Variety is the spice of life

It was sports day at junior’s play school and the management, in all its intelligence, prohibited parents from watching, for they felt, it may discourage the kids from participating!!! Semma kadups actually. But they shared tonnes of photos of the event. Junior participated in frog race and when I saw the winner’s board his name was not there. Didn’t want to push it but was curious to know what he did. But before I could check with his class miss, she was off for other work. On the way back, I was posting questions in all possible combinations to understand about the race. He was simply singing his favorite Ganapati song and as usual never minded me. When in auto, his full focus will be on sight-seeing and anyone accompanying him be damned. Every kid from the class were given a medal and when my mom saw the medal she was so happy that he had actually won. Before she could go overboard I told her the story and started checking the school’s social media page for photos. His group’s p...

First of all, it takes real guts to release your movie alongside a Rajini starrer, that too on a festival window. But surprisingly, the news is other way round. Seemingly, this Ajith starrer has garnered more theaters than Petta (pronounced pettai). Probably due to the heavy violent content family audiences are may be more leaning towards Visvasam, which is a mish-mash of emotions and sentiments alongside the mandatory hero worship. If Petta was a potpourri of scenes from yesteryear Rajini hits, with a running time well near 3 hours, Visvasam was its polar opposite. Especially, the first half was a rehash of all those movies, which were absolute duds for Ajith and god knows why the entire first half was wasted on them. Surprising that the movie watchers sat till the second half and made it a hit, because the second half more than make up for the former. Till interval, the story never takes off, crawling at snail’s pace over the non-existent chemistry between Ajith and Nayantara. Post ...

When the first song that launched the movie went by “Maranam maasu maranam” as starting line, it was pretty much a given as to how the movie was going to take shape. But there were lingering doubts around some of the recent attempts to bring back the glory days of Rajini and their success, with Linga being case in study. It was such a stupendous flop that it made Rajini venture into movies like Kabali and kaala, which again didn’t set the screen on fire. Against this background, came in Petta, riding on the “2.0” wave, which again was a hard sell like Saravana stores. They simply blocked every single screen across all theaters and movie watching public were left with little option. Even in that scenario, surprisingly, the crowd pull of Akshay kumar on the hindi belt was touted as the major reason for success and Rajini’s connect with audience were murmured to be on the wane. In short, to me it felt as if, Petta is a highlights reel of yesteryear blockbuster hits of Rajini. If you thin...

At times junior really stumps you for an answer. His aunt and himself were playing with balloons. He is fascinated by balloons and gets amazed at those floating things. Would beat the hell out of them if it is in his swinging arc is a different story. Knowing his penchant of them, my sister had bought a couple of colored ones and was trying to blow them into funny shapes. Watching her curiously he asked “Athhai..sudratha?” She was confused and asked “enna sudratha kekkara” He replied “Illa balloona ipdi oothindu irukiye..balloon sudratha? Naan aathi tharatuma” We were laughing like anything at the sutta pazham analogy. For those who couldn’t get the context do watch “Avvaiyar” movie and the interaction between KBS as avvaiyar and bala Murugan.

2019 never felt like a “new” year. May be 2018 was so exhaustive and felt forever to extend or was it because people started wishing “happy new year” from Christmas itself, whichever was the reason, somehow, thought will never see the end of last year. Moreover, the last week of last year saw us clinic hopping with one after the other falling sick, didn’t make it any easier. There were lot of heartburn and near misses that made 2018 an year of regrets. But in hindsight they all turned out to be for good. Hope the right thing, which is much delayed materializes this year. Latest addition to the list of favorite videos, courtesy Junior – Oddbods. Bubbles,Fuse,Newt,Jeff,Pogo,Slick and Zee are collectively called as “Oddbods” – are  the latest craze of junior. He has a knack for picking awesome videos, be it songs or cartoons. And whether he follows them or not, after a while, all those videos become family favorites. Be it ChuChu TV or now the current Oddbods, the videos are awesome...