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Just junior things

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Paati is always keen to win junior’s attention and earn her stripes with him. She learns new stories to impress junior and keeps interesting Whatsapp forwards on her phone. After choosing a story that may potentially interest junior, she started telling him the story. The baseline for any story as per Junior’s norm is, it should be funny. If not funny, it should be something like a trivia that he can quote later. The story was about a battle of wits between various leaves as to who was the best.  First went the plantain leaf, being the biggest of the lot. It proudly stated the facts about itself that, being the biggest it serves multiple utilities. It is the defacto food plate and comes from a proud family of a tree whose every single part is of use for all. Next went the betel leaf. It agreed to the points mentioned by Plantain, but despite all the food that can be served on that leaf, it needs the betel leaf to digest them in the end and hence she is the best. The curry leaf proteste
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Dahaad – drama series review

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Amazon prime has netter a winner this time with Dahaad. The hindi series which is about a serial killer has all the makings of a decent thriller and is quite engaging. The story takes place in Rajasthan and with all the killings happening across the state, the length and breadth of the region is covered in the 8-part series with the investigating officers present in one region alone. It is like Mylapore E1 station inspector and his deputy investigating killings across TN, from Thirunelveli till Thirutani !! The investigating team in the series, even get to travel across state to Mumbai and Goa in search of the culprit, which begs the question of why the agencies in the respective states or stations are not involved in a manhunt of such a big scale and for a case involving nearly 30 murders!! Having chosen Rajasthan as the base, the director has added the caste prejudices, backward class clashes and challenges, inter religious marriages and honor killings associated with that, as garnis
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Just junior things

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While coming back from his Karate class, Junior was in deep thought for a while. His master had just spoken about the few classes he had to skip because of his trip to native place and was advising on how risky the world out there is and how he is training his wards to defend themselves. He mentioned that by the end of the training junior will become a “bully” but a controlled one at that. The word “bully” had stuck something in his mind and junior made it clear that he had no intention of becoming one ever at all. There is a kid in his class who troubles not just junior but almost every other kid. That kid is probably of a higher age and had joined a class lesser than his actual batch. He is not just the tallest in the class but also physically big as well. He torments the kids to the extent that some of the kids had formed a “self defence force” to protect themselves from that bully kid.Junior said he was very angry with that kid bullying him. Nee badiluku ennada panna keta he said h
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Panchayat – drama series

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Have been hearing about this series for quite some time. Unlike English series, Hindi ones rarely appeal on OTT. When my friends mentioned that it was like “Swades” movie, was curious to have a look. The story is about a guy who gets a job as Panchayat secretary of a remote village in UP. While his friends and peers have all been employed in IT and other high paying jobs, he feels lost and grudgingly takes up the job. His aim being to clear CAT exams the very year and move onto a high paying MBA job. What happens in his role as a panchayat secretary, how the happenings in the village and its setup influence his life, forms the 2 seasons. The story for each episode is as simple as it gets. In fact, the most difficult part of the whole setup would’ve been the simplicity of the setup which leads credibility to the scenarios and situations faced by the motely group, led by the village Pradhan (a terrific Ragubir Yadav who aces the role of the proxy Pradhan) his deputy Pradhan and an office
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Ponniyin selvan 2 - movie review

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Yet another movie that segregates the movie watching crowd as “have seen” and “haven’t yet”. With the first part already an Industry hit, expectations on the second part were quite high. The book being a block buster success, surely helped in both the movies getting the required prerelease hype organically. Was the second part a worthy successor, winnings wise to the first, is a million-dollar question. Unlike to the reviews and feedback for part 1, second part didn’t have much of comparison happening with what was there on the book that was missed but rather how much Mani Ratnam had changed the story in itself!! Starting with the omissions, Poonguzhali character, who plays a major role in safeguarding and healing the wounded prince, has been almost totally neglected. Even in first part, her character was not even a shade of how much it was detailed on the book. But the fact that, as a screenplay team, they had decided to water down this role had been consistent across both the movies.
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F.R.I.E.N.D.S

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Recently I saw a meme in which it was mentioned the reason why we like certain series better than others being, it may reflect on the thing that we love but lack. My favorite of all time being FRIENDS, couldn’t help but ponder a bit on that meme. If I remember right, I’ve been watching that series from around 1999, if not early. By the early 2000’s when I moved to Bangalore, the DVDs of entire seasons of Friends became a matter of pride possession amongst my acquaintances. It became an ice breaker and immediate conversation topic while meeting new people and quickly became the defacto topic of discussion, in every chat stream, if there was a dearth of one. I used to think, after FRIENDS I would never feel interested enough to follow any other series and this space is evident to how badly that went. But despite watching so many series, I always come back to this one. It made me wonder why I am so smitten with this! And like me why so many people who started watching this series at the s
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Of ageing and maturing

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How do I look?  This is one question that I’ve never bothered to check for the first 2 decades of my life, for I was afraid of the answer. I’ve often been the fattest boy in any group and morbidly obese all throughout my school days. There have been times when I would wait for evening time, which will through elongated shadow, wondering when I would ever resemble those shape. Till the time I left Chennai for a job in a different city, I had never taken any step to exercise or take up fitness activities. With nothing else to do and with a decent gym company provided in the same campus, almost every evening of mine was spent there, and I finally reached the other end of the spectrum when I gym instructor one day, asked me to reduce cardio as I was too lean already! It was music for my ears but despite every wall of the gym being covered in mirrors I never liked what I saw in the reflection for it always showed me how others saw me rather than who I was. Unless it was the magic mirror fro
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