When the world is gone!

The countdown to the apocalypse is on! Will the world end? If the doomsday theories are anything to go by, exactly one year from now, the world will have ended!! Much of this comes, predictably, from Hollywood. Everything that has a beginning, has an end, goes the Matrix tag. And of course, coming to the much-talked about 2012, the so-called Mayan Calendar marks the day Dec 21, 2012 as the end of an era -- which is taken to mean the end of the world as we know it by Hollywood and hence, we had the luxury of watching the world go down under in Roland Emmerich’s 2012.People in a small town in Mexico called Tapachula, have installed a digital clock to count the time left before Dec 21, 2012, solstice and in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago sits a high-tech facility that could save the world if catastrophes like asteroid impacts were to strike. The seeds stored in this first ever “doomsday” vault would ensure the continuity of civilisation. Well, people in the city too have something to say about 2012. A few have been planning to live life to the fullest before it all ends. One such blogger, expressing his views on this concept is Udit Joshi. He says, “honestly, I think it’s a beautiful imagination by a highly creative being. And my experience of Hollywood on aliens says world organisations by now would have begun to panic! I would surrender to the universal energy and ask my loved ones to accompany me to the Mt. Everest for it’s the most beautiful place on earth and it would be worth dying there.”However, scientists in the city rubbish the whole Doomsday theory. BG Siddharth, Director of the Birla Science Centre, explains, “It’s all a hoax and there is no truth in it. It is a highly exaggerated imagination and the year 2012 will be like any other year.” He goes on to add that “the story was born because of the movie 2012 which used the Mayan Calendar. There is no way one can predict or give scientific explanations for it.” According to him, there are more interesting things to watch out for. “There are many interesting events next year like the transit of Venus in June. People should go back and continue living their life,” he advises.In the whole mocktail of opinions, there are a few who stand at the crossroads. A student, Harshad Rajamanauri, says, “I don’t think it is possible for the world to end, but if it is going to happen, I will probably go around the world in 80 days.” He also adds, “Hope it never ends. Civilization is getting better everyday.” A software engineer, Sachindra Pandey, chips in, “I don’t know if doomsday is a possibility or just a myth, but I’m certainly curious about it. And this is not the first time that someone has predicted events like this. In the late 90’s many people concluded that the world will end on a few certain dates based on text written by Nostradamus.”