chakravalam

The festival of thiruvathira is as important as Onam or Vishu in the Vallluvanad regions of kerala. Although most of us are familiar with the term Thiruvathira kali (or Kai kottikali), there are some rituals which are very native to Valluvanad. Chozikali is folk dance ritual performed on the night before thiruvathira which is now slowly becoming extinct in most of the urbanised Kerala.The chozi is played out by children dressed in plaintain leaves who represent the bhoothaganas of Lord Shiva. The children are accompanied by elders in the form of various other characters such as Kaalen and Muthiamma. The desha chozi (village chozhi)will be native to a particular village and they will have a prescribed place to don the attire which is kept sacred.The chozhi kali first performs at the temple and then they roam around the villiage visting each house to bless the people on behalf of Lord shiva. Once the chozi performs, the Kaalen(Yama devan) yells at the threshold of the house to claim any

Lockdown  Pop culture Musings Day1 Since in India, the govt has announced a 21-day lockdown to combat COVID -19 all of us have got some extra time in hand. For me, the time saved from commuting in Banglore traffic. I am planning to use this extra time to jot down my reflections on a movie\book\tv show or a personal incident that stayed with me and made me introspect. I would try to refrain from sounding like a review as I don't think I am qualified enough to review any of these great works. Nevertheless, it may have spoilers(unintentionally) So here we go. Pop culture Element:   Movie Name:   Jallikattu(2019) Language;   Malayalam This is a fairly new movie and it has got a lot of rave reviews from critics. The plot is a simple one-liner - "A buffalo escapes from a butcher hold and runs amock in a village." Yeah, it's just a buffalo who is the protagonist of this movie ( not even taming a ferocious bull which is a sport in certain Tamilnadu village

Happened to see this heartwarming video of Penguins roaming in an aquarium, as no visitors because of the quarantine. This reminded me of an old movie called 12 Monkeys. The premise of the movie is set in a post-apocalyptic world in 2035 where a deadly virus has swept away 99% of the human population(in the year 1996) and the earth is reclaimed by its original inhabitants the animals and plants. The remaining 1% have gone beneath the surface and are living in seclusion as the virus is still rampant on the surface and kills only humans. There is a group of scientists underground trying to isolate the virus in its pure form to develop a vaccine for the remaining population and reclaim their space on earth, as it has mutated now and is invincible in its current form. The movie is essentially a time travel movie where they send back a scavenger hunter to the time before the outbreak to gather the virus in its pure form. The movie dwells less on science and more on the time-tr

Pop culture Element:   Book/Tv show Name:  The Man in the High Castle Author;   Philip K dick \ I started reading this book after watching the first season of the show in the Amazon Prime. I was definitely a big fan of Philip K dick as I had finished his collection of sci-fi short stories and the book "Do Androids Dream of electric sheep".I realized that the show is definitely loosely based on the book and hence wanted to read the book before watching more. The alternate reality presented in the book where the USA has lost WWII is very believable. There is a book in the plot read by the main characters that speak of a world where the USA won the world war called "The grasshopper lies heavy".This was quite intriguing for me as it is too much to wrap your head around.  But the whole similarity between the show and the book ends here I guess although characters of Juliana, Joe, Tagomi all exist. What didn't work for me in the book is the weak cha

On 14-16th Novemeber ,I was honored and humbled to be a part of  the biggest conference for women in technology ,namely the Grace Hopper Conference India(GHCI) 2018.I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of women who had assembled (5000+)  solely to celebrate technology and Grace Hopper.Grace was one of the smartest woman the world of computer programming has seen,aptly called Grandma COBOL ,because of her work around machine independent programming language which led to the development of one of the early programming languages COBOL. The Grace Hopper Conference is organised every year by the AnitaB.org, started by Anita Borg a prominent computer scientist who was passionate about equal representation of woman in computing and technology and a strong voice in the crusade to end stereotyping of woman in engineering. This was my first time in the conference and was certainly a rewarding experience for me.The preparation to attend the conference started days before from NetApp office

This is my first attempt at reviewing a movie. Being the movie buff I am , this movie had let loose a stream of thoughts which I figured, I need to pen down . So here it goes . . ( spoiler alerts for those have not seen the movie) The movie in spotlight is “Her” . Set in the futuristic Los Angeles, ”Her” is modern day retelling of Pygmalion where the protagonist falls in love with the ever evolving OS he bought recently. The protagonist Theodore Twombly is depicted as a sensitive man who can write the most beautiful love letters as a part of his profession but fails to express love or connect to people in real time. The movie starts off with him nursing a broken marriage and slowly progresses to show his loneliness. Although set in the future, unlike movies like minority report this doesn’t have people flying around in supercars or the extended use of the augmented reality anywhere and everywhere. On the contrary, it shows ordinary people living ordinary live