1.
I travelled to Ernakulam for a day this week. For the first time, took the new Vande Bharat train - it was clean, comfortable and quite fast. Came back the same day, in a state transport bus. Online booking systems have become better. But the bus was delayed by more than an hour and the only way to track was to call the bus conductor to know where they were. Being Easter long weekend, there were a lot of students going home and it was crowded. Onward in the train took about 3.5 hrs and the return through bus took about 6 hrs. Met a couple of friends there, had ice stick candy at a place called Peni, lunch at a Punjabi dhaba opposite Cochin ShipYard and continued the discussions at a juice shop called Haji Ali.
2.
We were at Kollam for two days this week. Both days, I picked a random pin near the ocean in the map which was about 30 mins away from home and walked there. I am convinced that there is something going on, maybe in that community around, where people maintain the streets very well, all boundary walls painted and even a house made of tin sheets had a clean boundary made of cloth material. It is summer vacation, kids were playing football in uneven grassy fields, with wooden frames for goal posts and they had some spectators too. First location was coincidentally the same place that we had stopped during a random drive long back and second was a small beach. It was one of the best walks in recent times.
3.
Watched two movies - one with chakki, in a theatre after a long time. Manjummel Boys (Malayalam), which is based on a true story of someone falling into a cave that is known as Devil’s Kitchen (named by the British, later called Guna caves after a Kamal Haasan movie that was shot there) and the miraculous and heroic rescue. It was well made. We watched it in an old theatre at Kollam where the sound system wasn’t upgraded, hence the dialogues were coming across a bit muffled. These days I am too critical of most of what I read or watch, not sure if it is an effect of ageing - I felt the stories that are picked for the movies in Kerala are not raising the aspiration levels of our youth. I shouldn’t complain much since I don’t like the fact that Bollywood is disconnected from the realities of life of average Indians, but the malayalam movies are depicting youth who are not interested in education, who somehow scrape through a livelihood and glorify the drinking culture. It is probably the reality, which is depressing.
Watched Anatomy of a Fall (French). It was about a sudden death of a husband, in a family of three, ensuing trial of the wife as a murder suspect and the key witness is their son who is vision impaired. It was about the complexity of marriage, relationships, figuring out what is the truth, what is not and judging someone from slices of their life which never gives a full understanding. We do not know for sure what we truly believe, our memories are sometimes interpretations too and if we struggle to truly describe even ourselves in clear terms, how does someone else decide based on incidental interactions? It had one very long scene of the couple (she does not believe in couples) having an argument that goes into nuances of their relationship and how each is perceiving the other - it must have been one of the best written and acted scenes that I had ever seen in a movie.
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