When Rajini became a heroine !

I don’t remember the last time coming out silent after watching a Rajini movie. Typically Rajini movies leave us filled with positive energy. Surprisingly after Endhiran, we were awetruck, in silence for quite some time. As Rajini spoke in the movie’s audio launch, it was an experience. Shankar is one director, who understands his actors very well, he knows what the fans want from their favourite stars. Even though Endhiran is not Shankar's best in terms of his scripts, the movie had easily one of his weakest scripts, the first time songs looked irrelevant and unfitting. In Endhiran, Shankar showed us exactly what we have been missing all these years from the super star. Nobody had screen space or a role to play when the super star plays a character with a destructive intention, including the humanly Rajini. For the first time we saw a movie where Rajini had to underplay just to ensure he himself can steal the show with another role, the scene where he mimics the sheep when the Robot catches the human, a perfect example. He almost became another heroine of the movie, having had to come just for songs. I do have my doubts over the (electro-) magnetic abilities of a Robot as depicted in the movie. But without doubt the magnetism of the super star does exist and that is on the non-magnetic objects like us.

It was when Chandramukhi released, a lot of people said Rajini should retire since he had come up with a good movie at that age after a forgettable Baba and its good to retire while being at the top. After a few years, he gave Sivaji that was better than Chandramukhi. Even now I see people saying Rajini should retire because he has done the best work of his life. I also agree that Endhiran is one of his best works, and probably the best in the recent past. But when it comes to his retirement, I don’t want it to happen in the near future. The best part about champions is that they set their next goal immediately after their current goal is achieved. Lets see what he does in his next movie.

What's sure is the one who is going to direct Rajini’s next movie will have to deliver much better than his best if he has to satisfy us. Shankar has raised the bars of Rajini movies to a much higher level in his last 2 movies. In fact I don’t see anyone else who can make movies with Rajini.

I want to see a Rajini movie made by Shankar, an out and out mass movie, probably Rajini playing the hero and the villain, even better would be Kamal as hero and Rajini as villain. When we have a producer like Sun pictures, paying both wouldn’t be a problem as it had been. Such is one movie they must do before the two retire, that is I think the best that can ever happen to Tamil cinema. I think it must be the Raa Raa song from Chandramukhi that gave Shankar the hint on how much we, Rajini fans are missing (his best) negative antics from his movies. Seriously I would bet if there is any role Kamal can’t do better than Rajini, it is the villain role. Shankar gave a trailer of Rajini style with the mottai boss in Sivaji, and almost a mainstream villain in Endhiran. Lets see what Shankar comes up with next.

And lets hope that Rajini doesn’t take a break for long and gear up for his next asap.

Memory

This weekend was another good weekend out of home, went to visit the LongLeat. In the Longleat house, a palace like building, I came across this poem.

What do Cats remember of days?
They remember the ways in from the cold,
The warmest spot, the place for food.
They remember the places of pain, their enemies,
The irritation of birds, the warm fumes of the soil.
They remember the creak of a bed, the sound
Of their owners footsteps,
The taste of fish, the loveliness of cream.
Cats remember what is essential of days.
Letting all other memories go as if of no worth
They sleep sounder than we,
Whose hearts break remembering
So many inessential things.


I remembered the scene from Aalavandhan, the introduction scene of Nandhu.


Nandhu:  Gnabagam, that’s a key word. Adhu onakilla, enakkirukku
Vijay: Adhan un viyadhiye, gnabagam. sila vishayangala marakaradhu nalladhu Nandhu.

And we have this famous proverb “forgive your enemies, but never forget them”. Wish you all have a good memory of all the essential things and a great life.

Kallikaattu Idhigaasam

The weekend that just got over was an amazing weekend. Instead of the usual schedule of watching 6 to 8 movies, this weekend I watched only one movie, even that was started at Sunday evening. I spent a lot of time working as well. But that is not what made the weekend amazing. It is the second Tamil novel I’ve ever read, a promptly named “Kallikaattu Idhigaasam”.


Vairamuthu wrote in preface that Idhigasam means “It did happen”. But the translated English word “epic” means “impressive”. I don’t really know whether it happened or not. But definitely it was impressive, I felt very moved. This book made me take pauses literally to avoid crying. The climax of the story is predictable, but there is no other way it would have ended. The author has put on a very good effort to depict the details on the course of the story, the way he explains a process is amazing, be it the making of country liquor, stealing of goats/chicken, making of chicken kozhambu, cow delivering a calf etc.


The first ever line I loved was this, “மனிதனுக்கு மனிதர்கள் மட்டுமே தேவை என்பது இரண்டு பருவத்தில்: ஒன்று வாழத் தெரியாத இளம்பருவம்; இன்னொன்று வாழ்ந்து முடித்த முதுபருவம். இரண்டிலும் தனிமைப்படுத்தப்படுவதுதான் வாழ்வின் சாபம்” (There are only 2 stages in life where only human warmth is required for a human being, one is the childhood and the other is the old age. Left alone in those stages is the curse of the life), about a kid whose mother just got married and the stepfather was not ready to take him into the family, obviously with no other choice left for the mother.


Then the classic yet funny irony “சில பேர்தான் பிள்ளைகளைப் பெறுகிறார்கள். பலபேர் பத்து மாதம் சுமந்து பிரச்சினைகளைப் பெறுகிறார்கள்” (Only a few people have children. A lot of people give birth to their problems.). Somehow a thought immediately came in, about my parents, whether they fall in the first or the second category. I think they are in both the categories, the first category for their first 2 kids and the second category for their last kid ;).


The story had its share of romantic touches as well, for e.g. a short poem in which Vairamuthu explains the beauty of a girl,


பாசம் புடிக்கும் தண்ணி
பலபேரும் குடிக்கும் தண்ணி
சிறுக்கி மக குளிக்கையில
சீனித்தண்ணி ஆச்சுதடி


It does look like there are going to be a lot of follow-up posts on this because there is so much left. Lets see if I get to post the rest. :) But nobody wants to miss their most favorite and here goes mine.


வெள்ளாவிச் சீலயின் உவர்மண் வாசனைக்குக் கீழே சின்னதாய் - சன்னமாய் - உரிமைக்காரன் மட்டும் உணருவதாய் - நாப்பத்தஞ்சு வருசமாய் நாசியில் படர்ந்திருக்கும் அனுபவமாய் - புடவையின் வெந்து போகாத அடிமடிப்பில் இன்னும் ஒட்டியிருந்தது அழகம்மாவின் அந்த வாசம்.


After his wife dies, the protagonist makes the washer man to dismantle the boiler to collect her saree mistakenly given for washing; with the saree half-boiled, he feels alive-from-dead to be able to smell her in the saree. I don’t know how many of you would agree, but I believe its very true, we do know our close people’s smell. In fact I remember my dad’s smell even now. When I was a kid if I’m not well, I used to take 2 medicines, one is an allopathic medicine and the other is a deep sleep hugging my dad. There were quite a lot of things where I could relate to and to me that makes it very very special. 


If you can read Tamil, please do grab this one and read, I’m sure its worth your time and effort. Of course, have Panchathanthram or MMKR ready with you, you will need those to cheer you up after you complete :). For those of you who have already read this and didn't recommend it to me, don't tell me that you have already read this. ;) 


P.S: Those who know Tamil and English well, forgive my translation ;)

Honesty is the best policy !

 I was watching the movie "Salangai Oli" yesterday. I felt it was 2 quality hours of time spent on it. The best part about epics is that they give a fresh thought and a new perspective every time we listen to it. Sometimes they even make us change our own perception.

I still remember the last time I watched the movie, that was back in 2005, when Kamal had just started becoming as my favorite actor, I was watching lots of his movies. I loved the movie for Kamal that time. Till then, I had liked the movie mainly for its brilliant musicality and intensity it carries throughout.

But this time, after the movie had completed, I was thinking about something I've never realized, some thing my thoughts hadn't  gone even remotely close to. That is on why the character Balakrishna gave up on his love even when the woman is in love with him. He could have been silly enough to believe that he shouldn't be marrying a woman who had a dark past. Else he could have wanted to do what he felt was the right thing to do. But ultimately, it didn't help him much towards his success. In fact, that sole thing led to his failure in his life, giving an inconsolable pain in heart. I guess he wasn't honest with himself. Even though he wanted to be with her, he gave up, the reason being anything.

I have seen myself in situations where I chose to do what is right, not having my heart fully convinced and some of them really hurt. Fortunately they were not about love coz I believe its very hard to undo those scars that we cause through love. I don’t think doing the right thing helps at all times. I guess we need to be voluntarily wrong sometimes to match our imperfections.

How important is to be honest? I have personally felt that it is almost impossible to be 100% honest to everyone in this world. We certainly need to lie some times, some times to stay social, at the bare minimum for good causes. But its surprising that being true to ourselves is equally difficult, which is not supposed to be. Once in a rare while, when we are down in confidence, we see such moments reminding us the regrets. Of course the optimist will be up and saying to us “Come on, there's nothing much we could have done about it”, without which we would never be able to move on.

If a scenario comes where doing the right thing is not going to help keep our soul happy, we shouldn't worry much about not doing the right thing. It just kills, one not being true to themselves. But as we see, there is no way to roll back time. The best we can do is to start again and hoping to do it well this time.

Inspiration

I have a few well-wishers at my work place, teammates of my previous project in which I was for about 4 and a half years. I wasn’t very much loaded in my final 6 months in those 4.5 years. So we used to have a lot of technical and non-technical discussions, regularly go out for movies and food etc., Even in this 1 month, if there is one thing that hasn't changed, it is our communication. Except that now the discussion happens through gmail chat, we still discuss about a lot of things.

Just as usual, I was chatting with one of my teammates. On the course, he was saying about people we respect not accepting their mistakes, making them uninspiring. For e.g. in a technical discussion, if we ask opinion from one person who we believe is good in what we discuss and turns out later that their opinion is wrong, we respectfully notify them that their opinion was wrong. If they aren't honest about it and disagrees with what they had said earlier, isn't it real bad? We kind of consider them as our teachers and they promptly demoralize us. Doesn't that sound horrible?.

I am an ardent fan of the playback singer Chinmayi and I visit her blog so often as mine. In one of the posts where she wrote about the misbehaving traffic in Chennai she had questioned if they didn't have any inspiring teachers. In another post she had said Gowtham Menon is such an inspiring director and why we don’t find such people in schools and colleges as teachers for us. At the start, it looked a little strange for me that she is so particular about teachers being an inspiration. But thinking about it and the people who have inspired me till now, its a surprise to me that a lot of them are my teachers, whether it is about how to be or how not to be. There is my mother, brother, a few ex-colleagues and a few ex-teammates and a few friends, except them, every other person who inspired me positively has been one of my teachers.

I completely agree with her that its very important that we have inspiring teachers. I have been lucky till now to get quite a lot of inspiration from my teachers. I’m sure this is one right time to thank all those people (both teachers and others) who have inspired my life so far.

Without you, my life wouldn't have been so good, Thank you all !

To be or not to be, happy !

This is very well a follow-up post on my previous post about happiness. I guess its becoming my habit to write follow-up posts.


This time as well it is triggered by someone’s status message about happiness. It said “Don't put the key to your happiness in someone else's pocket”. I am a firm believer of that. Those of you who know me well would be able to easily recognize that I do stupid, crazy things just because I wanted to do it that way and didn't want to change it for someone else. My lunch-mates know how much I trouble them not to have food in Andhra mess near the office.


Suddenly I see myself not very happy with the way things are going on. The difference is due to my job. I was very happy about my work as a developer, no silly mistakes, in fact very few mistakes. But in Technical Assurance in simple words donkey-work I’m not yet confident. It is about getting work done from someone you don’t even know and in a much higher position than you.


I have now got very high respect for all those secretaries who plan the meetings for their superiors so well. I see that it is complex and takes longer time to get a meeting arranged than the actual work that is decided to be done in that meeting.


With people of different cultures, the style of work, the way they use the infrastructure, even the simplest thing becomes very complicated. At the end of the day if I get the meeting arranged and got the information and documented it, that is a good day at work. When that doesn't happen, its a total mess. So I tend to kind of feel bad about not getting it done, simply put “not happy” about it.


Even though I know that I couldn’t have done much about it I get to feel unhappy. Does this mean that I have my happiness based on someone else? Literally, yes. Actually, not quite.


Still the difference can be made by accepting that its not my fault and letting it go. A typical mind immediately accepts “its not your fault” and have seen it many times with myself in the earlier times. I personally don’t like “its not my fault”. And letting it go is the most difficult for me. I tend to think “What better could have been done?”. But I think that is where finding room for improvement makes us unhappy. I still can’t decide staying unhappy is right or not in this case.


I remember someone saying “the food that tastes very good and giving you pleasure when its on your tongue is going to spoil your body most of the times”. Similarly if we are happy at work for a long time, we are going to be in a major trouble sooner or later. Anyway, I believe I have spent enough time in this world to understand that all days aren't sunny days.


Let me see, I hope that in the near future I will be happy about what I’m doing again. For those of you who stay in your comfort zone for a long time, please try to get out of it as early as possible.


Oh yeah, I still remember “No one wants advice, only corroboration”.

Happiness

Today, I read a status message of one of my friends which said “Being happy is not a matter of destiny. It is a matter of options.”. I had commented on it with “I think its more about knowing what exactly we want. If we don't know that, we can't always choose right from the options available, can we?”. Thinking a little deeper about it, I see myself having a contradicting idea as well. I think the idea of “what we want” continuously changes. Something we like today may not be the same tomorrow. So getting what we want always is too difficult, almost impossible. But even if we get infinitely lucky to get everything we want, will we be happy? I don’t think we will. After all, as Virumandi said, “சந்தோசம்னா என்னனு அத அனுபவிக்கேல மனுசனுக்குத் தெரியுறதில்ல, அது இல்லாமப் போகுது பாருங்க, அப்பதேன் !” (one doesn’t realize what is happiness when they experience it, they do only when it is not there). I too believe that it is the absence of happiness that makes us celebrate it when it is present. It's just not a matter of options. Its about the cycle. Life will be boring if we are always happy and its not worth it if we always sad !


If you want to watch happiness, watch this !
http://youtube.com/watch?v=m3w8Ldb4oSc

Pray for me !

My travel to Paris in 2008 was quite a quiet one, not much work, planned well, had enough help and careful. But this time it was just the opposite. I still remember I wasn’t carrying a pen that time and it was really embarrassing looking for a pen. I sort of even decided to remember to carry a pen the next time I travel. You already knew, I didn’t take the pen this time as well. It is a well known truth that we shouldn’t make decisions when we are mad and it held well for me.


Remembering the last time I missed my flight to Chennai due to starting late, I decided to start as early as possible. For the domestic flight that starts at 21:40 from Bangalore to Mumbai, I had booked the cab at 16:30.


I left from the room at 16:40 along with Anandhan and UVK who accompanied me till the gate. The cab driver played on the way some real nice Raja songs.


Me: அருமையான பாட்டு, கேட்டு வருஷக் கணக்காயிடுச்சு (nice song, haven’t heard in ages)
Driver: எப்பவுமே நம்ப வண்டில ஓடி ட்டு தான் இருக்கும், அப்பப்போ வாங்க... எங்க ஸார் போறீங்க? (played daily in this vehicle, come once in a while, btw where are you going?)
Me: லண்டன் (London)
Driver: எவ்வளவு நாள் ஸார்? (for how long?)
Me: 2 மாசம் (2 months)
Driver: அங்க ஜெர்கின்லாம் நல்லா இருக்குமாமே ஸார், ஒண்ணு வாங்கிட்டு வாங்க மறக்காம.. (I heard jerkins will be really good, dont forget to get one sir)
Me: அய்யய்யோ, ஜெர்கின மறந்துட்டேன், வண்டிய திருப்புங்க.. (oops..I just forgot my jerkin at home, please turn back..)


I have always found it difficult to easily finish things those aren’t started well. So, I kind of felt the whole trip could go messy. And it was. When we are not confident in some thing, we mess it by trying to be over-cautious. 


It started with where we should go thro’ the immigration process. Even though I was sure that we’ll have to go thro immigration in international departure, I went to an Air India representative at the airport counter.


Me: Excuse me, I need some info. I’m travelling to London thro’ Mumbai via Air India. Do we     have to go thro’ immigration process here or in Mumbai?


Rep: Can I see your ticket, sir?


Me: Its here.


Rep: Sir, you are late for your flight. Boarding is about to start. Please get your boarding card now. You can go to counter no 41, 42 and 43.


Me: But the ticket says 21:40 is departure time.


Rep: Sir, the ticket says wrong time. Must be something wrong with the travel agency.


Me: How about the flight from Mumbai? Is that at least correct?


Rep: Oh, sorry sir. I thought you are going thro’ AI621. Your flight IC108 actually starts at 21:40 only sir.


Me: How about the check-in baggage?  Can I check-in for London directly?


Rep: You will have to collect your luggage and re-check-in in Mumbai. There is no direct check-in to London.


But the person who issued the boarding pass peacefully issued a direct check-in to London. Probably, the rep I had been contacting requires re-training. We got the boarding pass with the gate no. mentioned as 01. Gate 01 as it implies was the first gate and was in the left most corner. The TV was just there in which the T20 between India and South Africa was being telecast. It was 21:35 and the boarding hasn’t started in Gate 01. There were not even Air India staff. When I was wondering what the problem is, a security person approached me.


Security: Sir, are you travelling to Mumbai in IC108?


Me: Yes, waiting for the boarding to start.


Security: Sir, the boarding is almost over. They have just given the final call and waiting for you only sir.


Me: But the boarding pass says its Gate 01.


Security: Sorry sir, it has been moved to Gate 09.


I was supposed to spend 3 hours in transit in Mumbai. But I was late to board the flight. All the time was eaten in the check-in counter and the immigration queue. The passenger before me in the check-in counter was a student. The Air India rep in the counter had a tough time with the system to give him the boarding pass. She had to ask him to wait to clear the queue.


A very similar situation happened in the immigration queue as well. There was an immigration queue manager(?) who will make sure there will be 2 passengers per counter, one at it and the other behind. She asked me to go to counter 26 even though I didn’t want to since 27 was fast-moving and was about to be free. In 26, I was standing behind a person who had to finally say “கேள்வி கேக்குறது ரொம்ப ஈஸி மாமா, பதில் சொல்லிப் பாருங்க, எவ்வளவு கஷ்டம்னு தெரியும்..”(questioning is very easy, you will the difficulty only when you answer) to get his stamp.


I was quite relieved when the person before me didn’t hog during the security check. But my fate was at its worst, the moment I lifted my hands for frisking, the metal detector ran low battery and stopped working. Even the spare he had didn’t work. Finally he had to borrow one from the nearby guard to let me through. I was late for the flight by 10 minutes. But fortunately, the flight itself was late by half an hour.


If there was anything good it was the in-flight experience. I had a real good food and watched several movies Kandasamy, “The Good, The Bad, The Ugly” and a classic hindi cinema Gumrah. The songs' lyrics were really nice in Gumrah, at least the translated were good.


The immigration officer in London was very nice, she asked only simple questions and answered those questions herself. But she made me repeat “put the index finger-take it out” sequence for 3 times before telling me even that machine is not working fine. The 4th attempt succeeded and I was through.


I hope to have a smoother life onwards. But the first-day experience at work seems to guarantee continued struggle.


Pray for me !

B.Lit

This could well be considered as a follow-up to my previous post,  though a bit distant in time. As you all know, I have been longing to meet the kid and when he finally came to India, I couldn't be there to receive him since I was on my way to catch a flight to London from Mumbai. This travel to UK, even though just a normal process thousands of people go through everyday, it wasn't in fact a very smooth trip for me. Anyway, that experience deserves a separate post and those who want to know need to wait for some more time.


I was in Mumbai, on my way to the international terminal from the domestic, when my sister-in-law landed in the Coimbatore airport. We had a short fond chat as usual. I started with the usual how-was-your-journey questions and after the formalities I asked her "What have you brought from Australia for your brother-in-law?" looking to tease her for not taking any gifts, yeah I know she wouldn't have bought anything special for me since her trip was planned in very short time. But she responded with "புள்ளையக் கொண்டு வந்துருக்கேன் அங்கேர்ந்து, அத விட உங்களுக்கென்ன வேணும்?". 


I think only now she deserves that B.Lit degree she got years ago.


Sorry guys, those who don't read and/or understand Tamil, its time for you to look for help.

A Moment

I happened to have a chat with my bro in Australia after a long time. I asked him to upload some of his kid's photos. He doesn't like Picasa Web for some reason known only to him. So he uploaded those to his favorite Orkut. And I had been in hatred against office since then for blocking Orkut. And the non-sense Orkut doesn't allow to save those photos to my local system. Now I have to take screenshots and save them, hmm.. lots of work to do.


The second thing I did after reaching home was you-already-know-what-it-is. Of course the first thing was switching on my laptop. ;)

I haven't seen the boy in person yet since he is too far from me geographically. There were just about 45 photos. But it took me more than an hour to finish watching all those. I realized towards the end that my eye sight is not clear due to the fact that tears that were about to roll out obstructing the vision. It was something I didn't expect from me.

It is in that moment, I decided to write about that. At the least, it was one moment to be captured. It is almost the same as the time I saw his first-ever photos.

I saw his week old photos more than 3 months ago. He has grown(?) a lot cuter and prettier now. I'm loving the way he looks at the camera, smiles, cries and plays. 

Wow! after a very long time, I felt filled with positive energy ! 

Isn't watching a child grow make us feel so good and happy about living?

I still remember the good old days I made fun of Kadhal kottai movie's never-met-before-love or Koperunchozhan's never-met-before-friendship. Only now I realize so well that we dont have to meet to be in love. 

I just wish he is right here with me in my arms.. missing him a lot :-(

But the good news is that he's coming to India soon.. :-)

The Love thing

I never had the time or the inspiration to write a blog until now.

But having been thinking in not-my-usual way in the past weeks, I finally found them.

This is not the first time I've been disturbed by a movie.

People watching me in the last few weeks would easily know the movie I'm referring to. For the others, it is the Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa (VTV in short) of Gowtham Menon.

Even though I believe I have changed a lot as a person in terms of interests in food, music, movies,work etc., I realize that the core is the same.


I am still vulnerable to such subtle yet intense emotions. The last time I remember to have been majorly disturbed was by Titanic in 1999 which I watched almost 2 years after it was released. VTV had a similar impact on me even though a decade has gone by. And it has raised several questions to me on how this "love" thing works.

Is it true that a girl likes a boy who chases her?

Does a woman expect that a man should be ready to lose anything to gain her love?

To me, if there is anything that will stop a guy from telling his love to a girl,

it would be his fear of unknown / shame that he will have to face if that girl says a no. Isn't a guy expected to be ready to face that if he has to even attempt gaining a girl's love?

Why is gaining love of a girl so tough? When guys can fall in love so easily, why is it not so easy for the supposedly-more emotional gender? Even in societies where woman are treated equal, the story stays the same.

I guess I will agree with what one of my friends once said,

"Most men are idiots when it comes to love. Most of the women are intelligent in love most of the times". Even though I've heard people also saying "Being mad, stupid and crazy in love significantly enhances the joy of its experience".

Can true love happen at first sight?
VTV says we shouldn't consciously choose someone to love. But I can't find a logic on this true love part. Or is it all about that? Is love similar to god, not supposed to work based on a logic?

I know these are quite a lot of vague questions. And I'm not looking for answers right now. I hope to understand these things later (if I ever fall in love). Even otherwise, its not going to stop me from living my life.. is it?

Yeah, I can hear you saying "why the hell are you talking about it then?" ;-)