Clichéd resilience of Mumbai

“Atleast I can walk and do my daily work, but a lot of people are crippled for life as the result of the bombs and not many are willing to look after them” said Sabir Khan to the BBC on Monday (11-July-2011). He had suffered from an arm fracture and ruptured ear during the 2006 Mumbai train bombing. It was a profoundly moving interview which opened up some of the raw issues of apathy and attention span within our civil society.

Wednesday’s headlines literally brought back the limelight to Mumbai with a bang. It is always heart wrenching to watch an innocent person die or get badly injured, not to speak of the extreme sorrow it would cause to the loved ones.

The oft-repeated determination of the residents of Mumbai i.e. getting on with their work in spite of these horrific events could be eerily compared (albeit on a different scale) to a group of Arabs living thousands of miles away.

Palestinians in West Bank have had their dose of unabated violence for over five decades. This

barrage of heinous acts has numbed their emotions giving raise to dangerous thoughts like ‘suicide bombs are part of our daily life’.

To look at these attacks as a particular alienated and insecure community wreaking havoc on

the financial capital of India would be a superficial judgement. Every community in the name of

religion has taken turns to terrorise the general public with unspeakable inhuman acts from time-immemorial.

The inherent class differences within this mega polis ranging from the world’s costliest house to

one of the largest shanty towns in the world might sometimes provide a breeding ground not only for mosquitoes, but for social frustration. It is a known fact that a thriving underworld mafia exists in the city heavily intertwined with leading capitalists and celebrities. Combine this atmosphere with chauvinistic vote hungry politics; we would have a Molotov cocktail which is far from the democratic, secular & free thinking society we aspire for.

A city with around 50,000 residents per square mile must be a logistical nightmare for any

Government to monitor. Installing CCTVs and having additional security personnel s would mean more expenditure from the coffers. On introspection, we do have as many tax dodgers in the public as corrupt officials.

The celebrities tweet away their (heart-felt) condolences as the Government announces customary monetary compensations. The Indian judicial system would of course bring the perpetrators of these brutal acts to justice.

But whether accusing external agencies and bringing on punishments to individuals would heal

inherent tensions in the society might be a thought to ponder.

The strength of thousand elephants

After watching Gautham Menon ‘s Vaarnam Ayiram, I can say for sure that he is the best modern tamil movie director after Mani Ratnam.

But in what?

I would say in portraying suavity & slickness in a movie.

What about screenplay, spontaneity or a good story-line? Sorry Mr. Menon, there are better ones than you. 

This is not a spoiler of the movie, so guys relax. 

Imagine Madhavan in the C rated movie “Arya” and in Alaipayuthey. People would easily know which performance was a chalk and which one was a cheese. As many know an actor is as good as his director. GM brings out the best of Surya in this movie. No doubt about that. 

The refreshing part is that the story is not a liftoff from any English movies (forget Forrest Gump) and is quite natural without too much complications. 

Things I liked: 

The bespectacled father with a unique & dignified demeanor. A pleasure to watch. Simran pulls out a cracker of a performance.

The songs & cinematography. It is difficult to match good songs with better visuals. Ask Bharathiraja about spoiling good A.R. Rahman songs. But GM is mind blowing here.

Be it Taj or San Francisco or Kashmir, he is just amazing in his visuals.

5 stars for Surya’s emotions, six-packs and aviator glasses.

Sameera Reddy’ smile, her deglamorised approach and her sensible romance with Surya.

Cute Divya and her saree.

Mundinam Parthene song. Painstakingly GM had constructed vintage sets to give it a 70’s touch.

The subtle touches in the screenplay which are very original. 

The downside:

Narration style is pathetic. God sake GM could have avoided this.

The English dialogues which were supposed to increase the “coolness” of the film didn’t serve the purpose at all and would alienate rural movie goers.

Length of the movie. Certainly the army heroics and the bravery stunts could have been cut down. 

All in all a good movie.

But brace yourself for 3 hrs as it certainly isn’t a classic and can get you the occasional yawn.

... and appa I love you

 

  

Nutty Coconuts

I had a 2 hour conversation with my room mate about materialism and spiritualism and it invariably drained both of us. We couldn’t quite convince each other. I talked about the two being concentric circles while my friend was quite “eccentric” about them.

But very few people in the world think beyond technology and wealth. This is the reason why India is not perceived as a power to reckon with and is considered the nation of half naked fakirs.

I agree that India doesn’t have the technology of the Germans, the brute wealth of the US or the workmanship of the Chinese & the Japanese. We haven’t invented a Tycoon jet or cracked the gene which causes leukemia. But we are not viciously raping the environment either. The wiki points out that an average Brit’s effect to the environment is equivalent to the pollution caused by 120 Indian people. (10: 0.8 carbon foot print). I was shocked to find an information board in a reserve forest in England which stated “The most prevalent wild life species here is the red squirrel and the salmon”.

Sometimes I do feel that the western ideology is a disease sweeping across the human race. What does humanity require in the next 100 years? More dose of this epidemic?

In the dusty old Hindu books, I could find the duality of light explained implicitly. Why didn’t our forefathers indulge in these technological advancements? For people who invented yoga, ayurveda, kama sutra . etc, when the rest of the humans lived a far inferior life, it wouldn’t have been difficult.

Let me quote a useless sadhu’s saying – “At the breaking point (the deluge), humanity would have realised that materialistic ignorance is always the bliss. The perpetual ecstasy lies somewhere else outside the world and it is search towards the infinity.”

Hmmm... We have become so obsessed with the western world that we are kind of losing our identity. My thoughts reflected against the empty beer can lying in the London underground train. All I could find was a hairy brown skinned Asian trying to become a white man inside.

We all are bloody coconuts. Aren’t we?

You see I'm an aspirer

What is my aim... All I need is to earn more than my competing friends & relatives, get a fancy house, car .etc and bingo I’m settled. Then what??

Plan a) marry an orthodox lady who is chosen by my uncle’s uncle’s aunt
Plan b) find the love of my life within a long span of time …say 1-2 years for whom I’m prepared to give anything.

What about the affection & care two fools showered on me for 23 years. Damn them. They should be ‘flexible’ and mature enough to accept their son’s future.

Okay now with the sweet orthodox lady. Same as above except that the son’s wishes are made forcibly after marriage by the lady.

The Indian society calls for the slow poison which many people take. Some are adventurous and embrace a swift end. But everyone is infatuated to get a license for the bliss. But is it a bliss? My animal instincts strongly condemn this question.

“You know, our son is quite dull and to get a doctor seat by 2025 it will take 1 crore rupees”.

Hahahaha.. Now I have my hands full with the long term goal…

I love hypocrisy

I was awakened by the sudden shake of my father. “Konthai get up. Shankaracharya is giving a discourse. It is always good to start a new year with God’s blessings”. I yawned and nodded. Gave a blank look at the TV for 5 mins and went back to bed.

My family along with millions in India are closely associated with religious beliefs. But you can’t brand us as superstitious. We are clever bastards you see. I follow the code of conduct to some extent. I’m open to all religions unless I’m forcibly baptised... a friend to none which implies I’m a friend to all.

But I’m disturbed a lot in the temple…not by the Phallus but its worshippers. People preach, propagate and plead for the principles which they breach within the wink of an eye when they are out of the premises.

Keep the premises clean – but spit, vomit, urinate and defecate outside
Drop thousands inside the collection box – but don’t spend a pie for the person in need.
Don’t take meat during auspicious days – but get the animal kingdom on the plate for the rest of the days.
Talk about the society in India – but do the talking from a safe distance … and I’m quite far
You must respect another human being – but make sure the human is from your religion, caste, color & region.
Vulgarity has increased in Indian cinema – But you know ‘Virginity is not dignity, it is lack of opportunity’ is cool quote

I’m standing right in front of my pee and I’m complaining about the smell.

Why should I?
I’m not accountable for the act, you know …
Umh… I’m not the only one.
Everyone does it.
Why shouldn’t I?
I’m far better than the others who pee at the next person’s feet.

I comfortably choose one of the sentences above and continue my life.

The fruit

In my friends Tamil term I was called a ‘Pazha Payan’ which translates to Fruit person.

Who is a Pazham (Fruit)
After some vigorous research, I found that one may be forced into this category based on the following:
If he is studious
If he doesn’t get involved in cool stuff like thani (alcohol), dumu (smoking), dopu (drugs) or sex chat.
If he doesn’t have girl friends or lovers or feels shy to speak to girls
If he is not a spend thrift
If he is a responsible person in life
If he is not a party animal
If he has peculiar qualities like adopting vegetarianism, punctuality, or cleanliness (subjected to discretion)
If he doesn’t have a carefree (mayira pochu) attitude
If he doesn’t have the talent to ridicule others
If he is an introvert and doesn’t have a huge community of friends

As u see my career and life has been devoid of spice and it is definitely not worth a blog. But why should I bother about others... let me try and stammer out MY OWN BLOG 

Educated ?

I did my schooling in a school, which wasn’t a good one among the locals. Not because of its staff or the infrastructure or the culture inculcated in the school. The reason was it wasn’t good enough. The students did not get enough marks to get into a respectable engineering college or a medical institute.

The fact was half of my schools students barely wore slippers and could hardly afford a fee of 1000 Rs per year. In my opinion, my school was a really the best institution. It didn’t take in students who were from rich families with a very high so called “IQ” and prove to the outside world that it had generated the top 3 ranks in TNPCEE within the zone. But it did provide the first time graduates for many families and in my opinion, that is true education.

By the way, what was TNPCEE? Was it brain crackling exam? No a horse shit.
A Tamil Nadu student’s IQ was determined by his parents in his 12th standard by this test. If he scored well and got into a good college, he is a brainy guy among the lots and his ‘career – path’ changes (in the eyes of his parents). It was a rat race and did a memory based test of trash which they called it as Science and Mathematics.

I really doubted if students really understood what E=MC² meant, even though it was an important 5 mark question in the Physics paper. Personally I knew nothing about mechanics, optics, quantum concepts, electronics or relativity. I got through the paper with ease.

I chose Computer Science engineering primarily because I knew how to set wallpaper in Windows 98 in my 11th standard. Believe me... that was one of the dreaded practical exam questions one can encounter. This level of training was to groom students who were supposed to be future programmers of fortune 500 companies. I concentrated on subjects in which I can score marks more easily and get a good percentage. I did not indulge myself in tough subjects like ‘C programming’, networking or software engineering principles.