Idle musings

     My wife went with her friends to watch "Parva" ("Chapter", loosely), a Kannada play directed by Prakash Belawadi based on the book of the same name by the author S. L. Bhyrappa. It is based on the Mahabharata, the Indian epic of a conflict between cousins. The book contains the "Bhagavad Geeta", the "Divine Song" in which the God Shri Krishna educates, admonishes, guides and exhorts his friend and cousin Arjuna to fight in a war, uttering philosophical words that ring true today, just as they did in that time. The Geeta has inspired many people, including Mahatma Gandhi. Even without the Geeta, the Mahabharata is a superb story. The book "Parva" explores characters and relationships and morality itself, stripping the divinity away from the Mahabharata and considering the characters as purely human, with all our jealousies, anger and egos included!     "Parva" the play is based on the book. My wife admired the play and sai...

The credit goes to my wife's brother for introducing me to the Kannada movie 'Daredevil Musthafa'. He told me that the movie was crowd funded. It made me interested, but not interested enough to buy tickets for the movie. NOTE: I will avoid names of people in this blog post. A couple of weeks later I called upon another relative. This is a person who is very knowledgeable about both Kannada literature and also Kannada movies. While talking, the topic went to movies based on books. We talked of Puttanna Kanagal, Nagara Haavu, Sharapanjara and other movies. The conversation veered to Kannada authors. My relative spoke of the literary giant Kuvempu and his equally talented son Dr. Poornachandra Tejaswi. "There is a movie called 'Daredevil Musthaf'a released based on Dr. Tejaswi's characters and stories. It is his fans who produced the movie. For the first time, there is a poster of an author in a movie theatre instead of the posters of film stars. This can hap...

    There are very few movies filmed like a documentary that are worth watching twice. "Gandhada Gudi - Journey of a True Hero", a Kannada movie by Amoghavarsha on Karnataka's wildlife featuring actor and superstar Dr. Puneeth Rajkumar is one such movie. When I saw that the movie is released on the streaming service Amazon Prime Video, I was excited. I wanted all of us at home to watch it. We began watching the movie together, my wife, my mother and I. For the next 90 minutes or so, all of us were engrossed in the movie. The photography, the music, the places and the people captivated us. At the end of it, I was left with mixed feelings: on one hand, we have lost a talented actor who retained his simplicity until his untimely demise; on the other hand, the places and the visuals in the movie made me feel refreshed and energised. A couple of days later, my wife's brother visited us. I told him about the movie - and again all of us at home watched it with him and his fa...

    For now, the cloud of the SARS Cov2 pandemic seems to have been dispersed. When I go out for walks with my mask on, I see people without masks look at me strangely. In my mind, I hear them say: "Look at this character, he still wears a mask !" The mask feels uncomfortable and it is off from my face more often than it used to be earlier, but I do keep it on in crowded settings like when I am in public transport. With cases in double digits in Bengaluru, a long weekend made me look for a good movie to watch in the theatre. On 16-Apr-2022, my wife and I went to a multiplex for the first time after two years, to watch the Kannada movie "KGF: Chapter 2". The rest of this blog post presents my view on the movie.     My summary: some movies are meant for the big screen. If you are an action buff, watch "KGF: Chapter 2" (I will call it KGF2 in this blog post from this point onward) in a multiplex/ theatre.      https://hombalefilms.com/movies/kgf...

Since the last few weeks, I have heard a new ringtone around me. I commute in the bus to work. I heard the ringtone here as well. It is from the Kannada movie "Avane ShrimanNarayana" (ASN). Most of my Kannada speaking bus mates praised the movie. My wife's brother watched the movie on the first day and recommended it too. It was on 18-Jan-2020 that eleven of us watched ASN. This blog post contains my impressions on ASN. The trailer of ASN is available at https://youtu.be/Dj-HNEZ59Z4 . It shows that the  creators classify ASN as "Southern Odd Fiction". The trailer credits the hero of the movie Rakshit Shetty and "the seven odds" as the writers of the movie. Clearly, the movie is a collaborative effort. The story is as follows: a drama troupe hides a treasure while they are staging plays in a fictional town called Amaravati. The leader of a group of bandits Rama Rama finds them as they are fleeing and kills some of them. The rest mingle in the tow...

I have a habit of writing a quote on my whiteboard at work in the beginning of the week, typically on Mondays. Sant Shishunal Sharifa, the Kannada mystic and poet was born on 07-Mar-1819. Since 07-Mar was Sant Shishunal Sharifa's birth anniversary, on Monday, 05-Mar-2018, I wrote these lines on my whiteboard: "You say that your life is yours only / You say that gain in wealth is not enough / When the door is opened to step into the final journey nothing is provided / You lament simply !", from one of his poems "Lokada Kalaji" ("Concern about the world"). A translation of this poem is available at https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Raghu-Dixit/Lokada-Kalaji/translation/english for reading. The singer Raghu Dixit's video based on this song is available at https://youtu.be/lK2HwzB-unE for viewing. Having written the lines, the import of his words began to strike me. It led me to stream his songs and listen to them during the week. The more I liste...

An unprecedented event occurred on the evening of 03-Jul-2016. Over a period of 3 months or so, my wife and I watched 3 Kannada movies consecutively. I am primarily a Hindi and English movie fan. It is a landmark that I have watched 3 Kannada movies continuously. It is usually my wife's responsibility to recommend Kannada movies worth watching. The fact that I have seen 3 Kannada movies consecutively shows either: a.) There is a lack of good Hindi movies that caught my attention. or b.) There is a relative improvement in the quality of Kannada movies or c.) I have simply become more interested in Kannada movies. The pragmatic in me says it is c.) that is more likely. The Kannada fan in me says that it is b.) ;-) In reality, I suppose it is a combination of both a.) and b.) In this period we watched "Kirigoorina gayyaligalu" (abbreviated in this blog post as Kg) , "Godhi banna saadhaarana mykattu" (represented as GBSM henceforth) and "U-Turn" in that o...

    My fluency in reading Kannada is very poor, compared to my familiarity with English. My wife regularly solves crosswords in Kannada in the weekly Kannada magazine "Taranga". I attempt English crosswords but rarely complete all clues. So I admire her talent in solving Kannada crosswords. It was after marriage that I realised from her about the richness of local Indian languages like Kannada. The spark had been ignited by my late father who told me that he wished I had learnt how to read Kannada so that I could enjoy "Ramayana Darshanam" written by the Kannada literary giant Kuvempu or K. V. Puttappa also known popularly as Kuvempu . Now after having read one classic Kannada novel, I feel that it may yet be possible that I do read Kuvempu's magnum opus one of these days !     About 18 months ago or so, I picked up the Kannada novel "Roopadarshi" written by K. V. Iyer to read. In the beginning, I must have irritated my wife to a large extent, asking ...

    On last Saturday, 23-Aug-15, my wife and I watched "Rangitaranga", a Kannada movie at Garuda Swagath. This blog contains my review of the movie. Note: I follow a personal rule to avoid using personal names as much as possible. I have followed this rule in the blog post.     First, some background : my wife and her family are avid fans of Kannada literature and movies also. In particular, my wife's brother is a passionate supporter of Kannada movies. It is through him that we got to know that Rangitaranga is a movie to be watched. Other people also asked me to watch the movie, praising the thrill element and the story. My curiosity was whetted: I decided I had to watch this movie. Unfortunately, my wife's colleagues persuaded her to watch the movie with them. She watched the movie and further stoked my desire about watching the film by saying that the movie was scary at times and that I should watch it. I told her that she would have to be scared all ov...