Variety is the spice of life

This is going to be a running series till I finish the book. I am just into the 30th page and the book is already making me go wow!!! I was actually confused between the words “Deus” and “Deux” having thought that this book was part 2 (deux) of the Homo sapien blockbuster. Even though it is a spiritual sequel to that book, the title as it is refers to a whole new concept that is getting discussed on the initial chapters. Having conquered the known common causes of distress – war, famine, hunger and major diseases, the next focus on humans is towards achieving god status and hence the title – Home Deus. At least from the initial few pages, this is the impression on where the book could be heading to. The author makes an amazing statement and clears himself quite immediately when he states that, average life expectancy of humans have almost doubled to 70 from mid 30’s of the world war eras. Only to correct himself that for all we know, if not for the diseases and lack of basic hygiene, t

This post could get tagged under, yet another murder mystery and yet another review. But the author that she was, Agatha can never ever be tagged as just a murder mystery writer alone. This novel, starts with a resort as a setup. It takes a while to establish the characters, the setup and in fact after a while, the spotlight slowly settles on the victim and when the murder eventually happens, by that time, the readers are fully set into the premise. You can visualize the beach, the coves, the resort setup, people playing tennis. Slowly the spotlight moves across all the characters and when the controversial lady decides to take a solo ride, you know that something bad is going to happen to her. When her dead body is found on the shore it definitely does increases the tempo. The template comes alive – one location, multiple characters, murderer amidst. Of the couple of books that I had read, this one was very interesting for the fact that, all along, I was suspecting it was the wrong pa

The biggest plus of this lockdown is the amount of time parents get to spend with their kids. Like anything in excess that always have a flip side, too much of parenting is what it may lead to I fear. As a generation, the parents of this era are neither aware of old world wisdom, nor or they full blown dedicated to have an undistracted time with their kids, which can be spent on productive measures on development of their kids abilities. The bane of this generation and the previous one being, too much of devices and over dependence on outside information, majority of which are useless and used less. The challenge faced by grand parents is something similar. Beyond a limit, keeping abreast of the fast changing tech world of gadgets is quite a task, even for those who are related to that industry. Expecting the geriatric generation to keep pace with kids of 2020 would be too much of an ask. At the same time, the role of grandparents have never been more felt and needed, for they have see

"You are usually the top rank student in your class right? Always getting first mark?” Typically this query would’ve raised more reactions on me than Jothika. I was never posed this query during my school days and definitely didn’t expect this from my manager in present day situation!! As the tortoise coil swirls back, the flashback of the query, was from the possible set of events that lead to it. One thing that always accompanies me, wherever I go is, the “angry” tag. Be it a company that I’ve worked for several years or few months, somehow they always tag me at the least as a “strict” person and in other case scenario an angry person. In fact, within span of 6 months, I got a comment from some guy with whom I had rarely interacted and who had in fact joined couple of months after me!! One point could be that, say in my 4 interactions with him, had I sounded angry or irritated, even in 2 of them, that is 50% of the conversation with him which ended in that way. So I can neithe

Ithey ratela pona Haridas, Raja Harischandra reviewlaamum varalam. Both the movies mentioned are very famous and super hit Malayalam movies and are at least a decade old. Probably the time when Malayalam movies where heralding youngsters like Dulque, Nivin, Fahadh (that guy is Benjamin button in pause mode I guess. Looks old in every movie) and so many leading ladies like Nazriya et al made the movies all the more colorful and vibrant. Most of my friends have seen almost all the movies of Fahadh and Dulqur that were released during that time and they were always going ga-ga over them. With almost no new tamil movie to watch, have been shifting across kannada, telugu and Malayalam. Pretty soon I would also be like those international movie watcher groups, watching every movie across every language. Innum Korean, Bengali shift aagarathukulla corona kittenthu kaapathu saami. Indian pranaya kadha was highly rated by my friend and even recently he had posted about some top ten funny movie

One good thing about this lockdown is, I am getting to watch lot of other language movies, which I wouldn’t have even tried, even with time available. After a spate of Telegu movies, it was time for Malayalam. My sister and wife were getting too bored and was screening across the OTT platform for any different movies. The name must’ve caught their attention and armed with the support of subtitles, they ventured to see this movie. While I wasn’t too keen on the slow paced nature of the movie, was watching on and off while passing by and soon, with nothing else to do, started watching and didn’t even realize when I got hooked into it. The movie goes at a snails pace is as realistic as it gets. It traces the daily routine of an widowed old man in a village, left alone by his only son. I guess the story must’ve begun with the son sending a robot as courier to take care of his dad and the old man being reluctant and sad having been left alone by his son, must’ve resisted the robot. Slowly t

The movie has been in the news for all the wrong reasons and as the saying goes – nothing beats controversy related publicity. Again, thanks to the lockdown driven OTT addiction, despite having noticed this movie previously, the controversy related to the dog’s name, induced the curiosity. Being a Malayalam movie, almost 50% of the dialogues are in tamil!! The movie show cases Chennai so beautifully and most of the locations being very close to very I live, it was nice to watch them on screen. Another 10% of the dialogue is in French with rest being in Malayalam. Despite a 3 language dialogue driven movie, there is no semblance of a story on any of the language is an altogether different thing. The movie thrives on looks and looks alone. Good looking apartments, good looking cast, good looking supporting characters, even the vehicles used in the movie looks good!!! Good looking avashyamundu would’ve been the USP for the casting team I guess!!! But unfortunately kadhai anavashyamnudu ha