How’s everyone doing? Safe and sound at home I hope, amidst all this craziness that’s spread across the world thanks to a decision made by 77,302,580 people in November 2024.

I am at home too, just that it’s the home where I grew up and not the place where I call home these days. I was lucky to have transited through Abu Dhabi a few days before the war started, en route to India. I was planning to get back to Boston in a few days, but now everything is in the air. Literally.

Airlines are of course doing their price gouging thing as they usually do in these troubled times. Flights through Europe and the Pacific are five times their normal rates, and some helpful airlines like American have offered me a ticket at ten times the usual price. Me, I’m picky though, and am currently trying to find the lowest bidder - which appears to be a route that takes me from Thiruvananthapuram to Bengaluru to Singapuru (with a 24 hour layover) to Los Angeles to Boston. I haven’t made up my mind as I write this, but it does look like I’ll need to fork out the extra cash for a relatively shorter and less stressful flight through Europe.

On a positive note though, people are trying to help each other out, as they normally do in trying times. There’s this employee of Etihad who posted on a subreddit about the situation on the ground, and explained that they are prioritizing people stranded in Abu Dhabi compared to travelers like me who are transiting through. There’s another tech person who showed how to inspect the Etihad chat page to figure out your position in their queue. Mine is 162 after waiting four hours, if you wanted to know.

Having said all that, I really have no reason to complain. I am safe, with my parents, far away from the mayhem that’s continuing unabated. Children have been killed, unarmed vessels have been attacked, and weak men who live a life of privilege are making decisions on a whim, sending thousands of people to their deaths.

On that bright note, on to this week’s books and binges.

Naomi Alderman’s The Power is based on a simple premise: what if women were more powerful than men? Teenage girls wake up one morning with the ability to generate electric shocks from their bodies, something boys of the same age - or men - cannot. The power varies in its intensity, but occurs everywhere across the globe. Alderman focuses on four characters, three women and a man, who cover religion, the military-industrial complex, politics and business. The world is upended and current norms of gender are reversed over several years after this electrifying event.

The book isn’t particularly subtle; it has passages later on where men are described the same way as women are described now - as objects, of delicate sensibilities, who are better at softer subjects like art than war. I found it trying a bit too hard to make the same point over and over again, and wished the author had spent a bit more time on the world she’s built. Those are relatively minor quibbles though, as I tore through the book in a couple of days, eager to find out what happens next to the characters and the events they shape. Recommended.

My friend Jayasankar, movie connoisseur par excellence, told me this story of when he and a couple of friends were at his home and about to watch a Malayalam movie - which shall remain unnamed, because reasons. His mother walks into the room, looks at the screen which shows Mammootty, and happily announces “Oh, I’ve watched this film! Mammoootty acts really well - as the villain.” Dear reader, this was one movie where the identity of the villain isn’t revealed until the final few minutes, and having an actor with the stature of our man Mammookka play the bad guy was quite the fait accompli those days. Jayasankar also tells the story of our common friend Anil, who helpfully told him who had committed the murder of one Roger Ackroyd.

All this to say when I tell you that Mammootty plays the villain in Kalamkaval, it’s not a spoiler. The trailer makes this clear, the ads give you that vibe, and you get to know it in the first ten minutes of the movie as well. Vinayakan plays the antagonist, a police officer who has a sidekick and one jeep, which seem woefully small for a team that’s on the hunt for a serial killer. The movie isn’t terrible, but it’s quite a stretch to see Mammootty in his seventies get women in their thirties to fall for him. I also hated the Tarantino-esque chapter titles that pop up - they didn’t make sense, the English wasn’t great, and were pretty much a distraction. This includes the movie title as well, which has the phrase “The Venom Beneath” tacked on.

To get back to quoting Jayasankar, now on his review of this movie: “it’s a slow burn without the burn.” Recommended only if you are at a loss what to watch on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

I am not a fan of the medical genre of TV shows, as none of the popular ones appealed to me. Grey’s Anatomy, House MD, Scrubs, ER et al were not quite my cup of IV. However, after reading rave reviews of the first season of The Pitt, I gave it a try and was instantly hooked.

Set in an emergency room of a fictional hospital in Pittsburgh, the show takes place in ‘real time’, featuring fifteen episodes that cover fifteen hours on a single day. It has wet-behind-the-ears interns, world-weary nurses, excitable surgeons, business-focused administrators, and a calm, collected head of the department. If this appears cliched to you, I’d agree, but do know that the show fleshes out each of the characters really well, staying with them when needed and moving on when not. The trauma of the ER is intense, which could make it a tough watch for the faint of heart — and for doctors who have seen this multiple times in their career and would rather watch a whodunnit instead (ahem). I was reminded of production incidents in my career, when you had to make quick decisions based on a limited number of facts, with angry customers waiting for their business to get back online.

The show is tightly plotted, wonderfully acted, and has a lot of heart. You do not need to know anything about medicine to enjoy it, since the terms used don’t really matter. As YouTube has proven, most viewers enjoy watching people do things they are really good at, even if they do not understand it.

I’m halfway into the second season and so far it feels like a great follow-up to the first. Highly recommended.

By the way, in case you were anxious to know, I finally got through to Etihad support after waiting seven and a half hours on chat. They were very helpful though, and managed to find me a ticket to Boston for the 15th at no extra cost. Hope this one doesn’t get cancelled!

Stay safe, and have a great week!