Our Funarena!

Thanks perhaps to the conditional benevolence of the OTT streaming platforms some filmmakers, ostensibly under the pretense of being serious creators, get the rare opportunity to indulge in their experiments or otherwise while always managing to rope in talented actors to create a pre-release hype about their ‘darkly serious dram/thriller’ movies. They always prefer to choose female-centric themes or stories with female protagonists/antagonists, and most of them deliver their favorite ‘emancipation of women’ templates by making the ‘swear-word liberalism’ gender-neutral. They get the much-needed support too from similar or like-minded souls of the mainstream media who praise the movies to the heavens. Fortunately, the Amazon original movie ‘Jalsa’ that released on Prime Video on 18 th March, 2022, is totally free of that ‘liberalism’ while still sticking to the female-centric theme with three major roles of women protagonists/antagonists in the movie given to the immensely talented ac

Media-persons, including this writer, have the habit of prioritizing news stories/reports on the basis of how many people have died or are adversely affected, which is actually necessary to structure a news bulletin, always a tough job doing justice to the stories, selecting them and giving the prominence a story deserves. When a reporter comes in to the newsroom stating that an accident or any kind of such tragic happenings has occurred in which 2-4 people have died the news editor would just grimace it away and most often would ask it to be included in the scroll. If the fatalities are around 10 it normally gets into the bulletin as an important story, and when the toll is more than 15/20 then it becomes a headline news story. Well, this is unfortunate indeed; but in a hyperactive newsroom it becomes unavoidable. However, such stories are never taken as a good news story.   Deaths are always unfortunate whatever be the number, because for the person who succumbs in an accident or

The latest Hindi movie to premier on Amazon Prime Video, on 29 th October 2021 to be exact, is titled Dybbuk directed by Jay K who also directed the original Malayalam movie Ezra (2017) and started shooting this Hindi remake in 2019 and due to the pandemic could not plan a theatrical release, selling the rights to Amazon and premiered as an Amazon Original Movie. It is a horror movie with some elements of suspense and an interesting plot. Perhaps for photographic reasons the shooting was done in Mauritius apart from a little scene in Mumbai. The leads are Emraan Hashmi and Nikita Dutta. The film has all the elements of a horror flick like an overly loud background score, jump-cut scares, moving figures behind your back, an ugly face in the mirror or in the almirah and quite a few scary scenes that turn to be humorous inadvertently. However, the movie a bit better fare than the traditional Ramsay Brothers type or the Vikram Bhatt kind of horror thanks to its interesting plot involvi

Hapus and alphonso mangoes are grown mostly in the Rantagiri district of Maharashtra, a state of India. They are called the kings of mangoes. The taste is pure, deliciously sweet and fibrous yet very soft. The look is green-brownish-pinkish. The shape is a delight to the beholder and the size fits the palm. The mango season begins in around April in this western state of India when the price remains very high—about $10-$15 a dozen. In June-July it falls to tolerable levels. Mango festivals are organized in Mumbai around this season where growers from different regions of the state open their stalls of the priciest mangoes and sell at wholesale rates. Folks throng such festivals and try for a good bargain. Here pricing rates per dozen are not so much adhered to. The customers look for a peti, that is, a straw padded wooden case of rows of mangoes sealed tightly that can be bought at bulk rates. The newsroom of a local TV channel got the news that hapus mangoes are being e