ON SUPERHEROS

I have always revelled in the bedtime stories recited by my elders. Most of them had a common theme;the victory of good over evil. So there were holy ghosts, angel spirited demons & good for nothing villians; who had to give in to the greatness of Kings, Gods & more or less wierd little good characters. But so far as I am concerned, I thought, I have been a hapless victim of a generational fraud to super humanize characters; so that even simple fellows are made to look extraordinary. I was at a stage where I failed to find a 'spiderman' or a 'He-Man' in real life. I knew that I was duped and fooled into the make-believe world of surrealism. I even tried to put the cloak of the superheroes but it is not worth the effort. It takes a lot of pain on the self to stop trains, to move boulders, to fly high into the sky, to save the world & to rescue some damsel in distress. But I still adored characters like 'The Count Dracula'. Even the 'Mittals' can't afford a mansion in Transylvania with bats, cats & hunch-backed humans for company. In these days of high inflation, the self financed superhero lifestyle is hard to maintain. Even MI6 agent 'Mr.Bond' would require standing in que for his daily dose of Octane-6 fuel to power his many Aston Martins! The eco-friendly option for spiderman with webs gushing out of fists is still prefferable. I still dread the jet-lag that I would have to suffer travelling all hemispheres; in wanting to save the world. But like my grandma reminded me...behind every successful man there is the prescence of a woman. Here I would add: Behind every successful super-hero there is a super-villian. Let them all survive in bliss.........