Variety is the spice of life

All languages la the one word that junior hates the most is SLEEP. When we try to put him to sleep, we tread around very carefully with that word, making sure never to tell it out openly. But still he would get the draft of it and would immediately jump into some activity to delay it as much as he can. Till the time some one scolds him and forcibly puts him on his bed or till the sleep overcomes his already heavily laden eyes, he always will kottam adichify. Sometime back at around 11PM in the night, after having given up on the activity and being dead tired, wifey slept soundly. Realizing that waking a sleeping dragon is bit risky even for his skills, junior decided to take the easier approach.  “Appa…un kaadhula oru secret sollata” “Secret na kaadhula than solanum..mookula ila” He didn’t got the mokkai, but realized I am teasing him. Mandailaye oru adi vizhunthuchi, enakku. “S..t..o..r..y” nu he extended every letter and whispered. “Enna story venum..ganapati story sollata” “Illa...

Possibly the cheapest or least expensive good movie ever made with multiple cast. It involves couple of cars, one cabin like room with minimal furniture, half a dozen people, some food items, couple of packers and movers who are in frame for couple of minutes and an amazing group conversation stretching over solid 100 mins. Man from earth puts min in minimalist movies and In on intelligent dialogues. The story is about a college professor well in his prime, who suddenly decides to resign his permanent tenure and promising career to move away from everything. His close circle of friends for last ten years, mostly his colleagues, are clueless on his decision and gate crashes his leaving. He is in the midst of shifting the essentials to his transport when the party makes the surprise visit. They delay him and pester him to share his plans. He finally relents and says that it is his ritual not to stay at a place for more than a decade and it is something he has been following from the time...

The thing with junior is everything would be on your face, be it comment or criticism or his feedback. No holdbacks and take no prisoners is always his response.  Be it food or toy or his dress or anything else that is related to him, his response will always be direct and no beating around. Intha poosi mozhugarathu..maane thene additions..uhumm.  Payapulla ipidiye continue aavaanaa nu theriyathu but most of the times the resulting situations are downright funny. During one of his online classes, his class teacher was showing how to draw a lion. She herself had made it clear prior that her drawing skills are slightly passable and the objective of that activity was to improve fine motor skills on kids, ensuring they get proper grip while writing. The lion she had drawn was around the “palm impression” where in she had made up the fingers as mane and somehow made a body of the actual palm. It was not immediately recognizable as a lion but if someone explains it, can understand k...

Anything related to junior is a designated department internally, with specified timelines. Be it for food or for sleeping or for playing or for doing homework or for sitting along with him on online classes, he has specific task for each of us. Usually the play activity comes to me or his mom. But since she takes care of his school related work, he has generously given her the break from having to manage him throughout. When he plays with her it would all organized games like building blocks, jigsaws or dolling up Ganapati, coloring dinosaurs etc. But when it comes to me, we prefer gibberish. It would be raucous and noisy, no one would be able to make any sense of whether we are playing or fighting. We usually invent new games and never stick to any rules even for the ones that we’ve created. The recent addition being a “game” called “Versus”. Junior is die hard devotee of T-Rex, the dinosaur. Next to Ganapati, Tyrannosaurus Rex is his Ishta dheivam, best friend, saviour and favorite ...

In Avengers Endgame, post the Infinity war where in half of the population across the universe just vaporize, there is a resurrection scenario through time travel, which enables the deleted population to come back into being. Rather the scenario of Thanos clicking his fingers with Infinity Gauntlet gets avoided. Wish there is one such possibility for Covid as well. In last 6 months, as a family we lost almost one well- wisher/blood relative per month and even before the grief could settle on one loss the next one took over. It was like an never ending wave, hitting back and forth that, made us all numb literally and figuratively. Many of them we weren’t even able to see their faces one last time as there were restrictions on travel. Some of them were in regular touch with us and when they suddenly ceased to exist, it was very difficult to comprehend and accept. It is not like a file that gets accidently shift deleted or some item that gets misplaced forever from memory. All of them had...