By Nury Vittachi | IANS
You know that movie where someone jumps out of a building and lands safely on a passing truck? I think it was called Pretty Much Every Movie Ever.
Well, a reader sent me a link to that exact clip -- only it was a real-life news report. A building in Hebei, in the north of China, was ablaze, and several people jumped out of high windows on to a truck filed with vegetables, escaping completely unharmed.
Makes you think, right? Next time you've finished work and the lifts going down are full, check the passing traffic. Perhaps the Uber people could provide options. "I'd like to order a truck of vegetables outside my building at 5.30, please." "Certainly, sir, cabbage or lettuce?"
This correspondent has noticed that "life-is-a-movie" items usually appear in batches, as if Destiny decides to recycle old film storylines for a while.
The same day a reader sent me a link to another news video of real life imitating art: A beaver was seen guiding a herd of 150 cows in Canada. Perhaps the beaver had actually seen the movie Babe, about a pig doing the work of a sheepdog, and wanted to try it himself. Beavers are smaller than pigs and cows are bigger than sheep, so real life beats the movie.
A third example arrived a day later. A man broke up with his girlfriend and went off to marry someone else. The annoyed girlfriend turned up at his wedding with a gun and took him away. Police thought it was so movie-like that it must have been staged.
I would agree, except for one crucial thing: The incident happened at an Indian wedding, which is famous as vortexes in which anything can happen.
Example: At a recent wedding in Uttar Pradesh, the bride refused to marry the groom after discovering that he'd provided a meat-free banquet. She instead married a man from among the wedding guests.
Reports of brides marrying wedding guests are not uncommon in India, and it puzzles me that ANY single men dare to attend such ceremonies.
Several times a year, young men must come home and have the following conversation. MOM: "How was your roommate's wedding?" SON: "The usual. By the way, meet my wife, Aditi."
A fourth news report in this category arrived that night. Two people in the US state of Washington discovered that they were born on the same day of the same month of the same year in the same town -- and eventually learned they were twins. Yes, it's the exact plot of the hit movie "The Parent Trap". But that's about two young girls.
In the real life version, a man and a woman found they were twins after they got married. The scientific term for this is "awkward". No doubt they are taking classes in Sibling Rivalry and Cutting Remarks so they can be "normal".
If Destiny is reading this, can I put in a request for the movie "Almost Famous" to come true? In that film, the beautiful Kate Hudson falls in love with a not-very-good, not-very-famous journalist.
Real-life Kate, whoever you are, I'm here.
(Nury Vittachi is an Asia-based frequent traveller. Send ideas and comments via his Facebook page)
