Bigg Boss 19: Daily Discussion Thread - 3rd Oct 2025
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Bigg Boss 19 - Daily Discussion Topic - 4th Oct 2025 - WKV
How saiyara became hit
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Is 2025 Jahnvi Kapoor's make or break year?
Janhvi -Tiger in Lag Jaa Gale
Veteran Actress Sandhya Shantaram Passes Away
A Five-Year-Old Teaches a Lesson in Grace by Leslie Kendall Dye, from the New York Times
On the night the author loses patience with her mother and her dementia, a granddaughter’s love unites them all.
It’s eight o’clock on a cold spring night. Our apartment has been hit by a cyclone—the handiwork of a young, energetic child. Every bit of furniture is draped with paper chains, scissors and Scotch tape, modeling clay, piles of acorns, and party favors.
I’m so tired tonight. I’ve been on crutches for seven weeks, recovering from hip surgery, and I’m trying fruitlessly to clean up.
The phone rings—for the sixth time in less than an hour. We know who it is.
When my mother was 68, a hemorrhagic stroke claimed her brain, but not her life. She awoke from a coma severely damaged; the bleed instantly razed the landscape of her mind. Dementia soon built a Gothic fun house of distortions where coherent architecture had once stood. She has been manacled inside for a decade, with little to do but experience psychic distress.
She is dogged by paranoia—she thinks she has been kicked out of her assisted living facility (not true), she thinks her daughters have not visited in months (it has been a few days), she thinks that her friend Jimmy never wants to see her again (he calls and visits weekly).
Each time she calls, I play a game with myself called “How Good a Person Can I Be?” I’ve won five rounds of the game tonight; I am due for a fall.
She has no idea that she has repeated the things she is about to say a million times today and a million times yesterday. She has no idea that I had surgery, nor can she recall her own granddaughter’s name. She is unaware of most of the past, and she drifts in the present. She is lonely.
I hurl my anger at the easiest target: my mother, the very victim of this chance horror.
“MOM!” I yell. “YOU ARE NOT BEING REMOVED FROM YOUR HOME! AND WE VISITED TWO DAYS AGO!” (Maybe it was four days, but she won’t remember anyway.) “Mom, you have to believe me, and if you don’t, I cannot talk anymore! Everything is fine!”
Silence. Then:
“I was only calling to say hi.”
I feel the dagger of passive aggression, which is the only working weapon in her mental arsenal. My mother continues, having already forgotten that I yelled. (Sometimes she does remember; tonight I luck out.)
“But I’m also frantic about something; do you have a minute?”
“No, Mom, I don’t. I can’t again with this!”
“Why are you yelling?”
I’m yelling because you aren’t my mother; you are a poorly rendered stand-in who cannot help me care for my child, or be a grandmother, or even remember to ask me about my day. I’m yelling because I have talked you off this ledge five times tonight, and I’m yelling because you remind me of everything I fear: aging, sickness, fragility, bad luck, loss, impermanence… You name it—if it’s scary, you remind me of it!
I flop on the couch, aware of all my daughter is witnessing. She hears me reprimand my mother, lose my patience, announce that someone I love is an imposition. I have not only failed at being a Good Person; I have failed at being a Good Example to My Daughter.
I stew on the couch, defeated.
“Can I talk to Grandma Ellie?”
My five-year-old reaches for the phone.
Wordlessly, I hand it over.
“Hi, Grandma!”
I hear my mother exclaim through the receiver.
“Sweetheart! How are you? Did you go to school today?”
What witchcraft is this? All she said was “Hi, Grandma,” and my mother sounds like a person fully alert to the heartbeat of a normal day.
“Yes, Grandma, and today was share day, and I brought my Wonder Woman bracelets.”
“Can you put it on speaker?” I whisper to my daughter.
She obliges, and out of the phone comes a waterfall of good cheer.
My mother tells her how much she loves her and how lovely her voice sounds.
Then: “I hope I’ll see you soon?” My mother makes her plea for a promise of companionship. I hear her voice differently now. I am not tired or angry; I am soft inside, watching my kindergartner handle her fragile grandmother with such deftness.
“Grandma, we are taking you to the carousel this weekend. I’m going on the frog, and you can go on the horse next to me.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful, darling!”
I’m mesmerized by their exchange.
“Tell me, did you go to school today?” She already asked that.
“Yes, Grandma, I went to school, and we had share day. I brought my Wonder Woman bracelets.”
“You did? How wonderful!”
“Do you want me to sing you a song? I know three songs from Annie.”
And then my daughter sings.
The sharp evening breeze sails through the window, and the mess in our apartment settles around me like an old soft quilt. I listen to my daughter crooning to her grandmother, caring for her with exquisite patience.
I spend so much time wishing she had a “real” grandmother, wishing she knew my “real” mother. In this moment, I see that she does have a real grandmother, and she does have a real relationship with her. It isn’t the one I had hoped for, but to her, this is normal—to care for a loved one is a part of life.
When they hang up, after many kissing noises, I tell my daughter it is bath time. She wildly protests, but I draw the bath anyway. I am still Mommy, after all, and she is still five.
And yet tonight, she taught me how to answer the phone like a grown-up.
Originally published in the March 2019 issue of Reader’s Digest magazine.
Avan, Aval Adhu 473
If somebody came up to you and asked you, ' Hey, do you know who Susan Bennett, Karen Jacobsen, and Nikki Rolle are ? ', I am sure most of us would shrug our shoulders, roll our eyes upwards, and yell, ' who the f..k are they and why would I be interested in knowing who they are?'
But, if you were to learn that Susan Bennett is the name of the voice of Siri, Apple's digital assistant and that Karen Jacobsen is the voice of Google Maps and GPS, Nikki Rolle is Alexa, you would most probably stop what you were doing and stare at me and go, ' Oh! Nice. Cool.'
The reason why Rajendra had named his artificial Intelligence network digital voice assistant as " Sembi " was not because the name belonged to his powerful and illustrious ancestor Sembiyan Mahadevi. But because his late mother had also carried the same name but had possessed none of the former queen's traits.
Rajendra's mother had been a very timid, docile being but she had been a very protective and loving mother. They had shared a very close and tight-knit bond and that had been reflected in the unusually long nursing period. His mother had breastfed him until he was five years old and would have gone on if fate and the Gods had permitted it. Sadly, it was not to be for his mother had passed away when she had tripped and fallen down the stairs and had died instantly due to a broken neck.
He had taken it badly. Really badly and missed her terribly. It had been his father Raja Durai who had showered all his love and attention on him, had taken him under his wing, and had done his best to heal him. Nearly healed him.
Rajendra Cholan had not stopped by just using his late mother's name for his digital assistant but had also cloned her voice so that Sembi spoke to him in his late mother, Sembiyan Mahadevi's voice. He had hundreds of audio tapes of her speaking and singing to him. Every day and every night as she lulled him to sleep holding him close to her breast, to her heart, and to her soul
' My lord, master ' Sembi spoke softly in his mother's voice and Rajendra coming out of his memories asked his Digital Assistant, ' What is it?' and she answered, ' The attacks have started and I have identified a weak link.'
Rajendra pointed to the large screen and Sembi immediately transferred the data onto it.
The screen displayed a clean-shaven middle-aged man and he noted immediately, ' Sembi, that is Ravi Sinha, the current head of RAW.'
The screen flickered and displayed a short stout man who acted like he was a prime candidate for high BP, Cholesterol, Diabetes, and most probably for a severe case of hemorrhoids.
Sembi whispered in his mother's lulling cloned voice, ' My Lord, that is Mishra, an IAS officer and a constant go-between Raw and the Prime Minister's office.'
' Okay Mother' Rajendra replied and then quickly corrected, ' OK, Sembi, but there must be dozens like him linking the various cabinet ministers.'
' Yes sir. We launched a soft attack from ten servers all over the world and I used two servers to specifically target the CCTV cameras near the RAW and CBI offices and this man mentioned the word Chakravyuh a few times.'
Rajendra Cholan smiled and said, ' Good work, Sembi. You lip-read his conversation through the CCTV footage and hit upon the word Chakravyuh. Good thinking.'
' My Lord, I have been watching him for twenty minutes now and have found that he has spoken to one person three times in that short duration.'
Rajendra nodded and clapped and said, ' Again, good and quick thinking, Sembi. You obviously used all the cameras around him and caught the number that flashed on his mobile phone and hacked into that mobile number.'
' Yes, my lord. The owner of that number is his wife. Neelam Mishra and they have been married for 25 years.'
Rajendra exclaimed loudly, ' How the hell did you learn that?'
Sembi whispered in the same flat digitally cloned voice of his late mother, ' She called her sister to share the good news about the gift that she was expecting from her husband. Apparently, he has promised her to buy some Gold jewelry to celebrate their 25th anniversary.'
Rajendra Cholan listened with closed eyes as Sembi his digital assistant explained how she had gained access to Mishra's home computer through his wife's mobile connection and was now busy cracking the security walls that protected the computer.
A beep sounded and Sembi announced, ' My Lord, we have access to Mishra's computer.'
' Good work, Sembi ' Rajendra Cholan congratulated her and getting up, asked her to carry on the work and that he would be back in ten minutes after sending Android Hybrid 25C and its companion to Kumarapalayam.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2bTymnb1uE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOLRWJVIseY
https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/11/22430185/alexa-voice-actor-amazon-nina-rolle
My Mamma’s Letters by Octavia Capuzzi Locke, from Johns Hopkins Magazine
One woman’s letters help families pulled apart by the call to war feel a little closer together.
I still remember to this day my Mamma’s letter-writing. It began in the winter of 1941. Every night she would sit at the big kitchen table and compose a letter to my brother Johnny, who had been drafted the preceding summer and hadn’t been heard from since Pearl Harbor.
I couldn’t understand why Mamma kept writing when Johnny never answered.
“You’ll see—we’ll get a letter from him,” she insisted. Mamma said there was a direct line from the brain to the written word that was as powerful as any God-given light. She was counting on that light to find Johnny.
Whether she said this to reassure herself or Papa or all of us, I don’t know. I do know it helped hold us together, and one day a letter did arrive. Johnny was alive in the South Pacific.
It always amused me that Mamma signed her letters “Cecilia Capuzzi,” and I teased her about it. “Why not just write ‘Mamma’?” What I had not known was that she always thought of herself as Cecilia Capuzzi. Not Mamma. I began to see her in a new light, this petite woman who in heels scarcely measured five feet.
She wore no makeup, and no jewelry except for a yellow-gold wedding band. Her hair was fine, straight and black, tied in a bun that she refused to cut or “Americanize” with a permanent. Her tiny spectacles with the silver frames pinched her nose.
After she finished a letter, Mamma gave it to Papa to mail. Then she would put on the coffeepot, and we would sit around the table, talking about the good times when there were ten of us sitting there—Papa, Mamma and eight children. Five boys and three girls. It didn’t seem possible that everyone had gone away to work or to war or to get married. Everyone except me.
By springtime, Mamma had added two more sons to her letter-writing list. Every night she would compose three different letters, then pass them to Papa and me to add our greetings.
Bit by bit, news of Mamma’s letters traveled. One morning a little woman with gun-metal gray hair knocked on our door. Her voice trembled when she asked, “Is it true that you write letters?”
“I write to my sons.”
“And you read too?” the woman whispered.
“Si, si.”
The woman opened her shopping bag and pulled out a stack of airmail letters. “Read… read to me, please.”
The letters were from the woman’s son fighting in Europe, a boy with red hair who, Mamma remembered, used to sit on our front steps with my brothers. One by one, Mamma read the letters, translating them from English to Italian. The woman’s eyes misted and sparked. “Now I must answer,” she said. But what words to use?
“Make some coffee, Tavi,” Mamma called to me, as she led the woman to the kitchen and a chair at the table. She took out her pen and ink and airmail paper and began to write. When she had finished, she read the letter to the woman.
“How did you know I wanted to say that?”
“I often stare at my boys’ letters, the same as you, and I wonder what to write.”
Soon the woman returned with a friend, and another and another—all with sons at war, all in need of letters. Mamma had become the neighborhood letter-writer. Sometimes she would spend a whole day writing.
Mamma placed great importance on people signing their names, and the little woman with the gray hair asked Mamma to teach her. “I want to learn to write my name for my boy to see.” So Mamma took the woman’s hand in hers, and led it up and down and around on paper, over and over, until she could do it without help. After that, whenever Mamma wrote a letter for her, the woman signed her name and smiled.
One day she came to our house, and with one look Mamma knew what had happened. All hope had gone from her eyes. They sat together for a long time, their hands touching and their hearts locked as one. Then Mamma said, “Maybe we’d better go to church. There are some things too big for people to understand.” When Mamma came home, she couldn’t think of anything except the boy with the red hair.
After the war Mamma put away pen and paper. “Finito,” she said. But she was wrong. The women who had come to her with their sons’ mail now returned with letters from their relatives in Italy. They also came to her for help in becoming American citizens.
“There are some things too big for people to understand.”
Mamma once confessed that she had always dreamed of writing a novel. Why didn’t she? I asked.
“Everyone has a purpose in life,” she said. “Mine seems to be letter-writing.” She tried to explain her zeal for it.
“A letter pulls people together like nothing else. It can make you cry or shout with joy. There’s no finer caress than a love letter, because it makes the world very small, and the writer and reader, the only rulers. Girl, a letter is life!”
Mamma’s letters are all gone now. Yet the recipients still talk of her, carrying memories of her letters next to their hearts.
Originally published in the June 1992 issue of Reader’s Digest magazine.
Butter and behavioural sciences
Have you ever wondered why margarine is yellow? You might have assumed it was just a factor of the manufacturing process. But when margarine was invented, it had an off-white hue – uncharitable folk might even have said it was grey.
The change to the now-familiar colour came later and was primarily due to Louis Cheskin, a Ukrainian psychologist who had been hired by Good Luck margarine in the 1940s to boost their flagging sales.
To understand why shoppers picked butter over margarine, he set up an experiment. He invited local housewives to a series of lunchtime lectures. These talks were preceded by a buffet; nothing fancy – just triangles of white bread and chilled pats of butter.
After the talk finished, Cheskin chatted amiably with the attendees.
“How engaging was the lecture?”
“Did it last too long?”
“How well dressed was the speaker?”
“Oh, and one final question… what did you think of the food?”
Cheskin repeated this experiment half a dozen times, alternating between serving margarine and butter. The results fitted with the prevailing opinion of the two spreads: the diners made far more derogatory comments about margarine than butter. But there was a twist.
In the tests, he’d dyed the margarine yellow and labelled it butter and dyed the butter white and labelled it margarine. When the participants were disparaging the margarine as oily, they were actually commenting on butter.
The purpose of Cheskin’s charade was to prove that the enjoyment of margarine was determined by our expectations. All the elements of the experience – colour, smell, even the packaging – contributed to our expectations and therefore the taste. Cheskin called this phenomenon “sensation transference”.
Cheskin used his theory to make suggestions to the marketing team at Good Luck. His most important recommendation was to change the colour of margarine from off-white to yellow, so it would benefit from buttery associations.
It wasn’t just Good Luck who harnessed this tactic. Other brands swiftly copied the yellow colouring and category sales soared. In the 1950s margarine overtook butter in popularity – a lead it held for more than 50 years.
Good Luck’s approach was once typical. Brands would regularly hire psychologists to understand what they could do to boost their sales. Cheskin alone worked with brands ranging from Betty Crocker to Marlboro, Gerber to McDonald’s.
Avan, Aval Adhu 474
Rajendra Cholan stood with his arms folded across his huge chest watching both his creations with unblinking eyes.
' Walk ' he commanded and both his humanoid robots walked.
' Stop. Turn around and face me ' he ordered and both the robots swiveled on their feet like trained army commandos and stood facing him.
Pointing to one, he beckoned it with one finger and once it had done so and stood in close proximity, he leaned forward slightly and said, ' Hybrid 25C, I think you are overdoing the walk. Try to be more subtle. Your rather dramatic walk and exaggerated mannerisms are more in line with transgender males who have recently become females and who in our language are called Aravanis or Ombothus. Act like a woman without being conscious about it.'
Turning to the older version of Hybrid 25C, ' Keep a close watch on her and record everything.'
Taking out his phone, he called Meenakshi, ' Make the call and tell her exactly what I am going to be telling you.'
' Okay, Rajendra ' she replied and patiently heard him out.
Rajendra Cholan turned and looked at both of them, ' You are not robots anymore but a human. Both of you are now Meenakshis and you will talk like her and walk like her. I have programmed your chips with all that I know about her and her memories but I am sure that you will not be needing them.'
Stepping back, ' Kill them both and come back safely. Understood '.
' Yes, my lord. Perfectly '.
Rajendra watched both his humanoids resembling Meenakshi drive away and remembering what Sembi, his digital assistant had informed him about Hybrid 25C over-riding some commands and protocols, thought, ' I should have asked Hybrid 25C about it. But, I will give it a little more rope and leeway and wait and see where this creation of mine takes me.'
Sembi's voice whispered in his ear, ' My Lord, we are nearly there. Just another security lock to be broken down and we will be into Chakravyuh's servers '.
Rajendra looked at his watch and whispered, ' Not even an hour, and you are nearly done. Good work, Sembi.'
' Thank you, my lord. But, I think it was more luck than my work. We were lucky that we got access to Mrs. Bunty Mishra's phone and through it into their desktop home computer'.
He jogged his way back into his computer room without even losing breath or popping a drop of sweat on his body and stared at the Large screen as Sembi and his other supercomputers were busy writing program codes to break through the last of the security firewalls that protected " Chakravyuh " and informed his digital assistant, ' Cover your tracks and close all doors behind you. We are doing this for our personal reason and we don't want our nation to suffer due to that. Make absolutely sure that nobody else is snooping around or watching us for they might use this moment to hack into our nation's server.'
Sembi whispered in his late mother's voice, ' Yes, master.'
A few tense moments later, Sembi whispered, ' Master, we are in ' and Rajendra looked at the screen that was filled with an image of a large lion that stood roaring with its jaws opened wide in challenge and proud defiance. He stared mesmerized at the lion that shimmered in golden hue with the tri-color national flag fluttering around it.
' Jai Hind ' he whispered and informed Sembi to start copying and transferring all the data available to their servers.
Far away from Kozhiyur where Rajendra Cholan's residence was situated, Azhagan took the call and listened as his secret friend from across oceans and continents spoke to him.
' Sir, they are in.'
' Good. Now, proceed as we had planned and follow them home and wait for my word.'
' Okay, sir. Will do.'
Azhagan smiled and said, ' Thank you, Malcolm. Your help is crucial and means a lot to me and my friends. I could not have done this without your immense support. Stand by and wait for me and please keep me informed of every move this group makes.'
Azhagan made two calls. The first one was to Raman and the second was to Madhurima.
Raman answered the call, and after listening patiently, replied, ' Are you sure you and our people can do this on your own?'
' Yes. I am very sure. All I want from you is to maintain a constant vigil and follow my request without even the slightest deviation.'
' Okay, my Lord. I will inform Major Param immediately. All the best and happy hunting.'
' Thank you, Raman. Hopefully, we will be done by tomorrow morning.'
Azhagan made the next call and Madhurima answered instantly and looked at Ravi and pointed to his room.
Rasaathi Ammal and the others watched quietly as Ravi followed Madhu into his room and saw the door being shut and looked at each other and wondered what was going on.
Ravi shut the door and watched Madhu press the speaker button on her phone and the both of them heard the deep manly voice of the man they knew as Spartan and whose real name was Kavin.
' Master, ma'am, listen to what I have to say very carefully and ask your questions once I am done.'
Both of them looked at each other and chorused, ' Okay, Spartan. Go on. We are listening.'
Azhagan began to speak and he slowly explained what was going on and then methodically laid out the plan that he was about to carry out.
' This is what I want you both to do for me and it will be of great help if you can agree to this and follow it without any doubts or diversions.'
Madhu looked at Ravi who nodded and then asked worriedly, ' Spartan, my only worry and concern is for the safety and well-being of my family and my village. I don't want any of them to suffer even the slightest inconvenience on our behalf.'
' Master, I promise. It has all been taken care of. '
' All right, sir. We both agree to your plan and will do exactly as you have told us to do. All the best.'
The call ended and Ravi looked at Madhu and asked, ' Who is this man? What kind of man is he?'
Deep in the forest of Perumalvaram, all its magical creatures shook themselves awake and went on full alert hearing their king calling out to them.
The time had come for the boy to once again become darkness to fight darkness and try and end a war that had been going on for a long, long time.
Malar looked at Azhagan, ' You think this will end it all ' and he looked at her and smiled sadly, ' I hope so. I really hope so. But, at least it will be a mighty blow from which it will take them a very long time to rise up.'
In the inky blackness of the forest, he thought, ' Cut off the head and the limbs will struggle and eventually wither away without a leader and a mind to guide them. Then they will become easy pickings.'
The first time I mentioned the emblem and badge of the commandos of Chakravyuh was in chapter 332 of Vaanathai Pola 2 years ago. Time does pass us by so quickly. sad.
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