In America

  Prakashettan announced clubhouse keys receipt at 10 AM. Gafoor, Vipin and myself brought the chairs and tables over to the clubhouse. Girish was setting up the sound system. We put the chairs into a stage and gallery arrangement and left home to bring our families over. ....... An hour later,  when we dropped in with family, clubhouse was pretty much filled with the tracy hills keralite families in traditional attire,  ladies in kerala sarees, men in munde and shirt/juba, kids in traditional style clothes. The pookkalam was setup, sadya items had been arranged on the side tables,  sound system setup was complete and playing,  audience had occupied the gallery. The place just got live! Prakashettan took the wireless mike and announced the program start,  each family got on the stage and introduced themselves. We had Thiruvathira kali performed around the traditional kerala style "vilakku". Audience enjoyed the dance and clapped loud to express appreciation...

Flat   "Dupp.." - that was roughly the sound and the car swerved to the right suddenly in Mohan Lal style. Luckily I realized right away what just happened and navigated the car to the side of the road safely as the images of the car with a burning bonnet and another overturned van that we had seen last couple of weeks on this highway played slideshow in my head.  Called Geico insurance and got redirected to a service that would charge me one hundred twenty dollars to tow the car two miles. And on asking why, I was told that that is because I am on the highway. Ok in that case,  let me get out of the highway and I will call you back. Well, if I can get out of the highway, then I can drive on my run-flats to the tire shop. And I inched into the tire shop.  Having reached the tire shop, I decided that I can drive fifty miles to the Fremont home to open the rental home and get the deep cleaning done which was the agenda for the day so as to return the house keys. Tire r...

I have no idea why the bee flew over and stung me on my left hand, as I was walking right in the middle of the route. It is not like I got too close to the bushes, or disturbed it's hums. Still hurts, bee! The next thing to hit us as we continued on the trek was how deserted the trail was. Not a soul in sight or sound. It was as if Abil and myself were the only ones left in the  species.  The uneasiness built on for at least the first thirty minutes. A little later, a couple jogged down past us, breaking the spell.  Soon, fog settled in, with a gentle earthy smell that reminded me of the smell of rice water that comes from nicely maintained tourist steam trains. It is interesting how toning down the sights with fog made them more beautiful.  We had walked up for a bit and were now at the lower edge of the clouds. Sun had also joined us, making for some more spectacle, and out came the phone cameras, something that rarely happens as we try to complete the long walk up...

Nimisha did much more of a performance than Fahad. She has quite a few variations to perform, and has rendered each of those portions really well.  Vinay Fort shared screen space easily with Fahad, and proved his acting mettle. Hope this will be a turning point for his acting career.  Fahad did not have as much of a performance challenge in this movie. There were scenes that Fahad performed well, but there were also scenes where he was not convincing.  Sushin Shyam's music and background score blended in well at some points, while at other points were a bit too loud, and unsubdued. Liked the eighties style song.  Execution had touches of brilliance. The starting 12 minute shot was definitely impressive. Some plot points were good, but the script had quite a few fundamental flaws. Once the script failed me at a couple of points, I started feeling consistent low points through out the script.   When the movie ended, I was not as thrilled to have watched it, b...

 As a singer, you are a blender who needs to blend in the emotion of the song, the music of the song and the rhythm of the song.  "Bhava raaga thala sangamam - Bharatham" While that is a one liner for a famous music based malayalam movie, I think that sentence succinctly captures what a singer should strive for.  You can get all the emotion right, but if the tune is incorrect, the song would feel incomplete.  Same for other combinations as well. Sometimes, you hear technically awesome performances with great rhythm sense and musical notes but lacking in emotion. 

 You don't set some of the notes right not because you can't make those notes but because you don't know the notes well enough.  A song is not just a page of lyrics,  not just three paragraphs in a page, not just four lines in a paragraph, not just five words in a line, not just four letter sounds in a word, it is also the notes within these letter sounds.  You don't know a song till you know these notes.  And if you have not paid attention of all the notes within a sound, when you sing you don't know   how to render that sound, and your lack of clarity manifests as misplaced notes, voice shakes, voice aberrations.  Again, it is not that the note was beyond your reach. It is that you did not have enough clarity on what notes were involved in that sound.

  Airbnb at Redlands   Targeting a four PM check-in, with a six hour twenty minutes estimate, we started from Fremont around 9:45 a.m., while the rest of the group with Geo,Sudheer,Mahesh,Amal and Anil started after lunch time around 2 p.m. I had done a non-stop drive except for a gas stop when the tank emptied.  We had skipped lunch to save time. Since it looked like we might reach much earlier than the group, we decided to have lunch and took a pretty long detour to an in-and-out and then to give up on it as the car queue was real long.  When we arrived, Geo,Jismin and children, and Anil,Anu and children were waiting outside the house while our owners were cleaning the house. Anil had arrived first and had informed the group of the owners being there. So Mahesh,Amal and Sudheer families who were coming together used the time to do shopping, and also to prevent any questions from the owner about the head count. It is Corona time, and it felt like the first getaway i...