Touristic & General Information on Russia

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Many of the tourists who take the tour with us love the Indian songs. They have many Bollywood favourites which they have heard while growing up in their own countries. In UK, Israel, Russia, Middle-East, Africa.. Talking about Music will eventually lead us to the favourites of our visitors. They do mention names and hums tunes which unfortunately do not ring any bell for us in the begining. Here is the story of one such often mentioned song, "Killing Me Softly with his song.."

Lori Lieberman, a young lady in her early twenties, went to the Truberdor Bar to listen to this particularly talented young man who played there and was becoming popular with his style. While she was there the young man, who was Don McLean,  played his melancholy and heart pulling number "Empty Chairs.." which took young Lori's heart for a ride. She felt his words were straight out of her life, he was reading her letters loud, she felt feverish and embarassed and wished he would finish but kept right on...

The next day Lori discussed her experience with her associates  Charles Fox and Norman Gimbley with whom she was discussing the making of a record. Norman took the clues from her talk and wrote the song giving the title "Killing me softly with his song" which was inspired by some Blues singers whom he met earlier who sang songs like "Killing me softly with his Blues". They recorded the song which Lori Lieberman sang in the year 1972.

Roberta Flack, an already established Afro-American singer, was on a flight when she heard this song on the airplane's song collection. She was so struck by the song, she asked the stewardess to replay that song for her repeatedly while her musical mind took down the lyrics and made mental correction and adjustments to the Lori's song.

Immediately after she got off the plane, she called Quincy Jones to contact the writers of the song and request the permission/right to sing the song. She started practicing the song with her band at Jamaica, the way she wanted it to be played but did not record it. While performing on stage for an organiser, after her set encore, they asked her play something new if she had. She said, yes, there is a song we are practicing and gave it a try.
The audience went berserk after listening to the song and their reaction prompted the organizer to comment, " Baby don't you play this song ever again, before recording it".

Within a month the song was recorded and released and rose to the status of the most popular song of the year and one of the few all time hits.

Thus, Lori Lieberman's emotions while listening to a Don McLean performance became the most popular hum of a generation through another singer's voice while Lori's own song was sideline. One can imagine what it would have done to a sweet young lady like Lori, emotionally. She kept on with her writing and composed and song many other songs and albums though she left the space for a long time after the "Killing me softly with his song.." experience. 

An year without Maradona

 Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984 and her nationally televised cremation ceremony was an event which was watched by our whole nation, it was more or less an introduction of the visual media and TV to our nation.  Many of us did not have TV then, we walked miles and went to those houses where they had. Everybody co-operated.

I was in my school final in 1986 when the world cup came. By then we had a black and white Keltron TV that came in a case with shutter. It was on that TV our generation watched and experienced the first global event – The FIFA world cup of 1986.

That was undoubtedly Maradona’s world cup. With his game, talent and spirit he won us over and made us a fan of him and his country, Argentina, a country we had not heard about. Maradona became our hero. Excessive fouling and harsh man marking did not let him be as successful in 1990 world cup as he was in 1986 and in the one that followed in 1994 he was disgraced and banned for use of unacceptable drugs.

For the way he made us feel and experience the peaks of joy and excitement in 1986 he stayed in our heart as our hero and we went through all the bad news about him with a sad heart and kept only the memories of the game he once played.

It's going to be an year since he is gone, but the memories will not go away from our hearts till we die.

Thank you Diego, for your life and making that fleeting part of our lives in 1986 when the way you played football ruled our hearts and made it the best times of our lives.

IPL 2026 Final

The 19th edition of the IPL belonged to Royal Challengers Bengaluru.

RCB successfully defended the title they had won last year—their long-awaited first after years of being one of the finest yet unluckiest teams in the competition. This victory was not merely another trophy. It was the confirmation of a champion side that has finally learned how to convert promise into silverware.

At the vast Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, with nearly one lakh ten thousand spectators filling the stands and millions more watching across television and digital platforms, the stage was set for a memorable final.

RCB won the toss and chose to field first.

Gujarat Titans, so composed and commanding against Rajasthan Royals in the first eliminator, could not find the same rhythm on the grandest evening. The pitch offered a sharp, tennis-ball-like bounce and GT never quite settled. Their innings struggled for momentum as pressure steadily mounted, and they finished with 155 runs from their 20 overs.

The chase began with authority.

Venkatesh Iyer and Virat Kohli gave RCB the kind of powerplay start finals demand. Venki played with intent and confidence before falling in the fifties, leaving the game delicately balanced.

For a brief while, RCB seemed uncertain.

And then experience spoke.

Virat Kohli (75 from 42) did not chase headlines; he guided the innings. With maturity, composure and the calm of a man who has seen every shade of cricketing pressure, he steadied the ship and carried his side through when nerves threatened to take over.

Some titles are won through brilliance.

Others are defended through character.

RCB's second consecutive crown felt like both.

New Academic Year

After the joyful summer holidays, we return to schools and colleges with new hopes and fresh dreams.

Best wishes to all teachers and students.

May you have the grace to use your opportunities and time wisely, and may this academic year be filled with learning, growth, and success.

POST MATCH – RAJASTHAN ROYALS

What we witnessed tonight was heartbreak, but not humiliation.

To lose yet another playoff battle is painful for every Rajasthan Royals supporter. But let this also be said clearly, this young side did not collapse, did not surrender, and did not fall like a junior team. They fought.

Two hundred and fourteen runs in a playoff match is no small statement. Gujarat Titans chased with authority and deserved the victory, but Rajasthan walked away having battled with courage and intent.

The truth is, this match carried the same question we asked before it began. Could the young shoulders carry the pressure?

And they did.

Our hearts go out to Vaibhav Suryavanshi, Jofra Archer, Donovan Ferreira, Jaddu, and the rest of the squad who fought as one till the very end. Let us forget the dropped catches and remember instead the fight.

As for the stars and senior shoulders who could not step up when it mattered most — that is a conversation each man must have within his own heart.

This team is still young. Still learning. Still searching for its finest chapter. And for RR supporters, hope remains stitched into memory.

We remember Shane Warne, the man who taught Rajasthan to dream beyond reputation and play with fearless belief. That great Warne spirit continues through Kumar Sangakkara, Rahul Dravid, the coaching staff, management, and every member working behind the scenes to keep that vision alive.

Tonight belongs to Gujarat Titans. But Rajasthan leave with something that cannot be measured on a scoreboard, spirit.

Until next season, we say this not in anger, but with affection and faith: Best wishes, Rajasthan Royals. Rest. Rebuild. And return stronger.

We will continue the effort. Please come back.

IPL ELIMINATOR – BIG MATCH, BIG TEST

What we are witnessing is anything but ordinary.

I first thought young Vaibhav Suryavanshi might be just a few-match wonder. Without Sanju Samson, I honestly gave Rajasthan Royals very little chance.

But this boy changed the script.

Along with Jofra Archer and Dhruv Jurel, he has lifted Rajasthan to a completely different level. Rarely have we seen RR play with such freedom and confidence — perhaps not even during the Jos Buttler era.

Vaibhav has carried this side to the final stage of the competition with remarkable calmness and belief. No shake. No fear. Just intent.

Without him, Rajasthan may not have seen another daylight in this IPL.

But now comes the real examination.

Tonight, they face Gujarat Titans — a side on a champion's run despite a slow start and that earlier setback in the eliminator phase. Gujarat have depth, discipline, and the experience of big matches.

And yet, this young man remains the difference.

If Vaibhav survives and dominates through the powerplay, Rajasthan Royals could well run away with this contest. If not, the rest of the side must rise together — bowling, fielding, and fighting as one unit.

Otherwise, Gujarat Titans will be all over them.

The stage is set. The eliminator waits. And somewhere in the middle of all this pressure stands a fearless young boy carrying the hopes of Rajasthan.

Museum of Innocence

 

Do Not Die with the Dead

Reading Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence

Some books become mirrors—unsettling companions that continue their conversation with us long after the author has fallen silent. To me, The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk belongs to this category.

Pamuk, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, is often praised for exploring the meeting and collision of civilizations, memory, and identity. Yet among his many works, The Museum of Innocence, written after he received the Nobel Prize, occupies a peculiar and deeply emotional place. Celebrated by many readers as his most intimate novel, it is at once a love story, a museum catalogue, a psychological study, and a meditation on longing. It is also frequently spoken of as a great romance.

After reading five hundred odd pages, however, we are faced with a few difficult questions.

Is it truly a romance?

Or is it something more troubling—a study of love turned into obsession, fuelled by memory and kept alive through objects from the past?

The story begins in the Istanbul of the 1970s.

Kemal Basmacı is a man born into privilege and wealth. He does not earn his fortune but inherits it. American-educated and socially established, he is preparing to marry Sibel, a sophisticated young woman from his own social circle in old Istanbul, where modernity and European manners have become fashionable aspirations.

Around the time of his engagement, Kemal's father offers him a confession disguised as advice.

"Tell the woman you truly love that you love her," he says, "for tomorrow may be too late."

The advice carries the sorrow of personal regret. His father is not speaking of Kemal's mother but of another woman—a mistress he once loved and lost.

Kemal cherishes these words.

As destiny would have it, while shopping for an engagement gift for Sibel, Kemal encounters Füsun, a distant relative and shop girl of striking beauty. Their attraction is immediate. What begins as flirtation soon becomes a secret affair.

Pamuk spares no detail in narrating this relationship.

In the secluded Merhamet Apartment, hidden from respectable society, Kemal and Füsun meet repeatedly during her lunch breaks, making love forty-four times—even on the day of his engagement. The novel records these encounters not coyly but insistently, as though the physicality itself were being preserved as evidence.

Kemal imagines he can have both worlds.

Marriage with Sibel.

Passion with Füsun.

In the innocence—or perhaps emotional blindness—of privileged youth, he convinces himself that these two lives can coexist. Like many fortunate men, he mistakes emotional control for moral freedom.

Then, suddenly, the arrangement collapses.

Füsun disappears.

Though she says she will return, she never comes back to the Merhamet Apartment for their secret rendezvous.

And in her absence, Kemal makes the discovery upon which the entire novel turns:

What he had believed to be an affair has become love.

Or what he calls love.

Here Pamuk begins his most dangerous literary game with the reader.

The reader, like Kemal, enters grief before fully understanding its object.

Sibel, meanwhile, emerges as one of the novel's most unexpectedly dignified presences. Through Kemal's narration we come to understand her intelligence, restraint, and emotional maturity. She understands him after he confesses his state of mind and his inability to respond physically to her despite their engagement and intimacy. She recognises his suffering and sincerely attempts to help him.

But love cannot survive beside obsession.

Recognising that Kemal's heart has moved elsewhere, she breaks the engagement after publicly remaining with him for two months despite scandal and gossip.

It is an act of quiet courage within the social world of Istanbul at that time.

Ironically, many readers finish the novel feeling they understand Sibel more clearly than Füsun herself.

Years pass before Kemal succeeds in tracing Füsun again.

By then she is married to Feridun, an aspiring filmmaker connected to Istanbul's cinema world—who, in Füsun's mother's words, possesses neither prospects nor a secure future.

Kemal's re-entry into her life is morally uncomfortable.

Füsun's parents know precisely what has happened. They know Kemal loved their daughter in secret while preparing to marry another woman. They know the humiliation and sorrow that followed, how deeply heartbroken Füsun became, and how they felt compelled to encourage marriage as a remedy for grief and damaged honour.

Yet they allow him to visit.

And so begins one of the strangest courtships in modern literature.

For eight years Kemal visits the Keskin household.

Eight years of dinners.

Television programmes.

Conversations.

Silences.

Waiting.

To sustain these visits, he begins financing film projects for Feridun, who dreams of producing an art film with Füsun as its heroine—her greatest ambition.

Kemal serves the family, accommodates their wishes, and slowly rebuilds trust.

But beneath these domestic scenes lies another habit, stranger still.

Kemal collects.

From the house of his longing he carries back to the Merhamet Apartment objects that allow him to touch memory itself—things he can hold close, things that return him to the intimacy he once shared with Füsun, who is now Feridun's wife.

A salt shaker Füsun once held.

A hairclip that gathered her beautiful hair.

A cigarette stub that rested between her lips.

A spoon.

A dress.

Objects touched by Füsun become sacred relics.

The ordinary is transformed into emotional archaeology.

 

This is perhaps Pamuk's greatest artistic achievement.

Love is narrated not merely through emotion but through things.

A cup remembers.

A room remembers.

A city remembers.

And Istanbul itself—with its melancholy streets and fading grandeur, through which Kemal, Füsun, and Feridun move together—becomes a museum of longing.

What complicates Kemal's character is that during these eight years he never crosses the line of decency within the Keskin household. He does not force himself into Füsun's life nor openly challenge her marriage. All his desires and longings remain locked within his own heart.

And strangely, he learns to live within that ache.

The opportunity simply to see Füsun each day, to sit in her presence, becomes to him both pain and blessing.

It helps him remain calm.

Yet admiration for Pamuk's craft does not remove an important question.

After hundreds of pages—

who is Füsun?

This question shadows the entire novel.

Pamuk tells us how she dresses, smokes, laughs, dreams of cinema, quarrels, and moves through domestic life. We learn about her ambitions and social circumstances.

And still she remains elusive.

We know Füsun through Kemal.

We know too that when it comes to Füsun, Kemal is thinking more with his heart than with his head.

But do we know Füsun herself?

This uncertainty recalls older literary traditions. One thinks of the narrated tragedy of La Dame aux Camélias, where emotion is mediated through another voice. Pamuk similarly frames his narrative, even bringing himself into the story to tell the life of Kemal, who asks him to go and tell the whole world how happy he was living with the memory of his love for Füsun.

Yet unlike many nineteenth-century heroines, Füsun resists complete revelation.

Perhaps deliberately so.

Indeed, Sibel—abandoned and wounded—often appears psychologically clearer than the beloved woman around whom the entire narrative revolves.

This may be Pamuk's brilliance.

Or his gamble.

For after five hundred pages the reader may legitimately ask:

Have we encountered Füsun—

or merely Kemal's version of her?

To ask this question is not to dismiss the novel.

On the contrary, it is to take it seriously.

The uncertainty surrounding Füsun becomes central to understanding Kemal himself.

He understands Sibel.

He loves Füsun—blindly.

These are not the same acts.

Love, in its healthiest form, moves toward knowledge of another person.

Kemal's devotion, however, moves toward preservation—preservation of memory, of longing, and of the love Füsun once had for him.

And preservation, however tender, is different from understanding.

The final movement of the novel carries this tension toward tragedy.

After Tarık Bey's death, Aunt Nesibe insists that the situation can no longer continue indefinitely. Feridun drifts away into his own ambitions and agrees to divorce Füsun.

Marriage between Kemal and Füsun suddenly appears possible.

Füsun then reveals that her marriage to Feridun had remained unconsummated for eight years and imposes her conditions.

Kemal must present her openly to his world.

His mother must formally ask for her hand.

The wedding must take place at the Hilton Hotel—greater and grander than the engagement he once held there with Sibel.

And before marriage, they must travel by car to Paris and visit all the museums they had dreamed of seeing.

Kemal agrees to everything.

Obsession, after all, rarely negotiates—despite his mother's wise advice to marry first and travel later.

And so the journey begins.

In the family Chevrolet travel Füsun, Aunt Nesibe, Kemal, and the loyal driver Çetin Efendi.

At the Hotel Semiramis, on their first evening beyond Istanbul, they celebrate an informal engagement, with Çetin Efendi officiating and Aunt Nesibe witnessing.

That night, after nearly nine years of waiting, Kemal and Füsun consummate their love.

One imagines resolution.

Instead, Pamuk offers rupture.

The next morning Füsun awakens angry, drinking heavily and confronting Kemal with truths buried beneath years of silence.

She had wanted life.

Cinema.

Recognition.

Not merely remembrance.

Her anger shocks precisely because the reader suddenly realises how little of her inner world has truly been known.

She refuses Europe and walks toward Istanbul.

Kemal follows in the car, pleading with her to return.

At last she agrees—but only on the condition that she drive.

What follows remains among the novel's most haunting and ambiguous moments.

Driving recklessly, perhaps intoxicated, perhaps furious, perhaps acting out some desperate vision of punishment or escape, Füsun drives at frightening speed and crashes the Chevrolet into a tree.

She dies instantly.

Kemal survives.

And the novel enters mourning.

He recovers physically but never entirely returns to life.

Instead he studies museums around the world, learns museology, purchases the Keskin house, and transforms it into a shrine dedicated to Füsun and their lost years. Into this house go the objects he had collected from the Keskin household and from everywhere Füsun had once been.

He gathers not merely possessions but fragments of a vanished world.

Objects of love.

Objects of time.

Objects of Istanbul.

He invites Pamuk himself—whose family had long been acquainted with his own—to narrate the story for the museum.

Thus emerges The Museum of Innocence.

And here the reader confronts the novel's deepest unease.

The museum is beautiful.

But it is also a tomb.

Kemal is not a villain.

Neither, perhaps, is Füsun.

This is important.

Part of Pamuk's achievement lies in making us care for both of them.

One may question Füsun's silence regarding her marriage, or the complicated moral economy that developed around Kemal's devotion and Feridun's ambitions. Yet simple moral verdicts refuse to settle comfortably upon these characters.

Kemal, meanwhile, is cultured, vulnerable, faithful in his own wounded fashion, and capable of tenderness and sincerity.

We accompany him for so long that affection becomes almost unavoidable.

And then comes the unsettling recognition:

Liking a man is not the same as approving his choices.

This recognition may be the novel's true punch.

For many pages we stand beside Kemal.

Only gradually do we step back.

And when we finally see him decades later—meeting Sibel and her daughters thirty-one years after their last dinner together, tired, solitary, carrying his Museum of Innocence through life like a private religion—we confront a difficult question:

Is this the man Pamuk wishes us to admire?

Perhaps not.

Perhaps Pamuk offers something more challenging.

Not a model.

A warning.

Great stories often survive because they contain hope. We weep at Dickens. We grieve at the death of Anna Karenina. Yet tragedy alone does not preserve literature. Somewhere within enduring works there remains a moral, spiritual, or emotional window.

Pamuk's hope may lie precisely here.

Not in Kemal's fate—

but in the reader's awakening.

For while we may sympathise with Kemal, we are not required to become him or to love as he loved.

Indeed, the novel quietly teaches another lesson:

Do not die with the dead.

Kemal survives Füsun physically but becomes imprisoned within memory. He curates grief rather than living beyond it. His museum preserves love, but it also postpones life.

And perhaps that is why the novel lingers so powerfully long after the final page.

Not because it tells us to love as Kemal loved—

but because it asks what becomes of us when memory grows more seductive than the present.

By the novel's conclusion, one may discover an unexpected emotion.

The tears shed for the unhappy and unfortunate Kemal—though he asks Pamuk to tell us how happy his days were—are not solely for him.

They are also for ourselves.

For our unfinished griefs.

Our lost opportunities.

The rooms of memory we still revisit.

And perhaps also for the woman who may never have fully understood—or accepted—the depth of Kemal's love.

And perhaps that is the final brilliance of The Museum of Innocence.

It begins as Kemal's story.

It ends as our own.

 

Ginger Lime Soda

A 100-rupee burger from Burger King tonight.

Almost twice the price of the local version.

But the real competition here is not burgers.

It is the evening snacks from the roadside shops:

banana fry,

vada,

chilli vada —

simple dough or lentils dropped into hot oil and served fresh with rain in the background.

Kerala evenings do not need much ceremony.

Just rain, tea shops, and something fried.

But the champion of the summer was Soda Lime with ginger and the best we had this season was from 'RAVAN' on the Cherlai Road , Mattancherry.

12 May 2026

The rain finally arrived.

It dropped the temperature by almost seven degrees… and took the power supply along with it.

Three hours into the blackout and counting. (The power did not return till noon, next day).

Sometimes an unexpected power cut slows life down just enough to notice the evening again.

Fireworks Tragedy

For generations, ever since fireworks first reached our shores through ancient trade routes, they have become part of the celebratory language of our land. In Kerala especially, the sound of crackers and the brilliance of light have long accompanied festivals—whether in temples, churches, community feasts, or public celebrations. The scale may differ according to the size and resources of each institution, but the spirit of festivity remains the same.

Among all such celebrations, Thrissur Pooram stands as one of the world’s most renowned spectacles of ceremonial pyrotechnics, admired for its grandeur, precision, and emotional power. It is not merely fireworks, but tradition, craftsmanship, anticipation, and collective memory.

Yet behind every display are workers who manufacture, transport, store, and prepare these materials under demanding and often hazardous conditions. In our hot summer months—when many festivals are held—high temperatures, friction, storage lapses, and handling risks can turn danger into disaster within moments.

Yesterday, tragedy struck again in Thrissur as preparations were underway for the Pooram celebrations. Fourteen workers lost their lives, and many others remain in serious condition in hospitals. Families who expected their loved ones to return home now face unbearable grief.

Pyrotechnics are practiced across the world, and many countries have developed strict safety systems in manufacturing, storage, training, and emergency response. We too must continue moving toward the highest standards of safety, so that tradition can be preserved without costing human lives.

Today, our thoughts and prayers are with the departed, the injured, and their families. May those who died rest in peace. May the wounded recover swiftly. And may this sorrow awaken renewed commitment to protecting every worker whose unseen labour creates moments of public joy.

Dharma, Karma and the cross

The Dharma, Karma and The Cross

Between birth and death stretches the quiet field of a human life.

What came before our birth remains hidden from us.

What lies beyond death is equally veiled.

But between these two mysteries we are given a journey.

Many traditions have tried to understand this journey.

Some speak of dharma, the duty and order into which we are born.

Some speak of karma, the consequences of what we do within that order.

Together they form the path each person must walk.

In another tradition, Jesus Christ spoke of the Cross.

“Pick up your cross and follow me.”

Perhaps these ideas are not so different.

The cross may simply be the life already placed upon our shoulders.

We did not choose our parents.

We did not choose the family or circumstances into which we were born.

We inherit an emotional world, a culture, a language, expectations and responsibilities.

From there the road continues:

education, work, relationships, marriage, children, duties, disappointments, hopes.

This is the shape of our cross.

Yet human beings often try to exchange the cross given to them for another of their own making.

We choose careers that are not truly ours.

We form relationships for reasons that do not belong to our deepest self.

We run away from responsibilities that seem too heavy.

For a time it feels like freedom.

But often it is only a detour.

Life has a patient wisdom.

Sooner or later it brings us back to the unfinished task we tried to escape.

And then we begin to understand something simple but profound.

The real question is not which cross we carry, but how we carry it.

Every tradition teaches this in its own language.

The path may be called dharma.

The consequences may be called karma.

Or the burden may be called the cross.

But the truth beneath them is the same.

We must live the life that has been entrusted to us.

For my own heart, the path I have chosen is the way of the Cross of Jesus Christ.

Yet the deeper lesson remains universal.

We did not choose our cross.

But we can choose the spirit with which we carry it.

In that spirit lies dignity.

In that spirit lies faithfulness.

And in that spirit lies the quiet possibility that even the heaviest burdens of life may become a path toward meaning and peace.

Easter

An Easter Message

From a Bench Warmer To a National Hero

Stay close to your core.

Let your core feed you or bleed you.

But never abandon it.

This is the inspiring story of a young man from Kerala who once sat quietly on the reserve bench of the team, watching others lift the ICC Men's T20 World Cup trophy in 2024 in the West Indies. Two years later, he would stand on the podium as the “Player of the Tournament”.

His name is Sanju Samson.

In 2024 he was good enough to make the India national cricket team, but not good enough to play a single match. The tournament came and went, and Sanju remained what critics often called him — a “bench warmer.”

Later, he was part of India’s tour of Australia. Once again, he travelled with the team, trained with the team, but watched the matches from the sidelines. Opportunity knocked rarely.

When he finally got chances in a few games, the results were disappointing. His batting failed him badly. The team management tried him in different batting positions, searching for the right fit. His wicket-keeping remained dependable, but in a country like India, where talent flows like a river, dependability alone is often not enough.

Soon new young players arrived with explosive performances. Sanju was dropped.

For any sportsperson, this is the most dangerous moment , when the world begins to doubt you and slowly you begin to doubt yourself.

Emotionally drained and questioning his own ability, the dream of becoming a World Cup hero began to feel almost unrealistic. Even his most loyal supporters were preparing themselves for the possibility that their hero’s time had passed.

But there was one thing Sanju refused to abandon, his “core”.

Even when he was out of the team, he practiced like a man who believed his opportunity could come in the next match.

When the 2026 ICC T20 World Cup began in India, the team’s famous young opening pair initially struggled under pressure. Yet India kept winning, someone or the other stepped up in every match.

Then came the shock.

South Africa defeated India convincingly in a group match. The defeat stunned the stadium into silence. When you play India in India, you are not facing just eleven players,  you are facing an entire nation in the stands. Criticism drowned the Captain and the Coach.

The team management analysed the problem quickly. Their two left-handed openers were struggling against certain right-arm bowling angles. The solution was simple but bold, introduce a right-handed batter at the top and add to the fire power in the Power-play.

That meant bringing Sanju Samson back.

Some critics mocked the decision. Some even said India was effectively playing with ten players. The coach and the captain remained steadfast in their decision.

Those inside the team knew something important: Sanju had been practicing every day as if his chance would come tomorrow.

His first two matches at the group level were ordinary. Critics snarled as India’s chance of getting into the knock out stage following the defeat became thin, but the management kept him on even after they reached the knock out stage.

The Virtual Quarter Finals, the first match in the Knock-Out changed everything.

At Eden Gardens in Kolkata, chasing 197 against the West Indies wickets kept falling around him. Amid the chaos stood Sanju Samson , calm, composed, and unshakeable.

He scored ‘97 not out’, guiding India to victory and into the semi-finals. The country suddenly sat up and noticed. The hero they were looking for in the World Cup has arrived. Overnight, the former bench warmer became a national hero.

In the semi-final at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, India was put to bat first. Sanju delivered again,  a magnificent ‘89 runs’, helping India post 253. England chased valiantly, the match was won by seven runs. The nation erupted.  Senior cricketers and commentators gave him his due. Millions began following him on social media. His journey from obscurity to stardom captured the imagination of the country.

Then came the final. At the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, India lost the toss and were asked to bat on a tricky new pitch. Once again Sanju rose to the occasion. He scored another brilliant 89, leading India to a massive total of 255. The top three batters all scored rapid fifties, a trio, cricket experts later called “The Famous Three.” New Zealand never recovered. India won the final by 96 runs. The disgrace of being a joke to even the most Junior cricketers of the team turned to respect.

Sanju Samson finished the tournament with 321 runs at a strike rate of 199.37 from five innings and was named “Player of the Tournament”. He hit 24 sixes in these many innings.  

Behind this story lies another powerful story.

The story of a father, a Delhi policeman from a small fishing village in Kerala, and a mother who believed in the power of sports and their children’s dreams. They took their young boys to cricket training from the age of five.

Eventually the father made a life-changing decision: he left his job and moved the family back to their village in Thiruvananthapuram so that his children could pursue cricket seriously even though it meant he had to work harder and longer to give them the training and the playing gears. The youngest boy in that family was Sanju Viswanath Samson. The boy who spent more time sitting on the national team benches than playing matches. The boy who sometimes failed so badly that even he doubted his own talent. Yet he kept working.

He stayed true to his “core”. Today his story has entered the folklore of Indian cricket, a story that will be told and retold for generations. Not because he scored runs. But because he never abandoned the talent he believed God had given him. So remember this:

Stay true to your core.

Work on your gifts.

Trust the abilities placed inside you.

Even when you feel like nothing more than a bench warmer, if you stay close to your core, one day your core will deliver you. It could be tomorrow, or the day after.

But it will.

The ongoing ICC T20 Super Eight stage brought India face to face with a harsh reality at Eden Gardens in Kolkata.

In their first Super Eight encounter, the India ran into a relentless South Africa and were handed a crushing 76-run defeat. It was not merely a loss, but a dismantling.

Chasing the not so formidable yet a fighting South African total of 187 at Kolkata, India’s celebrated young batting order dissolved under pressure. Wickets fell, confidence drained, and the chase never truly began. Amid the ruins stood one defiant figure — Shivam Dube — whose fighting 42 was less a rescue and more a statement of resistance.

South Africa were clinical in every department. Their fast bowlers struck with authority, their spinners tightened the grip, and India’s famed batting line-up went up in smoke.

India now lie wounded.

But tournaments are not won without scars.

The question that lingers in the humid Kolkata air is this: can this young Indian side rise from the ground? Will they absorb the blow, steady themselves, and fight back? Or will the weight of expectation grow heavier, tightening its grip as the Super Eight journey continues?

The next match will not just test their skill.

It will test their character.

"Hamnet" : A review

 “Hamnet” . A review.

It is remarkable to observe how a young man behaves before a maid and how a young woman opens her heart to the man she loves. From the very first meeting, William and Agnes lose themselves in each other, bound by curiosity, desire, and a quiet understanding that grows into a profound love.

 Director and screenwriter  Chloé Zhao, adapting Maggie O’Farrell’s novel ‘Hamnet’, elevates this romance to lyrical heights. The film does not merely tell a love story; it immerses us in the emotional world of two young people discovering intimacy, partnership, and destiny in a harsh and uncertain time.

 When tragedy strikes the married couple through the death of their third child, Hamnet, the tone of the film shifts into aching sorrow. Agnes is raw and unrestrained in her grief. She does not hide her pain and openly accuses William of not being present when their son died. Her sorrow is loud, physical, and deeply human. William, on the other hand, absorbs this grief in silence. He accepts her accusations without protest, carrying his own suffering inwardly.

 Yet William’s grief is neither small nor brief. It burns within him for years, eventually finding expression in words. The film beautifully shows how the great writer, William Shakespeare, transforms his personal anguish into art. Through this transformation, we witness how pain becomes poetry and how private loss becomes universal emotion. The audience is given a rare opportunity to see how Shakespeare’s heartache shaped the words that would later break and heal countless hearts across generations.

 Agnes’s closeness to nature, her pagan beliefs, and her instinctive understanding of life and death are captured with great sensitivity. These elements blend seamlessly with Chloé Zhao’s direction and Lukasz Zal’s luminous cinematography, which paints the countryside as both nurturing and cruel. Nature speaks through Max Richter’s music and becomes a witness to love, loss, and survival.

 However, the film does drag at certain moments. Its slow pacing may test the patience of some viewers through the two hours screen time, and without the fine ending and the realistic depiction of the period, the emotional impact might have been weaker. Still, the authenticity of the setting and the sincerity of the performances save it from becoming indulgent.

 “Keep your heart open” is the central message the film offers to the world — a reminder that love and grief coexist, and that closing oneself to pain also closes one’s capacity for love. This message is made powerful by the moving performances of  Jessie Buckley  and Paul Mescal, who lead the cast with natural, restrained, and deeply affecting portrayals.

 In the end, ‘Hamnet’ is not just a story about Shakespeare’s son; it is a meditation on love, loss, and the alchemy of suffering into art. It lingers in the mind long after the light fades on the screen.

 

The final of WPL 2026

In the first phase of WPL 2026, Jemimah looked like she was falling apart. Timing was off, confidence shaken.

Then someone said something. And something shifted.

Suddenly there was power—real power—backed by proper cricketing shots. She stayed close to her core, played straight, and more importantly, decided she would not give up. My guess? Meg Lanning. Because Meg doesn’t do drama—she plays her game, and she makes others believe in theirs.

Whatever DC did before the final, it worked.

Now RCB have 203 to chase.

To win this, they’ll have to play the best game they’ve played all season.

Yes, finals carry pressure. And yes, under pressure, teams can fold—sometimes cheaply.

But this RCB is different.

Remember their first match? They fought till the last over and won. Since then, they haven’t just played matches—they’ve played to win. Every game. No shortcuts.

The only question now:

Has the gameless week after finishing top of the table slowed their resolve?

Or has it sharpened their hunger?

The chase will tell.

The Parisian Coffee Culture

Changes in coffee cafes of Paris

One Battle After Another

One Battle After Another

A film that feels like a cinematic reflection of what we read and watch in the media today, One Battle After Another unfolds as a crime–drama–thriller rooted in the uneasy realities of contemporary America. The story moves between the believable and the unbelievable—yet everything feels disturbingly close to what is already happening on the ground.

Spanish-speaking revolutionaries assist illegal migration and engage in terror activities aimed at destabilizing the nation, while officers—some driven by white-supremacist ideologies—counter them in the name of protecting the country. These larger conflicts are told through deeply personal lives: an ex-revolutionary (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his mixed-heritage daughter (Chase Infinity, in a striking debut), bound together by survival, memory, and flight.

An officer obsessed with “cleansing” the country (Sean Penn) resurfaces from the past, haunting the father and daughter and forcing them into a desperate escape. Surprisingly, help comes from an old revolutionary network long believed to be dormant. Their journey takes us through an illegal immigrant camp run by a legal immigrant (Benicio Del Toro), while the officer seeks to destroy the only evidence of his own moral collapse—his illicit desire for those he is duty-bound to kill.

The narrative is gripping and layered with suspense, brought vividly to the screen by Licorice Pizza writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson. Cinematographer Michael Bauman shoots the film in VistaVision, recreating the rough, muscular nostalgia of 1970s cinema—raw, uneasy, and forceful.

An adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, the film shows Anderson at his best, inspiring both cast and crew to deliver performances that resonate in every frame. DiCaprio deliberately restrains his performance, perfectly fitting the weary ex-revolutionary, while Sean Penn explodes with unsettling energy as an officer who commits terrible acts in the name of order.

Believable and unbelievable at once, the film ultimately offers international audiences a visceral sense of life along the borderlands of present-day America—messy, dangerous, and morally fractured.

PS:

Not an expert review, but a personal reflection of an ordinary person who likes to stay informed and attentive to the world one lives in... 

Amy Carmichael

In Memory of Amy Carmichael on her 75th Death Anniversary on January 18th. 

Living with her in our hearts,

The way she loved Jesus

A love that filled her with joy and peace,

A joy she lived to share with others.

From that love she found the strength

To do what seemed impossible,

To give a home,

To become a mother to the orphaned.

In Jesus she found courage

For every obstacle that crossed her path.

Remembering you, Amy,

Light and inspiration,

A model of love and quiet joy—

Teaching us to give everything

To what we are called to do,

Whatever our life’s circumstances may be.