Unna naanga varasolli kooptoma?

There is this guy in my office. I talked to him because I was told he is from Chennai. Apparently, he is one of those pseudo chennaiite (Bombay roots, Kannadiga stem etc.). This fellow got American Citizenship, thinks he was born in Ohio and talks like he studied at MIT (not Muthukumaran Institute of Technology, mind you!). I was forewarned by others that he is a psycho and one of those desis trying to assimilate with the Whites by berating Indianism (any act or stereotypes associated with an Indian, basically). Still I got to talk to him, mainly because he takes a smoking break every half hour and the designated smoking area happens to be near the labs where I work. To quote a colleague, he walks like Sid the Sloth in Ice Age; slow with drooping head as if he is ready to drop down any minute.

Anyways, so this sloth went to Chennai for 2 weeks after complaining loudly a 100 times how he doesn't feel like going, and he is forced to go only because his mother is there and his wife wanted to go visit her parents, and how the company stock prices are going to crash in the two weeks of his absence. After two weeks of granting bliss to people in my office with his absence he returned recently. I avoided him by taking all the preplanned routes out of my labs so I really didn't get to hear his horror stories, except for the one time when he complained how sewage was literally running everywhere in Chennai's roads and how Spencer Plaza and all the Mega malls and Mini malls were baaaddddd and uaaackkk.

Anyway, I ignored all these nonsense because you know that story about throwing kallu on seru. But soon my colleagues started coming to me one by one and asking, "Is this true? Is there garbage everywhere in your city?", "Is your house situated amidst a huge pile of trash? Because this guy just showed me pics of his trip and there were houses right next to garbage","There were dirty cows on the road. He said they are everywhere in the city, is it true?" and the kickass "he said it touched 125F when he was there it must be horrible".

Ok, there are dirty cows, garbage heaps but they aren't everywhere. This guy found immense pleasure in saying how dirty his city and country was and had tried to tell them he never wants to go back. And I am damn sure it didn't touch 125F in the last two weeks for sure. In fact for the first time there were a few days during which it was hotter here than in Chennai! So I couldn't hold back anymore and gave a long lecture to my colleagues on how this guy has been exaggerating many things, and how temperatures never touch 125F unless you are in Sahara desert. Anyhow, at the end of it all I felt angrier than ever.

Ivana elaam paduka vechu Asok Leylaand lorry aala yethanum. Raascal.

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Any one who thinks Slumdog Millionaire is better than The Dark Knight deserves capital punishment for retarded thinking, the failure of which has resulted in the former being nominated for the Best Picture category while the latter is not even nominated. And if SM pips TDK in even one of the categories of Best Cinematography or Best Film Editing then you know I am right.

Even in the categories of Sound Mixing and Sound Editing The Dark Knight is better. But TDK was eeriely marvellous whereas SM provided the American audience with the refreshingly exotic and nothing more which makes it better according to them but not for me. The Dark Knight deserves Oscars for atleast 4 categories, but the Academy Award voters are prone to be nuts.
P.S.: Add to this my conspiracy thoery of how a movie based on India is nominated purely to attract the large base of Indian viewers to watch all the Awards shows (and thus increasing the TRP ratings) and you get the full idea. It is all the same, like how an Indian 'beauty' inevitably ends up in the top 3 of the Miss Word paegents of late.

P.S.2: Have been thinking about this. How come this movie is superior to Jeans, the pathetic romantic movie directed by Shankar and sent for Oscar consideration by our Indian Govt.? Jeans also showed the story of 'hope', blah blah blah happening in US which appeared exotic to most of the audience at that time. My argument is that this movie (Slumdog Millionaire ) appeals to the American audience the same way. No story but lots of appeal. For the Indians you have to show nice skyscrapers, flashy suits, neat roads and they will buy it (atleast that was how it was). For the Americans you have to show utter poverty, destitute, chidlren with bloated stomachs fighting for food packets, tenements alongside sewers. Basically, people like seeing in movies what they dont experience in reality.

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அதென்ன சார் சம்பவம்?

Kamal asks this in Aboorva Sagodharargal when Janakaraj (the police inspector) keeps accusing Kamal of being involved in that 'சம்பவம்' (incident) without actually ever telling him what that 'சம்பவம்' is.

Similar has been the case with the dilly dallying by the Governments of India and Pakistan. While Pakistan kept claiming that perpetrators of the terrorist attacks on Mumbai were 'non-state actors', India still keeps urging Pakistan to take things to their 'logical conclusion'.

Why is the Indian Government afraid to openly state the steps it expects Pakistan to execute? If you keep telling them to take things to their 'logical conclusion' they will continue saying 'that they cannot act without further evidence'. Both Pakistan and India would endlessly argue that they do not know what the 'logical conclusions' should be or that 'there has been sufficient evidence given' respectively.

Successfully this issue has been politicized, pushed under the carpets and slowly being forgotten by everyone, just like things have been in the past.

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Moral overseers

India does not need terrorists from outside. Really. These chest-thumping self-proclaimed upholders of ideals of a Hindu nation must be rounded off and deposed in Pakistan border and forced to fight with the intruding terrorists. Instead they go around causing nuisance to the public.
அவனவனுக்கு ஆயிரம் கவலை. எலாத்தையும் விட்டுட்டு வந்துட்டாங்க பெருசா

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Why O Why?

I truly am happy for AR Rahman, now that he has won some international acclaim with the Golden Globe award for his scores for the movie Slumdog Millionaire. I had full goosebumps when he remembered to mention Chennai for his success. But surely, this was a mediocre work by his own standards compared to some of the magic he had conjured in Roja, Rangeela, Indian, etc. That brings us to my first what IF of the day. What if Rahman had scored some of these pieces earlier for a movie produced by one of those powerhouses from California? We will never know....

Anyways, now the enitre Indian media is bound to trip over itself while running to be the first to interview all kinds of people from the ones going on suburban trains to big time corporate hunks on how they feel about this new honor bestowed upon an Indian. Breathless reports by Burkha Dutt would logically ensue while she 'fittingly' stands amidst the crowds of Mumbai and talk about how this has brought immense joy to the much maligned Mumbaikar. And Pratibha Patel has to congratulate Rahman which would be followed probably by Manmohan Singh hosting a luncheon with him. More madness...

All these reminds me of an interview in some TV channel with Kamal Hassan. Kamal was asked if he had ambitions to win an Oscar in his life. I paraphrase Kamal's reply: 'Why should Oscar be the ultimate award which Tamil or Indian cinema seek? Oscar awards are given by the American film industry to films made in America. Why cant we raise our cinemas to a level where it is recognized globally and appreciated. Then we can have great pride in receiving a National award or a state award for our efforts and still have the same satisfaction of getting an Oscar'.
Need I say more? These lines concisely state everything that I would want to say after the melee that is going to ensue in India.

On another note, Heath ledger has won the Best supporting award for his performance in The Dark Knight. Which brings me to the 2nd big IF of the day. What if he had survived that fateful day and made more movies, especially a sequel to the Dark Knight?

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I hate Detroit. Its always snowing here. And when it doesn't snow, it rains.

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The Frenetic Week that was

I had around hundred things in my mind that I wanted to ramble about following the Great Economic Depression followed by the even Greater Farcical Comedy enacted by the US Senate during its 'inquisition of the CEOs of the Big 3'. Immediately, this was followed by the Mumbai terrorist attacks. As usual the (International) media coverage of it, riled me as much as the terrorists did: the dogmatic refusals of foreign media to acknowledge these terror invoking 'gunmen' as terrorists and instead subtly referring to them as 'gunmen' and 'militants'. Some even speculated that these could be 'discontent muslims' from within India. Somewhere, some guy had the balls to suggest that these could be LTTE too. I forgot if his article was in CNN or NY Times. But, there you go. That is a gist of what I had in mind. Things that would have made a several paragraphs of verbal outpour condensed into one. Meanwhile, a friend of mine referred me to this article in NY Times. Maybe, the world is not doomed yet.

PS: And what is this entire 'War on Terror' thing. I am not from Oxford but nevertheless it does not make sense to me. Should it not be 'War on Terrorists'?(Even that is silly. Something like crusade against terrorists would befit. But I guess crusade is a word nobody wants to use) How can there be a war on terror? Terror is an emotion. Can there be a war on laughing or a war on crying? War can be waged against Comedians, against sadists but not on the emotions inflicted by these men on the people.
Oh anyways. Who cares. The media found something and likes it. Try grabbing the bone from the dog's mouth.

PS2: Why Indian media have to keep posing the question to everyone if this is India's 9/11? What does that mean? Are you trying to grab the attention of US by self declaring it as India's 9/11? "Hey Bush (or Obama). Look, look we got our own 9/11 now. We are also affected by terrorism. We are now automatic allies in your 'war against terror'. Please throw us some bones too" Why does it have to be 9/11? India has fought terrorism in days when people in US did not know to spell the word. So why wait for US to acknowledge that we are hit by terrorism. Why declare 'Terrorism is a global thing now. This murderous act in Mumbai shows no country is now free'. This is a statement that should have been said probably when Al Qaeda attacked US. Not when LeT attacked Mumbai. Because, it is not a surprisingly new phenomenon. In short, stop sucking to US everytime.

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En Iniya Thamizh Makkale (aka) The Dasavathaaram Experience

I have had some bad experiences in seeing movies but I have never had a bad experience and ended up not seeing the movie. But now I have that too. I went with my friends to the Dasavathaaram screening at Cincinnati. From my previous experiences of seeing tamil movies at Columbus, Ohio I knew that the movie screening would be poorly organized: the movie will start at least 20 minutes late every time, the tickets will be overbooked and the organizer, in order to make the most profit, will rent the cheapest theater in town which would have an audio system as good as a 20W Logitech desktop speakers bought at a Thanksgiving sale and a picture quality as vivid as a camera print. And I also knew that we have to be early to get good seats as all fellow movie watchers would be our dear thamizhargal who would rush into the theater once the door opens and pandemonium would ensue.

So we arrived about 30 minutes early for the 6PM show and promptly found ourselves waiting in a queue that did not seem to move at all. And then 6PM came and went and 15 mins past 6 PM we were still standing outside the theater. One guy said 'potti innum varala' (meaning the film reel has not come yet). But another guy said the theater is already full as they have over booked it. I already told my friends that these fools would do that but this was not an ordinary over booking. There were about 40 people still standing outside with tickets for the show (which we bought through Sulekha.com). An American lady was collecting the online receipts and issuing tickets to enter the theater. She said the theater is full and we can sit on the aisles or at the back. Some people who were ahead of me started asking about refund to which she said the organizer is the one who is responsible for that as she is only the theater personnel and organizer is the one who has the money. And of course, that organizer was not to be found anywhere in the vicinity of the theater.

We first got the tickets and went inside the theater to see how its like inside. It was a dollar theater (a theater that screens movies that released months back for a dollar or so) having second rate seats, narrow aisles, dim lighting, speakers hanging from the walls well above the heads of those who got seats at the end of the rows, and a screen that was slightly brighter than a bioscope. I got frustrated and decided to come out as I did not want to stand and watch a movie because of some dumb ass to whom I paid $16. That organizer still had not turned up and nobody knew of his whereabouts. Not even the theater managers. So I went back inside the theater and stood with others at the back. It was about 6.30PM and still they were showing slides about coca-cola's rewards and 'please switch off your cell phones' for the 100th time. My friends said we will just shout and enjoy ourselves for the money paid.
I always enjoy every second of watching movies in theaters: the big screen, the DTS audio system, plush seats etc.,. When I was a kid I always made sure that I was inside Udhayam theater before the curtains rose inside just before the trailers are played. And later on I always went to the theater early enough to see all Prince jewellery and Vicco turmeric ads. So for me seeing movie standing at the back with dozen other people with some sitting near my feet is impossible. Added to that is a pathetic audio system and an equally pathetic screen. And so I went out again to see if this nincompoop of an organizer has turned up. This time he did and there was a small crowd of people around him. We shouted at him to refund the money.

There are some people who are too soft natured to even voice when being trampled upon. There were such people ahead of me who were asking, ' enna saar ipdi aiduchu? padam paakalaam nu wife elaam kootindu vandhen saar'. And then another guy who was closest to the organizer and waving his ticket at him for a refund said told others.' lets form a line so that we can be organized and we can get the refund easily'. Immediately two people said,' aama sar you are correct lets form a line and approach him one by one'. There are some times I lose my patience and shout at anybody and this was one such moment. I belllowed at the first person,' Yov ozhungaa organize panni padam kaamichaanganaa namba yenyaa ipdi gumbalaa vandhu nikanum. enamo organized la line la poi pesalaam nu solra?' Two people put ching-chak for what I said also and said 'yaya what you are saying is also correct'. Then some more people got angry and shouted at the organizer and he accepted to refund the ticket cost and he did that immediately. People who were before me were getting money from him as if they were labourers getting daily wages from company boss and said 'Thank you sir'. This angered me even more. So when my turn came I asked him in a high voice, "What the hell did you over book it for? Did you think you were selling tickets for Greyhound bus so that you can have another bus running if all passengers turn up?". He immediately drew a long face and replied in horrible english,' No saar. This people you know what they did? They bought tickets for 1PM show which was telugu version. Ticket is only $12 for telugu show. They brought that receipt now and got tickets and went in. So half the people inside are now people with tickets for noon show'.
Me: ' What the hell? Wont you check while getting the receipts from them?
Organizer: No saar. I was bringing film roll to theather and got lost and arrived 30 minutes late. By that time the American lady from the theater office admitted all people in without knowing they have come with tickets for noon show. All people want to see Kamal movie but wont want to pay more than 12 for it. What can I do saar? Also I see 12 people who got refund for tickets now going back into the theater for seeing the movie.
Me: (I blew my fuse at this reply) Yov, when people like me are shouting at you for $15 why dont you go and kick outside the people who cheated you for hundreds of dollars?
Organizer: (Just drawing his face longer and giving a dying dog look and not saying anything)
I decided I am not going to allow myself to be pushed over the edge of sanity and came off.

So my dear thamizh makkale. I know we are all cut throats. But now I realize that we are no better even if we are thousands of miles away from Thamizh naadu. We still would be same.
Vaazhga thamizargal, valarga India.

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Aussie high-handedness

I am not sure which is more despicable: an on field umpire trusting a fielder for a doubtful catch at a crucial juncture of the match or a captain eating his own words publicly in front of a global audience. India has been at the raw end of many unfortunate umpiring errors in matches abroad but none more than the just concluded match at Sydney. Its just that for some reason or the other just when India plays some good cricket, all the good work is undone by the umpires. We saw it in England before. We saw it in South Africa. And its happened in Sydney now. India has been very consistent in Test matches last two years or so. This is especially due to their good performance outside India.

I am not going to talk about Bucknor's decision to Dravid. Bucknor, who generally takes an hour to give a decision even if the batsman gets clean bowled, was quick to give Dravid out caught by Gilchrist. Its a different story that ball was no where near the bat. Umpires do err. But to be so consisently inconsistent against a team is frustrating to say the least.

The icing on the cake (or salt onto the wound whichever you feel) was done by Benson. I have seen batsmen stand for more obvious catches. If the Umpire has a doubt he consults the leg umpire. If they are still unsure, the third umpire is called up to see if the catch is clean. But on this occasion Benson thought it to be prudent to go by the word of Ponting who was not even the catcher. The ball was caught by Clarke after a bounce. The thing that irked me the most is Ponting's indication that the catch is clean! He was not the catcher and he cannot claim that. If his argument is that he was close by Clarke and so can vouch for the catch, it shows him more clearly to be the liar he was at that moment. In the post match conference, Ponting argued that before the match the two captains have agreed to respect the judgement of the catcher for close catches, instead of going to the third umpire. Obviously that applies only to the batsmen who are to take the word of the catcher and not the Umpire. Benson is an idiot to listen to what Ponting says as to the legality of the catch. If he relies on the players to make decisions, then what is the third umpire for. He might as well ask the batsman the next time if he thinks he is out lbw.

Add to this Gilchrist's appeal for a catch off Dravid's pad (which was upheld) and Ponting's appeal for a catch off Dhoni's pad (the ball hit the ground and Ponting also grasses the catch) you have a perfect pattern for the day. Video replays clearly show Ponting grass the catch and when questioned his reply is : "There's no way I grounded that ball. If you're actually questioning my integrity in the game, then you shouldn't be standing there,". So he assumes that nobody has the right to question him. A clear case of Aussie high-handedness.

If you think this is as bad as things can go, you are wrong. The Australian commentators were acting the clowns. Especially Mark Taylor who was justifying the action of the Umpire. How can a person be so pathetically blind to the obvious. Its normal to swear allegiance to a team. But you cannot call a bluff by trying to hide the plain truth. Taylor said that the umpire Benson was right. The reason is, in his very own words while commentating, Benson had to take a decision and he could have asked Bucknor for help or asked the fielding team as to the validity of the catch. And he chose to do the latter. So he did what he can do and so he cant be blamed. Probably he assumed that the third umpires are wax dolls installed to fill the seats in the stadium.

I can now sympathize with the adrenaline rush of all the psycho killers in the world who go running around with an axe because I felt highly inclined to do the same with Taylor and others. They had other similar excuses and they even cited the Ponting-Kumble pre-series agreement about taking the word of the catcher as if it is a written code of conduct and so batsman should not question the fielders word. Just imagine if things had been other way around and Australia experienced these things in India. The moment they set foot on Australia, Ponting would come out openly against the umpiring standards, verbally thrashing the umpires and how Indian players did not uphold the spirit of the game and were a big let down for 'him'. And ICC will not penalize him for breaching the code of conduct for openly complaining against match officials, while had any of the Indian did that last night a disciplinary action would be initiated immediately. And the Australians accuse Harbhajjan of being a racist!!

I wonder how Kumble managed to remain sane at the end of the day.

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