THE INDIAN COMMENTATOR

In the past they said, the internet would overthrow books, newspapers, print magazines and printed textbooks and as a corollary, the publishing industry itself. Fact remains that matters are different now. I remember, still, as a child I was fascinated by the talk about computers that textbooks would be replaced by something like slates, with glossy screens—like ipads, but hell, back in the 90s, there were no ipads in real life. What would happen to newspapers and magazines? We speculated. Who cared about newspapers and magazines? However, books were my weakness. I could not think, books being replaced by some solid, granite like glossy plastic and glass.   They were matters of science fiction. In school, our textbooks always took the form of glossy slates, when we talked about computers. Then when the new millennium came, when there was a rage about the end of the world and all, computers came to India. Image Courtesy: Google At first, some of us thought of what m...

Note: I have a major case of arachnophobia. The intuition was strong. In fact, the strength of my intuition was strong enough to wake me up from a startlingly clear dream I had so early in a morning, on a Wednesday. The Intuition was that there was something to this dream beyond the spiders I saw all over my body. The fear and aversion that I felt at the feel of spiders, already covering my face, and hands, and coming after me in a race of unsatiated hunger to terrify, to conquer me in my sleep, was at its peak, when the intuition hit me. There must be something to this, I heard myself think. I almost woke up, opened my eyes to the mild light of the early morning sun, and tried to make myself believe that it was all a dream-- just a dream . Image Courtesy: Google I felt a wriggling sensation on my right hand. I shook the hand violently. The cover fell to the ground. The cover was my fortress inside the darkness of dizzying impenetrable embrace of sleep. The spiders,...

1st among the movies about writers that Impressed me.  Capote “It's the hardest when someone has a notion about you and it's impossible to convince them otherwise.”—Truman Capote in Capote (film 2005) Image Courtesy: Google Thanks to one of my old friends, she gave me this DVD with some movies eloquently lavish on artistic material and inspiring story telling techniques. One among them was Capote . Directed by Bennett Miller, and released in 2005, Capote is biographically inclined to the life of the man who wrote the first nonfiction novel—Truman Capote. Truman Streckfus Persons, aka Truman Capote lived from 1924 September 30 to 1984 August 25. Although he had written fiction, including plays, his grit came out to its true colors with In Cold Blood (1966). He addresses this book as the first “nonfiction novel” in the movie, Capote . The movie is based on Gerald Clarke's book, Capote, the biography of Truman Capote .   Image Courtesy: Google Philip ...

And the 2nd place goes to…   Becoming Jane “As if the writing of women did not display the greatest powers of mind, knowledge of human nature, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour and the best-chosen language imaginable?” _Jane Austin in Becoming Jane (2007) Even if you haven’t read any of Jane Austen’s books, Becoming Jane will be entertaining. Becoming Jane is a British-Irish film with beautiful locations and wonderful rhyming British accent. Of course, you can call this “colonial nostalgia”, or whatever your professors taught you at the university. However, the attraction the setting held out for me was immense. Along with the storyline, the background of the charming countryside was speaking uninhibited on matters of heart and mind in this 18 th century woman writer’s life. Image Courtesy: Anne Hathaway Jane, the younger daughter of Reverend George Austen and his wife, aspires to become a writer, and in family gatherings, she prides herself in read...

3 rd among 3 Movies on Writers that Impressed Me.       Image Courtesy: Stephen King.com Stuck in Love   Bill Borgens, a successful novelist is unable to move on after divorce with Erica, his wife. Bill Borgens son, Rusty is seventeen years old, and is in a serious lack of romantic enlightenment. Bill’s daughter Sam (19 years) is, on the other hand, an emotionally matured writer, on her way to big success. She despises her mother, for leaving her alone as a child to find another man. Stuck in Love is a romantic drama directed by Josh Boone, and released in 2013, with these three people—Bill, Rusty, and Sam—struggling to find peace with their relationships. Image Courtesy: Google Sam publishes her first book, the one that her father, a successful writer, did not even see her writing let along help her edit. This creates a conflict between the father and daughter in the beginning, but is settled later, when the book receives lavish reviews from ...

For the next three days, I will be reviewing three of the most impressive movies I watched, 3 Movies on Writers that Impressed Me. The categorization, however, is based on the subject matter—writers. Being a professional in this area, the subject is of undeniable interest to me. I can connect deep skin with the characters and their feelings when someone says, “I sold my first story, today!”   Image Courtesy: Google The third movie I would talk about is not based on true events, unlike the other two movies. One of the movies, I reviewed had already appeared in TIC Saturday Flicks . This is the second movie in the “ 3 Movies on Writers that Impressed Me.”   The criteria for selecting each of these movies are kept as simpler as possible: personal taste . How else can one demonstrate those matters that defy all possible rational explanations and are reluctant to fall into the territory of the supernatural, at the same time? I still do not know, what instilled in...

To you, the sign that I exist. “Hear me out. Listen to me.” At first, I could not make out where the question was coming from. I looked around, saw the man sitting next to me, a fat gentle man in a blue shirt and white dhoti; then the young man leaning against the iron bar close to my seat; I saw the back of heads of the people sitting in the front seats; I also saw the many people crowding in a line in the aisle inside the bus. “You can’t see me?” The voice came back. I was pulled into a pool of curiosity that never before enveloped me during the afternoon hours. The next move I planned was to seek help from my nearby passenger. “Don’t even think about that.” The voice said. It warned me, in fact. I did not know what the repercussions would be, if I went against the instruction. This was the third sentence it spoke to me. OK, I agree, it’s my intuition that it’s an ‘it’. I tried to focus. I could only see the seat in front of me. “Look ...

"Hatred is love without the facts.” —Richard Bach ( One ) At first reading, I thought I misread it. So I read it again. It sounded the same—bizarre, as if some grammatical error had ruined a piece of the beautifully written book. Only Love is Real: A Story of Soulmates Reunited by Dr. Brian Weiss , first published in 1996 held out a promise to whoever leaved through the pages—life is a continuation of awareness in the timeless universe. One can also observe a two sided discourse associated with the title itself—love and reunion. Only Love is Real deals with real life experiences from Dr. Brian Weiss’ life and practices as a psychotherapist. He substantiates that individuals meet through lifetimes in search of love. Soulmates come and meet with their beloved ones in life after death. Reincarnation, in Only Love is Real becomes a physical reality. Every reader is pushed through the door of skepticism and doubt, but at the end, familiarized with the idea. The que...

This issue appears nasty. I did not want to write about it. After grappling many a turn with some serious questions, I sat down to write it. I could not stop, but wonder, where on the earth are we, right now. The issues in this article appear to be from some stupid dimension, but only to disappoint ourselves. These are from this world of ours, proof that we are getting increasingly vulnerable to defective identification of stupidity. Hell, I would not ask you to read it, if you have other interesting things to do. But then, if you do read, you will not be able to keep quiet that thing inside your head you call mind. In MTV's second season of "16 and Pregnant" a young girl appeared, her name was Jenelle Evans. She was born in 1992 and the world knows her as the ‘Teen Mom star’. An Indian audience may take it farfetched; Teen Mom series is a reality show that “follows” four girls and their journey into motherhood. When the Malayalam Movie Kalimannu released, a scen...