Manju Pole Oru Swapnam: Song video

Back in 2008, I had an interesting music project to work on. Those of you who follow my blog would have read about it. The opportunity was to compose and sung for a Malayalam telefilm project but the song was never officially released. This is a UK Malayalee production and was entirely shot in the UK. You can read more about it in this blog post. Now the song video is complete and it will soon appear in the Malayalam TV channels. So here is an exclusive online release of the song. Do check it out and let your honest comments pour in. 🙂 Thanks much!

Song video credits:

Lyrics: James Bright
Composed and sung by: Joseph Thomas
Camera: Chris Stevens
Editor: Prem & Xian
Director: Jayaram Sthanumalayan

Music credits:

Orchestration: Ajit Gopalakrishnan
Rhythm Programming: Bharath Venkatesan
Mixing: Nandu Mahadevan

(My thanks to Dr James Bright and Jayaram for making this happen!)

“The Juniors”

Got the link to this shortfilm through an email from someone I don’t know. I don’t have any details, but this is a brilliant work. I could see glimpses of a Quentin Tarantino style in this movie and the guys who did this really deserve a thumbs up! Watch it.

Gandhi in “Chatroom”

A friend of mine drew attention to a 2010 British film “Chatroom” which seems to have depicted Gandhi in an insulting manner. By the way, I am not a hardcore Gandhi fan so you know that is not the reason I am posting this here. I would not have bothered if it was some creative criticism on Gandhi but this seems to be pure sleaze which is totally uncalled for (and let me add, I have not seen the film, but just the clip, and I also hear from those who have seen the film that this has nothing to do with the story line).

Back to school

There is this small convent school just to the back of our house where all of us in our family went to from 1st to 4th standard. Those were the days when people had so many kids at home and could not afford to send them out to fancy schools with a fee. Those who could afford the fees and an English medium school sent their children to another flashy convent school near by. This little lower primary school of ours is called Pope John L. P. School (in Kuriachira, Thrissur) and even though it is in the next street, I have never gone back there ever since I was 10. I went there as I had a chance yesterday and it brought back some old memories.

The school has not produced any famous people that I know of (but certainly some good people), but there is one journalist who works with Mathrubhumi Weekly who was my batch mate back then. The building and even the class rooms remain the same way as it was 20 years back except for some ceiling fans which seems to be a new thing.  I heard that the school now has very few children and like in the old days almost all of them are from poor families in the area.

(All photos shot with my Sony Ericsson P1i)

A quote from Albert Einstein is written on a blackboard that says the power of thought is more valuable than the power of intellect (I don’t really get that though).

A class room frozen in time. Only the wall paint has changed.

A small chapel to the end of the main corridor.

That is a blackboard but what you see in there is not a map.

Lessons of math written on wooden desk. 🙂

First lessons of art, again on a desk.

First lessons of love.

A peek from the corridor.