A most awesome rally! Only if...

S and I were at the Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear yesterday! It was an incredible and awesome experience. Not to mention - ahem! - brief.

No, really. We were at the site of the rally for all of glorious seven and a half minutes before beating a retreat. I was/am so ashamed of myself, and it fills me with embarrassment even as I write this account.

And before any of you commiserate with me, no, it was not agoraphobia, nor enochlophobia. What made us leave post-haste was the concatenation of several powerful realizations - call it 'light-bulb moments' - chiefly amongst which were (a) both of us were vertically challenged compared to most of the crowd, and (b) the rally was being telecast live on Comedy Central and C-Span, and also being streamed live online.

A Decidedly Un-Robotic Open Letter to Nikhat Kazmi...

Dear Nikhat-didi,

aapne mera dil toRh diyaa... (You broke my heart). This was my first reaction when the end credits started rolling after "Enthiran: The Robot".

How could you? No, really, how could you? You are Nikhat Kazmi, an esteemed Senior Editor with the Times of India group and the author of a highly popular weekly film review column for the newspaper. La Esposa and I have been, for years, hanging on to every word you said in your movie reviews, because our collective opinions almost always found a reflexion in your eloquent ones. Sadly, you seem to have gone to the deep end now: you gave Four Stars to the newly released Rajnikanth-Aishwarya Rai starrer "Enthiran: The Robot". Intrigued about the movie and emboldened by your Four-Star review, we drove 50 miles to a theater in Gaithersburg to watch the spectacle, that purportedly broke all records by garnering Rs. 205 crores (1 crore = 10 million) through advance bookings before its release.

I want our money back.

I know we can't get those 2 hours and 52 minutes of our lives restored, but I have written them off to my stupidity and lack of foresightedness. I mean, seriously, what was I thinking? et tu, Nikhat-didi?