can you vish?

vasamsi jirnani yatha vihaya navani grhnati naro parani tatha sarirani vihaya jirnany anyani samyati navani dehi   (As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, the soul similarly accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones.)                                                                                   - Bhagavad Gita 2.22 Is reincarnation true? Didn’t you just read the sloka? Yes, but I am not devoid of doubts. Do you know who the father of our nation is? What! The father of the nation. Though I am quite sure you heard me the first time. Why? Gandhi of course! As you know, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated some six decades ago, and still we deal with a lot of Gandhi material on a daily basis. There are umpteen number of roads, public parks, colleges, libraries all named after him. Then there are some who live on through what they stood for their whole lives. Our former president APJ Abdul Kalam was a torchbeare

( This took place in Virtualia. ) “Good morning, sir!” shouted the students of class 6A as their class teacher announced himself at the front door of the classroom the exact moment when the minute hand of the wall clock touched 12, leaving the hour hand behind at 9. With a wave of hand, he acknowledged their greetings and asked them to be seated. The class teacher also taught them history. The way he dressed seemed to suggest that he himself had come from the past. “Does anyone of you remember where we had stopped our discussion yesterday?” “Yesterday was a holiday, sir.” “Yesterday means the last working day, smarty.” “We had stopped at the thirteenth chapter, sir. The turn of the millennia, and the beginning of chaos.” “Aah, very well. Let us pick it up from there. Thirteen, did you say? Like the number, the time period under question is widely considered as an unlucky phase of the history of our nation. As you might already know, Virtualia was at the zeni

C: The world we live in is unfair. J: Tell me about it. C: I often feel unwanted. That I do not really belong here. J: I would say you are making a mountain out of a mole. C: It ain’t like that. Sometimes I sound ‘s’-ish, like in cinema, or cereal. At times I also sound ‘k’-ish, in cattle, or canopy or callousness. I do not even have an identity. I find secure only in the company of H. When we are together, there is this amazing sound which is irreplaceable, like in charm or change. In H’s company, I am contended. J: Come on, it is alright to have more than a single sound. You become versatile, don’t you? C: Easy for you to say. Do people ever mistake your sound? You are unique. J: If it would make you any happy, I would confide that my life is not all pleasant either. It would have been if someone else had not gone out of their way to mimic me. I hate it when people use me in a negative word like jeopardy, but they go for G in gorgeousness. C: Haha! Y

Title : Masaan Language : Hindi Year : 2015 Director : Neeraj Ghaywan Genre : Drama, Romance IMDB Link Watch trailer on Youtube Lead Role : Richa Chadda, Vicky Kaushal, Sanjay Mishra , Shweta Tripathi Another realistically made, thought provoking film which keeps the viewers intrigued and in sync with the plot. Though the primary plot is based on lost love, the movie delves into varied issues including the nation’s debatable morality laws, social stigma, cop behavior and the like. Though the viewers are offered a plethora of love stories by our filmmakers, seldom does our movies paint romance in such innocent manner. The nervousness and sincerity are beautifully conceptualized. There is a subtle jibe at the existing social class differences too. Richa Chadda has done a commendable job playing one of the protagonists, Devi. Equally mentionable are Shweta Tripathi, Vicky Kaushal and Sanjay Mishra who all lived their roles.  Director Neeraj Ghaywan used to assist Anurag K

Title : Anarkali Language : Malayalam Year : 2015 Director : Sachy Genre : Drama, Romance IMDB Link Watch trailer on Youtube Lead Role : Prithviraj Sukumaran, Biju Menon, Miya George, Suresh Krishna Many of us might be familiar with the tale of Anarkali, the court dancer who was supposedly Jahangir’s secret lover. But when a debutant director announces the title for his directorial venture, one is not very sure what to expect. Is he gonna portray the Mughal times? Or is he planning to base the plot on the ageless tale of love? One fine day, the trailer releases and doubts are put to rest. Anarkali, as the team behind it described, is a romantic drama with feeble elements of thrill sprinkled here and there. The storyline is not very gripping or deep, and it is compensated by the beauty of the breathtaking visuals. Cinematography is the soul of the movie, and Sujith Vasudev deserves an applause. Prithviraj Sukumaran is apt for the role of Shantanu, our mysterious wan

"Do you know what irony is?" she asked me as she barged into my room. I was inside, reading. I considered her abrupt question. Apparently without expecting any reply, she continued, "Irony is when nobody bats an eye when guys drink their heads out, but when they see a girl drinking, hell breaks out." "Hold on, are you telling me that you drink?" "Occasionally, yeah!" "I don't think it is something to be proud of." "Hey don't judge me." "I didn't." "Yes You did. I can see it in your eyes." "Well I did not mean to. That would have been instinctive. But that had nothing to do with your gender. Drinking is bad for health. It's as simple as that." She did not seem to listen to reason then. Perhaps she thought I was just being another male chauvinist. An awkward silence followed. "Do you know what irony is?" This time I posed the questi

Title : Court Language : Marathi Year : 2014 Director : Chaitanya Tamhane Genre : Drama IMDB Link Watch trailer on YouTube Lead Role : Usha Bane, Vivek Gomber, Pradeep Joshi As the title seems to suggest, Court is a courtroom drama on the very outset. But it is not all about two lawyers traversing through the sections of IPC and the final verdict by the judge. Rather the movie goes on to show us glimpses of their personal lives, including their public dealings, homely chores and social circles. A folk singer by the name Narayan Kamble is framed and brought in for a trail. He is accused of having inspired the alleged suicide of a sewage worker through one of his poems. To draw an analogy from the timeless classic 12 Angry Men, the plot focuses more on the process than on finding out if the accused is indeed guilty or not.  The debutante director has succeeded in presenting the sequences in a realistic manner. This is probably novel in Indian cinema, whose courtroom d

'I know that you no longer miss me. I am not blaming you. It is okay. You have moved on with time. I understand. Often I remember those lovely days when you would never stop listening to me. Your days used to begin and end with me. I was so naive then. I thought you would dance to my tunes your whole life. But as days passed, things did change somehow. Perhaps I no longer charmed you. I was lessened to a remote space in your phone. I now realize such are the ways of the world. I miss you sometimes, and yes, I still love you.' And thus I woke up after the troubling dream. It was the wee hours of the night, still I could not sleep any further. An inexplicable feeling of guilt seemed to engulf me from within. I picked up my phone from my desk and searched for 'Heera'. The headphone was plugged in, and my ears were filled with the melodious AR Rahman composition. Soon I felt being transformed to some other wonder world. A world where happiness prevailed and I was ad

Kailas Nagar is a peaceful residential colony in the developing suburbs of Thrissur, Kerala. People belonging to the so called middle class lived there. People with permanent jobs, steady income and timetabled lives. And since they had to leave for jobs early in the morning, they could not afford to stay up late in the night except on Fridays and Saturdays. That day was a Sunday. The time was well past eleven in the night. Unsurprisingly, all families had retired for the day. Well, all but one. The two storied green house, the third one to the right, housed the young and handsome Manu Madhavan and his family. Manu was a tutor at a renowned school in the capital city Thiruvananthapuram. His long distance job demanded that he would be at home only during weekends. His family included his father Madhavan, mother Radha, and his newly wedded wife, Akshara. The wedding was only a week ago. Not a very lavish affair, mind you. The majority of the week that followed was spent in visiting the

Title : Baishe Srabon Language : Bengali Year : 2011 Director : Srijit Mukherjee Genre : Mystery, Crime IMDB Link Watch trailer on YouTube Lead Role :  Parambrata Chatterjee, Prasenjit Chattarjee, Raima Sen Baishe Srabon (22 Srabon) is a Bengali crime thriller with enough mystery elements thrown in to keep you the viewers enthralled and guessing. A serial killer is on the prawl, who finishes off people at nights and leaves verses from poems behind. The clueless police seeks the help of a brilliant ex-cop who was suspended from service thanks to his infamous torture methods. The script is intense, with cross references to Bengali literature and some history. The casting is perfect, and background score stands out. The movie is not exactly a fast paced thriller, but never loses the flow. Parambrata Chatterjee is turning into one of my favorite actors.

She sat in the Starbucks cafe, sipping her coffee and staring out of the window. The blood stained knife lay next to her handbag, covered with her blue silk scarf. The heat that welled up inside her made the coffee feel lukewarm. Rithu glanced around. After making sure was nobody was prying on her, she fished out her cell phone from her cluttered handbag. With mechanical precision, her fingers opened the tab where she had begun typing out a note. ‘This may seem to you as a confession, or as an admission of guilt. It is neither. This is me recounting some of my actions of the past and the circumstances that led me to the situation I now find myself in. For starters, I murdered a person.’  She sighed after going through it. For one last time, she asked herself if sharing her life with others was a good idea after all. After convincing her confused conscience, she resumed writing the story. Her own story. ‘The way I stated the fore-mentioned action may make me look li

Title : The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Language : Silent Movie Year : 1920 Director : Robert Wiene Genre : Horror IMDB Link Watch movie on YouTube Lead Role :   Friedrich Feher, Werner Krauss The movie is widely acknowledged as one of the landmark revolutionary offerings from the long gone era when movies did not speak. It may be technically incorrect to call a silent film German, nevertheless it was made in Germany during a time period when the European nation was in turmoils after the devastating World War I. The story begins with a young man by the name of Francis starts narrating the hardships faced by him and his fiancee (Jane) and the very peculiar, even horrifying doings of a strange man, Dr. Caligari. Dr. Caligari owns a stall at a nearby exhibition, and on display is a somnambulist Caeser, who allegedly has slept for 23 straight years! The doctor awakens him, and he answers questions asked by the spectators. To the horror of the locals, his prophecies comes true. Mean

Ramcharan Yadav, the History teacher of Lokmanya Vidya Niketan Indore, alighted the bus and asked the children to get down quietly. The class eight students were on their annual school trip, and this was the next stop for them. It was a quiet afternoon, and the sun was considering calling it a day.  After ensuring all students were feeling good, the teacher started speaking. ‘What you see here was constructed by a person who lived among us some years before, in the love for his wife soon after her soul bid farewell from this Earthly world.’ As expected, there was no collective sigh of exclamation from the kids, who had grown up watching engineering marvels and sky breakers across the globe. ‘Of course this may not seem to be such a great feat today, but you must remember that he had achieved the same at a time before machines started cutting stones or computers began to lay out meticulous plans. Twenty two long years were spent in the construction.’ Ramcharan watched

Close to the city of Paithan, in a small village called Sauviragram, which lay along the banks of the great river Godavari, lived a woman named Ilaa. Being cotton farmers, her family was well to do, but not among the richest in their area. It was the harvest season, and cotton had to be picked from the plants. The wholesalers and traders from Paithan would be arriving in just a few weeks, carrying gold and goods for barter. They would exchange what they carried for the cotton that the farmers grew. The bales of cotton had to be ready in time! Work was at its peak! But Ilaa was not to be found in the fields. She wasn't working. Instead, she was sitting by the banks of the great river Godavari. 'I am sick of this!' she grunted loudly. The cool breeze could not dampen her frustration. ‘Ssh...Not so loud, Ilaa! Others may hear.’ whispered a precarious Eknath. They both sat cross legged in the soft sand by the riverside. The wild outgrowth gave them a cover from th