Magic Moments

It's again that time of the year. April & the A To Z Blogging Challenge. And as usual the blogging universe is buzzing with excitement and anticipation. And of course, how can I forget, nervous breakdowns too! Yes, conjuring up 26 posts for each English alphabet along with a theme can be a daunting task. The A to Z Challenge is an international blogging challenge wherein the bloggers post everyday of April, except on Sundays. Each post should have a title starting with the English alphabet of that day. Having a theme is better as the anticipation of the next post is kept alive in the readers. It's like a month long blogging marathon (a term I picked up from Preeti Shenoy's blog) , with Sundays off! So today is the day, we bloggers reveal our chosen theme for this challenge. I had first participated in the A To Z Challenge in 2015 with the theme 'Characters from the stories I have loved' . I had successfully completed it, without giving up or ...

Santiago is the lead character in Paulo Coelho’s ‘The Alchemist’ . He becomes a shepherd against his father’s will, who wanted him to become a priest in the local church. When he thinks there’s nothing left to learn from the sheep, he sells them even though he’s very attached to each one of them, and embarks on a journey to live his dreams. He becomes a treasure hunter ready to cross the vast Sahara desert for his treasure. His journey helps him achieve spiritual, emotional and psychological maturity.  What I learnt from his journey to follow his dream and his search for treasure is that, we don’t tend to meet people by accident. They are meant to cross our path for a reason. He meets Melchizedek, who claims to be the King of Salem, tells Santiago about the soul of the world and insists him to follow his dream. He also gives him two magical stones, Urim and Thummim, which represent “yes” and “no”, to help guide whenever he’s confused. Without this encounter, the journey...

   Mozzie, aka Mozz is the closest friend and most trusted confidante of Neal Caffrey in the TV series ‘White Collar’. Together they used to carry out the world famous con and live in the luxuries that the heists provided. But after Neal works under FBI agent Peter Burke of the White Collar department, with a tracking device secured to his ankle, they have no choice but to live descent lives. They keep their skills alive by helping the FBI solve tough and confusing cases. Mozzie is such a darling. He’s just so cute with his bald head, short height and weird sense of humor. He is a voracious reader. He reads it all- classical and modern literature, mystery novels especially by A.B.Tattersol, history of art, and anything he can get his hands on. He always has a perfect quote at the back of his mind, fitting for every situation they are in. I love those quotes. It not only provides the characters with the much required inspiration but also moves us audience. His f...

“I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.”   Gus Waters is the protagonist of one of the most loved novels, ‘The Fault in our Stars’ by John Green. I had read and reviewed the book first. Then when the movie was released I watched and loved the characters once again. This one’s a timeless modern tale, tragic yet realistic, it intentionally won’t make you cry, still you’d find yourself crying towards the end. Read my words here . Following are my favorite quotes by Augustus Waters. “Oh, I wouldn't mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.” “Maybe ...

Watching ‘The Imitation Game’ starring Bennedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing, a mathematician and computer scientist, was a phenomenal experience. I really enjoy stories on secret missions and conspiracy theories. This one’s is on a true story- a declassified government secret that helped the Allied Nations defeat Germany in the World War II. During the Second World War, Alan Turing and a few others were chosen from the whole country of Britain, to work on deciphering encrypted German messages from the radio signals. The Germans used a machine called Enigma to send their secret signals to the U boats in war. To a person not familiar with the everyday changing settings of the machine, the signals sounded gibberish. It was considered almost unbreakable, and this team at Britain’s code breaking centre at Bletchley Park labored every day to work through each of its millions of possible settings and decode at least one message. Alan Turing was the first to think of, design, and...

I love stories. I need stories to survive, to be sane. Stories that offer a short vacation from the real world. Stories that help the escapist in me. I always carry my daily dose of fiction and nonfiction with me- movies, novels, ebooks, newspaper, blogs, and magazines. Any one of these would make my day complete. So with the several books that I have read and the hundred or so movies that I have watched, I have come across numerous characters. I have made acquaintances with some, and fallen deeply for a few. Some have enthralled me to no end and some have frustrated and disgusted me in equal measure. So here’s to those characters I don’t ever want to forget- the protagonists, leads, wallflowers, side-kicks, under dogs and doormats that I have cherished with all my heart. Revealing the theme with the sound of bells, drums and cymbals reverberating in the background. J ‘CHARACTERS’ So throughout the month of April I’m going to blog about the characters that have made an ...