Variety is the spice of life

The first thing that made me watch this series was definitely the name - it sounded so James Bond-ish. And within few minutes into the episode with the supposedly lippy guy (whom i thought was the hero) getting shot made me wonder was he really the hero? If not why so much scene putting for a side character? Then like true mega serial setup, the hero joins back to the police squad after the into name reels. I almost gave up on the series, when it suddenly switched into a different story altogether only to cut back to the police officer part in a bit. It takes some adjusting to figure out the story is about Past and what happens in the present. There are 2 "pasts" - one about the officer who gets shot at the beginning and other about a kidnapped woman, whose case comes to the officer as a cold case to pursue. He is joined by a deputy, who resembles guiness record winning hindi actor for having been typecast as inspector in over 100 plus movies. The deputy is an immigrant from ...

Bus - this multi tyred man made moving machine has played a major role in my commutation life. Right from the last year of my school life till the time corona made a grand entry into our lives, buses had been the de facto mode of transport for me. The very first time i travelled alone in a bus was during my twelth standard, from my place to Royapettah. The thing about 21 series is that it goes all the way to central which means, rather than getting down, people keep boarding the bus at every stop. It was a lucky design that the bus makers decided to have a seat for the drivers. Else 21 bus drivers would've had to manage the driving by sitting on the steering wheel!!!  There are several key criteria for being the conductor of 21, primary one being that he should be insulated from every sensory neuron in his body and waist should be less than size zero, for he has to squeeze in between 50 different tummy sizes. He should have the mental processing capacity of a gigahertz processor, a...

I came across a Reel video, which was actually "shorts" from a movie, with Irfan khan mouthing a couplet for the heroine and another couple of friends, all of whom were sitting around a campfire. My first reaction was that the poem sounded nice but there was a lingering feeling about it. It felt like i had heard it before but couldn't quite remember when and where. Incidentally the next video on the reels section was that of a kid singing that song in "Indian idol". The power of algorithm and how they line up things for our viewing is really amazing when it actually works for the reason it was meant to be!! From there began the rabbit hole that took me through the entire back story about the song, the singer, his background, his claim to fame, the original movie where it was picturized, the other movie where Irfan was quoting that song and finally why it sounded so familiar!! You would've heard of songs being ear worms, playing in loops in your mind, in that...

Finally managed to finish the series. As mentioned in a previous post, the first 30 odd episodes where direct screen adaptation from Indira soundararajan's book "Ragasiyam parama Ragasiyam" while the rest of the 40 episodes where apparently co-written by the director (Naga) and the author himself. Interestingly, more than the actual book adaptation, the second half of the series titled "Amabala kaala kadigai" is very fast paced and takes the story forward with each episode very tightly written. The story begins with the "Navapaashana lingam" laden wooden box being stolen by the village Vaidhiyar in a tempo and how it keeps changing hands, eventually to land at the house of the very doctor who is searching for it desperately along with the police. There is an odd bit of a petrol tanker lorry, touted as a ghost vehicle, that kills most of the main characters one by one. Wonder how come such a big lorry can just like that appear out of nowhere and kill pe...

 This was one of the episodes from the latest season of Black Mirror. I saw it almost month back but somehow this episode had a lingering effect and wanted to post about it. It begins with one company called Eulogy, reaching out to a guy for colleting photos about his ex-girlfriend who had passed away, to include in the memorial service. Like any guy who has shared a bitter past with his ex, he is very reluctant at first and shares few pictures where the face of his girlfriend is either not clear or where she is looking else where and face not being covered in the picture at all. The company has a feature that allows people to actually visit the photo, meaning they can walk inside the picture mentally and look at the moment when the picture was clicked from a third person perspective. Like a mini time travel, only within that photo. The more pictures he dig up, the more it becomes clear that, he had purposedly struck out her face on all the pictures he had of her out of hatred and ...