It was the summer break between grades 6 and 7... I was what 12 going on 22?
Leafing through the tabloid Sun (a Delhi cousin's who was on a visit), I saw this pink faced young man... intense eyes flashing a dazzling a power grin..
A very top dog look!
It was the hit movie of 1986 of course...Top Gun.
And I got smitten!
It was next summer between 7th and 8th grade that the movie was screened at ICI club.
Those days U.S. releases did not get screened instantaneously in India, intensifying the longing further for Hollywood blockbusters.
Heaven to see a cocksure Cruise on screen as Maverick..riding into the danger zone, playing with the boys...
"You Take My Breath Away" could have been written for all of us love struck threshold teenage girls back then.
I remember dreamily trodding grass on our garden overlooked by my bedroom window ! Walking in a worshipful circle to the Top Gun anthem blaring from my stereo inside.
Tears of ..heavy angst and a somehow befuddled inspiration clouded my eyes as an aeroplane overhead sped past noisily!
That's what's so awesome about crushes! It inspires heroic daydreams none of them pragmatic nevertheless...it inspires.
I was not just drop dead gorgeous like Kelly McGillis in my idle daydreams.
I was an astrophysicist!
I was a fighter pilot!
Later I was disappointed and disillusioned, who wasn't with their childhood idols, (barring Bruce "the boss"Springsteen), but he is still a colorful enigmatic personality. .
And chances are I feed off that charged charisma just a little bit even now!
Or could I have done this?
Dedicated a blog to this er... middle aged couch jumper ? Lovably loony, this man is going for broke finding meaning while most of us have given up on any particular belief system in this nihilistic random universe of ours!
He is maybe that slender sliver of quixotic hope that perhaps heros exist and myths are real, ubermensch not entirely impossible in a rapidly metrosexualizing material world.
Perhaps in all this anarchic entropic mess of a probability driven Douglas Adams universe /es, there is actual intent..and nothing is random after all.
Perhaps in all probability there is a sensible question after all that begs the ridiculous answer 42! ;)
