Variety is the spice of life

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 prot...

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...

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...

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...

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....