assassin or highly intellectual hacking geek or ........list goes on. 

Now consider and compare all these with our real world situation symbolically. Life is always like that. After happy memories of childhood ( training period ), all you required to do is get yourself  familiar with skills ( schools and collages ) and then plunge into real world for gaining more experience and build a character ( fighting inner demons , morality and lot other ). Also sometimes it seems that outer world is no more hostile and treacherous than fictional gaming world. You have to move and depend on your instincts, sometimes build a relationships ( with NPC ) and continuously go on for the new quest. 

Well, but not all is same here. I would like to point out a factor which favors in computer RPG  over real life ( absolutely my view only ). In real life you never had chance to live again with different path (very sad aspect ). 

so choose to indulge in RPG gaming (real or fictional : your take ) and build your character well so that you can fight back and register a victory over later stages (of game or life) and never ever fall back due to high difficulty as I said it's matter of time and earning experience and knowledge to overcome the problems ( evils or dragons or zombies or radiation or  loan payments or relationships problems or career roadblock or whatever the hazard :)