MS 10K race

1st race of the season – a 10K race MS 10K in Malad, a suburb of Mumbai. It was a completely flat route of two loops of 5K each.

The weather was terrible to say, no rains at all and humidity at a killer high. The distance was short by about 150 metres or so, but i continued until i completed the 10K.

The icing on the cake is the podium position – 3rd in the age category.

The timing is still work in progress.

The Trouble with Ally

Beautifully written British humour novel “The Trouble with Ally” by Sheila Norton.

Ally Bridgman is on the verge of turning fifty, her husband has left for somebody much younger, she has two teenage daughters, a sick cat, sick mother who miraculously finds a lover and goes to Majorca. She is in fear of losing her job and gets three week leave for stress.

That extends to another three weeks in which she finds herself battling one crisis after another. Her husband’s girlfriend falls sick which blame pins on Ally. Meanwhile her daughters Lucy & Victoria are in the throes of love in and out. Victoria goes from one boyfriend to another, while Lucy goes off with her boy friend ostensibly to get married and buy a house and all that.

Ally’s boss’s father Ian falls for her and that infuriates her to no end and her cat disappears for the second time. Amidst all this chaos Ally starts jogging on her doctor’s advice and finds her stress disappearing, her appetite back and her weight going down. But she still has to take care of her boss’s adventures, her husband sort of pining for her and her daughters doing things which daughters should not be a doing.

All in all, a madcap adventure novel very beautifully narrated by Sheila Norton. Goodreads 5/5

Ajji

Award winning Hindi revenge drama film “Ajji” (2017) written and directed by Devashish Makhija and starring Sushama Deshpande, Sharvani Suryavanshi, Sudhir Pande, Abhishek Banerjee among others.

The story is of a 9 year old Manda (Sharvani Suryavanshi) being raped by a builder politician Dhavale (Abhishek Banerjee). The police come on the scene but is unable to do anything about it. On the contrary the police threatens to evict all of them from their tiny house on the grounds of illegalities.

Thiers is a poor family with Manda’s mother cooking breakfast and delivering on a bicycle and her father working overtime in a mill factory. Her grandmother Ajji (Sushama Deshpande) a 65 year old with arthritic knees stitches clothes to make a living.

Ajji decides to take matters in her own hands and seeks help of the butcher (Sudhir Pande) to learn how to cut meat. She then goes on a reconnaissance to find out where Dhavale lives and what are his movements. Her neighbour Leela (Sadiya Siddiqui) is a prostitute so Ajji decides to take her help to become a prostitute for a night to do the damage to the politician.

The final act is a brilliant piece of blind siding the viewers. Sushama Deshpande as Ajji has acted superbly and overall all the characters have done a good role. Some of the scenes are bawdy but i guess that is show the debauched character of the villain. IMDB 6/10

The Guardian

A kind of a psycho thriller from Nicholas Sparks in “The Guardian”.

It starts of as a romantic novel but ends with a chase by the police of a psycho killer on the loose. Julie loses her husband to cancer at a very young age, but before he dies he arranges a gift of a Dane to Julie. Julie at first detests the dog but gets on to love him dearly.

Julie settles down to a life in Swansboro in a saloon and emerges to recreate her love life. Richard is one such suitor and so is Mike, the quiet garage mechanic, who happened to be close to Jim her late husband.

Richard is a strange character as he tries to dominate Julie. She goes by her gut instinct and starts dating Mike. Which is when the real drama begins with Richard’s real identity emerging. The police are onto the plot after in fact Richard complains to the cops when Mike beats him up.

Jennifer the police detective ploughs through to find more details of Richard and what emerges is a deadly story of crime, murder, escape, name change and lunacy. The narrative comes to life only midway through the story. Till then, it was a dull romantic plot. Goodreads 3/5

Gaban

Thought provoking Hindi film “Gaban” (1966), directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee and starring Sunil Dutt, Sadhana among others.

Its based on a story written by the noted Hindi litterateur Munshi Premchand and is set in the pre independence era British India of 1928.

Ramanath (Sunil Dutt) is a no gooder having no job and given to wantonly lying at the flick of his hand. His father gets him married to Jalpa (Sadhana) for which the father gets some jewelry on instalment basis. Unable to return the jewelry, Ramanath steals his wife’s jewelry and gets caught.

He finds a job in the municipal department and starts accepting bribes from people. The old debt with the jeweller still stands and to return that he steals from the government revenue. Caught he flees Allahabad to Calcutta and gets embroiled in a freedom struggle.

He is made as a government witness to implicate some freedom fighters in a bomb case. He initially agrees under the duress of his fraud scheme being kept open back in Allahabad. When he comes to know that he is clean in that fraud case, he backs out, but the cops threaten him with another case of theft of jewelry.

Sunil Dutt goes through the entire range of emotions in the movie and he alongwith Sadhana have done a good role. There are other character actors like Leela Mishra, Kanhaiyalal (who has done a positive role for a change), Anwar Hussain, Agha, all old timers who have all done good roles in their respective characters.

Very powerful story by Munshi Premchand and to buttress that, the dialogues by Akhtar-ul-Iman is also good. Hrishikesh Mukherjee has done a brilliant job with the script and has done ample justice to the story. IMDB 6/10

O.Baby

What a magnificient Malayalam drama movie “O.Baby” (2023) written and directed by Ranjan Pramod and starring Dileesh Pothan, Haniya Nafisa, Devadath V.S., Athulya Srini, Gopalakrishnan, Saji Soman, Vishnu Agasthya among others.

The story starts with a betrothal ceremony of Merin (Athulya Srini), the daughter of Jomon (Saji Soman) when she almost says no to the wedding. That is how the caretaker family of Baby (Dileesh Pothan) is introduced to us.

Baby is the caretaker of the Thiruvachola family spanning more than 4 generations. The family ties are under strain with the patriarch Pappy Valyappachan (Gopalakrishnan) a disabled but ego strong individual with stern countenance.

Merin and Mini (Haniya Nafisa) are his great grandchildren and Mini gets along well with Basil (Devadath V.S.) who belong to the new age internet generation braving and breaking the traditions. They want to start a trekking adventure to a hilly point and are almost ready with their internet marketing when the great grandfather objects.

There is a simmering tension in the family and they espy Mini and Basil having something going along. Mini feels it first — that sensation of love with another individual though Basil is blase about it. All hell breaks loose and the patriarch orders termination of their relationship and Baby to relocate to another place.

The story is built up so beautifully and powerfully with superb cinematography and camera work, which is almost realistic. The screenplay is brilliant and you could feel the magnificence of the story as tempers start flaying about.

Powerful acting by Dileesh Pothan and others but what stands out is the absolutely mesmerising performance by Haniya Nafisa as she displays a range of emotions from love to happiness to despair and redemption. That is one brilliant actor to watch out for. The subtle messaging is so superbly done without any preaching — allow women to have their choice and listen to what women wants. IMDB 8/10