Alive is better !

    Sometime in the last week of April 2014, my b-i-l and sister were on apartment hunting phase. I had visited them and had to disappear for a few hours as they meticulously evaluated the options. My b-i-l enthusiastically suggested that I spend my precious next hours paying a visit to the London's Natural History Museum and hinted that I would have missed out on 'life' itself by not visiting it. At the outset, I was not just skeptical but outright against spending my time within the walls of a museum. However, like most of his suggestions, I was confident it would be worth it. Here is the link if you have not visited http://www.nhm.ac.uk/  and now I would highly recommend it to others too. 

Getting to the museum is best through the South Kensington tube station, from where you have a glamourous tunnel to get to you to the entrace of the museum. This entrance will take you directly into the Red Zone which is described as the following on their website. 

"Take a journey through our spectacular Earth sculpture and find out about the tremendous forces that shape our planet."

I must admit my experience was rather dull in this Geology section with most of time spent in picking  up pamphlets and plodding along uninterested. Just display after display about silicon, soil, rock, rock materials makes one question their visit. Like a disineterested teenager in a school lab, I was careful with the exhibits but moved on with a dismissive 'so what?' attitude. After about half an hour of dragging my feet through all the sections diligently as if I was expecting viva-exam at the end, I was hungry and tired from the mind-numbing experience. It was not only me but about every other visitor exuded the same lethargy. The section was as quite as an abandoned warehouse. 

I neither recall any of the details today nor do I have snaps to prove that I was ever in that section. 

The most surprising turn of events then happens at this point.

After this is life, one enters the Green Zone starting with the Birds. Once you enter this section, the entire aura and energy levels change. Kids running around, people clicking away on every other display,  laughing, pointing fingers at minute details on description labels. If I had a scouter ( Sukautā ), it would have burnt away most likely. I rather leave it to the following snaps of what I saw next as one would need the vocabulary of  'evolution' to describe what followed, both figuratively and literally. 

So no offence to geology, but ALIVE is better.