Here are our weekly recommendations to push your culture quotient up a notch.
Bye Bye Bhaiya
Hiphop Tamizha, a musical duo based in Chennai released its newest single “Bye bye Bhaiya” on Valentine’s Day. The song is a classic “soup boy” tune – a colloquial Tamil term used to describe a young man going through heartbreak.
Hiphop Tamizha shot to fame with the song “Club le Mabbu le” in 2011, after which the duo released their debut album Hip Hop Tamizhan. They have since composed music for feature films such as Imaikka Nodigal and Mr Local, producing urban hip-hop rhythms for young Tamil folk. They are set to perform at the Singapore Indoor Stadium on Feb 28.
Mrs
Mrs, a remake of the 2021 Malayalam film The Great Indian Kitchen, has made waves on social media recently. Starring Sanya Malhotra, the film traces a newlywed woman’s plight of taking on the domestic drudgery of everyday life – cooking three meals a day, keeping the house spick and span and being a mere object of pleasure for her husband, who unfailingly reminds her of his esteemed profession (gynaecologist) and the fact that he simply has no time to assist her with menial tasks.
The film has divided audiences, with one party, predominantly female, resonating with the film to a tee while the other, predominantly male, touting the film as being a flag bearer of toxic feminism. The film has since been targeted by men’s rights group Save Indian Family Foundation (SIFF), which accuses the makers of prioritising women’s issues and overlooking that of men, children and the elderly.
Mrs was recently released on the OTT platform Zee5.
Maria, just Maria
In this coming-of-age novel by Sandhya Mary, we follow the journey of Maria, a woman who wakes up in a psychiatric hospital with no memory of how she got there. As she searches her mind for answers, readers are taken on a journey that blurs the lines between fantasy and reality, spanning centuries to uncover the truth behind Maria’s current predicament.
She recalls being “just Maria” – a girl born into a Syrian Christian family in Kerala, hanging out with her grandfather who took her on walks around the village and its toddy shops.
Originally written in Malayalam, the novel has been translated into English by Jayasree Kalathil, making Maria’s poignant and humorous journey accessible to a wider audience.
Reema Dudekula
