Every time I brush my teeth, I fleetingly remember that the last time I visited dentist was years ago. And she had showed me a super scary image of certain waiting disasters inside that needed to be filled in at some point, sooner or later. Life has gone on since and I have ignored the cavities. I know, somewhere inside, that I will attend to them the day the toothache gets unbearable.

That’s what we humans are like. We are intelligent enough to know we are making mistakes, even to work at finding possible solutions, but prevention is not something we really buy into. We wake up to reality when disaster strikes.

No wonder fantasy and science fiction fire us up like nothing else can. I just watched The Amazing Spiderman tonight. I’m not one for green and blue liquids in glass viles, transmutations and reptilian creatures that emit ghastly noises. But even I, who cringes when the suspense gets too much (I do know where Udai gets that fear factor from!), am a sucker for the good over evil theme. As long as things get all right in the end, I’m willing to sit through the horror and the gore, the absolute idiocy of celluloid sci-fi.

Unfortunately, real life guarantees no happy endings. We have played dangerously with nature over the past few centuries. Toxins that humans created are now omnipresent in our food chain and no amount of organic labeling can ensure a toxin-free food item anymore. Drugs, toxins and dietary changes are probably responsible for a worldwide epidemic of lifestyle diseases- obesity, heart disease, diabetes. We like to think the human race is immortal, but we do not know for sure. Perhaps we will mutate and adapt to our environs, perhaps we will perish and turn the Earth into the hands of less meddlesome species! Intelligent stupidity is a hallmark of ours certainly…let’s see where it takes us?

I write this as the date changes to Friday, the 13th and I smile…the more we know as a race, the more we cling to elements fantastic, bizarre, illogical…perhaps that is our escape from the reality we know we must face someday.