Monthly Review: September 2024
I’m writing this blog post to continue the ritual of writing and publishing — just to show up this month, too. I’ve been compiling things over a few days on a document, but when the deadline is approaching, I have this weird feeling of abandoning this and moving on. Writing monthly blogs became a ritual precisely three years back when I started writing what I did in September 2021. I was reluctant to write and publish this one, but my professor’s words echoed in my mind while I tried to abandon it: “No matter what, the earth won’t stop rotating. The show must go on.”
In addition, writing the opening lines for a blog takes a lot of work. I fill up the middle and the end and keep wondering what must be at the beginning. I’m curious about it, and here we are, successfully writing the opening lines about my current state of mind.
Before I get into the usual monthly blog post template of tangible things like movies, books, etc., I want to write about how I felt this month. I started working on a new project that required me to stretch my work timings, affecting my sleep cycle for a few days. An incident didn’t turn out well for me this month that made me feel sad. There were days where I was happy and there were days where I was like “WTF is happening.” And towards the end of the day, I somehow got my mood back, appreciating the world and the beautiful living things that make the world a happy place. One of the essential factors to this is walking on the terrace alone before I sleep.
There’s a film called Thiruchitrambalam where the protagonist, Dhanush, listens to Ilayaraja songs in his room alone. I smiled while watching the scene. Cut to the present day, most of these days, I’m walking alone on the terrace with Ilayaraja songs playing in the background and I’m vibing to them. Such comforting songs from the legend! Mostly some vintage songs from the 80s and the cool breeze, it is such a bliss to walk on the terrace after dinner!
This has become a habit that I once logged out at around 12 am but I still went ahead to the terrace, walked there for sometime with Ilayaraja’s songs playing in the background. This completes my day!
Speaking of songs, I’ve been listening to these two songs on loop:
Many of my friends and my sister hail this film but for some reason (I know that reason), I haven’t watched it yet (I know the climax). Thanks, Aastha, for sharing this soothing melody with me (I don’t know the meaning of this song or its situation in the film).
And this banger from Anirudh boy:
Okay, now I want to talk about an amazing weekend where I was excited to start my day and ended up with a lot of fun although I was exhausted.
We, a small group of friends — Suresh, Nageshwar, Tapasi, and I, discuss fitness among other casual conversation topics. Nageshwar and I planned to walk together every weekend for an hour or two, and we did it for the two weekends I was in Hyderabad. On one Sunday, we thought of walking at Durgam Cheruvu Park but it rained making the ground not suitable for walking. Tapasi stepped in, suggesting we could go for a walk at the Cycling track near the ORR (Hyderabad) and we said yes! We found cycles there and yeah, we cycled for almost half-an-hour. It was fun and refreshing.
The same evening, I tagged along with my friends, Praneeth and Meghana for a Boardgames event in Hyderabad. And it turned out awesome! We played multiple games, and towards the end, we played one game that had 19 players! It was crazy and fun.. 😀
Also, travel-wise, September was good for me — I went to two cities I’ve never been to in my life, one down south and another one in the north. Went to Coimbatore to attend a friend’s reception. Lovely city and has a good vibe. Someone mentioned it’s the lite version of Bengaluru and I can’t agree more. The weather is beautiful, streets are peaceful, and people are friendly! Traffic jams are there too! ;) But overall a good trip — meeting colleagues and friends, trolling each other with Thalapathy steps, taking pictures, and having fun. It was really good! Though I was there only for a day, I had good fun! And the city in the north I was talking about, I will write about it more perhaps in another blog post. Let it be a secret for a few days as I’m still there in that city right now, while typing this blog post.
Now, let’s get into the regular stuff — movies, books, etc.
Movies
Goat — The Greatest of All Time
Mixed thoughts — I was engaged throughout but couldn’t enjoy it completely. Could have been better, especially the music was a let down. Otherwise a decent commercial film.
Tumbbad
Yeah, out of the Rs.1.65 crore Tumbbad collected on it’s first day of re-release this month, my humble Rs. 500 is there 🙂And I had an amazing experience to have witnessed this on PCX (largest screen in Hyderabad). Having missed theatrical experience when it was first released five years back, I had watched Tumbbad on Prime Video but don’t recollect a lot except for a few scenes including the climax. Watching it on the big screen was indeed great — those wide frames of rain in Tumbbad, the intense close ups of fearful faces with haunting music made it worth watching again in the theaters. Having read the making story of the movie, my respect towards the film cast and crew is immense! After watching the film in theaters this month, I promoted this film on my social media handles like it’s my own film — it deserved much more applause during its first release but I’m glad people are lauding it now!
Mathu Vadalara — 2
I went there without any expectations on the story, just being there to laugh at the moments. And I did enjoy the film. Ritesh Rana did a good job in direction but the writing is not as impactful as the part 1. Satya stole the show, and I was watching the film only for this man. His one-liners, punches, dance moves were delightful to watch! Thoroughly enjoyed this film 👏
The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises
I watched this film during my college days and was amazed at the vision. I thought I’d watch only the first scene of Joker’s introduction but I continued watching it till the end credits. I noticed the characters more this time and how Joker turned Harvey against Gotham city. Also noticed the dialogue that directly jumps into the story rather than setting up the scene. We travel with the characters more in such cases. These two films have intelligent screenplay. Red Herring all along makes us overlook the details, underestimating the antagonists only to find them way too smart!
Series
Panchayat
I started watching it last month and finished it in the first week of September — all 3 seasons continuously. I like the closures and the re-entry of the characters like the son-in-law who has a history with Abhishek, the police inspector, and the officer working with DM. The innocence and the madness of the villages made me fall in love with the series. I have been close to villages most of my life, and encountered people who behave like they depicted in the series, with no filters, and I loved the writing and the portrayal of these characters.
In one of the episodes, where Prahlad speaks to someone’s mother about house — that was emotional. The last episode of the 3rd season I was laughing out loud, like really loud! The fight was really fun, and I was just banging the table, and couldn’t control my laugh. My flatmate thought something’s happening, and knocked on the door to ask if everything’s okay!
Totally loved the series, and yeah, looking forward to the next season! Thanks to many beautiful souls who suggested that I watch this series!
Books
I read two books this month, a Telugu novel and a non-fiction book in English.
A Telugu novel called “Repo Maapo Pellanta” by Malladi:
I purchased it because I wanted to read comedy but this one didn’t work for me. While the premise is good and has a lot of potential to turn it into a hilarious one, it didn’t do justice due to multiple characters and subplots that would have worked for visual medium but not for the book. This book is adapted to a movie, I’m yet to watch it but after reading I have little-no interest in doing that. One interesting learning from this novel is introducing many characters, and the characters having conflicting goals — a good way to write comedy.
Same as Ever by Morgan Housel:
Read this with a lot of expectations given I liked Psychology of Money and it turned out good! Lot of context around the US, World War I & II, Great Depression, etc that I wasn’t much aware of but the author touched those topics as per the need for the respective chapters/stories. There are many quotes from the book but I recall this one — “Dream like an optimist and plan like a pessimist.” Simple and smooth read!
And I watched a few standups this month — Rahul Subramanian’s on Amazon Prime and Sapan Verma’s on YouTube — loved them both! Every month I stumble upon something on YouTube/OTT that I repeatedly watch them. It was Piku once, then Avvai Shanmugi, Shark Tank, and now food vlogs.
I saw this song on my YouTube suggestions and it took me down the memory lane where I used to just watch YouTube food vlogs all day.
I revisited a few videos of Kripal and had this weird thought pondering in my mind — “What’s the point of life if we don’t eat the food we love!” And this is one such video that made me feel grateful about life:
On that note, we are towards the end of the blog post. If I recall correctly, this is the month where I spoke a lot to myself about things happening in my life and it made me feel better!
Until next time…
