Trying in vain to read a book in bus today morning, I thought I will solve the sudoku in today’s Ergo. By the time I was halfway through it, Kakuro given below sudoku caught my eye. Have been glancing through this paper for more than a year now and yet I never seem to have paid attention to it. Googled and got to know how to solve it. Got some old issues of Ergo from a sudoku-crazy friend and have since then been solving one puzzle after another!
Or so it feels like when I see the date of my last post here. So what’s been keeping me away from blogging?
Wanting to try some author I haven’t read before, I borrowed a couple of books of Sudha Murty from the library on the Monday before last. I first started reading ‘The Old Man and His God’ and liked it so much that I finished reading it at a stretch on the same evening. Finding ‘The Wise and Otherwise’ too equally engrossing as the previous book, the next day had me reading it at every possible free moment I could get. I can’t remember the last time I found a book as inspiring as these two! Reading those books made me do some serious thinking about a lot of things.
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It’s raining here! Yay! 🙂 Thunder, lightning, cool breeze, maN vaasanai, semma mazhai! Listening to the thunder and rain pouring, I am now happily singing
thandhaane thandhaane maega kooTTam thandhaane
iDiyellaam taaLam dhaane
mazhai thuLi maNNil vandhu sindha chindha ezhugiradhe oru vaasam
adhu ennai vaanavillil koNDu saertthu viDugiradhe sila naeram
😀 Veyil had been unbearable for the past 2 days with the temperature crossing 42 degree celsius. And now what a super weather! 🙂
Watching the last half an hour or so of Kannathil Muthamittal on K TV today morning, I remembered the post of mine that has been lying unfinished in the drafts for a long time now.
Sometime in June last year (this post has been in draft from that time!!), there was this thematic concert of T.M.Krishna that I went to. The theme of the concert was ‘Relationships’. As I heard a moving rendition of Mahakvi Bharatiyar’s ‘chinnanchiru kiLiye’(which he had chosen for the relationship between a father and his daughter) by TMK – how does he manage to bring so much bhava in everything that he sings! TMK rocks! 🙂 –, I couldn’t help remembering the movie ‘Kannathil Muthamittal’ the moment he sang those lines in the song. 🙂 As my thoughts drifted towards the movie, the first thing that came to my mind was what an apt title Mani Ratnam had chosen for the movie!
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Sangs’ post was what made me write this post. She has written that most of Mani Ratnam’s heroines are epitomes of innocence. But, I don’t think so.
Taking their own decisions, choosing how their life has to be, speaking their mind out and at times, being real stubborn – to me, these are what characterize the women in Mani Ratnam’s movies. Of course, some of their decisions do get influenced by their parents or others around them. But that, definitely, doesn’t make them innocent.
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4 days. 10 temples with no two temples being close to each other.1600+ km travel by car – Exhausting, tiring yet a very memorable trip!
Apart from a few temples that we had on our must-visit list, visit as many temples as possible without rushing even in a single place was the only plan that we had for this trip. And we did succeed in doing that. We left the entire trip planning to the driver since he knew all the routes.
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My current favourite songs are Manamadurai and Poo Pookkum Oasai from Minsara Kanavu and Chinna Kuyil Koovum from Yavarum Nalam (Yavarum Nalam songs deserve a separate post). Though I like the entire lyrics of all the 3 songs very much, my current favourite lines from two of those songs are related to rain and I just can’t stop humming those!
From Manamadurai:
thandhaane thandhaane maega kooTTam thandhaane
iDiyellaam taaLam dhaane
mazhai thuLi maNNil vandhu sindha chindha ezhugiradhe oru vaasam
adhu ennai vaanavillil koNDu saertthu viDugiradhe sila naeram
From Chinna Kuyil Koovum:
mazhai thuLi aayiram
kaDal maDi thaeDudhe
alaigaLaaga maaRi thuLLi aaDiDave
If only it rains here now, how great it would be! 🙂 And what a great respite it will be from the veyyil!
P.S.: Just as I was about to publish this post, I saw that Word had auto-corrected chinna of Chinna Kuyil to china and this old He-She was what I remembered immediately 🙂
I was telling a friend about how almost all the movies that I recently watched unfortunately turned out to be ones which I, forget about watching again, couldn’t watch even once and all I wanted to do was watch a really feel-good movie. Knowing how very few English movies I watch, she asked me to watch ‘You’ve Got Mail’. I watched the movie today and I really loved it. 🙂 It was exactly the kind of movie that I wanted to watch.
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anaivarukkum en iniya putthaaNDu nalvaazhtthukkaL! Let Virodhi (what a name! 🙂 ) be a great year to you all! 🙂 Happy Vishu to all you Keralites!
A talk by Dr. Chithra Madhavan on 17th January at Tattvaloka
vaikuNTa perumAL temple
This temple, currently being maintained by ASI, was built by Nandivarman 2nd, who was a vishNu Bhakta. It is one of the 108 divvya dEsams. Tirumangai Azhwar, who was a contemporary of Nandivarman 2nd, has sung on the deity here. The original name of this temple is paramEshwara vishNu graham, where Parameshwara happens to be Nandivarman’s name.
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