Magic Moments

A Netflix Original, released on 24th June, Bulbbul is a different take on the subject of witches - 'chudail' as is called in India, narrating the tale from the perspective of the out-worldly being. It is India's very own 'revenant' tale - a person who has returned, especially supposedly from the dead.  The storytelling in the movie is quite gripping. The way it intertwines sweet memory and nostalgia of childhood, the grief and longing of missing someone, the beautiful colors and scenes of old world Bengali zamindar family of British Raj with the Gothic-like feel of spook and fable and a tale of revenge, is remarkable. The dialogues are no nonsense. There's this poetry piece or song - that is sung by two central characters in two different situations, rendering a totally different meaning to the words each of the times. There's a hint of metaphor and word play that seems naturally drawn into conversation. The entire movie is visually appealing - the red hues

This is the first Anand Neelakanthan book in my ‘Read’ shelves in GoodReads now. I devoured the book, all in three days. Having watched the Bahubali movies, I was intrigued about the book. I had received this book with the author’s signature in 2018 May, as a gift token, from Blogchatter, for volunteering in their writing festival. Since then, didn’t really get a chance to read it. I returned home to Bhubaneswar last week, from Mumbai. So, during the self-imposed home quarantine I had awesome time reading this about 500 page kinda thriller. I would just sit in the balcony in the morning breeze (the weather here is really good these days, cloudy but it doesn’t rain) with my cup of black pepper chai and Marie biscuits and keep reading to my fill. Best time ever, since months. Sivagami is 17 year old who has grown in her father’s friend’s home, after her father was given the capital punishment, in quite a brutal way, for treachery, when she was five. She is filled with unanswer

The brain is an incredible device. Whoever planned it, created it, is indeed a master architect. Only a few of its functioning have yet been revealed to mankind. And so much of it, still remains a mystery. We still are studying the biological processes that goes into storing of a memory, neuro plasticity. The connection between the conscious, subconscious and unconscious memory. Déjà vu. Phantom pain. Curious cases of people suffering brain injury, and speaking in accents totally foreign to them after recovery. The change in neural dynamics when we try and learn a new language. Our very own thought process. And so much more. My limited brush with this field of study in the last one year of my Masters has excited me a lot. This curiosity has been a driving force in me taking up projects solely for personal development and knowledge in this field of Computational Neuroscience since the final evaluation was wrapped up online last month.   It feels like solving a puzzle, and the j