Forster should be more widely read. After having finished ‘A Passage to India’, ‘A Room with a View’ and now ‘Howards End’, I can confidently say that he’s one of the sharpest chroniclers of social relationships in the late Victorian and Edwardian era. Howards End is firmly rooted in the Edwardian era where the three … Continue reading Forster’s ‘Howards End’ and the Intellectual Life
Since PVR Priya had the only decent IMAX screen nearby, I had to book a 1145 pm show on a weekday for the 'Odyssey'. The movie was disappointing and failed to move me. Nolan just kept moving from episode to episode without any deep engagement with the personality of Odysseus, that Homer wrote about. Apart … Continue reading Nolan’s Odyssey
After watching all of Paul Thomas Anderson’s 10 movies, here’s my ranking: There Will be Blood One Battle After Another Licorice Pizza Boogie Nights Phantom Thread Magnolia Hard Eight The Master Punch Drunk Love Inherent Vice And the greatest scene across all his films should be this unforgettable three minute masterclass by Julianne Moore in … Continue reading Paul Thomas Anderson Movies Ranked
Knausgaard’s ‘My Struggle’, especially the first and second volumes, is one of the marvels of 21st century literature. I was perplexed when the books didn’t make it to the NYT Best of the Century rankings last year. Anyways, this month, I finally got to reading his Seasons quartet – a set of four books titled … Continue reading Knausgaard’s ‘Seasons Quartet’
The enterprises that Musk shaped and led: Zip2 X.com Paypal SpaceX Tesla Solar City Tesla Energy OpenAI The Boring Company Hyperloop Starlink Giga Texas Optimus Grok Neuralink Twitter Walter Isaacson’s 680-page biography of Musk was a page-turner and gave me a peek into the mind of one of the most polarizing figures of our time. … Continue reading Musk’s Ventures
When a piece of work carries tags such as “the greatest piece of literature ever written by a single person,” expectations are bound to be sky-high. However, King Lear failed to move me. While I could identify certain moments that justify its cult status, the overall experience left me underwhelmed. And one reason for this … Continue reading King Lear
Sound of Music: I realized that visiting Salzburg without watching the ‘Sound of Music’ would be unthinkable. So here I was, in my 41st year, watching something that should have been done in the first decade of my life. The shocking realization was that most of the songs in the movie were the ones that … Continue reading What I Watched – June 2025
When the Charter of the United Nations was signed on 26th June 1945, the Second World War was still raging in the Pacific. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were yet to happen. And colonialism was very much alive and kicking. ChatGPT informs me that the following countries were still under colonial control: Mark Mazower, in No Enchanted … Continue reading The Political Origins of the United Nations
Forty years after his deployment in the Caucasus, Tolstoy wrote Hadji Murad, based on a real-life figure, over an eight-year period. Published posthumously, it is often regarded as one of the greatest novellas ever written. Set during Russia’s early 19th-century conflict in the Caucasus, the story follows Hadji Murad, a feared warlord who defects to … Continue reading The Timeless Relevance of Hadji Murad
During my previous visit to Dharamshala, an amusing sight that caught my attention was a group of Buddhist monks, red-robed, sporting Nike sneakers, sipping cappuccinos and completely immersed in their i-phones. A few decades earlier, while visiting a Buddhist monastery in Sikkim, a Sikkimese colleague accompanying me, laughed off the elaborate rituals associated with Vajrayana … Continue reading The Market-Friendly Dharma of Buddhism
