Variety is the spice of life

22-1-2024. Certain dates are blessed with historical significance. Today is one such day that would probably go down in history as the day Deepavali visited India earlier than scheduled! It would be naïve to say Ram has come back to Ayodhya only after the Prana Prathista that happened today for the lord is omnipresent and timeless. But for mere mortals who attach materialistic meaning to every aspect of our lives, today is very symbolic and emotional, for, blessed we are to witness such a holy occasion. Just like how it would’ve happened originally during HIS time, when his return to Ayodhya after completing the exile and victorious campaign against Ravanan, culminating in his coronation, been witnessed by one and all, etched immortal on scripts and sculptures, with the aid of modern technology, today's event would’ve been witnessed live from the living rooms of countless many across the globe. Down South, videography or photography of “moolavar” is prohibited. Gladly such traditio...

I am a huge fan of Mission Impossible (MI) series and have seen all the movies in that franchise till date. It is a favorite for another reason that, somehow or other I would end up watching this series on theaters along with friends. The atmosphere, especially the pulsating theme music, stays with you long after the end credits roll and lingers for a while. Tom Cruise never fails to entertain with his unbelievable stunts and adrenaline pumping action sequences. You remove Cruise and his stunts, MI series would be more of Missing Information, in the form of a story line, rather than Mission Impossible!! All you would remember after watching the movie would be how Tom Cruise ran across Burj Kalifa tower or raced a sandstorm or climbed a running plane or was hanging bare hands on a cliff or hanging upside down all the way down a secret vault, but rarely the reason why he would be doing all those stunts. In some case it might be to chase a secret drug or some arm shipment or to retrieve s...

I like Sriram Ragavan movies, right from his first movie “Ek Hasina thi” (based on a Sidney Sheldon novel I guess) and “Jonny Gaddar”(debut movie of Neil Nitin Mukesh) were both quite intriguing to say the least. After watching “Andhadhun” I am quite sure his fan following would’ve multiplied exponentially, for here was one director who was acing thriller genres with brain teasing setups and open-ended climaxes. When I saw the posters of “Merry Christmas” his latest offering, the casting was like…sakkarapongal and curd!! Don’t ask me who is what in this combination but felt it was very weird pairing whose only commonality being their lack of fluency in Hindi (Katrina might’ve picked up after all these years, but Vijay Sethupathi speaks tamil in all languages). But this weird pairing only fueled the intrigue further considering the director’s penchant for such story telling. I wanted to watch this movie on Netflix or on any OTT when it is released, but surprise of all surprises, there w...

Have started with this book mid-December and finally managed to finish it this year! Considering that I heard about this book 4 years before, I forgot the reason why I had delayed reading this book for past 4 years!! Maybe I mistook it for a book about Marathoners!! But this one is not your typical Reilley thriller either. The first half of the book is like a Young Adult novel, detailing the travails of the narrator, a girl called Skye, who had shifted to Uptown New York along with her twin brother, accompanying their newly married mother and their super rich stepfather. Both the kids are sent to a school that is specifically meant for the Richie rich of the society and is filled with kids whose attitudes are borderline monstrosity and are psychologically disturbed to say the least. In other words, how they depict such kids on chick flick movies like Cruel Intentions or Mean Girls etc. There is a cliched bunch of characters who are exceptionally decent in that bunch, who invariably end...

I saw a video of a New Zealand MP making a passionate speech. I was watching the video without sound at that time and even without audio, while at a casual glance, it was quite evident that whatever she was speaking about was something she truly believed, unless she was an excellent actress, of course!! (Look at the amount of disbelief and disclaimer that must be included with each opinion!! Social media ki jai!!) When I read about her speech, it was quite a touching content! She is one of the ethnic representatives of her clan in the NZ parliament, having come from Māori background, I guess. She calls out on the government for having failed to protect the environment and natural resources as promised and addresses to her tribe people as to how it is natural to be different and being unique or distinct was nothing, they should be ashamed of but rather be proud about! She mentions how students from such communities end up on last benches in classrooms, become butt of ridicule and bullyi...

I watch josiyars trying to foretell major potential events that may befell each year at the beginning of the year. It is fun to see the confidence with which some of them make predictions which may sound exaggerated, to say the least, at times. This time, most of them on that show, hosted by a famous news channel where unanimous in predicting devastations due to water and fire and other elements. At the outset, I felt, it is quite easy to make such guesses which may sound wild to hear but make more sense if you follow the news bit more closely. Any amount of rain, if not slightly more than average, causes such devastation that it makes a clear tick for such predictions. With the callousness with which our city planners give permits to constructions and turning a blind eye to unauthorized shops that suddenly sprout out of any crevice between adjoining buildings, fire accidents are dime a dozen and many go abegging without due notice. To make such predictions one doesn’t have to rake the...