Walking Lakshmi through the Ghost House..
I should say I did not expect to have much fun when I thought about the prospect of visiting Universal Studios at Hollywood for a second time within a year.

But when I had to literally drag a screaming Lakshmi into a ride called "Mummy Returns" with all my strength, I kinda knew that I was in for a surprise!

The ride is nothing but a typical Haunted-House setting with all paraphernalia required for scaring the hell out of weak hearts. Skeleton heads bump on you, ghosts come and touch you, vague human-like figures move around you, little ghosts run towards you and all the other works. You are supposed to walk through all these settings. And you are bound to hear quite a few screams whenever you go for this ride at Universal.

This time too, it wasn't very different. Only that Lakshmi was screaming all the way through! :-)

Atleast twice during the start of the ride, she decided to walk back off. But once I made her cross a few hurdles, she dropped the idea of backing off. Probably she did not fancy the idea of going back through what she had crossed already!

So then, she is walking along with me, screaming at the top of her voice almost without interruption at all the fancy scare-work that they had put up (and I believe she had her eyes closed too..) when this 8-foot ghost-figure comes and touches her shoulder. She screamed - I screamed - and then I did not hear much of her. I turn around after a few steps to find that Lakshmi is no longer with me but is running backwards and tripping on a few people - and scaring the hell out of them in turn - for they dont know which one is the ghost now - and they are all screaming too! I slowly gather myself up amidst all this confusion and walk back to see whats happening. It was all dark and there were atleast two people trying to help Lakshmi get up.

As I was walking across, an old lady (herself scared to death during all this) told me in a dry voice "You better take care of her!"

We did manage to complete the ride without any serious ado after that(well, it really couldn't get seriouser than that).

And we were outside on the roads of Universal Theme Park when I noticed that a few less-than-five-year-olds were crying outside after the ride.

Lakshmi was crying too.. Well, almost.. :-)