Idle musings

On 21-Aug-2016, my wife and I watched the Hindi movie Nil Battey Sannata. This blog post is my review of the movie. The movie has a simple story: a maid (or "bai", in Mumbai lexicon) wants her daughter to take studies and school seriously. The bai Deepa Sahai dotes on her daughter Apeksha, fondly called Apu. Deepa works at a doctor's house where her employers are supportive of her. The doctor's wife is called "didi", by Deepa, the term  of respect used commonly by maids to address their employers. Deepa bares her heart to didi about her worry regarding Apu's maths knowledge and her general lack of interest in studies. It is now that the women realise that both of them are also Nil Battey Sannata (loosely: good for nothings, according to a search on the Web) in maths, just like Apu ! Didi now suggests a radical idea: Deepa herself could enroll into tenth standard ! In this way, she would achieve two objectives: complete her disrupted educat...

    Last month, I visited Hyderabad. I stayed overnight in Secunderabad. My impressions of the city and a memorable visit to the Salar Jung museum are described below. Since today is Independence Day, writing about the history and culture associated with the museum is particularly apt, I feel !     I landed in Hyderabad at 9:20 a.m. The Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Shamshabad is about 38 k.m. away from the hotel I stayed, which was in Secunderabad. My first thought was that just like Bengaluru, the approach to the airport looks classy compared to the rest of the city ! The taxi driver took the P. V. Narasimha Rao expressway. In Bengaluru, the Hosur Road expressway is 10 k.m. long, which has made reaching Electronic City a lot simpler. The Narasimha Rao expressway is 11.6 k.m. long according to http://www.businessinsider.in/be-it-intracity-orinter-city-these-5-expressways-make-travelling-a-breeze/PV-Narasimha-Rao-Elevated-Expressway-Hyderabad-Andhr...

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 wife and I took a couple of days off to visit Yercaud. This blog post contains my impressions of the trip. Note: I have avoided mentioning names of people. The photos in this blog post do not contain people. Some friends and relatives would have received a link to an album with more photos. Please email me if you would like to view it as well. Since I don't like driving cars we had booked buses to and from Salem. Our bus was at 6:30 a.m. We reached the pick-up point ahead of time. The man in the counter of the private bus company whose tickets we had booked said that the bus would come in a few minutes. So we waited .. and waited! When there was no sign of the bus even at 7 a.m., I gave him a piece of my mind. He made some calls and said that the bus was on its way. It appeared that this bus had to come from the farthest corner of Bengaluru! I threatened to complain which resulted in more calls being made. Finally, more than an hour later than planned, we were off. I counted t...

    During my student days, Oliver Twist was a story I remember reading as a "Rapid Reader" (supplementary text, an abridged version). This was my first introduction to Charles Dickens. In time, I read the story in its original form, as also "A Tale of Two Cities", "Great Expectations" and "Pickwick Papers". My favourite among these books is "A Tale of Two Cities".     In January this year, I purchased a smartphone and to go with it, I downloaded several apps, including an e-book reader ! My workplace is around 20 k.m. away. I commute to my workplace in a bus. The commute varies from 45 minutes in the morning to 100 minutes in the evening. To fill this time, I used to listen to music on my smartphone. After downloading the e-book reader app, I visited https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/98 to download "A Tale of Two Cities". Then, I tried out the audio option on the e-book reader app. There are a few irritations I noticed while...

    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...