Booscuthalaa - Untying the Knots

  “Why didn’t you do it well? There was so much time you had to prepare”  “It was such a tough question paper. All the questions were so twisted”  “It’s just that you didn’t prep well. Don’t blame the question paper. How much did Harish and Vinoth get” “I don’t know. I don’t care” “Wait till you reach home. You’ll get good” “Just stop it. It was just so difficult. I don’t even like this subject”  “I’m going to devise a tougher model exam question paper for you next toke even before your actual exam. So if you do that well, no other paper can be tough for you” “!!!!”

An utterly refreshing watch! There has been a lot of criticism on how this is such a designed-for-upper-class kind of an anthology and I agree with that point. However, I wouldn't call that out as a point of criticism. It is the point-of-view of a certain set of people. Everyone's been raving about the houses too - especially the one in 'Reunion' - Rajeev Menon's film with Gurucharan and Andrea. Recently discovered that the location is actually a restaurant 'Madras Square'. It's open architectural style reminded me of Howard Roark and Ayn Rand. Very inspiring visually! Our personal favorite was clearly Ilamai Idho Idho. While Jayaram completely nailed the Yoga Master pretense, Kalidas and Kalyani's cutesy moments stole the show. Sudha Kongara's got such amazing skills in weaving melting romantic stories. Really looking forward to Soorarai Pottru after this one. None of the other stories really lived up to the hype of their creators according to m...

 This was such an engrossing watch on Netlfix recently. After several months of dormancy, this was one series that pulled me into it - perhaps the concise 3 episodes season design played its part. There was a lot of noise even before the show went on air with apparently Mallya claiming that the show is full of lies & mis-interpretations. So, by the time the show went live on Flix, it had piqued a lot of interest. How much India has changed and evolved over the past 20-30 years. The series captures this so well. Across the 3 episodes, Bombay and Bangalore and some of most influential personalities from these cities come to the fore. While we have read a lot about the 'bad boys' in the news, what the series delivered very well is a more balanced & nuanced perspective of the story. It's true that all these 'boys' started out with very ambitious notions which seem to have worked very well upto a point. In the process, there are millions of lives that they have t...

 As we start learning any art form, the teacher takes the center stage - also widely articulated as the Guru commonly in India. In some sense, a good guru becomes Godly, is rightly deified by the disciples. This is so normal with respect to the arts. I love those gurus who don't just teach and criticize but also appreciate their students! However, this is not true just for the arts but for so many other spheres as well. Career mentors are an often overlooked set of guru and whose values we realize much later than we should have. In some ways, I think we surrender to these gurus / mentors - in a very discrete but open way, but how importatn these conversations can turn out to be. More on this later... -

 So what's next? It's almost nerve-wracking to see that the US presidential election's counting is finally drawing to a close. What are we going to be discussing about next? Our lives are going to be filled with the void for a few days - maybe go back to Covid discussions?! Sometime in Feb this year, Covid conversation openers started. You know what I'm referring to. It was quite a rage for a few weeks. In our neigborhood in Singapore, the numbers started with  14 /15 per day. We panicked, moved to India for a few days (Am so thankful we did that trip in mid-Feb!) & returned in late Feb. Only to discover that the numbers in Singapore soon moved to the 100s and & in no time, 1500 per day was the average. Italy and USA numbers warmed up discussions in this phase. India threw every other country out of the chart. IPL took over next (for the cricket enthusiasts mostly) and Biden vs Trump followed up. What's next, what's next .....

 Nothing motivates me as much as having to deal with a deadline. Especially at work. Gives the much needed adrenaline rush to get things done. It's a shame, isn't it? But it works! As I keep procrastinating working on a project just driven by inertia (!) - these deadlines ring the alarm bell and pull me to the finish line. I often ruminate how much better things would be had I started working earlier on them.  Deadlines always take me to my IIM Days when a 11:59:59 deadline was the norm. You could really feel the feverish excitement / nervousness in the hostel lobbies as time inched towards the new day. Of course, there was a lot of disincentive when we didn't meet deadlines, so we tried really hard to.   We mostly struggle with keeping to deadlines in the non-work space. Though I've been singing for long, I hadn't performed for more than 30 min at a stretch in a really long time - decades. As I revived my music lessons in the past few years, I realized I had to tak...

Interviewing -  That’s really a skill. Only a few do it very well. Maybe the more empathetic ones. I think the interviews we catch online these days are primarily based on creating sensationalism and click baits. And then there are the grilling interviews and noise pollution based debates. if you’re Tamil, you think of Rangaraj Pandey. If you follow national media- Arnab is shouting in your ears now.  So what are some of the defining features of a good interview.  1. Question to understand- In good interviews, A response mostly leads to a connected question or the part B of the question. This doesn’t imply that one needs to probe and probe. I’m just saying that an interviewer needs to listen and try to ask questions in an organic manner instead of trying to complete a prepared question paper.  2. Showcase the personality - Most celebrities resonate with certain aspects of their personality that are always in the limelight. A well researched interview often extracts m...