THE INDIAN COMMENTATOR

Image Courtesy: Google “The young and energetic secretary or clerk or someone, I don’t know what she exactly is, is the only reason I went to the Sloppy Bunk of India.” Racer (name imaginary) said with a conspicuously agitated temperament. He was talking about a bank. He said “Bunk” in order to avoid any legal problems. He was very careful, especially in public. “You know what, she—that secretary__” “Clerk.” I cut in. “Yea, clerk; she is pretty, you know. I mean beautiful. Nice eyebrows, nose and all.” Racer brightened his façade with a smile. I did not know that my childhood friend Racer could be such a connoisseur of feminine appearance. “I go to bank only to pay the exam fee. I don’t even take the concept of ‘savings’.” I said. Racer did not seem to hear what I said. As I was about to rephrase my point, Racer with dreamy eyes and an amorous mood stumbled back upon his topic. “I was in the bank the other day with a handful of money.” He said. When Ra...

Image Courtesy: Google It doesn’t matter if you believe in dragons. What matters is if you are ready to own one. Eragon (Ed Speleers), a farm boy gets a dragon for himself, and becomes a Dragon Rider to save the land of Alagaësia from the cruel and despotic ruler Galbatorix. The seventeen year old boy was out hunting at night, with his uncle peacefully asleep in their house. Arya, the princess of Ellesméra is chased by the wicked shade named Durza, a sorcerer. Arya had stolen a stone from the king, Galbatorix. When Arya (Sienna Guillory) is sure she is busted by Durza, she transports the stone to another place and it appears in front of Eragon, the naïve farm boy, in his adventure at night in the woods. Stefen Fangmeier’s direction is praiseworthy. He condensed the bulky book that goes by the same name as the movie, written by the American writer, Christopher Paolini. Mark D. Rosenthal and Jesse Wigutow, the two screen writers, clearly helped Fangmeier to condense the...

Image Courtesy: Google I didn’t know what this was. I never cared. This argument has been around for some time. They say if I should get across the struggle to possess a permanent job, I would be required to qualify the job tests, and in order to get through the job tests, one requires General Knowledge. General Knowledge? Yea, you know what this is, don’t you? A potion that is part buried in the history and part in the present—science, math, geography and whatever you can think or imagine about. Well, it also depends on who prepares the question papers. For some even the date of birth of some dumb old politician is General Knowledge. Can’t blame them. So is the charm of this phrase—General Knowledge! Sometimes, this phrase even makes me feel that I am good for nothing. The crux of the argument was related to my loves—things that I love the most doing. Reading is a skill I possessed in supreme ratios, as a young boy. As I grew up this skill grew with me, too....

Image Courtesy: Google The school was quiet except the regular high pitch accent from an English teacher, who had been in charge of the vacation class. The April sun blazed above the tile roofed building and the day was hot. The time was close to midday and the traffic was milder too. Any kid of voice that interrupted the class was minimal, which was a very impressive factor for the teacher, who was actually fed up from the otherwise roar of the traffic and the chattering of the 1500 students of the school. He preferred the vacation classes to regular ones.  The teacher’s preference for the vacation class had one more reason, other than the noise factor—time. During the vacation class, he could experiment with his teaching, provide better opportunities for the students to express themselves, and there was more time to do activities in the classroom rather than the regular school days. The class was under his total control. There was less interference by th...

Image Courtesy: Google At first, I thought this would be a movie about the great witch-hunt during the second part of fifteenth century to the early eighteenth, and the usual sympathizing with those people who were fried and grilled on stakes in public. But then there is a twist. One of the witches that is hanged and drowned as part of the exorcism ritual as per the ‘Book of Solomon’, comes alive and kills the priest who performs the rituals. Season of the Witch was released in 2011 and directed by Dominic Sena. Nicolas Cage plays the protagonist, a Teutonic Knight named Behmen von Bleibruck. He and his friend and companion, Felson (Ron Perlman) decide they should quit the crusade. The massacre of the innocent people in the name of god is out of their comprehensibility of justice. Claire Foy Image Courtesy: Google As they return, they pass through villages hit by the disastrous plague. Black Death had claimed not just villages but cities as well. The two horsemen a...

This is part fiction and part darn non-fiction Image Courtesy: Google “Don’t you dare, poke a staff in the eye of an angry mammoth!” An outrageous Mohanlal shouts at the villains in the Malayalam movie, Narasimham (2000). As part of the accompanying gesticulations, he slops his right shoulder down at an angle and raises the left leg and tags the white dhoti up, folding it around his waste, ready to attack the baddies. “What shall I do sir? My father asks me to wear a lungi at home. A full NO to Bermuda shorts!” The student asks over the phone. I stand puzzled. Then I try saying; “The white dhoti, “mundu” is the traditional male clothing in Kerala. It’s part of the formal dressing style and is used for most of the auspicious occasions such as festivities in temples and marriages, you know. Even kings wrap a dhoti in order to show their affluence and importance. The informal version of dhoti is ‘lungi’. Look at the variety of colours that are available for lungi. In mo...

Image Courtesy: Google This is non-fiction. What happened was, today evening one of my students called me. A boy, who is a multi-talented performer of sort. His is a dancer, and when he dances the whole crowd gathers around and rocks away along with his natural moves. He says he never learnt dancing, but it comes to him naturally. The unknown source of creativity somehow springs into his mind and fills everything around him with a magic, very unique. He is good at his studies too, although uses his gifts to sometimes cut corners. The best part about him is that he never gives up at anything. Unlike his teacher. “Hello, sir!” he said excited due to some reason, and with an usual cheerfulness in his voice. After some initial hesitation and usual introductory cookies, we immediately came down to business. He turned to sharing his problems and I to the digging for stories. I knew this boy might have something really wonderful and surprising to share with me. Intuition, you can ...

Sree Narayana Guru Image Courtesy: Google Meeting a childhood friend is always a refreshing experience. Somehow, what felt like old, past, ghost-like, dead and gone appear ‘refreshing’, new and approachable with the appearance of a childhood friend.   It was the day when Narendra Modi came to Sivagiri Madam, pilgrim centre, the tomb of Sri Narayana Guru, one of the foremost social reformers Kerala has seen, and made the place known in the northern parts of India . I did not have anything else to do, so I went to the city, thinking I could buy some fried chicken from KFC. Image Courtesy: Google It was a hot day. I bought a burger, a Combo of Friend Chicken, French Fries and a Vanilla Blue. After eating the chicken, I thought why shouldn’t I go out and take in some sea breeze. So I went to the beach. I had the burger with me still and some Vanilla Blue. I sat on a concrete bench, took the breeze on the face, and watched the waves crashing on the wet sandy shore. R...

Image Courtesy: Google Can books save humanity? Hell, no. Then why do we celebrate the World Book Day? Image Courtesy: Google Apparently, some influential people want us to believe that books can change the world, the time, and the people, and save the asses of the disillusioned rich. At some point in time, someone with power, some megalo seemed to have discovered that there is a chunk of time for leisure, available for those who work in factories, offices, schools and also for those with no jobs and no prospect of getting any in the future. This leisure time became the subject of a great scrutiny in the bureaucratic level throughout the world, after the Cold War. The age-old dictum ‘an idle mind is the Devil’s workshop’ was an archetypal threat they all felt. What if the Devil himself decides to establish his base camp in those many idle minds? Clearly, it was a warning sign, because the bureaucrats were outnumbered had the multitudes with loads of leisure time...

Image Courtesy: Google Image Courtesy: Google What Serves Batman Best?! Bat plane, Bat car, or The Bat, an all purpose flying machine that Lucius Fox presents to Bruce Wayne, which one is the most efficient tool of Batman ? Image Courtesy: Google What attracted me as a kid towards Batman was his vulnerability. The thought that he could fail was enough for me to unshackle myself from the meta-fantasy of the Superman, the hero of perfections. (Not completely, though, which I later realized.) However, among battles between good and evil, Batman relies on a number of surprise gadgets which were fun to watch and enthralling to imagine on your side; what impressed me the most was the rope. But then there was Spiderman, with a genetically generated spider-web-shooting gland on his wrist! Batman has still got the grounds, because he always has the specially designed vehicles and daggers or darts. Some darts, are designed to look like bats. Only Batman has custom...

Batman Image Courtesy: Google For the first time Batman bored me. Not the movie, but Batman. He was old and grumpy and sad and desperate and hopeless about life, about being Batman. However, with a really good story line and terse screen writing, the movie is entertaining. There is one character that appears to be worth an enemy for the Bat guy—Bane, the muscle man and wizard of the ‘cone-revolution’, in The Dark Knight Rises . Bane comes to town, proclaims to be a ‘liberator’ and conquers Gotham city in no time, with the help of cones and inmates of the state prison. What attracts the most is his accent and voice that booms out through some sort of a mask that—we understand at the end—helps him breathe. Tom Hardy as Bane Image Courtesy: Yahoo.com Bane used to be a member of the League of Shadows, the same bunch of supremely wrought fighters who taught Bruce Wayne, Batman’s alter ego (clarification for those who are too much into the Marvel Universe and ign...