Archive for QTB

Shopping is always good fun

{ October 17, 2009 @ 4:11 am } · { PSBB, chennai, on and off, ramblings }
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Either you love it or hate it but you never escape it,thats a very cheesy way of putting across the experience of shopping but I would take that. Shopping like all the things in life which is fun but injurious like smoking,drinking,doping and blah blah is addicting. And its a costly and a time consuming addiction. There is an art involved in it. You need to know what to buy and where,bargain the correct way,see the most susceptible face and catch hold of that shop keeper and get yourself a good deal.I always love the whole experience.I still remember the blast we had in college trying to get ourselves cocktail dresses in a boutique. We would try out all clothes and pose for pictures and the shrewd owner would pretend not to notice because she knows we would ultimately fall for one.

There have been whole set of research papers on why women like to shop and men dont. People have come up with all kinds of suppositions and theories that I would come to believe it holds a vital key to unlocking the human psychology.And i really dont give a damn. I think people should work on how to open men up to the possibility of showing an ounce of patience when on a shopping trip.that particular evolution needs to come along. I have shopped in many places but the place I loved the most so far is Goa’s flea markets. They are designed for you to sin ,literally.Its the kind of place where your bank account would always take a nosedive,so throw your cards out before you enter the shop lest you end up spending a fortune.

But theres always a moderation thats needed and its with time you learn not to buy everything you see like a kid in a supermarket.But whats most interesting while shooping is to observe the riot of colors on the streets. its always fun to shop on the streets than showrooms. You save money and you enjoy yourselves. Its often a photographer’s delight.The people crawling across,the expression on their faces ,the vivid madness of it all is always worth capturing.I find the entire experience rejunevating and why not you are after all buying yourself some good stuff and thats always fun!

Chetan Bhagat’s ‘2 States ,The Story of My Marriage’-A Review

{ October 13, 2009 @ 7:03 am } · { QTB, book review, ramblings, review }
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Chetan Bhagat’s latest offering exactly takes off where he last left with 3 Mistakes of My Life.By now you as a reader would have settled into a familiar rhythm with this fellow. From the mandatory number in his title to his sense of humor you must have seen it all.But the reason why he clicks is also the reason why rom coms are a hit-its fun. His latest book is perhaps the best one after that much promising debut. Its tailor made for a movie and I want to see one by Imtiaz Ali.The story is about cross cultural differences and their significance in a love marriage.His sense of humor is at its easiest best.By now we know his books are always semi autobiographical and Hari,Shyam,Krish are all same at some level. He takes on the vibrant Punjabi culture and the more conservative tamil counterpart with a perfect sense of familiarity and alieness combined. His mockery as he says in the prologue is laced with liberal doses of affection.
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So if you are a tam bram or a punjabi you would all the more enjoy this book if you have the ability to laugh at your own community Some of his one liners are just on the dot like the one where he says there is absolutely no love left between a couple by the time you convince both the families for an amicable marriage.Another one where he says what a marble is to a Punjabi is the same as a foreign degree to a Tamil.Or his poking fun at the quiet tamil households and fat punjabi aunties is equally fun.
He gets most of his facts right from the various tamil ceremonies involved to the lifestyle of the people. Thus he notes all that would be familiar to the people from the community-the idlis in the morning,quiet lunches,carnatic music,hindu,even Bay Area in US,obsession with IITs and IIMs and so on. The only place where he slips is when he confuses a nakshatram or a star with a jaatakam and the name manjunath is hardly a common tamil iyer name more likely to be a kandu one.

When you read a bhagat you read it because its entertaining not for literary value, so grab a hot mug of coffee,recline on a sofa or bean bag comfortably ,put on some good music and munch along a bag of chips as ypu read his latest book. Its fun,light hearted and entertaining!

Lectures,Sermons & Musings

{ August 20, 2009 @ 8:34 am } · { QTB, hinduism, musings, ramblings }
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The past few days I have been reading Ayn Rand and her lectures and views on various topics.I am not an Ayn Rand fan ,in fact I consider her philosophy and take on most issues a collection of hog wosh.I consider her views insidious and harmful to the functioning of society at large.While her premise of using rationality as a basis is worth admiring and accepting ,her subsequent take on numerous issues such as morality,freedom of speech, Man vs Woman,God vs Man, State vs People are too insular.Her views directly contradicts the Hinduism view of life.Its not that which bothers me ,its an application of pragmatic principles in an ideal manner discounting any medians between the extremities that disconcerts me. the irony in her philosophy is that its probably the only one that brackets the left and the right in the same set.If I have to repudiate Ayn Rand it would take a large amount of time and blogging space,So I leave it to rest here.ayn_rand1
I have also listened to considerable amount of sermons on Vaishnavite philosophy the past few days. I realized I have hardly ever read anything related to this.I should have read substantially on it considering I belong to that tradition. It would help explain our views on God,on salvation,on life,on significance of rituals and so on.So if anyone knows any simple book that I can read up on it please do let me know.
The last of the lectures I wanted to blog about is the one I attended at the faculty hall of IISC yesterday.It was a lecture that sought to explain the presence of sensuality in sacred temple art throughout the country.It was a highly interesting and engrossing lecture that had as its basis that presence of erotic art in temples was normal back then and nothing is licentious or bad about it as people saw it as a symbol of fertility. Fertility the lecture sought to tell was the central motif.It was a method of transcending the barrier between the real(physical) and the surreal(divine or spiritual), a celebration of both.
The lecture was delivered by Ms.Vidya Dihijea(I am not sure of the spelling). Anyone interested in this can buy and read her book The body Adorned.
khajuraho7I have a few reservations though. If you were to look at the temples of India (atleast the ones in South) and the Khajuraho temples theres a glaring difference.While all temples have voluptuous dancing girls tanatalizingly poised and copulating pairs on its pillars none of them brazenly celebrate it as the ones built by the Chandela dynasty at Khajuraho.The erotic art there in its scale,intimacy and number out does most other temples.I said South because I have seen only those temples. I have wondered why.Its known that the Chandelas were there during the height of Tantrik following. Tantrik philosophy is different.it speaks of attainment of salvation through sensual pleasure. Obviously as a nation we were not uncomfortable with the idea at all. afterall a substantial part of Hindus,infact most of them are Phallic worshippers.I wish she had explained the phallic worship and the tantrik ideology after all its integral to the theme of the sacred and sensuos.
The lecture was peppered with quotes from ancient Hindu texts on Gods.the example of soundaryalahiri and bhagavad dhyana sopaanam were given to show that detailed physical description and a celebration of it is also a way of acknowledging the spiritual one I think. The thing is these are intended as mere physical descriptions. Both adi shankara and shrimad thoopil vedanta desikar are ecstatic describing the beauty of the blemishless(what Rajaji called korai illadha govindan) God. both the names of sopanam and soundarya lahiri stress on this aspect.There is no hint of anything uncomfortable in those lines even for the devotee who reads them. a better example could have been the description of lord shiva and parvati by kalidasa in his kumarasambhavam.
Interesting lectures are always a welcome change, I was not entirely convinced though.

Where’s the sense in the reality?

{ August 5, 2009 @ 9:17 am } · { QTB, on and off, ramblings }
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the recent furore about sach ka samna evoked some strong responses from both sections of the case. While,freedom of media should not be curbed it needs to be checked and regulated from an administrative point of view and on high moral grounds.whats so disgusting about this show or for that matter media’s coverage of the arushi murder case is that underneath all the guise of reporting there is a deliberate ploy by the channels to get the public hooked to something thats not right,not needed and morally wrong. some one asked me why not sach ka samna when people read freely about actors and public figures. in short we are a group of people who love gossip. we are interested to know if shahid kapur is dating priyanka chopra or if Mr. X across the street is cheating on his wife. But the problem here is that there is a significant difference. actors,politicians or sport stars are public people. that sets a limit to the privacy they can enjoy because they are made by audiences and followed by millions and adored by people throughout the nation and sometimes globally. Thus its necessary to know if the late michael jackson has been convicted of paedophillic charges or not,its equally important to know if gaguly was distracted because of some illicit affair during his captaincy.As a cricket fan or a music lover you are entitled to know why you are not getting your money’s worth.Gossip about actors is not necessary in the strict sense and can be avoided but there’s always a fascination amidst the public for larger than life icons.That curiosity may be bad but its present naturally and substantially.

Now,moving to Mr.X across the street ,it should be strictly none of your business whom he shares his bed with unless of course you are Mrs.X ,but even if you do gossip it should not be on a grand scale on national television. It was wrong to begin with,to aggrandize it and popularise it is profane. you are not only degrading by washing people’s dirty linen in public but you are letting those people taking part denigrade themselves. It sort of reminds me of two things1) the roman mobs that immensely enjoyed gladatorial contests where men and beasts tore at each other in all the glory of bloody brutality.This show is somewhat similar just that its more emotional while those bloody contests of yore were starkly physical.2)the movie requiem for a dream.watch it you will understand why.

As for the high court’s order on switching off your television sets, it does not make complete sense. We see it necessary to have censorship boards to monitor movies. No one told the catholic community to just not watch the Da Vinci Coide or the Hindus to simply boycott the Fire and The Water.From parental guidance to ratings we see it necessary to monitor entertainment to secure the fabric of the society.Then why not ban this show? No one told the people to just not visist that orkut community when some arbit bloke wrote some not so nice things about Mrs.Gandhi!Why? because its necessary at all times to see that a sense of decorum prevails.
Maybe one day pornography would be telecast on national television and the supreme court will just ask you to turn your sets off, by then of course the sense of reality and the sensibility behind it would have gone for a toss!

A celebration of life-Maargazhi maadam

{ December 21, 2008 @ 5:21 am } · { QTB, hinduism, musings, ramblings }
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What the vibrant city of Bengalooru does consciously with Bengalooru habba its quiter counterpart  Chennai has been doing routinely with maargazhi. Its almost unconscious like some endemic clock that programs a city together during the month of dec-jan every year.i do not know the reason for the significance of the month nor the origin of the customs followed during that period. At a point when I am finding it increasingly difficult to find time to be in Chennai its this month I miss the most.

The thing with maargazhi is that it transcends communities and castes .I lived for 21 years in Nungambakkam .I liked it there; you saw different kinds of people  unlike mambalam or triplicane. Even now I find areas such as the latter suffocating because you see people only in one mold always. Anyways now  I no longer live in Nungambakkam but somewhere in me I shall always belong there.

You know its maargazhi when ullikayam (garlic) and venkayam(onion) become a strictly enforced taboo. It always is but no one cares .No amount of begging and throwing tantrums would work with your mother. So its also the month I eat out often. You see when something is forbidden its all the more irresistible. Its like when, though you may be an insomniac for days before vaikunta ekadeshi you sleep at nine and eat for three people that day. But apart from no garlic maargazhi is also the month you get up early. When I was younger and more at home it used to be five or six, now it’s a more earthly eight or nine. For a person like me who sleeps at five and gets up at two in holidays(you escape the hot sun that way) such early timings is a sin but its impossible to sleep later than nine  even if you wished. For, Maargazhi is the month of the fourth veda of tamil , that of aandal’s thirrupavai. So, every channel and hence every household blares that and in some like mine my mother recites that loud enough to make my sleep uncomfortable and yet not disturb the neighbours. It’s an achievement that none of my friends in college have been able to achieve. She has this strategic point outside my bedroom that lets her disturb my utopia, keep an eye on the kitchen, watch T.V and chat to the aunty outside. When you hear elle illankiliye innam urunkudiyo you give up and get up. That’s the point she knows she will break me and hence takes the high pitch there. Its thirrupavai that’s so integral to this month, so wonderfully framed it’s my greatest regret that I don’t know thirrupavai properly. It is chanted everyday in the morning. You hear it in temples, mutts, households, TV, in the katcheris in the evening or the discourses in the morning it’s all pervading during those few weeks.

Apart from thirrupavai it’s also the month of discourses in the morning. Every sabha, auditorium or even schools has one. But what maargazhi is world famous for is its concerts in the evenings called katcheris. from junior artistes to the best you see all of them. while traditionally a carnatic stronghold you can also get to hear music from around the globe at that time. the crowds flock all the concerts, toursists come to the city and its when daily conversations begin with “inniki sudha enga padraa paaru?” each one has their favourite artiste, the connosieurs devour the chance, critics descend like a plague and newspapers devote sections to musical reviews, aunties debate who is the best this season ,the sarees and jewellery of singers become the latest fashion statement and little children(like I was a long time ago) lose their evening cartoons. Today as a part of SPICMACAY I realize why the movement or concerts fail to excite me as it does to some of my friends, its because when you are a part of maargazhi ,concerts are what the city breathes and you as a part of it fall into the rhythm. A lot of things pale in comparison to that.

Rangolis are another aspect of the month.i no longer see them in my street but when I was 12 or 13 I used to get up and assist(more like disrupt) my mom’s rangoli. You could see a whole lot of kids and aunties doing the same,  everyday every house has this huge rangoli in front of them. I was generally given a small one to fill up seperately next to my mother’s. Not a single soul later in the day would appreciate my piece of art. Everyone even your maid will point at the bigger one and seem impervious to the beautiful small one next to it. You see I had my limitations I was given only those shades not needed in the main one and I experimented a bit(like not filling it all inside the white outlines) and apparently it wasn’t that appealing.

Lastly its that time of the year when you get venpongal with ghee everyday. prasadam in each temple out does the other and idlis and vadas and sambar mirror the spirit of the city more then than anytime of the year.

 

A day in the life of a blogger-con&porn and a bit more.

{ December 20, 2008 @ 1:27 pm } · { PSBB, QTB, book review, musings, on and off, ramblings, review, the dividing line }
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Yesterday was one of those days when you had a lot to tell but was lazy enough  not to do so.Apart from the fact that i came down with a bad cold and sore throat  and my laptop is teetering over the edge with a con virus , it was a pretty uneventful day. The virus in my laptop is a porn watcher’s delight. It made me give 2 significant frustrated outbursts.One was about how i dont even watch porn and yet the virus , ppl found that funny. So funny that every person who has so far promised to set my laptop right has laughed at me, my comp or in the case of shiny ended up watching movies on it.This led to the other outburst- more a cry that went ‘ i dont want windows’…you see with Windows its like the ants in the basement story. There are ants all over the place in the room next to yours. yet you believe it wont be your room next.It takes a good few bites to realize and go and get a lakshman rekha.This moral holds ofcourse for the average laptotting ,non-open crazy ,non-geeky,non-Gates basher whose ultimete utilisation of the comp is watching movies,like me.

Then there was this speech in the afternoon organized by SPICMACAY. I dont even remember the guy’s name. He was ok, conservative,praising the media and believing in Utopian ideals .The worst part was that heair  gave the sppech in Kannada. Now thats discriminatory in a national institute of technology.

Back in school i used to have this wonderful long discussions on a lot of topics. We fought, badgered but always discussed. It mattered to argue whether reservations are right or not,about dvaita and advaita, open relationships,whats diff btw american girls and indian ones,that Scarlett O Haara was perfectly justifiable or the run of the mill Tamilnadu politics. It did nothing but to increase phone bills, reduce the concentration in class hours and lead to small phases of ‘i wont talk with you’.

It also strengthened bonds of friendship,made you understand people better,helped you to while your time in sanskrit classes and most importantly it molded me into a debator and a pretty successful one at that till i crash landed at NITK.The prob was a large number of ppl i met as a naive first year did not take such discussions in the right sense.  They called it giving fundae and still do .The thing with such discussions is that they are meant ultimately to be taken in the right sense,its not about who is better its about what you think. Of course opinions vary for some wierd reason and you need to live by that.

Lastly I read IWoz and realsized that Wozniac belongs to a rare breed of ppl.If its indeed the triumph of the nerds then its the triumph of this guy more than the other for Gates is like a poisonous ivy in your backyard and a shrewd bussisnessman(at some level they mean the same
) and Jobs ofcourse is this rockstar cum politician cum visionary cum streetfighter all rolled into one. My god there is no geekiness in him, he is the larger than life CEO whose charm is at best irresistible.As for Michael Dell,packard and others we will leave it for another day.

P.S: the answer to that question abt the girls is .. mind you i quote,” To an American girl its important that you always have a boyfriend and to an Indian girl its important that you ever had one”. I dont own anypart of that statement its been copyrighted elsewhere.

As for the guys by mutual consent we came to conclude not much of a difference . afterall after a certain drop it does not matter if its left or right.

The myth called the Indian Government

{ November 29, 2008 @ 5:46 am } · { QTB, on and off, ramblings }
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Much has been said and written about the attacks in Mumbai but will something at all be done is the big question mark.the attacks are a blow not only to the morality of the nation but also confirms our worst fears, the Congress and the UPA has turned the nation into a soft target for terrorists.There is enough anguish in people to use up the whole of blogosphere and may be we are all being turned into agony aunts and uncles. Barkha Dutt in all her dainty diplomatic glory said that its always easy to blame the politicians and the government at such moments but its the solidarity that matters. Maybe she is partly right but that successive governments are to blame and especially the National Congress is a biting reality that the aam admi has known for long.And here’s why

Minority Appeasing

while a nation as diverse as India needs to pride itself on its unity and secular structure our politicians have played the monkey here ,never really doing enough to uplift the minority and not willing to address the problem that haunt the nation because of people who are unwilling perhaps to get integrated.Discrimination and caste structures and BJP’s hard stance are the often cited excuses for the mess, especially when Union Minister Kapil Sibbal is asked to comment on national television. Unfortunately for him and  quite a few others, this problem of the jehad brand of extremism is not isolated to India alone. It is a world over phenomena surely, our brahmins were not there everywhere to discriminate!That the BJP did a grave mistake by promoting the atrocities in Gujarat violence is not to be doubted but to cite that as the reason for an escalation in terror is sheer impotency.That the US,Spain or UK  did not have a single major terror attack since their respective ordeals is a testimony to their anti terror mechanisms.

we on the other hand do not crack down on the madrasaas, were reluctant to ban SIMI, will cite human right and minority violations when convicted criminals are hanged, will dismantle terror laws and cosy up to the nation across the border even after repeated evidence of its complicity in anti-India activities.

the worst problem we face is whom to choose, one party promotes extremism against its own people the other fails to recognize any kind of trouble at all. that the nation’s security is foremost on the agenda is something the government must wake up to.

What we need indeed is a dynamic and systematic anti terror mechanism and a government willing to pursue that giving it whatever that takes.Till then, probably as Prahlad Karkar put it, its the rape of Mumbai and in a larger picture,the whole of India we witness as mute spectators.
The media circus

the media as usual had a fieldday. Repeatedly showing the Taj , Orient and Nariman house and occasionally dropping in the names of other places where the attack took place.why the hell on earth would NDTV want to interview Mahesh Bhatt at such moments is something that escapes me. The man is obnoxious even in normal circumstances. And of course yes, the mandatory ” how do you feel Mr…. knowing that your son -in-law is trapped inside?”, he must have stuck a finger up the nose of the female who interviewed him.

That it was a collective failure in strategy and a case of being caught unaware when three major officials were shot dead is something thats hardly mentioned. But of course its indeed a time to salute all the brave people who staked their lives sucessfully and otherwise to fight the terror that gripped the city of Mumbai. Even while you ponder on that surely you can hear the politicians  bickering for diplomacy with neighbouring countries and for the minority votes?

Yagnyaseni by Pratibha Ray

{ October 2, 2008 @ 1:56 pm } · { QTB, hinduism, mahabharath }
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A highly sucessful oriya novel, yagnyaseni tells the story of draupadi.infact we are shown the entire story of Mahabharat from the perspective of the story’s heroine. The author strongly sympathises with draupadi and atempts to unravel the different layers of her character from the viewpoint of a woman.Thus a large part of the novel is drawn from folk lore and some parts i suppose are the author’s own interpretations and suppositions.The book also deals with the eternal story of love between Arjun and Panchali.It also potrays the friendship between Krishney and Krishna strongly.

Draupadi has arguably, always been the most oustanding and enigmatic of all heroines the world has ever known.The author uses this fact brilliantly to flesh her character out.she explores the hurt in Arjuna for having to share his wife and Draupadi’s great affection for Arjun.Infact this is something that the original Mahabharat hints at too. While it blatantly states that Draupadi’s favourite husband was Arjun and the latter preferred Draupadi of all his wives, it hints at Arjun’s frustration in two places. The Mahabharat also makes it obvious that Yudhishtir desired Draupadi , something that Arjuna sensed. Yudhishtir was well aware that his mother would ask the alms to be split, afterall it was repeated everyday. Yet, he chose to call the princess won by Arjun as a gift.That later Arjun decides to enter the chamber of Yudhishtir and Draupadi and undertake a piligrimage has always been very curious. he didnt need his bows and arrows to catch a thief and that he couldnt find weapons elsewhere is also incongrous. What perhaps was the reason for that was his hurt at having to share Panchali thus deliberately moving away and subtly hinting at it. His subsequent piligrimage for one year saw him marry three times. Incidentally the novel mentions the duration of this tour of  his to be 12 years. the versions i have read so far place it at one year which afterall makes more sense.The second and perhaps the last time we are given an insight into this hurt of his is in the Karna Parva where Arjun accuses Dharamaraj of enjoying the fruit of his labour. He sights Draupadi svayamvar as an example and also states that Yudhishtir was the root cause of their and Panchali’s suffering.This book by Ray however deliberates upon that aspect elaborately.In parts its unneeded. The pandavs and panchali accepted their fate as such and realsied that they were the tools to establish dharma. That Arjun sulked all the time  and Draupadi thought only about him is perhaps a bit difficult to digest. Afterall given their sufferings its highly improbable they could do it even if they so wished.

The other aspect of the novel is Draupadi’s regard and affection for Karna.It also states that Karna’s animosity towards Arjun was because the latter was Draupadi’s favourite. The original Mahabharat mentions no such incident. It only states that Karna was hurt by the insult at the svayamvar ,the reason why he participates in the cheer haran. That he subsequently repents that act is also elaborately stated.The disrobing is thus the low point of Karna’s character along with that of Bhishma, Drona and others.But Krishna asking Karna to give up Duryodhan states that while doing so he will obtain Panchali as his wife. Thus perhaps Karna nurtured a soft corner for her. But then she was the supremely desired woman of her time.

As for draupadi’s attraction towards Karna there is no such incident in Vyasa’s story. Its only the later folk lores which mention that. Infact Draupadi goades Arjun to kill Karna and Arjun also promises her that he shall do so to assuage her insult.

That Draupadi was an example of total supplication to Shri Krishna is something that is well known and we again see a great deal written about it, here too.

The Mahabharat is great because it does not hide the grey shades in any character. It portrays no person as purely good or no one as the epitome of evil. The sanskrit version provides ample scope for writing about Draupadi as such. There is perhaps no need to draw on folk lores and build imaginary situations. This is perhaps Prathiba Ray’s greatest fault.While mirroring Draupadi in today’s women the author has missed out in places on the true nature of her heroine. Yet it is perhaps the best book on draupadi ever written.

Dasavatharam-A Review

{ June 19, 2008 @ 4:57 pm } · { QTB, on and off, review }
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Its a bit late but nevertheless its here.This monday last, I saw Dasavatharam in Kaveri theatre in Bangalore. I dont generally watch movies in non- multiplexes for obvious reasons. But this one had to be an exception for two reasons:

1. the cost of a multiplex ticket

2. the lack of availability of tickets

This one is afterall one of the most hyped movies to be released in a while . so did i like it?Yes.did it live up to the hype? yes. did it live up to your expectation? yes and no.Here’s why.

Kamal is brilliant. His dedication,persevarance,dilligence and acting skills are worth admiring.As an actor he is a spectacular success. No one in Indian cinema could have carried off ten diffrenet roles as charismatically as kamal has.Rangaraja Nambi, the first character is perhaps the best from Kamal in a while. He breathes soul and life into that character. Its well shot,enacted superbly and quite evidently meticulously researched.This is probably the most memorable role from Kamal since Kameshwaran of MMKR.He is also brilliant as the telugu RAW official, though after a while the effect wears out.Govindaraja Naicker has shades of Madan in it, maybe because the characters themselves are similar.As Christian Fletcher the villain, he makes you wonder why he doesnot do negative roles often.He is again above the cut. The only blemish being Khalifulla Khan, though the make up is praise worthy, Kamal falls flat. As Avatar Singh he is predictable and as Krishnaveni he again shows his class.

The movie is a thorough entertainer, its technically of a different contour than recent Indian movies.In fact   most times it reminds you of Hollywood movies. Action sequences are well shot, songs are decent, background score keeps the adrenaline pumping and the graphics is superlative.Asin as Andal is highly irritating in fact if at all there is a villain in the movie, it is this role of hers.This movie must be watched because its not often that you get to see such superbly shot movies, this one is on a different level and yes, Kamal Hasan is the USP .Is it better than Shivaji definitely yes. The only major blemish being this movie doesnt have the kind of story that Kamal’s movies generally have. This one is meant to be an entertainer and its one of the best in recent times.This is one also comes with a heavy dosage of atheism as expected. Watch it in the big screen you wont be disapponted.And yes, a multiplex is better.

The director I love-Mani Ratnam

{ June 5, 2008 @ 5:29 am } · { QTB, movies }
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Today morning when I switched on the T.V for news and was generally channel swapping i came across the song ‘mottamadi mottamadi’ from anjali, a tamil movie.it was like being caught in a time warp reminding me of the days when i sang val jhodi val jhodi instead of well, luv jhodi.The movie according to me is the best from mani ratnam, unsurpassed by the brilliance of Roja or the slick flick ayutha ezhuthu or the poignant kannathil mutthamittal. More than a decade and half before Aamir could utter every child is special, MR gave us a masterpiece on child psychology and the world of special children. It beautifully explores the relationship between a child suffreing from mental retardation (role essayed brilliantly by then baby, sharmilee) and her mother, siblings and the society at large.It does not have a fairytale ending but speaks more of a stark biting  reality in the rosy world of children that includes imaginary ET inspired trips to the moon and back.

There is only one person who occasionally surpasses MR in the art of story telling and thats Kamal Hassan. Watch Nayagan when the two came together for the first and what possibly is the last time. Brilliantly narrated story of the rise and fall of a don- vellupillai .The movie is partly inspired by Godfather and the real story of the don of dharavi-varadharaja mudaliar, the man who ruled Mumbai’s murky underworld before Dawood stepped in. Company doesnt even come a close second.ManiRatnam succeeds because his films are so very rooted in local issues that it always seems uncannily that he tells you exactly what you want to listen and think is true.He perhaps  has understood his audience better than anyother filmmaker has in recent history. Here’s a pick of some of  Mani’s best.

Thalapathi: based on the mahabharath, it explores friendship and the relative perception of right and wrong. Mamooty, Rajnikanth and Shobhana with a young Arvind Swamy. It was the precursor to his successive  takes on underworld and the murky politics that comes with it.its special because,perhaps it was the last time audiences saw rajni the actor on screen.This is the movie that gave us Rakkamma kayathattu..

Mouna Ragam:Brilliant music and a poignant tale of love. Watch this, you will know where bhansali went wrong with Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam.incidentally, Cheeni Kum’s music is borrowed  from the Illayaraja’s score for this movie.

AgniNatchathiram: fight between the sons of two wives of vijayakumar for pride, standing and identity. A heady combinantion of karthik and prabhu. The movie marks a turning point in the Indian Music industry.It was the last time Illayaraja held sway. The movie marked the split of Maniratnam-Illyaraja combination, forcing MR to bring in a young Rehman for roja, the rest as we say is history.

Iruvar:if you want to know what defines tamil nadu politics, watch this. the tale of MGR,Jayalalitha and Karunanidhi, played perfectly by Mohan Lal, well you are not dreaming-Aishwarya Rai(her debut) and Prakash Raj.It also features Revathi.Gouthami, Tabu and Madhubala.Aishwarya’s best performance till date. The only blemish being the ending. watch it you will understand.

AyuthaEzhuthu: redefined  cinematic narration and technical brilliance.Madhavan,Surya,Siddharth,MiraJasmine,Trisha and Esha Deol. Inba and Michael Vasanth, simply unforgettable. Yuva, its hindi version is almost a shame compared to this.

Tiruda Tiruda: not directed but roduced by RGV and MR together.A great entertainer with seemingly no logic. Yet memeorable for all the right reasons. Hira Rajagopal turned in a gem of a performance.

Mani Ratnam is arguably the best director in India today. He is also the director of Roja,  Bombay, Alaipayuthey, DilSe , Guru and Kannathil Muthamittal.He is the one who gave south indian cinema , a recognition and a standing. Today much of the film industry in south owes it to him be it for Rahman or international acclaim .He is astutely a tamilian first and then a director, the reason why his movies work  and can never be copied satisfactorily.It also the reason why he fails to recreate the magic in Hindi, Guru’s success not withstanding. He prefers not to be called an art director and cannot be more correct.His stories are not offbeat, the way they are told are.There are actors who would do anything to act in his movies and not without reason. Its simple, theres only one director when it comes to me and thats Mani Ratnam.

 

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