God Is A Gamer - Ravi Subramanian

GOD IS A GAMER – RAVI SUBRAMANIAN

Okay..here we go…God Is a Gamer by Ravi Subramanian. So..I finally finished this bitcoin thriller from the master author of financial thrillers. This is the first book I preordered on Flipkart and still I don’t know why I did so. May be because I had read The Bankster by the same author and liked it.

God Is A Gamer, again is set against the backdrop of an international bank. The story is spread across India and US. A thriller by the tagline itself, the author introduces us against all those characters who can be the ultimate culprit. A murder followed by its investigation, series of other events linked to the murder taking place in India and US simultaneously, FBI and CBI agents and the unavoidable factor, the bank – New York International Bank.

The suspense of the story is good, well packed, not leaving any clues for the readers till the final chapter. The author has to appreciated for his knowledge and research he had done in bitcoins – the virtual currency which can be the future. I feel the story cannot be called a bitcoin thriller just for the fact that its mentioned somewhere along the storyline. The story would be the same more or less even if the bitcoins were replaced by normal currency.

To sum up, Ravi Subramanian’s latest outing with bitcoins, God Is A Gamer falls short of my expectations. Its not a bad book either. A book that falls in th same genre of all those previous books by the author, its indeed a ravi Subramanian thriller. I sincerely wish Mr. Ravi Subramanian leaves his comfort zone and start exploring other backgrounds other than banks to come up with great thrillers.

My rating : 2.5/5

HER - A Spike Jonze Love Story

Well, this is the first time I am writing about something other than a book. This film was there in my harddisk for the last couple of months but I managed to watch it last week only. Now, by the time I am writing this, I had already watched it twice and can watch it n number of times without getting bored.

Her, the film written and directed by Spike Jonze had Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams and Scarlett Johansson in lead and was released in the year 2013. It went on to win critical acclaim and Spike Jonze won the Best Original Screenplay award at the 86th Academy Awards.

As I don't want to be an IMDb or Wikipedia, I am not going to elaborate on the story or its technical side. I just watched the film without even pausing for a single moment and had a feeling of watching a good movie after it was done. As far as I am concerned, a film is good if the viewer can carry something from the movie in his heart at least for a couple of days – be it the story, a character or even a scene or dialogue. So Her is so good as Theodore and Samantha are still there in my mind, not willing to leave my thought process at least for now.

Theodore and Samantha are the lovers of the future. This tech savvy world without doubt will turn out into a place where we humans don’t feel for other humans; instead we depend on technology to be our partners – in work, love and life. As we are going through an era where we smile more at our smartphone screens than at any of our fellow beings, falling in love with someone who don’t actually exist or rather exist in a virtual world created by ourselves is not going to surprise anyone.

Whether you fall in love with a real person or an OS, once you are in love, the feelings are the same. We feel the magic in our hearts when we spend time together, we miss each other when we are apart, we care for each other, we dream together and work together to make that dreams come true, we share everything – our secrets, fears, likes, dislikes we argue, fight and say sorry and to some extend we even feel jealous and insecure when the person we love spends time with someone else, maybe a friend or colleague. Human feelings remain the same no matter how much advancements we make in the fields of science and technology.

To be personal, Theodore reminded me of myself which is one of the reasons why I can write any number of pages about this movie and the character himself. Samantha is so caring and loving that any guy will love to have a girl like her by his side. But her heart as she said is not a box to be filled with love, it expands the more you love. By letting a third person walk into your life and become a close friend, a person can still have the same feelings for his/her lover. At the same time, being committed in a relationship, we have to make choices – either we are theirs or not. The scene where Samantha confesses her conversation with eight thousand three hundred and sixteen others while talking to Theodore and her relationship with six hundred forty one of them is really heart touching. I guess I got the numbers right. Even if it’s wrong, it’s ok.

To sum up, Her is a fantastic love story of the future which is a must see film for everyone who love romantic tales. The film was released last year and the critics and viewers had already given their verdict. If u have missed this wonderful film, make sure you watch it soon.