Newsgraph Online

What is your idea about a horror movie with a creature in it? Well, it should have innumerable chase sequences with gory action from the creature, more lines of screams than the dialogues are a must and also ritually, it should also feature horrified humans struggling to overpower the being right. Much Like what we saw in “The Thing “or even the recent “Maze Runner”. But this is not true in the case of “Possession”, where the creature is the least horrid part of it. Yet it sutures terror, realistically into the viewer’s eyes even after the movie. Possession, the 1981 horror movie by Andrzej Zulawski reels through the life of Anna (Isabelle Adjani) who asks her husband Mark (Sam Neill) for a divorce without any reason. After a series of altercations, Anna starts to behave strangely and leaves home, an amused Mark initially discovers Heinrich (Heinz Bennent) as Anna’s lover. Mark then goes to meet Heinrich only to discover the fact that Anna does not go there too. He then devi...

The year was 2009, and my brother like every techie was hunting for a car, not just any car, one with a dickie specifically. For Indians, dickie or the boot is not just another colonial vocabulary hangover, it is rather a symbol of status. And this demand was addressed at the best format by none other than Maruti, with their Swift Dzire, the re-booted version of their most popular hatch, Swift. But, Dzire never came out of its maiden name, for people it was still “Swift with a boot”, however, it did manage to sell very well in the market. And after years of its launch, Maruti has finally tried a hand at separating Swift from Dzire, literally. The new Dzire is marketed without the name of its hatchback version and has undergone a massive shapeshift inside out. The new version has undergone a positive transformation from the glued boot car into a proper sedan. With curvy body lines and a snappy front grille, the car stands out from its competitors. The front grille is closer...

“Taxation is theft!” said Murray Rothbard a twentieth-century libertarian, but the twenty-first century India is celebrating the launch of a new national tax regime, Goods and Services Tax, abbreviated as GST. The launch is organized in an extravagant manner with a midnight launch resembling the announcement of Independence for India. The resemblances are very striking, we have the confused citizens across the nation and a clueless administration.                 “ I do not own a computer and at this age, it is not possible for me to even learn it. Even if I buy one I will not be able to afford a staff to operate it.” Says Ramdev, a cloth merchant from his hundred square feet shop in Maruthi Seva Nagar.” They are saying that it is mandatory to have a computer with internet to do the billing, what will I do? ” Retailers like Ramdev are the worst hit and they say that the implementation was in such a short ...

The new power plant in Yelahanka and the people around it “It is a candle,” said Keerthi the eight-year-old pointing at the cooling tower of the proposed LNG power plant in Yelahanka. “They say it is a gas plant, where they make electricity from gas,” said Renuka K mother of Keerthi. Their home at Kenchanahalli village of Yelahanka is a stone throw distance from the power plant that will produce 370 MW of electricity from Liquefied Natural Gas to meet the power demands of Bengaluru. The residents allege that the Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited, KPTCL, the builder of the project has not even come once to them with the mandatory public hearing and they are clueless about the project. This is a plight that they share with the residents of more than a dozen apartment complexes that dot the boundary of the project area. “Earlier we had to suffer the dark fumes that came out of the diesel plant and now I wake up to these large structures and god knows what the futu...

Biriyani-ism, a tale of Bengaluru's own biriyani by Ajith M S Humans love classifications, tall-short, thin-fat, fair-dark, rich-poor they say it makes it easier for them to identify and to treat them 'differently'. What is ridiculous is that they have brought these divisions into food, as vegetarian and non-vegetarian, and most interestingly, they have given character to these discriminations too, non-veg is often erased conveniently from most of the tasty food charts and food reviews even.  Quite conveniently, the MTRs and Brahmins of Banashankari gets itself into most of the must-try lists of Bangalore for their dosas and idlis while Bengaluru’s own Muddhes and Koli saru is often shunned.  Another forgotten master from this fable is Karnataka’s very own Donne Biriyani, which roughly translates into, the biriyani that is served in palm leaf cups, mostly with a mutton embellishment. Unlike every other biriyani, there are versions of donne biriyani too, and the one from C...

Most of us have stronger admiration for things that are beyond our reach, the farther it is, the stronger our admiration would be. This peculiarity pushes us most of the times into a sorrow over our inability to acquire it. And much time is spent on things that are inaccessible and unavailable. But how often do we try to observe the things that exist around us? And how much we would have observed them and how many times do we have appreciated the things that are in our close reach, most of us will have a ‘nay’ within. The campus of our very own college, Kristu Jayanti College has one such example, most of us spend a good amount of time loitering through the circumference of it but efforts to understand and appreciate the most beautiful thing in the campus, its trees and plants are very rare. To start with, the patch of greenery beside the playground is home to over a dozen trees. Amongst it stands a majestic shade that students loosely refer to as, ‘the wisdom tree’. It is, i...

  AN ESCAPE TO THE ISLAND By Ajith M S   Trying to find sleep inside a crammed budget airliner is a task, especially when your tummy is filled with excitement and heart empty enough to fill countless memories, hence the time was ripe for a cinematic gaze into the serenity of the dark skies through the window while it whisked us through boundless darkness across the Indian ocean. Into the heights of it, we were greeted by the pilot, “good morning ladies and gentlemen we are now cruising at an altitude of 32,000 feet at about 780 kilometer per hour,   we will be commencing our descent to the Don Mueang Airport, Bangkok shortly“. Don Mueang Airport is Bangkok’s oldest airport that serves budget carriers exclusively, it does save a lot on flight charges if we book our flights to Don Mueang than to the posh and busy Suvarnabhumi airport of Bangkok. Choosing Don Mueang or DMK also comes with another advantage, the queues for visa on arrival and immigration there are...