Few months ago, watched dear comrade. Having  never watched Arjun Reddy,  I watched geetha govindam just to see what the hoopla about this guy was. That movie was just a simple engaging romcom with cringeworthy knot( hero takes selfie with sleeping female copassenger!).

I did like the pairing though. That and the killer songs made me watch dear comrade.  

Surprisingly, It turned out to be really good. It is the best metoo movie I have seen in south indian space or probably indian space( i know pink is really good too).

It traces the journey of lily, who we meet through bobby( vijay devarkonda).  Lily, is a state level cricket player. She falls in love with Bobby after bit of pursuing from his side. But the film isnt about just their journey, it is even more about her, about what she has to face and undergo and how she overcomes that. 

ofcourse, hero plays the savior - those are only few scenes anyway. And Movie has its flaws mostly related to the pace. It is not too crisp, falters at places. But I will still take that. 

Because in tamil world(assuming telugu is similar too), I see interviews and interviews after metoo from barely ther female celebrities about how

1. they never faced metoo

2. they would quit if they ever encounter metoo

3. they would slap them so no one would dare

Considering these barely there celebrities/ TV anchors dont even have the guts to ask a sensible question to their interviewees, I doubt if even one of the above is true. 

Which is why dear comrade is important. Even when first half  focused on their love story with her cricket going on in the background almost as a prop, you are aware of that. You feel bad when she has to go through what she has to go through. 

She makes a tough decision on relationship and survives that. When we meet her the first time, she has already survived a personal tragedy.  But she breaks down on losing her dream, her passion, her life over this. And you know she cant quit, the hero wouldnt take it either.  Most importantly you know she shouldnt have to quit.

 I liked quite a few other elements too - Bobby's love letter to lily's cousin and the bama character.

Years later, hopefully no one will remember Geetham govindam and hopefully Dear comrade will be discussed.

Deepavali memories are made

Of Periamma(Periappa's wife) and mom hitting the bed barely before midnight, thinking of the idlis that need to be made in 3-4 hours and wondering if they might as well start now
Of the first burst of cracker before ganga snanam
Of going in order of age starting with thatha(dragging him) for the first rocket
Of references to some morbid pencil cracker in the days of yore(!) so we never bought any for many years

Of asirvadhams in anticipation of the money
Collecting the money across all the cousins and dreaming of spending it all on crackers again and  realizing it is enough for a family picnic
Of writing essays in tamil about naragasura and deepavali 
Of Paati mandrams  
Of spending an entire afternoon with biglis, with another older cousin saying she(I) is ready for them, without realizing others treated as a bore
Of putting a hole in cousin's saree each diwali while holding the agarbathi that thankfully she never got upset about and doesnt even remember now( may you all be blessed with cousins like that)
Of Paati deciding Deepavali/other major festivals dont have to be joint affair anymore - just a gradual transition as families got bigger

Of spending the entire day visiting each others houses

Of cousin's husband marveling at how deepavali was celebrated  in the family
Of pouring over the cracker list, balancing between the expensive 1000 wallah, rockets and other veedis
Of the bottles that are needed for rockets
Of parachutes that never landed in the launching homes
Of the vedis carrying mom's name, so brother would call her out before bursting each one of them
Of the first Deepavali on moving to the city of my birth when my brother burst the vedi at 4.00am, startling the neighbour - neighbour switched on the lights, looked at us and went back. City didnt start the celebration at 4.00am
Of the storms, rains and associated power cuts coinciding with deepavali often enough
In the City of my birth, deepavali often was a lottery conducted by weather gods
Moving here, across oceans, deepavali was/is always a weird day,
A day with memories of the mega festival in the head and no traces of it in the surrounding
Of marveling at the thousand July 4 fireworks on chennai sky on couple of diwalis when I managed India trips during diwali

I have realized quite a while ago, home is where Parents are. Whereever they are, whether it is in India or one bedroom apartment I used to stay in or sibling's homes - parents followed the same routines, procedures that it created home.

But Diwali - no. It stays in the memories in the head. 

Blindly supporting a Political party or a Political Leader seems multiple levels dumber than Film star fandom.
 In the past few years whenever I see support for some party as if it is elixir I have several questions.
Economic Development:
From china to numerous other south asian countries have had tremendous economic development in the past few decades.  You know what that means there are lot more people with jobs/salary/better health care/education than they were before. Why did India not get to the level China got?
How is this not a relevant issue in election?
Is it because you and I still get our roti, kapda aur makan that economic development that could benefit so many others looks like greed to you? How is this not a issue congress had to address - the failure of growing India to the capacity its 1.25 billion population deserves?

dynasty based caste based(potato/Potatah - dynasty/caste same thing) Rahul Gandhi has assured some amount of money to every poor person in the country. As if he is  king who is giving away some amount from his coffer to poor as a charity act. Except this is a democracy, so it isnt a largese you are donating, it is at the end of the day people's money you as a voted official are distributing. And if the country has developed similar lines like China did in these past 3 decades they wouldnt need these sort of dole out.

Corruption:
Scam after Scam is the only constant factor in Congress led governments. I mean they even had one 5 year period of governance without Gandhi government but never without corruption scandal. From bofors to 2G to all other numerous other unreported scams. I am pretty sure there are quite a few corruption scandal that never made it to Media. 2G happened during first UPA regime and came to limelight only in the second.
Yet none of the congress leaders from Sonia to Rahul to P Chidambram ( cough cough) to Sam "middle class shall pay" Pitroda even had to address a single question on corruption. It is not an election issue they had to fight or face. why?


Religious based issues:
   Kamalnath with his glorious role in 1984 Sikh massacre riots is currently the CM of MP.   What does Rahul Gandhi's apologies for 1984 on twitter mean when Kamalnath is the CM? 
    Second issue, Congress's track record when it comes to rights which get affected by the garb of religion. Shahbano had got a fair verdict from the court and Rajeev Gandhi rushed to ensure no muslim women ever gets her fair maintenance. Then there was Triple talaq, congress would never have touched it a barge pole.
Imagine how much women would suffer if Sati, Child marriage and numerous other religious evils werent made illegal. Even after law, there is a still long road ahead towards an actual Societal change. Atleast it is a first step.
       Third, just a reminder Satanic verses was actually banned in India.

Indirect casteism is still casteism:
Any government in India can now come to power only with the help of regional parties. The regional parties
1. are typically casteist - from yadav to ramdoss that is what politics works at regional level these days.
2. Gundagiri: Mamatha is the first example that might come to your mind, truth is this is quite true for all regional parties too. Levels of this might vary based on how despotic the leader at the top is.
Congress have always formed always alliances with these parties, so the blame comes on them too.

The counter to all the above cant be the other party can be blamed on the same issues too. Every party that stands for elections needs to face the issues not get a free pass which I feel congress has got it this time.

As citizens there is only one opportunity in 5 years to take the parties to task and that has been wasted.

It doesnt matter what the election results are at this point.
  

Gmail turns 15 it seems. If you remember, it was invite only initially - an excellent marketing scheme. People created blog accounts because some bloggers had received an invite. That was the craze. Thanks to well connected friend I got mine, distributed to my family, friends, felt cool and all. Lots of joy. Within a short time, people started getting 50 invites.

 Enjoyed the privilege while it lasted. 

Few years later, I started receiving emails from this random mama who had a niece in chicago about some good slokas and their meaning. I didnt reply but then brother2 was like shouldnt you atleast let him know.

The mama replied, " can you send it to her?".

like how?  

Then there was MCA student from somewhere in AP. I mean MCA. It wasnt that she was using my email for some spam accounts. All her department emails, job application... whole geographical as well as career movement could possibly be tracked if one is interested but I am not. 

There are some older women too. Bank details, travel itineary, ATM withdrawals... it gets worse. It continues till date. On some information that might be needed sometimes I reply. Most people apologize, one nut case screamed because I deserve them apparently!(literally what goes for me)

His absolute logic fail apart, here are two reasons why I receive them.

One,  literally no institution in India uses confirmation email. Banks included.  Banks usually have information masked* but others happily send the billing details, address, phone number... Waiting for Jathagam now.

Two, my email  is exactly my name with intial. So yeah that moment 15 years ago when I was feeling super cool creating the email exactly with my name...( instead of weird numbers or other extra alphabets you are forced to because the username isnt available) means it is up for anybody who shares my name. 

On top of that, gmail will ignore some special characters in the email i,e ab@gmail and a_b@gmail is all the same.

So 15 years of gmail, 10+ years of receiving emails of all the sachukichu's of the world anniversary for me.

* Though in a hacker/schemer's hand it would be extremely handy