In bliss

SMASH!

Frown all you want, but I reckon there is something weirdly blissful about smashing stuff! So much so, I do not mind going on record to say that the sound of shattering glass is oddly therapeutic to me. Before you take me as a loony on the run, I ask you to download Smash Hit on your mobile phone.

This simple game involves you throwing balls at glasses of different forms, shapes, and sizes – scoring and breaking barriers or various hazards – while you must move forward at varying speeds as set by game, through surreal environments.

Even though it is not a new game, I revisit it time and again, like I did last week. After reinstalling and playing it again, I realised that the games which I hold dearest are the ones which are the simplest and the most straightforward, such as this one.  

With a range of soundtracks playing on the background and the joy of smashing different glass objects, Smash Hit is not just fun, but also strangely satisfying in a way. 

EYES GLUED TO NETFLIX

On a fateful day in 1989, 43 women around the world gave birth even though none of them showed any signs of pregnancy before labour. And an eccentric billionaire adopted a number of the infants. These kids were not ordinary; they were gifted with different superpowers. And bringing them together under one roof, their most unusual 'father' trained them to form an odd superheroes'-team and a funnily awkward dysfunctional family.

So surreal is the premise of the story that I found no reason why I should not delve into it more. And so I delved – 'binge-watched' being the more appropriate expression – taking in all 10 episodes of The Umbrella Academy's season one in one day.  

A family reuniting after the death of the father... a mysterious mom... superhuman siblings haunted by bitter childhood memories... threat of an upcoming apocalypse... time travel – I got hooked to this recently released series and simply couldn't log out of Netflix for the day!

A QUICK READ

With endless consumption of apps, flicks, social media and what not, many of us seem to have almost given up on the good old habit of reading. To not let this habit go rusty, I turned to Siddhartha last week, which is one of the most iconic works of the Nobel laureate, Hermann Hesse.

The short novel is just around 150 pages. And hence, even though I am a slow reader and this book is written in a simple style, I completed it in a couple of days.

The story follows the spiritual journey of a man named Siddhartha who lived in the time of Buddha.

I found this aspect really interesting! Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, is also known as Siddhartha; but the protagonist of this novel, bearing the same name, is yet another person on a spiritual journey of his own. In fact, at one point the two actually meet and have a conversation!

If not for anything else, Siddhartha is a fantastic read just for that bit: how the writer introduces Buddha, how the fictional character gets to know about the historical figure, and how they interact.

Photo: Collected