on the road to El Dorado

So i lived in a house with a father who loved mysteries...who would point to the sky and spot moving objects with colourful lights, on clear nights when power cuts were the norm...he would look at me with a sparkle in his eyes and say " amu come, come here" and i would inevitably, like all the times before, be carried away by his fascination...i would run up to him and look eagerly in the direction he pointed....and up in the wide expanse...between the black sky and twinkling stars would be an unknown light...is it possible!!...but as all well-brought-up-rationalist kids..i would go..nah thats a satellite or a night flight...but my dad would insist....point out height difference or colour difference to prove that it was a UFO.....spying on earth through the night sky....aliens from some unknown galaxy...can they see me?....nah its a satellite!!

For years and years these were the stories that filled the half-hour span of darkness when our nuclear family sat together watching the clear night sky....there was always too much of disbelief....but the stories continued persistently...its almost ingrained in my soul...what about the lights or the life beyond, the event horizon, the patterns seen on the fields or the sightings of unknown creature with big eyes...too many evidence just like the faithful saw god evrywhere...years moved but the stories continued in its various hues...or rather in accordance to my old man's whims....then came the holy grail (mind you, years before dan brown or that crap)....the gospel according to judas and thomas..the lost gospels....lost years of jesus youth....the Gita, the Buddists on himalayas....it still continues.....he never realised how much i was being influenced...how much beyond the garb of cynicism i believed him....

one such mystifying story was this settlement built of gold for which the Spanish searched high and low...the El dorado....According to my old man it wasn't that this place was hidden from the spanish but more a mysterious disappearence of this otherwise visible structure from the view of the white man...who had come with the mission to loot....me thinks maybe the sun god had darkened the great andes so that the shadows fell upon the huge structure....a sanctuary built to honour and worship the sun god...a fertile high point from where one could see and own the world...my old man even thought that it was not ordinary people who lived there but aliens....their unknowability being translated into godliness.....the belief then goes that the whites found the fruits of knowledge...of corn, tomato and potato...from this land..and that these seeds were in fact not one that belonged to this planet but of some other...if one is not too wrong...for the longest time the christians in north america protested against corn as the fruit of the devil, if devil can be just a pagan or the unknown or just an alien from outer space...it makes sense...i am sure you have seen movies like the children of the corn....i'd say corny rather...whatever....coming back to the topic....it was nutritious and the fruits had an appealing bright colour...well the devil won for now more than a majority of the citizens of the US of A have these in their daily diet...they are the ketchup country...the magic seeds once sown by aliens/devil/peruvians like a doctrine widespread has seeped into the arteries of all the devout and others alike.....


So today as i looked with fascination once again at the pictures of Machu pichu...the lost city of the incan civilization....i was reminded of the old stories...of el dorado..of the mystery of the hidden city on top of the mountain....the city of the sun god...city so fertile that it is probable to even think that it was the sun god's harem.....there are structures to prove they worshipped the female...if you know what i mean... or maybe sun was a goddess...so abundant....the land of exotic fruits...the structure so mysteriously created...stone upon stone with not so much as an adhesive to hold them...more that 2000mts from sea level...how did it reach there...thousands of men working in the night to create an abode for the gods......so secretively stored until another white came along to cheat the natives of their secret...woe be to that man who let down a civilization by telling on it...woe be to the spanish conquerors!!! but i guess thats a lie cause i plan to go to the city soon...to discover the treasure lost somewhere....and i couldn't have gone there if he hadn't told on them....but what happened to the incas?

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