In America

 Aneesh stole the limelight from the seven damsels dancing around him for the grand finale of a fun-filled evening at Gafoor and Ramshi's house on the occasion of Eid 2023.  The core group is based off of friendship built over ten years all the way from Kochi to America. Amazing vibe, mouth watering pot luck food, fun filled games organization under the captaincy of Jacob and the refereeship of Junaid. Fish fry, fish biriyani, appam, beef biriyani, chicken curries - not a single item fell short. Tasty lively food. I was excited to meet the director of the critically acclaimed "Porshce Leben" and to realize that it is the same down-to-earth always smiling Harish that I have met multiple times already without realizing that he is the one and only talent that I have been raving about to multiple folks. And to also have him right next door is definitely exciting should a short film/a video project ever kick off. At the same time, corporate life is pretty much killing quite a ...

 Job Kurian's grandmother had passed away 2-3 days back. He shared that with his audience naturally. He is sad, his heart is there. However, he gave himself fully to his high energy performances. The connect between the audience and the performers was amazing.  Harish Sivaramakrishnan when introducing a song had said that this is a song I usually sing for my friends, and you guys are like my friends. Cheesy as that may sound, the connect was real with every performer. Sitara came in with a song directly and then continued the conversation. Audience shouted out requests and she sang them out.  Very talented.  Sitara engaged the audience very well.  Harish Sivaramakrishnan shone with his characteristic top-of-the-voice improvisations to yesteryear musical masterpieces.  He connected very well with his audience as well. The consistency in performance was impressive. Every song from every performer came out great. Hardly any fluff. No long-draws sponsor message...

  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.