Hues of soul

#spoiler alert The Nightingale  Kristin Hannah  I was never a good student of history. But later as my reading progressed, I became fascinated by the past events our species went through. I tried to catch up by searching internet and of late with the help of some Netflix documentary series. Novels and movies, albeit being works of fiction, helped me to get  multidimensional lively pictures about such events. Because those deal with emotions and describes how the events affected individual and collective lives of people. All these add up like pieces of jigsaw puzzles. Yet, many more pieces are to be gathered to complete the picture. When I read The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah the memories of reading Mein Kampf, The Book thief ,Afterlives, Catch 22 and watching 'The Boy in the striped Pyjamas'  came to mind. I read Mein Kampf long back. It was intriguing to see how a hateful political philosophy spread by propoganda and affected the geopolitical scenario of the whole...

Healing after Broken Relationships  "Life is the flower for which love is honey" - wrote the great french novelist Victor Hugo. Love is beautiful. Love is the driving force of life. Love is omnipresent. It is everywhere around you.. There are any number of poems and songs about love.  People do crazy things for love. When you fall in love, the focus is that particular person. Everything else is out of focus. Your days, thoughts, feelings, everything revolve around that person. You spend a lot of time, energy and most of the time money in the relationship. When you end up in a breakup that intensifies your misery. They say lovers think with their hearts; those little red pulsating hearts. Is it true.? Let me be a bit unromantic here and speak a little about the science of love , the chemistry of love to be specific. Researches have discovered that the initial  attraction is caused by any or a combination of  hormones, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, estroge...

The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath Esther Greenwood, a college student, finds herself inside a bell jar quite often. Outside world looks surreal and eerily silent while she is inside. In spite of her scholarly achievements she struggles to get out of the bell jar of depression. She struggles to pick the right fruit from the fig tree of her life.  "I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite ma...

Laapataa Ladies It seems being 'Laapataa ' is not always bad. For Phoolkumari, the experience turned out to be an enlightening and for Jaya a liberating affair. "Ghungat se chalna seekh " was the first advice Phoolkumari gets, soon after her wedding, when she stumbled on something. One should learn to walk wearing ghunghat, perceivably looking at one's own feet, so as to make the next step.  'Ghungat' which symbolises patriarchy, is the villain of the movie, but loses big time as it's entire scheme falls apart. It is so heartful to watch the whole movie which is set in rural Madhya Pradesh, hopefully quite some time back. I simply don't want to believe that a girl like Phool Kumari exists nowadays. But,  all is well that ends well. Nitanshi Goel as innocent and naive Phool Kumari, Sparsh Shrivastava as the separated and love struck husband and Chaya Kadam as the brave and independent Manju maai did exceptionally well. Altogether a beautiful must wa...

The Path Do not hurry,. Don't aim too big.. Lest the present go unnoticed.. At the pinnacle,  The glory is celebrated, Exuberance stays a while.. And then what.???? Do not hurry.. Don't aim too big.. Aim small and rest a bit.. Admire the present.. Reminisce the path traversed.. Be excited about the journey ahead.. The path holds the essence of life. Not the destination. Preetha Raj

Swathi Shetty's soup is horrible. Yet she aspires to be a chef and dreams of opening her own restaurant. Amidst utter chaos Swathi selfishly pursues her ambition and fortune favours her. But as soon as she finds out the secret ingredient for her soup and started her own restaurant things crumble down. However  horrible Swathi's soup turns out to be, until she finds out the secret ingredient; the makers of the series get all the ingredients perfect. Konkana Sen Sharma and Manoj Bajpayee together in action is enough to make it tasty but all those eccentric components that are sprinkled make it tastier.  Preetha Raj