Harris Blogs

    Something funny happened last Saturday at Panampilly Nagar Central Park , Kochi. There was a readers' gathering for silent reading planned by Kochi Book Reading Club at 4.30 PM. The group started one month ago and this was supposed to be the 4th meetup. But on the same day, Kochi Reads , a new similar group had planned its first gathering at 4 PM at the same venue. People who saw the announcements by the two groups turned up and started the silent reading session. Those who saw the Kochi Book Reading Club announcement thought the gathering was connected to that group. Similarly, those who saw the Kochi Reads announcement thought it was that group. So, two different groups gathered at the same place and sat together silently engrossed in their own books without knowing there were two separate groups. Anyway, it doesn't make much difference because the activity - each getting lost in the book in their hands - doesn't get affected by the book club's name. However, I w...

In  Why I Am a Hindu  by Shashi Tharoor, the author sort of answers the question in the title in the first chapter itself. In other words, if you are looking for a brief answer to the question 'Why I Am a Hindu' posed in the title, you only need to read this part of the book. The remainder of the book constitutes a comprehensive commentary on Hinduism, which may also be considered an elaboration of his abovementioned answer in the initial chapter. His answer could be summarized in the below words which appear in a later part of the book. Buy on Amazon “I too, as a Hindu, can say, when people tell me ‘ Garv se kaho ki tum Hindu ho ’, that I am proud to be a Hindu, but in what is it that we are to take pride? I take pride in the openness, the diversity, the range, the lofty metaphysical aspirations of the Vedanta; of the various ways in which Hinduism is practised, eclectically, and of its extraordinary acceptance of differences. Unfortunately, as I have noted, the votaries of H...

‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ is a memoir by Viktor E Frankl, a Jewish Austrian psychotherapist and Holocaust survivor. It summarizes his observations of people, including himself, suffering in Hitler’s concentration camps and what psychological impacts the bitter experiences there had on them. He keenly studies the transformations of the minds of prisoners and classifies their mental and spiritual states over time into different stages with the help of his professional knowledge. He even explains how bizarre it turns out with certain prisoners finding it hard to cope with a free life when they manage to be free after many years of captivity in the camps, as torment had become their norm. Buy from Amazon He emphasizes that men (read men and women) need a purpose to life, something to live for, even if it’s something imaginary, to overcome the hardships of such environments and survive through the torture and agony. He says those who succumb to the suffering are doomed while those who find...

  Though the film Neelavelicham  (‘The Blue Radiance’, Malayalam, 2023) is a remake of Bhargavi Nilayam  (Bhargavi Mansion, 1964), both must be considered independent creations and comparison must be avoided. However, I couldn’t help comparing some aspects when I watched the new film. Both movies offer excellent visual experiences. To me, Bhargavi herself is the most prominent person in  Bhargavi Nilayam . So, I didn’t have a problem with Tovino or Roshan in place of Madhu or Naseer respectively in  Neelavelicham . However, I couldn’t fully reconcile to Rima’s occupying the place of Vijaya Nirmala. I kept comparing them. It’s not about their performance, but the stark differences in their appearances and countenances. In Neelavelicham , Tovino became more important than Bhargavi to me. The song 'Pottithakarnna kinavu…’ and the scenes within it are what I loved the most about the movie. The writer’s character, performed by Tovino, makes small talk with the invis...

(Warning: Spoilers ahead!) It's April Fool's Day, and it's a coincidence that I just watched  Chungking Express  (Hong Kong, 1994) in which this young and handsome police officer is jilted by his girlfriend on the first of April. Initially, he thought it was an April Fool's prank, but she had left him seriously. He decides to wait for a month, and meanwhile eats canned pineapple slices, because she liked it very much. He makes sure every can he purchases from the supermarket had May-1 as the expiry date, which completes one month of his loneliness, beyond which there would be no pineapples for him. His lost lover's name happens to be 'May'. The first of May is his birthday too. After the monthlong wait, he looks for someone who could go out with him for the evening. But he's late. Another May, who is a worker at the takeaway joint he frequents was a prospect but while he was waiting for his lost lover, she had found another person to spend the evening wi...

   ( Buy on Amazon ) I haven't liked much of whatever I have read of M T Vasudevan Nair’s fiction so far, except  Naalukettu , especially because of its ending, and one of his short stories. And every time I read one of his books, I sincerely hope I would like it. However, it's only now that I’ve found a novel by him I can honestly say I love and admire. This book  Manju  (Mist) is different from most of his other works; the story doesn't take place in Kerala but in an exotic Nainital, and perhaps this is his only novel with a female protagonist. It’s not a novel, but a novella with sixty-odd pages and is sweet like a little melancholic poem. Vimala is a boarding school resident teacher in Nainital who stays in the school quarters even during the summer vacation when all the students and staff leave for home. She hardly visits her family. It's the end of winter and the start of the tourist season where Vimala sometimes talks to the boy known as 'Buddhu' who oper...