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A short piece about that feelings that I felt when I sold my car in November 2020.

I sold my first and only car last day to Cars24. It was something that I had been considering for nearly a year after having owned it since 2016. There were quite a few problems with it, which together was the primary reason I decided to sell. It was also attached to a recent failureI experienced, which only aggravated my desire to do so. I was the only one in my family who had no concerns about…

A recent experience while looking to buy a laptop online.

Pretty difficult. As I found last month while looking for a decent, mid-range laptop for a friend.

What Seems to Be the Problem?

You would think that all the guides, discussions in various forums, and video reviews on YouTube would come in handy when you are looking for a computer. But that’s not the case. Especially if you are like me, someone who does not keep track of the latest laptop…

A list of all the books I read in 2019.

I know I am late to the party here in all possible senses. I have wanted to do these lists ever since I began reading for knowledge (2012) and this specific list since I closed 2019 with the best-ever reading record in my life so far (28 books). So, here goes a list of all the booksI read in 2019 along with a short description of how I feel about them. The descriptions are based on my notes that…

The lockdown has almost upended my life and now it is just a stream of unhealthy lifestyle choices including this new habit of writing at three in the morning. One of the major discussions that I participate in these days that is not work is what food to cook and eat for the next meal.

I have been working from homefor four months now, making a lot of time to read and write, and overall…

Zapping Google Analytics User Tracking From My Website

As of 22 June 2020, I have disconnected the Google Analytics property attached to my website, nairtejas.com. This means that starting today, your presence on this site will not be tracked. I am currently trying to disconnect Jetpack/WordPress tracking too which I don’t know if is entirely possible.

This move was taken as part of my larger vision to keep away from adopting the user-hostile…

Netflix and books and sleeping don't cut it anymore for me. #coronavirus #nostalgia

On 16 April 2020, I completed a month of remote working. As I continue to practice spatial distancing and occupy myself with some indoor activities, I have grown nostalgic of some experiences that I used to enjoy before the Covid-19 epidemic. Experiences that I never thought I would have to live without. Or at least wasn’t prepared to live without for such a long stretch.

Here they are in no…

My thoughts on the Bengaluru International Film Festival (#BIFFES) after I attended its 12th edition earlier in March 2020. Read:

Earlier in 2020 before the Covid-19 outbreak paralysed all my travel plans, I was fortunate to attend the 12th edition of the Bengaluru International Film Festival (BIFFES). I managed to attend the festival for two days and watch a total of five films. It was a fairly exciting experience for someone like me who – in my first solo trip – took a bus from Mumbai to Bengaluru just to attend the fest…

A look at how miserably I failed to collect my #IGNOU MA degree certificate at its 33rd convocation ceremony.

In February 2020, I took a day off from work to drive to Pune with my entire family to collect my Master of Arts degree certificate from IGNOU at its 33rd annual convocation ceremony. Call it a stupid mistake on my part or a sheer lack of luck, I was denied my certificate. Morose and disappointed, we cancelled all our subsequent sight-seeing and luncheon plans and decided to drive back to Mumbai.…

The PM of India has askedits citizens to observe what his office likes to call the Janta Curfew so as to try and restrict the further spread of the deadly coronavirus (COVID-19) disease. Essentially, we are not supposed to venture out of our homes on Sunday, 22 March 2020 from 7 AM to 9 PM unless there’s an emergency. As someone sitting in his Mumbai residence, it’s hard to know what all I can do…

10 Best Malayalam Film Posters of 2019. #malayalam #posters Read:

2019 has been rather a weak year for Malayalam cinema. We had some terrible films come out this year, some of which were discussed and bludgeoned to death on Reddit. But there is no denying that we also had some fabulous poster designs that promoted these very films – both good and bad – through their various, often unnecessary, stages of publicity.

From two first-look posters to a trailer…

My First IKEA Bookshelf

Last week I bought my first-ever IKEA bookshelf. Here it is in all its glory.

I bought this from the Mumbai online store of IKEA India

Everyone who knows me closely knows that I have been waiting for IKEAto open its Navi Mumbai store ever since the news about it buying acres of land in Turbhe came out. But when it decided to throw open its online store before the physical one, I thought I…

My arguments against the idea of gifting flower bouquets at weddings or any other function. Plus 8 alternative #weddinggiftideas. #weddingseason #floralbouquet #flowers #giftideas #moderngiftideas

This wedding season, I have already been to three different dos associated with marriages. And I made an observation in all three that has bothered me for years now. It is the general, settled tendency of gifting flower bouquets as presentation.

In India specifically, dressed up men and women enter large decorated halls or lawns with a bouquet in hand. They then queue up to meet and greet the…

Best Films I Watched at MAMI 2019

2019 was the best year for me in terms of the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival. I watched a total of 19 films over the six days of the festival which has now given me another treat: I have come down with a bad cold. And I think the culprit is Robert Eggers’s The Lighthouse, the last film I watched, on the day when there was a light drizzle in Mumbai. Slightly soaked hair plus the air-conditioned…

The Definitive Guide to the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival #JioMAMIwithStar2019 #NeverTheSameStory #MAMI2019

Everyone talks about the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival (MFF) but no one talks about how to do it right. There’s a lot of information out there, most of which is pushed out by MAMI itself but it’s all scattered around on social media and other boring places that no one visits anymore like Facebook.

So, as a festival regular since 2015, allow me to provide you with everything that you need to know…

3 Days at the 2019 European Union Film Festival of India

Reddit is one of the sites that I frequently visit these days, even more than Letterboxd and Twitter. And it was through the r/Mumbai community there that I came to know about the India edition of the European Union Film Festival (EUFF), a platform that showcases the best European cinema has to offer to the Indian populace and which is organized in several cities across the country every year as…

List: Dumb Things People Do in a Movie Theatre

I am currently attending the India edition of the European Union Film Festival (EUFF) in Mumbai and it is during one of the film screenings last day that I got the idea for this article. As the title suggests, there are dumb things that people do while they are watching a movie in complete darkness. And here I am going to list them out without much description.

Murmur

Take a photo of a shot in…