Monthly Review: May 2024
I started this month with a wish to get back to working out regularly and be consistent with writing while watching as many movies as possible without stress. I have been taking therapy for the last few months to overcome stress and other things going on in my life, and my therapist remarked that I’m progressing well by incorporating a few things she suggested to me, like meditation and affirmations. I’ll return to the mediation part a little later, as I’ll touch upon what I did this month first.
As 1st May is a holiday here, I began watching two movies back to back, unplanned by me as I just followed Tapasi. We watched Challengers first in a PVR and immediately rushed to another mall to watch Do Aur Do Pyaar. I’ve never watched two films at Cinema Hall in a single day, that too back to back! Thankfully, one turned out to be brilliant, and the other one was, well, good in parts but underwhelming as a whole.
The following day, I attended the teaser launch event for a Telugu film called Patang. Check out this refreshing and funny teaser!
I spent most of the month in my hometown with my family. I went a week or ten days before the elections (we had the polling on May 13th) and was there a few days after the elections as well. Whenever I’m home, I become too lazy, and this time around, I was slightly better! We have a running joke at our home on me. If I’m in my hometown, my neighbours would also not know I’m there! I rarely step out, but this time, I was broke the behavior on this part as well! I was stepping out almost every day for something or another, purchasing groceries, eating out, visiting temples, meeting friends, or attending any event. But I consciously avoided one thing — working out. From last December, I was working out regularly, at least 3–4 times a week, and I felt it was my time to take a break from working out too and chill for a few days. I read books, wrote something, and meditated but didn’t exercise. I felt like it, and I’m happy about it, too! No guilt, nothing 🙂
Speaking of working out, I recently finished 100 workouts successfully at Cult! I believe I did more than 100 workouts, but these are the ones that are logged and tracked. A small victory for me in the physical wellness aspect, and with this josh, I’m being regular this week 🙂
With that, I’ll move on to mental wellness as well. I’ve been meditating regularly these days, trying different things, such as silent, guided, sleep meditations, and pranayama. So, yeah, things are working out well with a combination of a few types of meditation that are helping me to calm down my mind and focus on what’s important at the moment instead of overthinking about things beyond my control.
With progress in these two going well, I also had a good month in tracking habits! Here’s the sheet:
For most of the days this month, I was feeling joyful as we had friends coming over to watch IPL together at home this month! Towards the second half of the season, the intensity was high, and I started watching most of the matches. The RCB vs Chennai match was a tense match, and we all friends sat together to see RCB win the match to continue its six-match streak and qualify for playoffs. What happened next is not great, but their comeback is worth appreciating from the bottom of the table to making it to the top 4.
Also, we were cheering for SRH at our home with all our friends coming over and having fun, sharing tension and stress, cursing the situations, lighting the mood with non-sync jokes, donning the coach roles by suggesting what the players should do, and all! It’s fun to watch sports in the group because you have people supporting both teams, and there’s always trolling each other for representing their respective teams as if we are the franchise owners. Yeah, SRH played well this season, but KKR dominated well! We had much fun having friends over here, trolling each other, and cheering for the teams from home.
One more thing added to my happiness this month is meeting my college friends multiple times. I joined the 11th class (called Intermediate here) 2014 and made new friends. There was no one from our school who joined the same college as me. Amidst the competitive environment, I made friends with multiple people, and a few of them are still close friends of mine. It’s been a decade for our friendship, and we met twice this month, once at my home, where we watched IPL together and went swimming the next morning, and the next time, we all played cricket in Kachiguda and had dinner. We’re meeting today, too!
We were innocent souls back then, and the rapport remained the same, although it’s slightly difficult these days to meet owing to people having multiple programs to attend to. Nevertheless, we always make it a point to meet in person and spend more than half a day at least when we meet. Quite often, we see ourselves playing cricket near Narayanaguda as our college is nearby, and it’s kind of a center point for most of us.
I often speak to or meet some friends: Nakul, Aditya, Naman, Tarun, Madhu, Karthik, Pranay, Sammed, Rupa Shankar, and our hero, Vatsav. Thanks for being there with me for the last 10 years and being part of my happiness!
Yeah, moving onto the regular template now — books, movies, and all.
Books
I completed reading two books in May — “Written by Salim-Javed” and “Gandhi and Bhagat Singh” and am currently reading the Screenplay book of Rang De Basanti.
The book “Written By Salim-Javed” is good. It touches upon the work and personal lives of Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar, who collaborated to write blockbusters in the 1970s and 80s. They have Sholay, Deewar, and Mr India, among others, to their credit. The book explores their personal lives, their initial days of collaborating with each other, their writing style, recurring themes, the characters, and their separation. I had fun reading this book.
The book “Gandhi and Bhagat Singh” is based on a speech by the author, VN Datta. It discusses the situation during Bhagat Singh’s trial and execution and gives the perspectives of people who supported Gandhi for his efforts to commute the death sentence and those who criticized Gandhi for not putting enough pressure on the Viceroy to commute the death sentence. I wasn’t aware of the events that occurred around the time, which opened the doors for me to read more about our Freedom struggle.
Movies
Challengers
This is a crazy film. The writing and the editing complemented each other with match cuts to flashback and to the present day, making it smooth and fun to watch. The anxiety levels were increasing at times, added by the music. One of those movies that gives us the experience of watching a game intertwined with a love story.
Do Aur Do Pyaar
Started off well, and I just knew this film was about extra-marital affairs and infidelity. Nothing more. It was fun initially, but after a point I slowly started to disconnect from the movie owing to it’s tone shifts and sudden escalations in the film. There’s awkward comedy that worked in parts, but they couldn’t carry it forward. Also, the dialogues are too descriptive, we seldom see characters in real-life talk like that. The actors were good, and I wished the writing is more strong to hold on to its premise well.
I have a complaint about the films/series with characters from non-Hindi backgrounds — I’m multi-lingual and speak four languages. But my primary language for communication at home is my mother tongue, Kannada. I never talk to my parents in other languages. It doesn’t come naturally. I saw this happen in many families — if they are used to speaking one language, they don’t switch languages in one conversation. You can establish that they are a Tamil family, but if the movie is set in Hindi, let them speak Hindi through and through or add subtitles and make them speak in Tamil alone. Don’t switch the languages, that too, Hindi, English, and Tamil.
I felt bad for that guy — Sendhil Ramamurty. Pratik Gandhi is good, so is Vidya Balan and Ileyana. The music was so deep that it felt like it wasn’t necessary for the scenes playing on screen.
Fall Guy
I had total fun watching this film. The title sequence is good and shows David Leitch’s quirkiness. It’s a tribute to the stunt choreographers, while the script has its own twists and turns. The comedy worked well, and so did the action sequences. I’ll revisit this again.
Luck By Chance
I’ve heard about the movie but know nothing about it except that it is based on the film industry. I started watching it and was engaged with the content. It follows the story of a boy from Delhi who wants to make it big in the industry as an actor and a girl from Kanpur who aspires to be a star in Bollywood.
I love the cameos — I knew that Hrithik was there, but I was smiling happily upon seeing Anurag Kashyap, Karan Johar, Manish Malhotra, and the man himself, SRK.
They kept the character gray — using his ‘luck’ and every opportunity he gets to eliminate the competition, playing his cards right to get paid higher, associating with the female lead, and gaslighting Neena Ji (Dimple Kapadia) — you get it!
I love the climax scene where Sona gives him the reality check that he’s onto himself. Even when expressing his love, he cares about how she adds value to his life, but he seldom cares about her life. That’s some amazing writing there.
Om Shanti Om
Wanted to watch it for a long time now, although I watched it in parts during childhood. This movie has clever writing. Totally in love with this film and the tribute it pays to Bollywood. Perhaps I’ll write more about this film in a separate blog post, but this quote kind of rekindled my belief in life.🙂
Mahaan
This film has been on my list for quite some time now. I finally watched it and impressed through and through. Karthik Subbaraj’s writing proved to be strong, and I liked how he built up the tension and unpredictability of the characters’ behavior. In a way, it talks about the popular “Nallavan-Kettavan” with father-son pitted against each other. The character study of various characters in this film is interesting. Again, something I’m drafting up for a separate blog post. I’d rate this film as one of the finest from Karthik Subbaraj.
Rockstar
I manifested to watch Rockstar only on the big screen, and it happened. This movie disturbed me owing to the personal tragedy shown in it. It reminded me of Tamasha — the character’s introspection and the separation from the person the protagonist loved. Again, I am compiling more things about the movie and perhaps will publish them soon.
26/11 Mumbai Attacks
I was 9 years old when the 26/11 Mumbai attacks took place. I was following the news back then and was feeling sad for the people who were victims of the terror attack. Though I knew a few details, I wasn’t aware of the events unfolding. I’ve known this film for some time now and thought it had everything covered, but RGV limited the movie to the attacks of the terrorists and the aftermath of arresting Kasab. He tried to portray the film as brutal and gruesome as possible so that the impact is felt by the viewers, and I had to forward a few scenes as I couldn’t bear watching the killings of people. A well-made movie, in my opinion.
I discovered recently that one genre of films that I like and the books I like are those related to Films. Reflecting upon the films I love the most, BrochevarevaruRa, Uttama Villain, and Iraivi are there. Conversations with Mani Ratnam and The Autobiography of Akira Kurosawa are among my favorite books.
Interviews
I’ve watched a few good interviews this month, and these two from Vishnuvardhan are interesting — his interviews with SS Music and Baradwaj Rangan. I love this man for his visible passion while talking about films. His movies, too, are well-made.
Another interview I started watching but haven’t completed yet is the recent one of Baradwaj Rangan with Jeyamohan.
I’m currently watching Imtiaz Ali’s conversation with Mani Ratnam at the Jio Mami festival.
Also, I was browsing through YouTube to watch Standup comedians and came across Ashish Solanki’s Roast series. I started watching all his other standup videos on YouTube. Along with that, I watched standups of Aaditya (Kullu) on YouTube. He is another funny guy whose videos are worth watching without adult jokes.
Songs
As I’ve watched these two beautiful films this month — Om Shanti Om and Rockstar — I’ve been listening to the albums of these two films on a loop, especially the following songs. I looked up the lyrics of Rockstar songs to pain myself even more.
With that, we are towards the end of this blog post. I have been writing this blog post for a few days now. Although I initially promised myself that I should be publishing it on the last day of the month, yesterday night, I was almost ready with the blog post, but I felt it was fine. As long as I’m writing something regularly, I’m happy. And publishing the blog posts too, I started doing for my own sake. So, yeah that’s the reason there’s a delay in publishing this blog post alone.
These days, I’m publishing fewer blog posts than last year or the year before. I’ve got reasons for that, and when the time is right, I’ll share them here!
Until then…
