Don't get too close,
Or you'll be bored
Once you see through it all
It's not cool anymore...
Stay at the periphery
There is a boundary.
Keep 'em all away
That's the better way...
Buckle up, inhale deep
Hide the tears and smile
Hold your head high...
It will be a trudge,
But do not budge...
From the determination.
So walk alone and expect none
'Coz everyone always breaks expectations...
Every sense is gone,
What's the time, what's the day,
Am I waking, am I asleep?
Has the time stopped, or is it me?
There was searing pain,
Like a dagger had pierced my heart.
Then there were tears,
Now the eyes are numb
Resting in the dark pits of agony...
All the pain in the world had to dawn
On simultaneously.
It was all bright outside,
Still my head went dark...
Every wound reopened...
I sit bleeding in suspended animation...
There are times when everything spirals...
We try to hold on desperately...
Even if we know the hopes may be too high...
When the world itself is in shambles,
This was expected, still...
Revisit the pains all over again,
Try not to think, but thoughts won't stop.
Head goes numb and words are chocked.
Sleep would never come before too, but now
Sleep will never come until you fall down.
You don't expect anyone to understand your pain,
Yes there is pain no matter how much you deny,
Suppress, repress, try to forget...
It will always be there and it is what it is.
May be this is the what you have been dreading,
Today or tomorrow it has to come...
What has to happen has to happen...
Everything spirals down,
Endlessly....
And you have to face it all alone...
I am angry and upset. My anger is bubbling like lava and it will flow incessantly if these continue. So should yours. If you deem yourself to be a human. X(
The reason for this is the news about the deaths of 3 under 25 women within a time span of 3 days. The ages of the women, 24, 23 and the latest one 19! Last year another woman of about 25 years was murdered by her husband and family. This is a resurgence of bride killings. Why are these happening? 25 and below is the age one gets an education, searches for a job and so on, not getting "imprisoned, extorted" and murdered. X( When such news come everybody makes a hullabaloo and then forgets. Nothing is done to eradicate this. Dowries still flow under and over the radar, women still get murdered.
If a woman is being "married off" at such a young age, then it is proof that there is something wrong with the parents of those women (and those of the men who teach young boys that they can kill a girl if they want to). Girls are like chicken grown to be butchered and eaten. We are not supposed to have a life of our own. Our lives don't matter. The (fake) "prestige" of our families depend on our marital status, within how many years of marriage we reproduce (have you ever thought that asking/commenting about whether someone has a child or not is equivalent to being nosy into someone's sex life and is a form of sexual harassment?) and how long our marriages last. Our achievements, our education, our financial independence do not matter. Oh well, how will any of these matter when our own lives don't matter?
What the parents whose fragile prestige/social ego depends on the preconceived notions of how a woman's life (of subservience) don't understand is that they are the ones contributing to such social evils in the first place. On what guarantee are you sending a single person not trained in combat to play "Mortal Combat" in real life in a house full of abusers? This is unacceptable. On what basis are you telling a woman that she has to tolerate harassment and violence to "protect" your fragile "social statuses" at the cost of her life? This is not acceptable. You cannot cut off your own daughter's education and then marry her off (to death) no matter whatever it is. Do you idiotic parents really think that a man who is the product of a patriarchal society (whose endorsers you too are) will "protect" your daughter? Your daughter is very well capable of "protecting" herself and thriving if you do not force her into alien households where she faces violence. If the parents of girls cannot let go off their own false prejudices about the abilities of their female offsprings, those girls will ultimately suffer violence and die.Especially if they are young and not financially independent.
You marry a girl off to "protect" her from random people who may attack her, into a household where she is sure to be attacked 24 X 7 X 365. Inside the 4 walls of the house is where she will never be able to cry for help or seek help. God knows how many more women have gone through these stuff during the pandemic. By being idiotic you are being part of a social evil. Why the hell did you not realise your duty as a parent to your own child? If you are living in the 21st century why don't you act responsible towards your child? (Or is it that your love and care are skewed only towards your male child and are you also ultimately hoping to get dowry from his bride?)
Just because a woman has grown up doesn't mean that you can push her into being murdered at the hands of random people. So these incidents are happening time and time again not just because of the entitlement of the man (husband) and his family, but also due to the impudence of the parents of a woman who refuse her the right to life. X( The truth is a woman is not safe in her own home because she is abused mentally and forced to get married and go and die in another house. She is not safe in the other household because they are violent and abusive. And she has no money of her own or means to survive, so she cannot leave but her only option is to die or get murdered and the hands of abusers. X( X( X(
I want to ask a major question. All these parents sit and cry after the girl is dead. It was your fault in the first place that you were foolish, selfish and irrational to
1) marry off a your daughter at a young age
2) break her education
3) and destroy her chances of getting a well paid employment which could have helped her take care of herself
It is your fault that you imprisoned her, traded her off and then she was butchered. You are failures as parents. You don't even have the right to call yourselves parents and siblings. You must be prudent enough to read the data and understand that many women are suffering from domestic violence. (That won't happen if you are imprisoned by your stupid beliefs and egos. X( X( X( )
a) To young women who may be forced into marriages you don't like - have the courage to fight. If your own family abuses you into abusive relations/marriage, file a case. No family is worth having if they do not respect your life in the first place.
b) To governments/authorities/policy makers establish help and support systems. If the parents of a student are forcing her to get married and break her education provide her support/safety and means to continue her education. Even if she is not a brilliant student who may not be good at studies, teach her a vocation so that she can find an employment and be financially independent.
c) Again to young women - always get an employment no matter even if it is low paid. It is very important to be financially independent and you must be able to walk/run away freely and go to a safe place even if your own parents ditch you for running away from a violent marriage/in law household. Your life is more important than anything else in this world. A man, marriage or maternity is not the most important thing in your life. YOUR LIFE IS.
This is a serious issue which needs immediate attention. Young (and old) women cannot thrown to murder like this. If a woman is getting killed in the name of dowry there is fault on the sides of both the parents of the bride and the husband and the family. Dowry is extortion. If parents of a woman are so much interested in getting extorted they should just give way their money to random strangers. Why bring their daughter into it and kill her? X( X( X(
PS: I have not written anything about how a man's entitlement due to his gender has a role to play in all these. Bride killing is murder. It is a crime. And anyone who contributes to the death of a human being is a criminal. How many more women's lives will it take to solve it? X( X( X(
This was motivated and inspired by a valentine's day card shared by ICECUBE and the song "Hum mile ya na mile". Here is my post valentine's day musing.
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A Neutrino Love Story
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I love a love with a mass squared difference
For though we start together we travel differently
Yet we will meet sometime, somewhere
In time, past the distances
Then reminisce, be us and move on...
To meet as someone else again...
Still moving on, hoping to meet yet again.
There is love in the anticipation,
The longing in the journey,
Through emptiness or matter
That may resonate us or not.
What is love without a mass squared difference?
Without ups and downs, sines and cosines,
The masses and the mixing,
How much of you in me and me in you;
The melody of patterns
Where we meet and retreat...
Until we meet someone
Who tells our story
In light and delight...
What is my love for you
Without the tiny difference?
For we may have no story
Without the mass square difference!
Yours truly,
m_i
There are still some more hours since 2020 will be officially be over, but what an year it has been! Obviously it has been a very unprecedented year with completely unexpected turn of events. For many across the globe it was a sad and very hard year and let us acknowledge that. For those of us who mananged to survive this year let us take some moment to appreciate this and be thankful. There are a lot of things which I want to write but there are too many that I don't think I will be able to write all of them. So I will write how I personally feel about this year and what this year taught me.
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An year ago, I was in Chennai trying to wind up my 2nd PDF preparing to travel to Europe for my 3rd. I had 15 days in Chennai before I went home for a 9 day break before travelling - a break which involved a lot of packing and literally no time to enjoy a much needed vacation at home. Who knew that I would be at home away from home for most part of this year!! Who knew when I was in the airports what I wouldn't be seeing an airport after January! I rememeber coming across a news about covid in Wuhan before my journey and some passenger probably comforting a tense family member on the phone saying something about droplet infection, during the jouorney. Now that I think about it January 2020 seems to be from some other time and not a part of 2020.
After moving into the new apartment in early February I remember watching the news on youtube about how Wuhan was under lockdown. Still covid-19 was something which was happening far far away (well as humans we tend to conveniently forget that modern world is (or should I write "was") a well connected place). It was when cases went up in Daegu that I was startled a bit since I had just attended a conference there in 2019. Probably humans become alert to things or tend to follow things which happen in places which we know or have been to. Then I was watching all the WHO press meets every evening and became a Mike Ryan fan in the process. Then one day came when covid-19 was declared as a pandemic and I remember watching the WHO briefing from my office. No there was no lockdown here till then.
(Now that I think about those short time period when I used to go to office everyday, I remember how we used to go for lunch everyday (i.e, days when I didn't have to cook - who ever thought that I would become a make-my-own-take-a-tiffin-box kind of person ever) and the one day there was snow and I felt like a small child - well it was my first and probably only snow till now. Snow I miss you.)
Then there was this dilemma of whether to wear a mask or not. Although mmy first impresions when WHO said not to wear a mask my gut feeling was "why are they saying it so", I thought they knew better than me. And there was this cultural dilemma in the beginning of the pandemic - "Would people think that you are infected if you wear a mask? Would people think that you are a rude person who detest other humans if you wear a mask?" Thankfully later on officially it was declared that everyone should wear a mask and that did away with the cultural awkwardness of wearing a mask in public.
The week before the first lockdown happened I went shopping and couldn't find anything. Funnily I bought a dust bin! And bought egg pasta - nobody seems to buy it - but it is tasty actually! Then came lockdown. And the craving for color pencils. For a not so artistic person, how I missed my color pencils is amazing. So much to the point that I started having dreams in which Faber Castell sketch pens and colour pencils where I could never reach them. The craving aggrevated when I during one of my video calls to home saw the sketch pens I had left there. Obviously in the end I googled and found out an art supply store and went as early as 9 am to the store to find it closed then went back another time to get sketch pens and colour penicils and a drawing book! That made me realise how the "not so necessary" stuff are actually and inevitable for us. In fact 2020 is the year which reminded us that there are things which we need beyond survival - something which we always used to take for granted in a "normal world" before covid-19.
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2020 in every way is the year which made us (atleast me) revisit and appreciate a lot of things which we in our busy lives were taking for granted. This will sound cliche, still:
i) Travel: I was literally city hopping almost every month in 2019, wishing that I didn't have to travel so much. But 2020 reminded me that I like travelling though I have complained about having to travel too often in 2019. This also made me realise something - in 2019 I had attended a conference which was not exactly an academic conference. In that conference I met a girl for whom coming to that conference was a big deal even though it was not exactly an academic one. In 2020 I appreciate why it was a great thing for her - it is not just about attending a conference - it is also about being able to get out of your home, travelling, meeting new people and experiencing things. Someething which I had also done in my life earlier but had forgotten. 2020 reminded me of that. How I miss airports! How the first time during lockdown I braved getting into a tram to go and get notebooks and other things from my office. How restarting the use of public transport felt like learning how to walk or cycle. How refreshing it is to get on a train or bus and go somewhere.
ii) Going to a restaurant: As a not so young urban millenial, going out for a dinner in a restaurant was something which I had never thought would become a big deal. When I was in Chennai it was like whenever I wanted to eat ghee roast I could go to A2B or Sangeetha. That one time when I found an Indian restaurant in my new city and had dosa before lockdown was a very happy day for me. May be it was because I am in a new country that not being able to go and eat in a restaurant didn't feel that bad - but after being devoid of any form of restaurant eating I really understand that I had taken it for granted. Also how much I crave for a ghee roast from A2B or Sangeetha. (Would I ever be able to go back to Chennai? Even if I went would I be able to eat dosa like I used to?)
iii) Shopping: 2020 is definitely the year which taught me how to shop less. This was the year in which the majority of shopping I did was only grocery. This is a stark contrast to all the previous independent adult years of my life where I would shop something or the other whether I needed it or not. That one time when I went to a mall after so long was exciting (another thing I had taken for granted). (Ofcourse now I cannot trial clothes like I used to and have to look at exact sizes and buy.) Especially now a days malls are often closed in view of health concerns. 2020 taught me that living minimally is possible. It also taught me that sometimes we need to buy stuff which seem "totally unnecessary" to some people - like cosmetics, jewellery and colour pencils/art stuff but are absolutely necessary for the well being of our minds.
iv) Getting ready/putting makeup: This is one thing which we often curse having to do when we are late to go somwhere and have been taking for granted (to the extend that in the past I used to think that it would be nice not to have to "get ready"). It is when I didn't have to go anywhere and didn't have to do it daily that I realised how much I like the simple daily acts of combing the hair, putting an eyeliner or putting a lipbalm, searching for a matching earring etc and how much they matter.
Now this brings me to the point where I wonder - "what is the basis of out happiness"? Is it just being able to travel, eat in a restaurant or shop and post pictures on instagram or facebook or is it something more else? Surely this year most of us were confined to the four walls of our homes (i,e if we belong to an economic class who can afford a home), working from there (again i.e if were are lucky enough to have one), confined in some sense, ripped of the usual things which we think are the bases of our happiness. This is the year which taught us never to take anything in life for granted (literally "Kal ho na ho") and find happiness in the smallest of moments and in the minutest of things which we do everyday - be it growing a plant from a seed or being able to find a small box of colour pencil or just taking a tram to go somewhere. And to apprecitate the privilage we may have. Not everybody was happy to sit at home. Not everybody was safe in their homes. Not everybody was privilaged to afford an internet connection to take online classes.
This post will not be complete without mentioning the following.
While those in post graduation and above might have managed to get online classes, the education of a majority of students has suffered this year. As much as there were webinars and talks for the internet privilaged people, the classes of small children, their daily meal program etc were disrupted. The academic year of 2020 is so-so for many. This will have to be addressed in a major way in the coming days - i.e, how are we going to keep education free and compulsary for the poorest of poor children who may not even have an ordinary phone or tv? Surely nothing can substitute children going to school. But in situations where children cannot go to school do we leave a generation to be uneducated and deprived of the right to education or are we going to address this and make internet and technology accessible to all? This may be a challenge but nevertheless doable. If 2020 has taught us or reminded us of anything that is how adaptable humans are. When we couldn't meet IRL, we switched to online platforms, those who could work from home worked from home. So there is an answer to this question and we should find it and implement it as soon as possible.
Same goes for a lot of social things - since we were concentrated on dealing with the pandemic, a lot of social issues which we would have addressed otherwise have gone unattended. Again the pandemic should not be an excuse to go back four steps into dark ages and overethrow every socially forward things which we have achieved in the past years. Once data comes wee will get to know what kind of beastly things 2020 had as a result of the pandemic. So we need to be aware.
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A word about technology and adaptability - As we all know we adapted our work methods. "Zoom" became a norm and probably has made us the real meaning of the word! For people like me in academia, attending conferences which we wouldn't otherwise happened. More than anything I will say that this is the year we used our laptop webcams (yes this is also the year when we might actually have appreciated this camera more than ever! Come to think of it till 2019 every other phone company was trying to make more and more powerful phone cameras - sometimes front cameras more powerful than the back ones so as to satisfy our selfie taking selves. This year as a matter of fact seeing a phone ad felt so weird. It was as if pre-2020, every other electronic company had forgotten that people would still need laptops and the larger 2D screens with usual keyboards and mouses but suddenly we were using ouor laptops more than ever. May be in the coming years people will try and make the laptops even fancier!
Social mediawise I would say that this is the year where our narcissistic pleasure seeking migrated from the number of likes and loves on FB to the number of views and likes on youtube. In a way this was an intensely academic year for those who could afford internet. We engaged in a lot of science outreach activities. The thing is this was all possible even before the pandemic - but with the lockdowns and so on everybody's attention was captured and youtube and online platforms were put to a good amount of use by academia to conduct public science seminars online. So much so that someone even made a meme with a graph of number of lock down vs number of webinars. The word "webinar" became common and I am sure it will be incorporated into the dictionaries at some point. But as time elapsed the number of webinars became overwhelming and at some point the number got reduced probably people also realised that there were a lot of webinars going on simultaneoulsy.
How can I not mention online "Kumbidi"? :D I was an online kumbidi this year. At some point of time I attended two different meetings with two different headsets in each ear! I also gave talks in webinars! As much as I love science outreach giving a public talk is much much harder than talking to an audience who works in your own subject! Before every webinar I used to panic "why did I promise to give this talk" but giving those talks were also a nice experience since it involved a lot of revision (and also those were the occassions when I really had to get ready, put on makeup or comb my hair to be in front of a camera). At the end of 2020, I wish just for the sake of not having to attend too many meetings online, the pandemic would end. As much as it is convenient to connect to people with the help of technology, this is becoming tedious. I may end up forgetting that we live in 3D and not 2D if this continues. Or else tech companies may now invest in fancifying laptops and popularize holographic imaging or something!
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Resilience: Above everything else what 2020 reminded me is the resilience of humans as a species. As a matter of fact I am not the only person to notice this. There were times when I used to wonder how people had recovered from the horrors of wars and other calamities over the centuries. The only answer I can find now is resilience. Whether we are aware or not our species is very resilient. It is not like this comes all of a sudden as if a switch has turned on and suddenly everyone is strong. But it is more like d/dx, step by step, minute things adding upto larger things - we learn to wash hands, keep distance, wear masks and we move on. We search of solutions, it builds up. One year ago we couoldn't even imagine having sanitiser dispensers in shops. One year later it is common everywhere. the human world adapted to certain things. May be our adaptability is a part of human resilience. And as a human being I appreciate it more than ever.
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PS:
1) 2020 was the 20th year since I was in 10th standard. Had someone told me that 20 years later I would see a pandemic I would not have believed! I would not have believed in 2019 that 2020 would be a pandemic year! Personally I was thinking that some climate/weather calamity would be occuring in near future. But who knew a pandemic was lurking around the corner!
2) Historic: 2020 has been historic in many respects. The world as a whole witnessed a lot of historic things apart from the pandemic. It is as if humanity was waiting to be stirred again and the pandemic was a catalyst.
3) The world will never be the same again for sure. But that is how it has always been. There was always something or the other in the course of human history that we have overcome as a collective and moved forward.
4) In a non-pandemic world, we would have seen Met Gala with the theme "About Time: Fashion and Duration" (may be masks would become an integral part of fashion someday) and the Olympics.
5) There were some silver linings in 2020. Good female leaders, 4 female nobel laureates, "Queen's Gambit"...
6) Hand sanitisers became popular. There was a time when an auto driver in Chennai asked me what was smelling so good when I had used a Lifebouoy hand sanitiser and I explained to him waht a sanitiser was. I was reminded of this at the beginning off the pandemic.
7) Character building: This year definitely did test everthing. In a way it was an year of character building step by step, day by day...
8) Hope: Hope is what leads us forward. There is always the hope for a better tomorrow. While hoping that the tomorrow will be a bit better let us not forget the realities and root our hopes in them. Along with hope let us be prudent and not forget the lessons 2020 taught us.
9) Remarkable: As much difficult it might have been, 2020 was a remarkable year. Who would have thought that I, a normal human being would experience such a thing in my mundane lifetime!
10) The otherwise unthinkable achievement of 2020: Watching 23 seasons of Pokemon something I would never have done in a "normal" year!
11) Gratitude: To all those who kept the world going. To all those who took care of others - medical staff, doctors, nurses, essential workers... Many many thanks to you all. <3
If I have to define this series in two words I will say "freaking brillinat". There are many many many things that have been said and written about this mini-series on Netflix, you can google them or find on youtube. Before I delve much deeper let me say this - a person asked me what is there in this series to like except chess? As a person who doesn't know anything about chess all I can say is that it is not just chess which makes this series brilliant. Again even though I am not a movie critic or expert, as a lay person who watches a lot of movies I can say for sure that this is an extremely well made show - well written, well shot, well edited, well acted, well choreographed, with an excellent background score. Oh and the makeup - just how cleverly the colour of Beth's lipsticks indicated her maturity and the deepest shade was a nod to her adoptive mother! Does anyone need any more proof for the thought process and detailed effort that has gone into this show? So if you are someone who is thinking that there is nothing interesting in this show except chess or if you are a person who doesn't know anything about the game watch it anyway because if you don't you will be missing out on a cinematic marvel. There are moments in this series when I wished to watch it on big screen just because that scene was giving me goosebumps. After all that you can check out those articles/videos which explain how camera angles were used to create drama - how the framing matters etc.
I am not going to explain all these. But what I felt as a viewer watching this series. Spoiler alert - don't read further if you haven't watched the series yet.
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To be honest for over sometime I have been seeing the thumbnail and wondering about whether to click it or not. I don't remember if I watched the trailer or not, in any case I didn't think it was interesting enough. Then at some point I think I saw some review which said it is based on a book so I cheked and found that the show is based on a book by a male author. So I was skeptical again - how can a story about a woman written by a man be good? Would it be authentic? (I still have no answer for this.) I haven't read the book either so I don't know if the book is really good too. But because I had finished watching all the thousand something episodes of Pokemon and clicked the thumbnail anyway thinking that if I don't like it I can always close it and watch something else. What I felt in the next 10-15 minutes is inexplicable. I was spell bound - had been itching since the first episode to tell how well written this is - but controlled it till the last episode.
How Beth discovers the basemenet and what is there, how she asks to know what that game is and how she deliberately bangs the eraser to make it known to Mr.Shaibel that she is down there and will not be satisfied unless he teaches her the game. Some of these scenes (like many more to come in the series) have no dialouges in it - but the intend is conveyed beautifully, executed beautifully. So beautifully that it makes you aware of how well written it is. There is a beauty to watching movies or series that are well written - the beauty being that it rivets you to the screen, makes it too difficult to take your eyes off the screen for even a moment.
And then there is the addiction. It really was shocking for me to see that orphanages in that era used to give tranquilisers to children until it was banned by law. There is a lot happening in between how Jolene helps Beth cope with the life in the orphanage, how Beth's addiction starts and so on - just watch it. The child Beth's addiction is particularly shocking there is a scene which aptly portrays how an ingenious child would solve the problem of getting to the thing she wants - here the banned tranquiliser and how an addict would behave. Here is a small girl who does something shockingly unnatural eating tranquilsers like candy or cake. Usually smalle girls do shockingly unnatural things only in horror movies. Here in a slice of life situation it creates more impact and leaves you wondering if small children can get addicted, then I rembeered Robert Downey Jr. Isla Johnston as young Beth Harmon is superb - at some point I even wondered how this series would look if she had played the character all throughout. :) (But ofcourse then this series would have had to be made over the years to match the character's age.)
There are so many other things each essay worthy, but the viewer has to experience that for themselves. Now let us come to the part where she starts playing chess and her first tournament. Like I said even though I don't play the game, I could completely relate to what Beth was going through. In fact the main reason why I love this series so much is because Beth playing chess reminded me of my quizzing days. Infact if you happened to have participated in any competition this series is sure to remind you of all those experiences. While Beth Harmon had very tough life circumstances to deal with her career in chess is something which many of us can relate to.
What I struck me are the following:
1) Beth doesn't win games just by her natural talent or her addiction. She practises her games, be in her mind visualizing it on the celing or on the board. She actively puruses reading as much about it as possible. There is a whole lot of earnest effort and practice going on which may or may not be shown on the screen. If not shown we are supposed to understand it. Now if we take chess out of it and put anything else there, it is the same. Anybody who has ever pursued something seriously will understand it - how actively and deeply we go for it, practise for it and work hard for it before we win it all.
2) Beth's gender - Beth's gender has a lot to do with how she is perceived as a player. In the show once it becomes clear to everyone that she is an excellent player, majority of people stop brooding over her gender and looks at her game. (I am not the only person who seems to have noticied this about the series.) And that is a good thing because when you are judged solely on the basis of your talent, one can let go of the burden of dealing with the extra hurdles and judgements (which usually a woman has to deal with after a certain age) and push their boundaries to seek excellence in what they do.
Everytime her gender is made a fuss about she is unhappy because instead of directly accepting the fact that she is very good at what she does people seems to be surprised and saying "for a girl you are good". Trust me that is very annoying. When Borgov offeres her a draw and when the commentator makes a statement saying that she should accept it, it implies the doubt over her ability only because she is a woman, and a prejudice that she cannot do better because she is a woman and should be content with what she could achieve. But ofcourse Beth pushed the envelope further. Why go for a tie when you can win?
What I felt that it was easier for Beth to win as a child or a not-so-stylish teenager than to win as a super-stylish woman she evolves into. The show puts the question straight in one episode when a journalist asks her "What do you have to say about being called too stylish to be taken as a serious player?" Any woman who has ever been stylish and was judged about her abilities will surely understand this. Beth being so feminine and stylish in a male dominated sport is hard to miss. Women in Physics (and other STEM), does the situation sound similar to you? :) But Beth being Beth, ultimately makes people shut their mouth knowingly or unknowingly becasue she is undeniably good.
While in real life chess and many other things like STEM have a lot of prejudices and don't always treat women equally and puts unnecessary self doubts into the minds of young women by means of derogatory comments it was an assuring reminder to see a female character who was extremely good at what she does. Not just that she went for what she wanted in life no matter what - contrasted probably by her adoptive mother - how she didn't puruse her piano career though nothing was preventing her from doing so after a ceretain period of time.
3) Which brings me to this point - Beth's defeats. I was so relieved when Beth didn't win everything she played. Because that would have looked so unnatural and artificial. In any competitive field a strong opponent/rival (as they say in animes) is bound to show up. Which is good. How on Earth is somebody supposed to improve without tough opponents? (This realisation was also the effect of all those Pokemon episodes where Ash always has someone stronger and better to face and does not always win.) Beth goes into a downward spiral after her second defeat to Borgov. What I felt was that she completely know that it was her fault. The defeats we suffer because of our own carelessness are the hardest to get out of. It really pains when we know that it was nobody else's fault but our own - we didn't put that extra effort, took things for granted and were careless. That can lead to all kinds of disastrous consequences. All we need to do is to pick ourselves up and move forward and mend the mistakes for us. That's what she does ultimately. What makes the ending of this series so brilliant is that she becomes aware of that and mends that mistake. Then plays for herself, wins it for herself.
There are many many other beautiful things about this series. Like the following:
1) Jolene's character - Jolene's reappearance is when I felt relieved. Jolene is a gem of a character. Like some internet user said I would like to know what her life story is. That is definitely worth making another series. :) Moses Ingram's acting is so beautiful and assuring. The dialogues she has with Beth are gems too. (Including the one where she says "You should not thave bought the house or all those dresses." ;) ) To really appreciate this character watch the series.
2) Mr. Shaibel - Like another internet user wrote, Mr. Shaibel in the basement could have been a creep. But he wasn't. And that made the whole difference in the story. I will not say anything more, the basement scenes are some of the best in the series.
3) Beth's Gibson toast to Alma Wheatly.
4) You have seen Harry Beltik somewhere before. Haven't you? :)
5) Beth's crush on Townes in the Kentucky tournament.
6) Beth stealing chess magazines from the drug store. Do look for these scenes in the series.
7) Beth's game against Girev and how she keeps on asking what after that and how he keeps saying "I don't understand".
8) How Beth gets backs all her money from Benny at speed chess.
9) How all her friends call her from Benny's apartment.
10) The last scene of the series - I am crying just thinking of that scene.
Two other things I realised aftere watching the series is how sharp and crisp the editing and how good the background score are. The length of the series is perfect. An episode more or less might not have done justice to this. Do read about the cinematic techniques used for this seires. They are mind blowing. Makes you want to do something good like that. In otherwords I will say this is the "Titanic" of Netflix series. Ofcourse the entire cast has acted so well that I am not mentioning it separately. Anya Taylor-Joy's acting is a joy to watch.
In any case just watch it. While the real world may be still unkind to women in many fields, God it felt so good to see a female character who goes out and gets what she wants and excels in it. So, chess is not the only thing to like about this series. (Afterall we all love "Chak De India!" eventhough we are not all hockey players or enthusiasts. Same goes for all sports movies - we don't love sports movies just because we may be able to play the sport or understand the rules of the sport. There is a strong human emotion which relates to pursuing something, discovering the joy of doing it, failing at it, picking up the pieces, correcting the mistakes and winning at it.)
If you look carefully enough, you will realise why this is a great series. Not just technically but also as something which appeals to humans as such.
PS: Some math easter eggs:
1) There is a scene where Beth answers what a binomial is. Chess has two players.
2) Alice Harmon, Beth's birth mother was a mathematician whose PhD thesis was named "Monomial Representations and Symmetric Presentations". I am just wondering if this has anything to do with permutations and chess. Anybody who might know this please clarify.
