Variety is the spice of life

“Why do bees hum” This is one question that would set our collective household into a sigh and smile at the same time. Junior has taken to joke telling in a big way and is on a mokka joke inventing spree at present. Every time we sit together for a story telling session, he would’ve only one demand – the story should be funny. If he is not satisfied with the jokes he would ask me to continue till he gets at least one satisfactory laugh. This has been the tradition for last couple of years and he will laugh at my mokka jokes so much that I’ve been named the “jokester” (recently renamed as “mokkaster”) of the house. Looking at his eagerness to tell jokes, I showed him some from “Champak” magazine on the net. Unfortunately couldn’t find much about that famed magazine from my childhood. But of the dozen odd jokes that I read to him, he picked a couple that he was able to understand and was easier to repeat as well. He even started making out his own jokes similar to what he read on the boo...

When I read the movie review of Badhaai Do, I felt nauseated a bit at how it might have been portrayed on screen. For long, movie-wood, across all of those regional woods and beyond, have depicted people from LGBT community, either as weirdos or enjoyed many a slap stick comic scenes on their cost. Do we really know how to recognize someone as belonging to this community on face? Unless some one comes out, is it even possible to know? If without knowing or revealed to us, if they can gel in the crowd, at least superficially to others if not themselves, what difference it makes once their identity is known? At the outset, it looks more like a trust issue, if someone after all those years suddenly reveals themselves as different from how others perceived them. But if they themselves weren’t aware and has to go through lot of emotional upheavals to understand their orientation, how can others expect an early or truthful portrayal? Logically and for all practical purposes, orientation of a...

It is that time of the year where the most common question on the street would be “Swami enga irukaar” (where is HE). Possibly the one question, for which yogis, philosophers and all theists, spend their entire life in search for an answer, which any common person whom you may meet on your way in mylapore for the next ten days, would be able to answer, confidently and almost always correctly. The response could vary anything from “He is near Vasantha bhavan..you can take your time. He will be there for next ten fifteen minutes”, “He is resting in Thangavel nadar store area”, “He is just crossing fund office”. Atheists or non-believers may get gob smacked on the responses and on the accuracy with which god’s location being discussed. It is thiruvizha time, as the lord of mylapore makes his town tour, on different vehicles along with this consort and cohorts. The heavily decorated vehicles, especially the floral designs, are the highlights of the arrangements, which become discussion top...

Couple of days back there was an issue that I was talking to wifey about and when she couldn’t understand what I was telling despite explaining the banking process multiple times I felt irritated. My voice rose and junior who was watching all this stepped in the middle like a refree and asked me why I was getting so angry. I actually wasn’t angry and was only feeling irritated having had to explain my point of view so many times. But when he made that comment it immediately struck me how it is being perceived by people on other side!! I calmed down and asked my queries one by one and eventually it was me who was under the wrong understanding of the process!!! This one turned out to be an eye opener in literal sense for me, for I always wondered why people perceive me as short tempered and all the while the answer was right in front of me or rather within me to be precise. It’s the vocal tone with which I respond and possibly my facial reactions as well may be (did I just define anger a...

It has been 14 years since my dad passed away. Every now and then a thought will come to mind, imagining how it would be had he been alive now. My kid would’ve been the luckiest one ever to have had him around and possibly the most pampered one on the planet. I often think of him whenever something happens new or for the first time in our life. Be it the first flight travel, first time when we bought a laptop home, when we had inverter setup, when junior started going school and every time when IPL kickstarts a fresh season. He was an avid cricket fan and just couple of days before the launch of the first season he passed away. It was all a blur and before I could realize and grasp the depth of it, already couple of years had passed. He was someone who wanted to enjoy the thrills of life and would’ve loved to travel by flight. He would’ve been secretly nervous, now that I slowly understand how he would’ve felt at a similar stage in his life, but would’ve been proud of having travelled ...

If the title wasn’t a straight forward giveaway on the theme, the posters and trailer more than gave the whole storyline, that it is a triangular love story. It was promoted as a coming of age story of a guy from college till his middle age which again gave lot of nostalgic scenes to expect and none of the expectations were proved wrong. In fact the storyline is so done and dusted, most of the scenes write by themselves. There is no twist or turn or overtly negative villain or even melodramatically bad situations. Of course there are some sad sequences, loss of loved one but even those scenes can be preempted. But still every single review of this movie is so positive and people going ga-ga over who should play whose role when it gets remade in other languages. For such a simple and oft used storyline, possibly the most commonly used theme for star kid launch movies, the movie is possibly the biggest hit of 2022 from Malayalam movie industry!! There are people who are so smitten with t...

When my friend had posted a review about one of the series “Stay close” I started watching it and lost interest within couple of minutes. Somehow the British way of story telling is difficult to relate for me as I find it way too slow or erratically paced. Accent can be addressed by subtitles and familiarity with faces will get adjusted as the scenes go by, but they do lack that hook to capture the audience from first scene in most of the creations is my humble opinion. After reading a bit about the author Harlan Coben, I decided to give that series a try and ploughed on, hop-skipping and jumping across many scenes. In the end, it wasn’t that bad as I had perceived with the final episode having so many twists than a coir rope. The entire series of 8 odd episodes happen in past and present mode, where the events of one night that happened decades ago, comes back to haunt the characters involved in present day world. It is almost as if, the past casting its shadow on present, making the ...