Brain on fire ..review

Brain on fire

This is a true story of a very pretty blonde girl Calahann working as a budding journalist in New York post who is liked by her boss for her dedication .
,she is dating an young  musician Stephen
her parents are divorced but she is close to both of them .
suddenly all goes topsy turvy as she goes into trances ,has auditory hallucinations and near accidents ,also gets mood swings and finally develops seizures .
all blood tests and investigations like MRI brain EEG does not reveal anything wrong and she keeps getting worser admitted in a hospital and finally doctors start thinking it could be a psychiatric disorder and she may be moved to a specialized center for such patients .
The parents are adamant that this should not be done as they still feel she has a problem not recognized by the doctors .
one of the neurologists Dr Ms Khan approaches an Egyptian specialist doctor who had taken a sabbatical only for teaching and not seeing patients .
Persuaded by Dr Khan Dr Souhel agrees to see her .
He reaches her bed side and does his detailed examination goes through all reports and tells her that he will try to find out to his best ability the cause for her problem and then treat it .
he gives her a paper to draw a clock face strangely she draws only one side of clock face leaving numbers from 6 to 12
this raises suspicion of dr Najjar souhel who feels the problem lies in one half of the brain and a brain biopsy is needed to find out the cause and treat her .
in the biopsy its seen that she suffered from an autoimmune type of encephalitis called NMDA encephalitis and started on treatment and after months she recovers completely all thanks to Dr Najjar
NMDA encephalitis started to be in the suspect list of many doctors after this
till date more than recorded cases of NMDA encephalitis is there
thinking loud would a PET scan have helped to pick it up earlier
nice film
please see in Netflix

 By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54364596

Ponmudi

A day in the hills with no dead lines

Ponmudi is just 60 km from Trivandrum .

It cannot be called a hill station but it is 1000 mts ASL and had the summer palace of the maharajah of Travancore though it definitely lacks the trappings of a hill station with colonial buildings ,residential schools ,and hordes of tourists descending on its slopes in summer .

Of course tourists were never much encouraged here .

It just had the kerala tourist development cottages more for the travelling Govt officials and of late no one is allowed to reach the top as there were some landslides recently so it was risky .

There are some space and defence installations i think so too .

As I was in Trivandrum i thought will just hop on a day visit .

I took the 8 am KSRTC bus a small one as it was needed to climb the 22 hair pin bends but that was reached after more than 2.5 hours .

I had a good window seat and three chattering engineering college girls going up on an assignment made small talk to me so time flew fast .

Once hair pins started it became cooler more cloudier with drizzly rain .

Once we reached top I walked into the KTDC restaurant had an omelette and a cup of tea .

I then just walked aimlessly along the mountain road .

There was a small rivulet with crystal clear water from hills
Not a soul in sight i just had the cool breeze ,a pale sun ,and the cloudy hills for company .

Chirpy birds ,rustle of winds ,my footsteps , leaves falling were the BGM .

It was solitude at its best

A tango with nature

Peaceful

I was in a trance

Suddenly I wondered what if a lonely elephant or a wandering elephant confronted me !😰
This made me turn back.
Soon I was back in the restaurant tucking in a fried rice !🤣
By 3 pm i was back in the bus with the chattering teens for company 😆
By 5 pm i wasback to swelter land😣

Padmanabhaswamy temple

The Padmanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram is today known all over India after they found out that its the richest temple in the world .
Its underground store chambers named alphabetically contains priceless treasures in gold precious stones jewels crowns swords precious coins in heaps and artifacts from history ,
some of the chambers are yet to be opened with the temple authorities and royal family not happy about opening up those rooms with unknown treasures as against temple tradition .



 The royal family is well lknown for its sincerity humility and honesty has been hurt when rumors spread some of the treasures have been pilfered by them over the years .

For those who call themselves as Padmanabhabha dasas or servants of lord padmanabha and dust their feet when coming out of the temple symbolically showing that even carrying dust from the temple was an offence such rumors are wounding indeed .
The temple has been mentioned in many of the epics ,there is a mention of how Balarama worshiped in this temple,records of mentions from 300 Bc to 500 Ad exists
Though officially it was Vilvamangalaswamy a holy man hailing from north Kerala near kasargod in the 16 th century used to pray in Ananthan temple there which is the moolasthaanam ,a young lad used to come to the temple and play mischievous pranks on the holy man and one day angry he shouted at the child who disappeared and the saint knew there was something divine in the child keeps wandering in search of him ,after a long time he reaches the southern tip of Kerala and hears an old lady mentioning Ananthan kaadu or forest he goes there and finds the lad who promptly turns into a tree which falls turning into an idol of Vishnu in his resplendent pose of ananthasayanam on serpent but the statue is more than 11 km in length and so the saint requests the lord to shorten himself so he can construct a temple which the lords dose , but still long enough for a person to see only parts of the lying idol like the head ,trunk and the foot in three separate parts ,
A temple was built and later the Thriuvananthapuram rajahs patronize it with the ettu veetu nairs who are chieftains

It was mathanda pilla maharaja who curbed the ettu veetu pillamars and makes the temple kula thaiva of the royal family and presents the kingdom to the lord ruling it on his behalf as padmanabha daasas .

During these times there were several small internecine battles and the victory treasures were stored in the temple ,there was trade from foreign shores like the Roman empire ,Arabs Dutch Portugese etc and so many coins jewels were also stored ,

The invasion of Tipu sultan in north and central Kerala made the local rajahs seek mercy to the travancore royal family requesting them to hold their treasures in the temple .

These could be the reason for the immense riches .
As there is a court case going on a receiver has been appointed since 2012 with many controversies form his part of interfering with the temple rules and rituals ,for eg there has been pressure to open up still unopened chambers to find out what they contain but the royal family and temple priests feel the ritualistic part of the temple powers should not be tread upon
Meanwhile the security has been increased and the number of tourists have shot up the roof .
Social media comments like using the money for the poor has naturally brought replies of the money being the property of the devotees and the traditions should be upheld ,though accounting of the treasures can be done and it secured it should not be removed from the temple and it should be preserved as it was for centuries

Ee Maa Yu

After a long time I saw a good Malayalam movie in the theater .
Ee Maa Yau a film on death,
no not morbid but a tragic satire .
Eeso mariam Yauseppe is whispered in the ears of the dead body as a habit amongst the coastal christian community in kerala the title is an abbreviation of this .

Vaavachan mistiri is an old man with a daughter and a son who is married ,vaavachan is a loving father but has long bouts of absence from home and also has a second wife and son nearby .
He comes home after a long time and when he gets down in the bus stop one local ridicules him about a love affair of his unmarried daughter and he hits that man and goes home ,

He never talks to his daughter about this as he loves his family but is disturbed ,he and his son get drunk that evening and he tells his son how he gave his father the best funeral in that coastal village of chellanam off Ernakulam ,the slang of the coastal village and the dashing waves ,the wind rustling the coconut fronds and the eerie dusk is well portrayed by the camera with the larger than life music looming behind , foretelling of tragedies ahead .

While the duck Vaavachan brought home is being cooked by the women of the house the son promises his father that he will one day give his father a funeral which will surpass what his father gave to his ! and then when the son sneaks for a smoke the old man happily drunk just falls down and dies and in the fall injures his forehead and has some bleeding ,there is lot of fuss and in minutes the neighbors arrive they all know the old man is dead and gone .

Here is when the close friend of Eashy the son enacted by Chemban
vinod arrives
He is Ayyappan a panchayat member and a good Samaritan of the village .
To me Vinayakan who took up this role and had proved himself as a good actor surpassed all in this film with his superb acting .

Eashy tells his friend what he promised his dad and Ayyappan knows Eashy has no money to keep up the promise so they pawn Eashys wife's only necklace and Eashy buys a costly coffin spending half the money though Ayyappan tries to dissuade his foolish friend the best .

They also send word to the local parish priest who by now had heard there was something suspicous of the old mans death as he had some bleeding from forehead ,the priest who loves reading detective novels sees shadows in the plot and calls up the local circle insector and with his authorirty asks him to look into this ,
Meanwhile the night drags on like in any death house with the crowd trickling down by dawn the current going off and an angry Ayyappan forcing the line man to repair it in the heavy rains .
The priest comes down and insists that the body has to be seen by the doctor in the morning as he smells something wrong and just certifying by a nurse wouldn't be enough .
This angers Eashy the son who is frustrated at all the blocks for his dear dads funeral he hits the priest in anger who swears he wouldn't allow the burial in the church cemetery by any chance .
Morning comes and the father is put into the new coffin which promptly gives way and the body falls prompting confusion and clamor then the big pandal collapses in the rain all foreboding signs .
Finally ayyapan brings the police inspector to clear the air and the doctor also says the old man died naturally and rest was rubbish but since the priest was unwilling for a burial in cemetery Eashy goes wild and starts digging a grave in the house compound like a mad man and no one could stop him finally he does that .
The last scene is shown wherein the dead father in white along with a couple more who died that night stand on the grey dark dawn looking to a big boat full of lights and hooded figures to go into the nether world
All about a death but taken well by Director lijo jose pilliserry