Karnan – What you do if where you live and your name controls your destiny

Official Trailer: Let’s get the few obvious questions out of the way. Which one is better, Mari Selvaraj’s first or his second movie? Pariyerum Perumal (PP) or Karnan? To me, both are director’s movies and showcases his talent, how not to get carried away by the message compromising the art of cinema, how to make a good cinema with great content. Both had oppression, a universal subject, as the core

 

COVID, India, Vaccination – How did we end up here?

Let me start with a success story. Not one but two. First is small pox vaccination and eradication from India. India was one of the few countries where small pox still existed in the early 70s. With collaboration with WHO, focused program was launched in 1972. By May 1975, the last known Indian smallpox patient, a 30-year-old female, was identified. By April 1977, two-year search and active surveillance activities confirmed

 

COVID, India, Religion and Tinted Glasses

Two events. Spaced across one year, one happened Mar 2020 and second in April 2021 (ongoing). Attendees of both failed to follow COVID protocol. Both can be considered as super-spreader events, along with many other super-spreader events (shouldn’t single them out) – I don’t think any detailed data analysis done or available on  impact of these events on the COVID infection numbers. Similarities stop there though. It is little unfair

 

Mandela – Underneath the humor it is a story about the sorry state of our society

Official Trailer: What is one vote worth in a democracy? Especially if that one is the deciding vote in an election outcome. That is the question the movie Mandela asks and uses that interesting premise to cleverly to give us a political-social satire. Village of Soorangudi is split in to two groups based on caste – from my observation these castes are at the same level in our caste hierarchy

 

The Great Indian Kitchen – we need stories…many stories like this

Disclosure: This article (with few edits) also published within the organization I work for. Posted here with permission from organization The Great Indian Kitchen is a Malayalam language movie released 15th Jan 2021 on NeeStream, a Malayalam OTT platform, with subtitles. Official Trailer: Watching The Great Indian Kitchen (TGIK) is an experience in itself. There are movies, well-made ones, that talk about social issues in a hard-hitting way. They do

 

#ToolKit – What a Tool Kit or a Tool Box can do to you?

Arrest of 22-year-old this week has sent chills, the way she was arrested, sections filed against her, five-day police custody granted by the court just like that. Yes, major newspapers have condemned and heavily criticized the arrest. Yes, there are opinion pieces being written by eminent personalities. But I don’t think any of these denunciations is going to change the ways of the current leadership. This is not the first

 

Rihanna, Greta, Meena, Mia, and fortified India

“Democracy doesn’t work if we constantly demonize each other….for progress to happen we have to listen to each other, see ourselves in each other, fight for our principles but also fight to find common ground, no matter how elusive it may seem” – Barack Obama Rihanna Fenty, Greta Thunberg, Meena Harris, Mia Khalifa are all in news this week in India. Capturing the frontpages of print, online, and social media

 

2020 Came with a Humble Message

(Author: Vikas Sethi) 2020 came with a humble message:             “Little is more” by having us                          Value our Health,                          Value our Loved ones,                          Value our Planet,                

 

Kamala Harris – Chain of Events

Disclosure: This article also published within the organization I work for. Posted here with permission from organization “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice”

 

On Habits and Efficient Prisons

(Author: Jay Ramalingam) Good old chap Jeremy Bentham, in 1780s England, designed a clever prison building called Panopticon. He designed a prison to reduce the number of guards needed and their salaries. This design did not allow prisoners to know when they were being watched. Prisoners in such situations behaved well even when there were no guards watching. This made prisoners to become their own guards. Does this sound familiar?