Days 307 - 310 : Panchajanyam Film Festival, Mom, Teacher & Review!

I am writing the post for these four days after much delay, so initially I was drawing a blank on what exactly happened. But then I happened to remember four awesome highlights over these four days, so here goes.

1) Mom is in town - after many months. And she has brought a heck load of food - from jackfruit varattiyathu to koorka to banana chips to beef fry to what not. In short, I ate a LOT, which is always great.

2) The film played at Panchajanyam International Film Festival in Palakkad, Kerala. Unfortunately neither my co-producer nor I could attend the film in person, but my dad happened to be there. And I here that the screening went spectacularly well. It was a full house, albeit being on a Tuesday evening, the crowd was super appreciative and apparently, we even got a standing ovation!!! That is SO awesome! Of course, I completely regretted not being there, but some of the regret was appeased when a couple of good folks wrote into to me with extremely positive feedback. One goes like this.

3) We got a write up from veteran film critic Gautaman Bhaskaran on Hindustan Times! How awesome is that! Here's the link.

4) Last but not the least, a teacher of mine from school seems to have saved an old newspaper - to be precise, an 18 year old newspaper - that featured an article on me. How many people in the world would have the privilege of having such an amazing teacher?

190 more to go. 

Day 132 : All the Good Folks!

I got two lovely notes today.

One from a total stranger who had watched my sitcom series Athazham, and then proceeded to find my old blog, and then found me on Facebook and finally wrote me a note that was complimenting and supportive. She had a lot of nice things to say and it was sweet. Obviously gestures like that make me feel all nice and happy! 

Another one was from a friend's wife whom I had met for the first time recently when they visited Singapore, and whom I had updated about Madam's tumor story. She wrote to me saying that she didn't know how to react then, but she wanted to extend her love and support. She had a lot of genuine and lovely things to say - my favourite being "The scenery on your path will be different than you imagined, but not any less beautiful". I feel like I made a friend for life! It is just amazing how people rally around in tough times. God bless her kind soul! 

Last but not the least, I had the opportunity to spend some time with two aunties, who had welcomed me with open arms to their lives and homes when I first came to Singapore as a lost 16 year old and when I visited Singapore Kerala Association for the first time to rediscover my heavily missed Mallu roots. It's been almost two decades since then and I have always been in touch with them. One of them had migrated to Perth but was in town for a few weeks and I went to visit her today. I obviously had a great time, but it was great to see how Madam took to them too! She drew for them, sang for them, narrated stories for them and in return was showered with chocolates.

So yes, today was all about the good folks around!

368 more to go. 

Days 45 - 48 : Palace, People & a Great Business Trip!

I have to say the London business trip was one of the best so far!

For once, I actually had time to go out and explore the city not one day but two! This is a big change from sitting inside a hotel and shuttling to and from meetings all day, every day.

On day 2, May 2nd, my cousin sister who is based in London, came down to meet me with her family. I had a four hour break mid-day, so we had lunch together and then they took me to the Buckingham Palace and the St. James Park right next to it. We walked for hours in that area, taking in the lovely weather, watching the glorious tulips in full bloom, marveling at the the palace and the guards of course, being part of the numerous tourists and locals who were having as nice a time as us, and being amused by the antics of the ducks, swans, sea gulls, pigeons and what not in and around the pools in the park. It was perfect! I have been to London a few years ago just for a couple of days, but this time I felt like I immersed myself better - we even took the London Tube (even though there is nothing really to write home about on that one)!

May 3rd was choked with meetings but I enjoyed them because I got to once again meet with all the wonderful people from my team from the US, and it was fun!

May 4th was my flight back home. It was pretty eventless other than of course my routine movie marathon watching. I watched the English film "Her" (really interesting concept and acting but rather overboard with all that sexual stuff), a comedy called "The Heat" which was fun and the Hindi film "Phantom" which was way better than Kabir Khan's previous rubbish called "Ek Tha Tiger". Overall, once again I enjoyed my long flight and the only real "me time" I ever seem to get!

I got home in the morning on May 5th to a rather excited little Madam. The day was spent in recovering from the trip, sleeping away the fatigue, catching up on emails, playing with Madam and spending time with the dad and the husband as well.

It was a good business trip and it is great to be back home!

452 more to go. 

Day 11: The Facebook Love!

I quit Facebook about three months ago as part of my social media detox process, and  have not missed it even for a second since. That's pretty surprising because I was expecting myself to have withdrawal symptoms, given the level of my activity on it. Instead, I might even go as far as saying that I feel truly liberated and suddenly find myself with so much time on my hands, which I like to think am putting to good use.

But what has been interesting is how, over the last one week, at least 6-7 people reached out to me or to our mutual friends asking why I have left Facebook and that they actually miss my posts on it! "Miss my posts on Facebok?! Seriously?!", was my reaction to that, because not even in my wildest imagination would I have believed that all those updates that I used to post made any difference to anyone. But apparently it did to a small extent to a small group of people, all of whom I think are way too sweet and I am very grateful to their kinds words.

I am not sure whether I would get back to the social network (I deactivated my Twitter account more than a year ago, and it still remains deactivated), but for today I am just going to be happy about being missed. And I also resolve to reach out to all these folks and stay in touch with them one on one, which may just be a better way of sustaining relationships anyway.

489 more to go.