Sivaram Thinks and Scribbles..

Re-Entry of Thala

2018-04-30T16:40:00.002+05:30

Hi all,
There is plenty of cricket going around well only India this time, as it is the season of IPL. There is no cricket happening elsewhere in the globe.
As usual this year too, there is plenty of action and thinking happening on ads to be shown in the telecast, and pretty much they meet the standards they have set for themselves that most of them does not make sense at all !

The biggest wonder one could ever have is the ads for mobile phones, not a single phone ad shows one messaging / speaking , all they care about is taking a selfie, or a selfie like picture using the back camera !

Now that I have set the context with cricket and jumped to ads immediately I am also trying to be in their league. If at all anybody needs one without any proper coherent thought which I think is the most sought after skill in IPL season, I am all ready and can guarantee that I will be a pro in it.

Coming back to this season specially, there was quite a buzz as it is the much anticipated return of two teams by actually eliminating two teams which was formed as the result of elimination of two teams in the first place ! You probably know this already, unless you are living in a den!
It is Gujarat Lions and Rising Pune SuperGiant(s) which were basically in camouflage making way for CSK and RR. Except for the name change , these teams were practically the same , giving us a Sivaji'um nan than MGR'um nan than moment !

But interesting part is how do we take this edition, since TamilNadu is in auto-pilot mode for protests, which surprisingly is uniting all of us irrespective of caste creed and religion. With advent of WhatsApp and decline of Facebook, we have simply too many protests happening on. If you had to take a road trip from Kanyakumari to Chennai, you could have participated in all sort of rallies protests, by that time you reach Chennai you would realize how diverse TamilNadu is , and you will see the diversity of the protests.
While I seriously believe in the significance of protests and the results of the same, there are some protests which are totally pointless like the one which happened in the movement of IPL from Chennai. I was totally confused with the protests, the ruling party AIADMK was protesting for non-setting up of the Cauvery management board, DMK was protesting that AIADMK was not protesting in full vigor and josh, Congress and BJP were also protesting, only point which we will have to ponder upon is who has to act on these protests if everybody is protesting for the same !
Since the protests were going seriously, some people realized that nobody realized that they exist like Seeman, Communists and some movie makers. Since they were jobless they decided to protest against IPL and they formed a brilliant plan like one of Vadivelu's men who try to stop a marriage by stealing the comb of the groom.
These guys decided to stop the entry of umpires thereby stopping the match. They let the people in, they let the team in, but delayed the entry of umpires!
People may have heard of threat to player safety, threat to particular religion or race, but being unique TamilNadu made a threat to umpires, and as a result the toss was delayed by ten minutes !

Coming back to cricket (once again ) , this time like always CSK is giving their fans enough reasons to go for a health check up to survive pressure. It seems like Harbhajan was practicing very hard for well learning Tamil and tweeting. I was very surprised to see the squad of CSK, when all other teams were picking up the youngsters, CSK relied on experience and it seemed as though that they were picking up team for a decade of IPL with players who played since the first edition. But you have to believe in MSD, for he can do what others cannot think of.
On a serious note, I think no other franchise has established that much of a fan base. Teams bankrolled or supported by cine stars, industrialists have found their fan base wavering, while CSK had created a phenomenon for itself. CSKs owner Seenivasan, reached a cult status with followers branding him as 'Seeni mama'.
The Chennai Franchise and the entire state, has adopted Dhoni as 'Thala' a localized term for Leader, and the deputy Suresh Raina as 'Chinna Thala'. It has got to be in the state's DNA that an outsider of the state comes into the state and then becomes the undisputed ruler of the state and its people.
History will always repeat itself ! And the state does not take it as a bad remark, but takes pride in this that an outsider of the state is able to do this in the state and people are generous !

For anybody outside the state to strike a conversation with a guy from the state, the first topic which they will arrive at is Rajinikanth. CSK's campaign so far can be directly compared to Rajinikanth's movie that the hero will be cornered to a point of no return, and then the hero does a jail break and emerges victorious.
It is the same reason why CSK has a strong fan base, that the fan base is organically grown, and there can be so many parallels between CSK and the real happenings of the state. Knowingly or unknowingly, the tradition of the state is maintained in the commercials, also some local guys from the state also grew up in the team to good roles.

It does not matter whether the trophy cabinet is filled this year or not, it does not matter whether we top the fair play chart or not, all it matters for the state is the long-on six of MSD. It does not matter whether Dhoni continues to play for India or not, he will always be welcome in Chennai and when he decides to hang up his boots, for sure as a tribute Chepauk stadium will have a stand named after him.

For a state so generous to MSD and with the current political vaccum, you can never predict what is in store for MSD, he can one day become a ruler of the state as well.
Irrespective of that, he may earn a berth in Marina!
It may well be turnout to be a Mangatha da! moment :)

Bye till next,

Truly immortal

2018-03-24T16:43:00.000+05:30

Hi all,
We all have been using now Watsapp heavily, and this post merely is a dedication to the messages which we receive on Watsapp.
I am not meaning the numerous 'Check if your watsapp has been hacked' or 'Send it to 10 other people to receive blessings immediately'.

Those posts come with a message to send and share to other people, and the one I am going to articulate on is the one which gets shared without being instructed to. And those are called as

meme

miːm/

(cue for applause..)

Though I must admit, that that does not call for a applause, as I have not told something which was not told before or not known before. Every smartphone user now knows what it is.

For the majority of non-tamilians, Tamil Cinema starts and ends with Rajinikanth. And they keep wondering what happens now to the political scenario of the state, but that's for another post.
But for the common Tamilian, it is not just Rajinikanth, and in fact a day can easily pass without mentioning of Rajinikanth, but not this guy Vadivelu. ( cue for applause... again the same )

He has done what Rajinikanth or even Kamalhaasan cannot achieve in the state. He has achieved an immortal state, inspite of not doing movies now actively. He had a bad experience by involving in campaigning during elections, and since then he has not got movies regularly, but the state hardly misses him.
Not a single day passes without mentioning his dialogue or enacting his reaction. One can easily find a single picture of him to respond to questions, which will to the point the summarize what you want to convey.
A picture is worth a thousand words, and a Vadivelu reaction picture is worth more than that.

Its been more than 30 years, he started his film career, and he has undoubtedly changed the way common people react and speak than anybody else. May be better talented actors have come before him, or may come in the future, but he is the guy who was in the right place in the right time.
And thats the only reason inspite of his absence in movies, he is living right in everybody's phone in the form of meme's.

I had written a post long time back, dedicating to the Laurel and Hardy of tamil cinema, who in their prime days made hopeless movies turn to a blockbuster, and mind you that was not the time of Digital era. They were able to attract people into halls just with their presence in the posters, as there was no promo's nor other marketing techniques which people employ now.

He may not be as talented as others to pull of a variety of roles, but he is the best in his forte. His comedy which may have been monotonous, still holds value as a small change here and there would make it so good and hard to ignore.

And majority of people, think that Tamilians go behind Rajini's punch lines, while it may be true, the shelf life of those are short lived. In reality Tamilians go behind Vadivelu's punch comic lines and that's precisely the reason why his absence was not never noticed. He was not in the silver screen, he was in everybody's mobile screens.
And given the current political scenario, where politicians are having almost a monopoly in the Laughter challenge which they have put on the state, Vadivelu floods the internet like the Chennai floods with no mercy on every single line which our political guys speak.

There are some lines which are used heavily some in the same context, some though in a different context perfectly makes sense.
Vadivelu , probably was not notice for the first time heavily by the common public as a comedian in this movie 'Singaara Velan' where he was one among the many in the movie. Though he was like a side-kick to a side-kick, his mannerisms made sure that nobody would miss him.

And then he soon started getting more and more, and just like the previous set of comedians, Vadivelu too weaved a web which caught everybody and he was proving to be the Midas's touch for the movies to make it a blockbuster.

And that was the same time, when the mass masala flicks was picking up. And since someone had to ensure that people do not leave before the second half where the actual story begins, the whole responsibility was shouldered by the hero and the comedian. Who plays which role is upto them.
Vadivelu was simply amazing in this role, and we can quote a bunch of movies which would not have even running time of half an hour without him.

Classic example being Sundar C's Winner. Though the movie was a blockbuster, the lead actor Prashant (or was he really ?) struggled to get good movies after that. And in some sort of way, you can call this a resurrection for Vadivelu as well, as he realized his mettle after that and then there was no looking back for him.
People may forget the movie, the character names of other actors but Vadivelu's Kaipulla is etched in hearts of Tamils and can never be erased.

And there are various famous comical sequences between him and actor Parthiban, where people do not even know which movie they belong to , but know the comical lines by heart.

And there are more , even his character name can bring back laughter, forget even the lines.

His role as the Contractor Nesamani in Friends, role of inspector in Marudamalai, Naai-Sekar in Thalainagaram are other examples, Dubai return guy in Vetri Kodi Kattu, where any common Tamilian would tell the lines without a slight trace of stammer.

And the most important of the whole lot is the political satire 23rd Pulikesi , for which he played the lead actor role officially on the title card , made sure that he attained a immortal form.

And this movie single handedly gives enough content for the meme creators every day and I really hope that inspite of all the dispute and issues , the second installment of this do gets to see the light.

Vadivelu has truly been the celebrated guy in any Meme Creator's app, and a small Google of Vadivelu meme will tell you that.

Some of the below are the ones I found very funny and interesting,

And given that this one is dedicated to Vadivelu, how can one end without the epic

Long live ... Aahaan...

Bye till next,

Movies of 2017

2017-12-27T22:19:00.000+05:30

Hi all,
As the year end is approaching, so is the chance for me to pen down something as usual related with tamil movies. Here I wish to articulate on the movies I liked this year , similar to the one which I wrote last year. Gosh ! Time Flies !

This year I realize that it is turning out to be a year of newbies with lot of young crew making it big with nice content, when the big stars were finding it difficult to find good content.

Adhe Kangal

The year began with this movie, which turned out to be a very much interesting movie. I was in for a surprise with this, it appeared to me as a triangle love story in the beginning, then I thought the hero(Kalaiarasan) is playing a false game of being blind etc., but what turned out was totally out of the box for me.

The plot was refreshingly new and though I must admit that in the end it was turning out to be a bit predictable, but till the time the plot unfolded itself it was a very much engaging experience.
The heroine of the movie was from Zero, which was pretty much a bad movie for me last year, but this movie was a perfect fit for her.

The movie is surely a good watch for it is a rooted and believable thriller with no cinematic injustice added.

Managram

Set in the capital city of the state, this is a clear class movie of this year, with a cut above the rest.
Everything about this movie is perfect, the visual experience, audio experience with background score being so perfect for this.
I remember seeing this multiple times, and everytime it will give you jitters and will keep you engaged from the beginning to the end.
The fact that the leading characters do not even have their names called out, but still kind of end up in a tangle together is definitely a master piece, and this is definitely a master piece for the city itself.

Muniskanth of Mundasuppati fame, found his way back atlast in this and his role was outstanding, as a wannabe criminal with a easy-go attitude and his performance was brilliant.

While movies in the past couple of years, portrayed only North Madras as the place to live in, and the urban city where the rich live is not the place to be, this movie does not do that. It shows the lives of the people in city in various economic level and sections of the society and how they are all related in a good way, and also proves that all lives are related. Definitely a must watch !

8 thotakkal

This movie stands out again this year, for its pure content. The lead actor was definitely born to do this movie, and I am not sure if he was his natural self or he performed in a such a brilliant manner of a guy who has a unstable past and forced into a job which he does not like and does not have any friends/relatives to mingle with.

If at all a biography for M.S.Bhaskar is done, the single shot of a dialogue portion between the lead actor and M.S.Bhaskar will form the climax of that.

I remember seeing the interview of the director after watching the movie, and it was mentioned that it is 8 different stories for 8 bullets. I must admit that I did not realize that when I saw it for the first time, but later I realized it and probably that is the only thing which was planned in paper and did not materialize well.

A must watch for this year !

Bahubali 2

This is the epic movie of this year, answering the most wanted question of 'Why Kattappa killed Bahubali?'

When the big directors and stars were finding it difficult to manage the expectations with plenty of budget and a big market to cater, this one ruled them all like a boss !

It is not easy to manage prequels/sequels unless planned so meticulously and with so much of CG work involved in this deadlines will definitely slip a bit as we have not done this earlier.

In-spite of the delay, the movie was good and managed to exceed the expectations. It has good mass moments, as well as good content backing it.

Definitely a must watch !

Oru Kidayin karunai Manu

Again a new crew with a very small budget made a nice movie.
The only familiar face in this movie was Vidharth of Myna fame.
Apart from him, rest of them were pretty much new or persons whom we generally do not remember after the movie ends.

The intial 15 minutes of the movie, I felt it was going to be a typical village sentiment movie which was tried and tested in all the movies of 80s and 90s . I was not very happy in picking this up to watch. But what followed later was hilarious and totally worth the somber fifteen minutes, and then I could totally relate to the first 15 minutes.

It is not an edge of the seat suspense thriller, but if you ask for a movie where you want to know what is going to happen next every 10 minutes then this will be it.
It is not an emotional drama, but if you ask for a movie where you want to know how people react when faced with adverse situation this is it. It has a mix of black comedy, satire, everything you need !

Rangoon

Gautham Karthik found at-last something to cheer about in his career.

The movie is wonderfully done with small incidents moving the story beautifully with many people involved and all of them have a significant role to play.

The movie goes into details of black market and makes a mark in that aspect of making a convincing movie out of the lives of the people involved.

It is not edge of a seat thriller, but keeps you engaged till the end, though must admit that however realistic they try to make the movie there was some additions for the sake of doing it.

Like all movies which show North madras, this movie too does the same with friendship, betrayal among friends, revenge etc.
But that is where the twists reside and the beauty of the movie.

Maragadha Naanayam

From last year, the horror movie genre spree continued this year too. Fans of this genre generally to do not approve of horror movies in tamil, as they generally do not provide the thrill which foreign movies of this genre do.
Apart from the target audience and market reason, there is an economical reason as well for mixing comedy with horror as to get a U certificate and then become eligible for tax exemption.

In this trend,among the movies which released this year this one I felt is a cut above the rest.
Anand-Raj once a dreaded villain, is now the go-to man for a villain with a bit of comic sense. There are some decent twists and role-play involved in this which I liked. What makes it a cut above the rest is that the comedy portion is not forced here, but is pretty much part of the story and not a track running in parallel.

Uru

Kalaiarasan the lead man in this movie, like Viddharth had a decent year with two good releases with this and Yeidhavan. This movie though belongs to both the lead actors.
Continuing from Thirandhidu Seesae , Kabali,
Dhansika too must be lauded for her performance, has been choosing movies with scope for performance which is rare in tamil movies.

The movie has been inspired from various movies and has credited them all , and still cannot be counted as a remake or a pull-off.
In spite of that very rarely we get a tamil movie with such an ending open for interpretation and the movie justifies its title and instills fear for sure.

Pandigai

Another low budget, not a strong hero , and riding on the fact that the content is the hero.
Couple of movies this year I thought were inspired from Fight Club which I was partially correct and wrong. One was this and other one being Bogan.

A decent year for Kreshna, the lead too with decent outings in this, Yakkai and Vizhithiru.
And after ParuthiVeeran this is the movie where Saravanan had a good role to play once again, of a gambler trying to hit the jackpot.

This movie is a mix of underworld, gambling, unauthorized fight clubs, and heist movie as well.

The movie has drawbacks as well, with unwanted songs sequences, forced romantic portions with plenty of cliches which has been tried and dusted in tamil movies.
But inspite of the drawbacks, the movie provides enough thrill to keep you engaged.

Vikram Vedha

It was raining Vijay Sethupathi movie last year, and this year though the count was less, the movies which saw the daylight had covered up all classes or centers as they call it.

After a very long time a good movie with enough mass moments and brainy moments as well with such seasoned actors this is a perfect treat for a commercial movie fan.

I had written a separate post for this movie, and the only one which I wrote this year related with movies prior to this one.

Everything about this was a perfect, with awesome background score, lyrics, songs and too top it all Vijay Sethupathi and Maddy's performance !

A must watch for this year, can ignore the rest if you have not yet got a chance to experience this !

Taramani

This is Ram's world where he tries to capture the persons whom we hardly notice in our busy life. This movie is purely for the people living in cities and who have experienced the globalization.

Like Bala, Ram has got his own trademark style now.

All his movies deals only with characters with extreme nature be it love or hatred and he shows them both in one person. Irrespective of whether you buy into the content or not, one can learn a lot from his movies in terms of the writing and you see only characters evolving and behaving.

I liked the way of promotion of the movie with the inverted mute of words, the voice over of the director and not from the hero which we are used to, and makes a cut into all pressing issues of the society with demonetization, relationships, ego, illegal relationships, living-in etc.

Kurangu Bommai

Another awesome movie this year for Viddharth, proves that he believes in good content and knows his strength.

After Pandiya Naadu, an awesome performance of Bharathiraja in this.

As expected the main crux of the story does not involve heroine and does not require it. But still the portion involving Viddharth and heroine was refreshingly new and does not give you a boring feel.

The way all scenes knit together in the plot is interesting and has good emotional content as well with friendship, loyality, questioning of ethics for a loyal behavior in an unethical smuggling business. The bag serves as a metaphor for the monkey in all of us searching for a route to fix our problems. Except for a few scenes which look forced, this movie is a nice routed thriller with a package of emotions and engaging twists and turns.

Vizhithiru

This movie has the leadwith two actors who have had a successful 2017 : Viddharth and Kreshna.

There has been some similarities with Managaram and this, as both of them deal with incidents happening in one night.

But what the movie deals is different, and also how it deals is also different.

What I liked in this movie is that the movie begins with a message and ends with the same, and in the end we can understand the message conveyed better, and there lies the strength of the movie.

The second half was a bit dragged but still worth a watch for the plot and message conveyed. It is not preaching like Samuthirakanni's movies, but it just sheds light on the message and makes us think rather than having scenes to justify and elaborate on it.

Theeran

When big stars tried to make a commercial flick with mass fan boy moments and still worthy content, here was a movie where fight sequences were a bit cinematic, some moments for the whistles and claps, but still had rooted content.

The fact that it was made out of real life incidents and real cops, was an added advantage for this movie.

It cannot be counted as a regular commercial flick, as there was enough thrilling moments and keeps one guessing on what next rather than when to whistle and hoot.

A proud moment for the original cops involved in the chase, and really serves as a testament to them.

Except for the initial romantic portion between the lead pair, the content was very much bang-on the topic and very much gave a chill to the viewers.

Velaikaran

The last movie of this year for me, from Jeyam Raja and SivaKarthikeyan.

Raja's name should be christened now to Thani Oruvan Raja , and this movie serves as the perfect sequel to Thani Oruvan.

If Thani Oruvan was man in power questioning the injustice in the society, this is a common man questioning the things, on things which we deal with day-to-day life for our life and job.

The dialogue writer in Raja is very much alive and has not come out of Thani Oruvan yet, and had enough content to make it very powerful. A mass hero could not have done this, as the content would have been diluted a bit to add mass moments and hence a perfect fit for Siva Karthikeyan.

First half of the movie was very much bang on, and some important artifacts used in the first half did not appear in the second half, it looked as the villains in the first half and second half changed, those things too changed :)

The movie has a big star cast in terms of the support actors, and everybody had an interesting role to play with. Except for the comedy portions which was forced in here with Robo Shankar, everybody else was very much wanted in this script.

Since it deals with the problems we face day to day, it would relate with everyone and whoever stayed till the end will appreciate the guts of the director for making an end card with a message of success of the movie.
I say here 'stayed till the end' because of the song sequence in the end after the climax , when people started walking out as it was more like end credits rather than the movie. I did not like the song and neither the placement of it.
When Karuthavan ellam galleejam was placed perfectly, Iraivi song was a bit forced to add a romantic number, the last song was intended as the fast song before climax, but was in fact added after climax !

There are probably some more ,which I have not got a chance to see yet, but these are the ones which I felt was worth its salt :).

If you have stayed till here, then I wish you a happy new year :)

Bye till next,

Madurai Karan for RK Nagar

2017-12-08T19:39:00.000+05:30

Hi all,

Of late, continuing with the current scenario we hardly get a chance to stop laughing. Last time I remember we were all laughing our asses off was when Rahul Gandhi gave an interview to Arnab Goswami. After that , we have hardly got good (for a lack of a better word) comedians , be it in real life nor in movies. The leading comedians in all the major ‘woods’ of our state like Vivek, Vadivelu, Santhanam, Brahmanadam, Sunil , Abhishek Bachan, Kapil Sharma everybody went out of form. That was like a dull period in our history, where people did not have enough topics to laugh heartily at.

And being a Democratic Country, the Government which is for the people has decided to do actually something for the people. All our Government departments are probably in a race to win the Kalakkapovadu Yaaru reality game show by making people laugh at them.
Last time it was the RBI, and then the local parties in our state, and now it’s the time of Election Commission.

What transpired in RK Nagar, was not even remotely possible in a Perarasu movie. Given a chance that a Perarasu movie is rare nowadays, and something which even that movie cannot think of is like a once in a century event, and that’s what rolled out in RK Nagar.
A person from Madurai , though originally from the equivalent Rayalseema , out of the blue comes into the political scene. This was totally unexpected, when people were looking at Rajinikanth, Kamalhaasan, Vijay to announce their political ideas and plans, this guy all of the sudden has arrived and stirred the storm totally in an unexpected direction.

And then comes the interesting twist of the symbols which he applied for : Whistle, Boat . Whistle was believed to be taken to rhyme with his name Vishal , but was actually expected to be taken by Kamalhaasan as he launched a ‘Whistle Blower’ application , but also apt for Rajinikanth, as that is what his fans gave him whenever he appeared on the big screen. And Boat they say is to attract the fishing community, though I doubt if they even care for the elections ! They have actually more serious issues to deal with than the election , and the symbols used in the election.

What was thought of as a serious move, instantaneously became a comedy as the Election Commission rejected the nomination. What happened was bizarre, and I have no clue of the actual happenings, and I guess nobody will have. Election Commission resorted to a scorecard ticker to indicate the number of candidates appearing in the election. It was increasing and decreasing simultaneously, and it looked like a first year student in Electrical Engineering had just got a circuit board and was playing around with the signals there. I am not joking here, the nomination was accepted-rejected-accepted-rejected-accepted-rejected-accepted-rejected, and the loop never came out like a Christopher Nolan movie.

And then to spice it up, there were even more comedians in the stage, there were too many Madhusudhanan, Dhivakaran, Dhinakaran in the constituency and all of them were contesting. This was probably a move by the ‘whatever-the-name-call-it’ party which is now left over after MGR-Janaki-Jayalalitha- left the party to cause confusion among people. Seriously, we need a separate enquiry to find out what were they drinking and eating to identify the possible source of these ideas.

And then Election commission probably realized that they are being pulled down in the contest and to prove their humor sense they gave out a reason for the rejection of nomination of Vishal :

Nomination rejected as two signature of the 10 were allegedly forged.

This is not a spoof article, this is what had happened and announced officially. One would wonder, why would somebody require 10 signatures for nomination. If only the law makers were alive, we would have had another interesting enquiry to find out what were they smoking to come up with this law. I am not sure of the law whether these 10 have to be in the same constituency or whatever but why! The probability of these 10 guys voting to the party which gives them booze and money is definitely high than to the guy they signed the nominations paper for. It is not a guarantee signature, it is not like these 10 guys are taking an oath to vote for this candidate. In hindsight those ten signatures are probably more useless than this post!

But that is what Election Commissions are meant for, they have their own powers using which they can create additional powers and use it at their own discretion. You have to definitely give credits to those people who came up with this concept of discretionary powers.
Common public can only relate to Mudhalvan/Nayak

Lawyer : ‘In accordance with the discretionary powers of CM….’,
Raghuvaran : ‘Yov! English lam pesadha, mudiuma mudiada solu’.

One can wonder, what I had to come up with this post I can assure you that I am in my right senses when I am writing this post and not in any sort of high, and I got inspiration for this post from a whatsapp forward.
The whatsapp forward read like this:

“ You need 1 witness to assert to substantiate a judgement for a crime,
3 witnesses for a marriage.
Higher the risk, higher the witnesses required”.

I just extrapolated with this “10 signature for a nomination”. Way to Go!

Unfortunately, the buck stops here at the nomination process. The actual number of votes required to win or margin or announcement of a winner, there is no sort of process there, not even 2 persons validating! So according to them, what they are doing is insignificant when compared to a judgment issued to a petty case!

And then the film associations, who actually have comedians started a agitation that Vishal should resign from his post as head for the film association, as the previous guys who were supporting parties did so ! It looks like all the contestants were boozing on some heavy stuffs.
Theirs is a private association, and they have their own rules and regulations and there was no rule/regulation which actually said that.
This is a classic Indian example: we practice something while we preach and prescribe something else.

But, coming back to the contest, the winners are anyway going to be The Election Commission. As they announce the winner themselves even if they are competing :) such is the discretionary powers they have!

On a serious note, they are democratic and they wait for the election and counting to complete and then announce the winner whom they had decided before even the contest began :)

Remember Sivaganga constituency!

Vaazga Jananayagam !

Bye till next,

Economist in Tom Dick and Harry

2017-11-12T23:44:00.002+05:30

Hi all,
Last week, we had the first year death anniversary for our beloved 500 and 1000₹ denomination currency notes. I was just wondering what impact it had on us.

While plenty of people supported and praised it, there were equal number of people against it, and there were again some people who were unaffected by this. That category of the people were either rich or managed to live in the 'Digital India' unaffected, or they never used the denominations earlier.

It was a tough decision and when PM announced it with a emotional touch of sacrificing himself I was moved by it and felt like somebody had done something and we being the educated crowd have to support him. Honestly I was for the move, and those little inconvenience of standing in the queue in the midnight or going to office area on a holiday to get a chance of withdrawing money from the ATMs did not matter for me.
But definitely, it had adversely affected the majority of the daily labors and uneducated crowd and led to lot of panic and they easily fell prey to cheats.

Even now I do not know whether it was a good move or bad move, or as some people said the way it was done was bad. I have no clue, but one thing is for sure, demonetization was one move which gave enough to talk about daily to everybody ! For once I saw a move from Government which visibly had a impact on everybody.

Media was full on it, common public spoke about it everywhere, famous personalities in all domains spoke about it, and those who had got the new currency notes were also famous and those who had the change for it to the 100₹ notes were even more famous. With each and every day there was new amendments, new rules the only guys who were fully updated on this were the meme creators, they had what they called as 'field day'.

Everybody including BJP Supporters, common man, opposition, everyone became a economist in India and were giving out terminologies after terminologies and hence did not realize the absense of RBI.
This can definitely be added to the points to be considered to decide demonetization was a good move or not.

The guys who were supposed to speak firmly was the RBI and they were totally clueless on their existence and hence they did not even know whether to speak or not to speak. They had no clue on how to adapt the new ATMs till date even after a year, 2000₹ probably is going to celebrate its first birthday this week, while the erstwhile 500 and 1000₹ are neatly buried God knows where and how much. The design team of the new notes should be awarded with a great amount of the old 500 and 1000₹ notes to make them realize the dimensions of the existing currency note and requirements of the ATM machine and also get them tested for their IQ and also a appointment with an Ophthalmologist.

The approval teams definitely needs a big consulting session with all major hospitals across India.

I have played with lottery chits and colorful bus tickets in my childhood and the new denomination notes can give a run to them.
I agree that the old notes were a bit dull colored ones, but I liked the 5₹ notes very much, for it was in blue and it was very difficult to find one which was not bent/torn apart already :)
Probably the designer got bored of the existing palette, and thought the way to end black money was to paint the money pink and make everyone feel embarrassed carrying it !
And for the new denomination notes which still has not found daylight probably will be looking like Tweety Yellow for that is one color which the RBI has not issued anything yet !

And also to top it all, there was rumors and videos going on that all the new notes had a chip which can continuously send GPS signals and the signal will be realized by the server sitting in the moon and help them track the people who hoard money in lump-sum !

And even after months, RBI is calculating, auditing, accounting, inspecting, surveying, examining, scrutinizing, checking, assessing, appraising, evaluating, reviewing, analyzing, studying, reflecting, dissecting the number of notes which existed and which returned.

Also former and then RBI Governor is seen nowadays in some interviews occasionally and the current guy is nowhere to be seen, and even in those times when RBI gets to prove that they are still a functioning organization in India he is missing.
Probably he realized that there is no AI yet in ATM machines to print the denomination dynamically and sign notes on behalf of him and busy signing new 200₹ notes, or busy playing his part in the Blue Whale Challenge which the Government has given him !

Bye till next,

Entertainment Tax for TamilNadu

2017-09-30T11:01:00.001+05:30

Hi all,
For the past few months, things are not stable in our beloved state TamilNadu, and to add fuel to fire our Sarkar ji keeps introducing new bans and new things and of course gets a new immigration stamp in his passport. Our local politicians ensure that there is no need for Central Government news to come inside our state, by making a flash news every 5 minutes through out the week.

A couple of weeks back, our PM introduced GST for simplifying things for a accountant managing business run by other people. I wonder why it was needed though, as accountants and auditors are the people from whom you can never get a straight answer. When you think that for your question, there can only be 2 answers, they will argue with you and ensure that they can give a false third answer and contradict your 2 probable answers. Thats what accountants are capable of doing, they can make a big document with all complex words and sentences which even Shakespeare would not have dreamed about, and they can give a run to TR's barrage of words even, to state a simple statement.
I am not an accountant, so I have to be precise in my writing, and hence coming back to the original idea I had in mind for this post, is that after GST was implemented our state as usual had some problems with it.
1. We did not understand it fully.
2. It was rolled out in the Pan-India all-ears show of our PM in Hindi which we do not understand.
3. Our local guys were busy playing hide-and-seek in resorts.
4. We are not accountants.
5. We were happy that the one rupee coins were not banned.

The ordering is anyways insignificant in TN, as anybody can change it at any point in time for their convenience.

With our current state of the politicians and coffers instead of collecting taxes from people, it would have been easier to impose the entertainment taxes on the news channels and political parties.
We are not sure how many percentage of tax it has to be with GST, as I think almost all conditions of GST would be applicable here.

For a state which has seen a mixture of cinema and politics, this is not new and hence entertainment tax on politics has to be there in TN for sure is my opinion. ( most likely it is the same case through-out India, but we are not aware !)
When movie halls in TN were shut down and were protesting against Government citing taxation reasons , local public had no issues with it, and did not even realize that as the local politicians were giving them enough entertainment with entire gamut of emotions.

Opening scene of our politics movie will definitely be a Vikraman style la-la-la moment, with all people united and calm under the iron fist of Jayalalitha.

And the plot unfolds, with Jayalalitha getting hospitalized. Reason for admission to hospital is unknown to almost everyone of us, making it analogous with reason why Power star Dr.Srinivasan came into movies as hero.

When she died, again with unknown reasons, the plot went beyond Vikraman and went into the domain of Shankar. Director Shankar known for his blockbusters also has a knack of keeping things under carpet and maintain a air-of-secrecy always around his movies.
And anybody who has ever entered the Apollo Hospitals, know that it is going to be like Big Boss house , and they have to do all sort of tests and diagnosis with absolutely no clue of why it has to be done and the bill amount is going to look almost the same (best case scenario) of what you have in your mind for your retirement planning.
Such is the budget required, analogous again to Shankar movie budget which again can only be afforded by Jayalalitha. I would suggest that a separate raid can be done on the family or whoever paid the bills questioning on the funding source for clearing the bill !

And when regular night watchman of the TN CM seat OPS and Stalin smiled at each other expecting it to look like hero-villain stand of in a Maniratnam movie, it was observed by Sasikala clan as a villain-villain combo which resulted in the suspension order for the night watchman.

And then OPS did a Rajinikanth style comeback after a Himalayan-effect meditation in the Jayalalitha memorial in the Marina beach. While Rajinikanth has to spend a lot to go to a cool and calm place to mediate in the Himalayas, OPS can do it in the scorching heat of Chennai in the fully crowded Marina beach. Never mind, it was budget constraints, the move was played to the gallery and duly responded with the hoots and whistles.

While OPS would have hoped for the 4 minute Natchathira-Jannal song , he ended up with Amudhan's Oru Suravali kilambiyathae. There came the mandatory forced and obvious twist like in Perarasu movies.

And then , just when people realize that the drama is over , we make EPS for CM. This was the time when our school books and other official documents were still being printed with OPS as CM name. All the processes stopped like the waves which freeze and never move in a Balachandar/Visu movie shock scene.
When Sasikala thought of playing the Veeram Ajith's role to safeguard the family and party, BJP did a Bala style villain move coming out-of-nowhere.

And then the epic-fallout between EPS-Dhinakaran is one thing nobody in our esteemed film industry could have thought about, just like Dhanush-Anirudh.

And then the cat-and-mouse game between OPS-EPS for CM position which was expected to be like Thuppaki Vijay and Vidyut Jammal, turned out to be like Vivegam Ajith - Vivek Oberoi, with each person speaking highly of the other one forgetting that they are supposed to be in the opposite ends !

And then what followed was truly a Hari movie, with all Sumo's and Qualis moving out of all the MLA houses in fast forward mode resulting for an entertaining chase and kidnap sequence.

And then the climax portion of OPS-EPS joining together is straight out of Dhanush's VIP (and the replica VIP2 as well) , and make all of us laugh at ourselves for following these guys!

Jaya TV still has not awaken from the dream like in Christopher Nolan's Inception, is still waiting for the kick to come out of the dream of 'Maanbumigu Chinnamma kuriadupol' or 'Makkalin Mudhalvar' etc.

All the while , Stalin was a silent spectator expecting to rise as hero, only to realize that he can only play the role of America Mappillai / first boyfriend in Selvaraghavan style movies.

And of late, Kamalhaasan has come out and is making an interesting 'extended cameo' in the political scene, that he is making it look like a Kamalhaasan movie and no guest appearances for others will be entertained when he can play them all !

KamalHassan - Politics - One person to rule them all !

Who knows it may be the rebooted version of Thillu Mullu with the roles swapped and Rajinikanth only doing a cameo when Kamalhaasan is going to take the center stage.

And since much of the happenings is happening in Alwarpet, one can propose directly that we move the headquarters to Alwarpet and ofcourse lease out the current headquarters to RajKamal Films International.

Vaazhga Jananayagam !

Bye till next,

Slicing Vikram Vedha

2017-08-18T23:34:00.000+05:30

Hi all,
After quite some time I loved seeing a movie, and I was eager to catch up more on the layers of the movie and wanted to see it multiple times.
The movie which I mean here is Vikram Vedha. I am neither a critic nor a person who knows the intricacies of film making and the nuances of it, but with some interest and all the interviews I followed I have slowly understood and getting a bit of it.
This post is a bit of it, may be correct or may not be correct, for this is my understanding from the movie of what went into it.
SPOILERS AHEAD !

As everybody is aware this is a movie regarding Vikramaditya and Vedhalam based on the Vetala Tales.
Lets cut open to the beginning title animation sequence which was made beautifully.


Vikram Introduction - Madhavan		Vedha Introduction - Vijay Sethupathi

Madhavan who plays Vikram, his name appears when the king is shown.
There is a monologue which goes for few seconds when no credits roll.
Then when 'Vedhalam' is announced in the animation, credits for Vijay Sethupathi who plays the role of Vedha appears.
The color of the animation could have been anything, but overall it gives a black-white-grey shade only for the entire animation , guess to signify what the plot is going to offer.
What is going to unfold over the entire movie is directly shown in the short and crisp sequence.

Coming to the frame where the title is shown.

The title picture appears in a bit of hazy dusty background to what appears like a maze.
On observing closely at this point it looks like a puzzle to be solved where some parts are in the grey area, while some are clearly bright, and some dark.
And you one could draw a perfect straight line right in-between those two names, and it would bisect the two perfectly making each name fall on the sides of the line.
And the maze is again full of straight lines, its not a circle or any other shape they could have made.

Now to scene where Vikram and Vedha meet for the first time face-to-face, Vikram comes with a neat full-black beard and mustache and in a white shirt, and Vedha turns up in black shirt with a white-grey beard.


Vikram - White shirt	Vedha - Black shirt

And the circular shots of both Vikram and Vedha together in one frame shows both of them in white and black shades interchangeably.
Just like the animation sequence Vikram wants to find Vedha, but it is Vedha who appears first before Vikram. Vedha does not open up to other cops and waits for Vikram to come in and also Vedha's first dialogue in the movie is 'Oru Kadhai sollata sir' as in the animation.

Intro scene of Vedha where he directly walks into the police station with a cookie for the barking police dogs clearly shows how well he plans and executes, and neatly played to the gallery for getting the whistles and claps, which is nowadays there always for Vijay Sethupathi.

The dialogue portion between both of them in the confrontation sequence again plays to the gallery, but also with both of them contradicting the other immediately.
When they discuss about the number of encounters/murders done, Vedha clearly says Vikram had done 15 encounters and purposefully leaves the 3 which Vikram did in the introduction sequence. And when Vikram corrects him as 18 encounters, Vedha asks about the last encounter with a subtle neat emotion and the steady voice becomes a feeble and shaky one too to show the sadness of his brother's death, giving a clue there itself to Vikram, that he is emotionally connected to the deceased.

Story 1 : Thiruda Thiruda
And after the first story which Vedha narrates to Vikram, when Vikram is wondering about what Vedha did , Vedha asks Vikram to think about the moral/dharma involved.
At the end of the first story, Vikram feels that both the characters involved are bad and says both of them should be punished, while Vedha says though both did bad, there should be a moral/dharma involved when choosing who has to be punished.
In the first story, Vedha narrated he says when wearing black sunglasses, nobody else will be able to make out what he thinks. When Vedha walks over with bail, he looks at Vikram and says that they have become friends now and when Vikram questions Vedha why the later surrendered in the first place, Vedha puts his coolers on and asks Vikram to find it out.

-- Vikram's wife says to Vikram not to look at things only with his point of view.
-- Vikram in home is questioning his wife on moral/dharma involved in lawyers profession.
-- Vikram's wife questions back on moral/dharma involved in the fake encounters police do.
-- They discuss it exactly face-to-face sitting in the opposite ends of the table.
-- Vikram sticks to his view point, camera shows Vikram inside a box, while for other portions they show in a bit wide angle and outside the box.
-- After Vikram realizes that the encounter involved Vedha's brother Vikram comes back to the same place in living room, but this time camera does not show him inside a box.
-- What Vedha gains from this is that he has got Vikram thinking on the reason why Vedha came back from hiding, and wanted to convey that there were enemies for him in his business/area of residence as well, and he cares about his brother very much.

Interval Block


Vedha in back of Vikram		Interval - Maze Mirror reflection

-- Vedha right at the back of Vikram, as in the classic story, and animation.
-- Vedha again asks whether he can narrate a story.
-- Vedha questions the morale of Vikram for the reason behind his action of sponsoring education for the children of deceased. Vikram responds that the child should not become a criminal, while Vedha reverts back with a question again asking whether Gandhiji's father did a Gandhi and whether Ghotse's son did a Ghotse.

-- For the interval block, the maze has become clear with the blurring removed, and one can now clearly see that the maze is formed by small pieces which themselves are built using mirror images, and overall the final maze as well has two halves one being the mirror image of the other.

Vedha gives a opinion different from Vikram everytime, and keeps only asking question to Vikram and it is to be noted that Vedha too responds to questions of Vikram, in a manner that it answers but also makes Vikram stare at the next question.
Like for instance, the above opinion of Vedha gives a different view point to Vikram's and his friend Simon's statement of 'Sins of father will affect son' as well.

Story 2 : Thiruda Thirudi
-- Story raises a question on morale involved in the fight between gangs , when all gangs are doing illegal things anyways.
-- Vedha says to his friend to find out the informant who leaks the whereabouts and other information to the opposite gang.
Indirectly questioning Vikram to find out who was the informant involved in the murder of Vikram's friend Simon, and how did the murderer's knew about Simon's availability in the location.
-- In the end Vedha asks Vikram on the decision he has to take for now both the characters involved are innocent and the logic for such a morale/Dharma.
-- Vedha gives a clue to Vikram when narrating that his brother was never into illegal business and his brother wanted to live a clean life.

Vedha out of Box with edges blurred

-- Vikram's wife questions whether it is good morale to use one's wife without her knowledge to get things done for him. This makes Vikram realize that what he did is almost similar to what Chandra did by stealing money of Vedha/Vedha's brother for her need cheating them, as narrated in the story 2.
-- Vikram's wife cares for him though they had a misunderstanding , this makes him again realize that Pulli would have been asked to come to the encounter area by making his wife/girl friend as bait, also helped with the forensic reports, as Vedha mentioned that he asked his brother and girl to move out of city.
-- Vikram loses his peace of mind and knows now that he has done a mistake in killing Vedha's brother.
-- Vikram in pursuit of his ultimate goal of finding out why and who killed his friend Simon, decides to find out reason for death and presence of Pulli, a innocent man in the encounter spot.
-- And as Vedha told in the story, Vikram realizes that to find out this, he needs to find out the informant who helped to plan the encounter by leaking the whereabouts.
-- Now the camera shows him a bit farther, showing him with the edges of the boxes blurred.
-- For Vedha, he has got Vikram convinced that his brother was innocent, and also got Vikram convinced that he had got nothing to do with murder of Simon and also has got Vikram working to find out why Pulli was killed.

Story 3: Thirudan Police
-- Vedha realizes that somebody is targetting his gang and killing people.

-- Vedha after getting the information from Vikram that Ravi had informed about his and other gang member whereabouts, Vedha kills Ravi for avenging his brothers and other gang member's death.
-- Vedha's motive of coming out of hiding accomplished.

Vikram's learnings :
-- Ravi had tried to kill Vedha gang using contract killers, but contract killers were not up for it as they did not have guns.

-- Vedha's gang members were encountered by police only after the story happened as third story was set 6 months before current time, and Vikram had relocated to his house only 3 months as per his wife's statement, and after that only the whole sequence of encounters happens.

-- Vedha's gang members were killed in sequence, but enemy gang members of Vedha were not involved.

Climax

-- Vikram says Vedha is thinking of only what he wants, and he does not think about other people involved. Vikram's motive of police job was only to kill criminals, as his father was killed by a criminal.

-- Vikram realizes that all other people in his team were in need of money for various reasons and hence they had taken bribe and killed only Vedha's gang members.

Vikram realizing the motivation of his team

-- Vikram applies the dharma/morale learned from story 1 to decide who has to be killed .

-- Note how camera opens up all the police officers in front of Madhavan, when he realizes that all of them were corrupt, it is such a wonderful piece of art that will get us thinking as well !

Overall there are lot of black-white-grey sequences and I guess they were more than the colour sequences. Colour sequences were more in the stories which Vedha says I think.
At the end of movie, you would realize that almost all dialogues in the movies starting from the title credits have a role in solving the bigger puzzle.
Note that in the end Cheta is still alive, the nemesis of Vedha's gang, as he had nothing to do with Pulli's death. Dharma saves, and Adharma kills !
And also costumes of Vikram starts with white in the beginning and always with clear contrast between his t-shirt and jean, and towards the end the contrast is not that high and t-shirt changes to dark shades.

While the story was a very common one, which could have been said in a linear screenplay, they made it to look complex and interesting by opening up sequences only when the actual characters realize it themselves , but still giving us clues all the way along just like how Vedha gave to Vikram.
Special credits to Vignesh Shivan for penning the lyrics of Karuppu Vellai song, and Sam CS for the music and background score as well !
Opening with a big puzzle, and then carefully weaving small-small stories and finally coming back to the big puzzle only to make it now clear , is a wonderful and skillful way of storytelling. This movie is a master piece for that.
And for the final icing on the cake is to make the audience think for the question of whether Vikram should kill Vedha as a responsible cop, or Vikram should set free Vedha for saving his life.
As the whole movie goes, it is not a easy question to answer to decide which is Dharma !
Time to pick up Vikramathithan stories and search for the question and answers !

Bye till next,

Nandri Hein !

2017-04-18T16:50:00.002+05:30

Hi all,
India is a land of diversity. Diversity as the dictionary meaning says its a range of different things.
We have to believe in this, and if you do not believe in this, no matter what the reality is you will be called as Anti-national , and probably you will be asked to surrender your Aadhar card immediately.

India , as we know has 29 states and 7 Union territories. But from a South Indian perspective , it is like apart from the 4 states TamilNadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra ( actually 5 states as Telangana also needs to be added, but who cares !) rest all can be safely called as North India, and the people as Northies.
While from a North Indian perspective, anybody who speaks a language which they cannot comprehend can be safely called as Madarasis.
Though we are split here, we are all united in one thought that , we believe that those people who speak any language other than our language are complete morons.
This is why we always end up in the language controversies, which will finally end up like this post with no point.

Recently, there is a language controversy, that the central Government is imposing Hindi in all states, through various means. Sometime back, central Government was trying to do the same with Sanskrit and asked all schools to celebrate a Sanskrit day, and they decided to remove German from the school curriculum and replaced it with Sanskrit.
This was all happening in North India, and we were wondering why on earth in the first place we had German in our school, and why it was not there in our school.
The reason why all students like to have a non-local language in their school , can be many and we believe in diversity. For instance, some gangs may like to speak in their language among themselves so that other gangs does not come to know of their plans to win a cricket match, other reason could be that it can be a good break in a day as there will be no staff to teach them and it becomes a free hour.
When schools are finding it tough to get teachers to teach their local language, we introduce a foreign language expecting a ex-pat to come all the way from Berlin to Mundasuppati and teach German.

Going further back, there was a anti-Hindi protest in 60s , which now nobody bothers as it is so-long-ago when Facebook and Twitter were not there, and what kind of protest would it be without a Black DP and #StopHindiImperialism trend tags.

It is not like we hate Hindi or other language, some of us who had studied in CBSE had Hindi as a third language were always happy that they had got an extra free hour that day, and the staff who did the class for third-language was mostly a Maths teacher who had done his/her graduation in a city where some Hindi guy would have traveled in the same mode of transport to the same place. That becomes a good connect to Hindi and to give an additional responsibility of teaching Hindi.

I mean no offence to Hindi/ Sanskrit, but in the same-time I believe that they can and should be taught and not imposed. There is a saying in Tamil, Anjula valayadadu ambadula valayadu , which signifies that if one does not learn at 5, it will not be possible for him to learn at 50. This is what the Government should try to do start from the grassroots level and solve the problem there and not impose straightaway.

Tamils, are not aliens to Hindi, we grew up watching Doordarshan having 22 hours Hindi programs and 2 hour Tamil program, and the two hours as well one will be able to see only if he is in Tamilnadu, if you are out of state for some reason, you will not be able to watch it. This would make me even wonder, how on earth is that signals from Delhi reach TamilNadu while the signals from Chennai, then Madras does not reach Madurai. See the Hindi imperialism started from there.

Coming to the media, see even the advertisements for vehicles be it Maruti 800 or TVS XL Super or Benz , all the vehicles will have their registrations in Maharashtra and they will be driving in Snow and rain.
Come on, we from Tamilnadu have never seen snow except for scenes from the movie Roja, and the topic of rain and water is another debate. And there will be claims of me being an anti national or to be precise anti-tamilian that I did not write a blog during water crisis or Jallikattu protests.
We may belong to a state where we do not have much rainfall and snow but we drive bikes and cars, and all the ad makers and companies are only Hindi Imperialists and they are anti-tamilians.

Now one can know how easy it is to instigate a language controversy and India with so many tongues can never avoid a language controversy. Now from an constitutional perspective, our forefathers knew that this will happen and that is why they wrote the whole stuff in a diplomatic and un-biased manner , and made sure that no common man would be able to understand it in full clarity irrespective of the language one spoke :).

Jokes apart, our forefathers were thoughtful enough that they believed in true diversity and inclusion and hence they made many national languages and not one, and precisely not Hindi/ Sanskrit.

When a Government tries to force something instead of other, unless people revolt it is just a matter of time when one's identity is lost. One should try to create a system where two things can exist in parallel and cause no problem, instead of making one-ways.

Just as a few points to think before I complete, there were many languages which flourished in India, and I am pretty sure that we would have had minimum of 25 languages with good history and literature, and now how many do we have ?

The current Government again tries to meddle with History to make things worse , when we should be proud of our history and should try to learn more about us, the Government simply wants to stop the whole stuff, as it again conflicts to their theory of One-India.
Links of Interest :
Transfer Of Archaelogist - Tamil Nadu
Leave History Alone

Bye till next,
Nandri,
Dhanyavad,
Dhan'yavādagaḷu,

Movies Part- 2 : 2016

2016-12-30T16:12:00.000+05:30

Hi all,
Continuing from the previous one for the movies in 2016 which I liked, the below is the ones which I did not like.

Maalai Nerathu Mayakkam
This movie is a classic showpiece of what all can go wrong in a drama. It was supposed to be an tight emotional drama, but I felt it lacked the connect. The lead characters are like replica from Selvaraghavan's previous movies, from their brought-up to their life style everything is just the same. I agree that story was a bit different from his previous ones, but one could see Selvaraghavan's signature everywhere in the plot, though it was not directed by him. One among the two below is going to be for sure,
a. Only Selvaraghavan can direct his stories, no other person can do it for making a connect with the audiences.
b. His wife probably took the script and was entangled between Selva's direction and Selva's script. Probably it was too high to live up to the expectation in directing a Selvaraghavan story.
After watching this, if you are a Selvaraghavan fan, you may be happy that he did not direct this.

Thaarai Thappatai:
Just like the above, this is again what we call a typical Bala movie with his routine set of villains. Usually only some scenes in his movies used to give you the Aaargh feel , but this entire movie does. I am not very sure whether this was intended, if yes great, if not you will really feel bad that this movie completely tortures you out.
Ilayaraja's background score is the only positive in the movie, I am a nobody to comment on the national award winning background score. Considering the fact that lot of movies gets banned in TamilNadu, this movie should have been banned for the simple reason that they promoted it saying the movie deals with the history and current situation of Karakattam. This is probably only for hardcore Bala fans, I unfortunately did not like this.

Jil Jung Jak:

The movie simply failed, it is barely a one time watch and may be I did not get the things intertwined in the plot for us to discover. I would say the promos for the movie was awesome, idea for the promo and the movie was awesome, but just that the screenplay for the movie failed. Since the movie is set in future but with a cowboy kind of story,it is simply difficult to relate and it is a mix of gang war in a road movie and probably something more which I could not find.
I assure you that it can give you good laughs at some comedy sequences but in the end I felt that it is like the Schrodinger's cat till you see it for yourself you can never be sure whether it is a good one or a bad one.
I liked some of the dialogues, but just that the story did not have any significance nor relation to the dialogue. In that case, this kept me wondering what was the need for the dialogue which I liked!
And same holds good for the movie as well!

Pokkiri Raja:
Jiva's bad patch continues with this as well. Sibiraj definitely makes a mark as a villain, but just like all mass-masala flick, he is still a dummy villain, the story simply did not require for a villain.
He is just there as a bad guy in a story nowhere connected to him. He is all good in his mannerisms reflecting his father, but simply falls flat because of the screenplay.Despite having an intersting plot which could make a decent fantasy movie, one will definitely say that this falls into the category where the oneline story would make you turn, but the feature film will make you run away!

Zero:

For a complete failure in story telling, I still remember my headache after seeing this movie. Complete random sequences given a screenplay, random characters meet and help each other and on top of it they try to relate to some catastrophy which the world is about to face. I simply did not understand what was the idea behind, was it a revenge or a ghost movie or a religious movie, one would realize that not everybody can make a cocktail which tastes good.
My opinion Zero simply justifies its title!

Idhu Namma Aalu:
For it could have been a better, this lay flat. For a movie where the screenplay holds the value, one should be careful in moving the story inbetween comedy sequences and in comedy sequences.

Sundar C , Bhagyaraj were the ones whom I would say can do it at ease. It was refreshing to see Simbhu back in the screen and Parotta Suri played probably for the first time in his career a city based character and was good too. It could have been better if some portions and unwanted song sequences could have been trimmed. One would probably see this over a lazy weekend with good amount of fast-forwarding and would make one think what was the movie about!

Jackson Dhurai:

A horrible ghost history movie. This is what would happen if somebody wants to make a movie but different genre movies are the trend, and you make changes to adapt to the trend and forget where you started and where you want to end with.

Kadavul Irukkan Kumaru:

Its high time Rajesh comes out of making movies based out of totally stupid heroines and heroes.
Once or twice it would be good to see , but making the same again and again will just kill it. RJ Balaji had to replace Santhanam, and I would say it was a complete failure. RJ Balaji went on and on with his monotonous dialogues which made me feel like somebody should have asked him to shut up and act and not just talk talk talk!

Kavalai Vendam:

2016 was a bad year to Jiva, he had three releases and all of it was complete failures.
This was a disaster for Jiva. Complete lack of story, touted to be romantic comedy, it was a dull and boring movie. The movie had no good laughs, and comedy was not intelligent and RJ Balaji once again failed here. Somebody should go with a decent script to Jiva, for him to justify this title.

There are probably more in this list, those are something which I am yet to see :).

If you have read till this , then thank you and I wish you a very happy new year !

Bye till next,.

Movies Part 1- 2016.

2016-12-30T15:52:00.000+05:30

HI all,
As the curtain for 2016 is falling, with my free vacation time I thought I will watch all the movies which I missed during the year. And I realize that its been long time since I wrote anything about movies.
I saw quite a good number of Tamil Movies this year(as always) and liked some.
Here I revisit some of my favorite ones this year, in order of their release (courtesy Wikipedia).

Kathakali :
This movie directed by Pandiaraj with Vishal as lead hero, is one movie which I definitely liked a lot. It is not a typical hero-centered flick , and thanks to Pandiaraj,

as he had made the film with no star value, but just what the film required. It had enough powerful scenes to keep the audience clap and enjoy as well as good amount of scenes to guess what is happening. I must admit, though one would easily always know that ,the hero is going to win the battle in the end, it is still worth a watch with its racy screenplay particularly in the second half !

Irudhi Sutru:
This movie is a nice sports drama film directed by Sudha Kongara. Like most of the sports drama film it is like underdog-to-gold-medal in this as well, this is one of the very few movies where you would say almost all the characters were a perfect fit and had equal importance and depth. Madhavan as the rough coach, and Ritika Singh as the boxer were simply perfect , and I liked very much Nasser's and Radha Ravi's role. The way the relationship between Nasser and Madhavan was taken and with Radha Ravi was different and nice. Songs and background score were definitely a big plus for this movie and its definitely to be mentioned that not everybody can weave an interesting story around real facts and still make an engaging movie ( if not this would have been what we call as a documentary type movie) this movie definitely did that!.

Visaranai :
This movie is definitely not for the weak-hearted, its reality at its brutal best. This one is India's official nomination to the Oscars, that stands as a testament to it, so nothing to be added from my side. When many peo
ple speak about the first half (adapted from a book), it would take real guts to direct the second half. I would say that first half definitely makes you feel sorry for the boys and you definitely would feel afraid seeing what power in wrong hands can do. If first half was making us afraid, second half definitely makes us think and for people who can connect with the real life characters of the second half, they are definitely in for a treat ! A justified national award for Samuthirakanni.

Mirudhan:
I liked it, for the mere attempt. It is a fairly nice attempt which would give enough thrills for someone who has not seen this kind of movies in English. Duration of the movie was short whic
h is a big plus to movie, and if not for the unwanted song sequence in the second half it is a definitely a onetime watch for me.

Sethupathi:

It is again one of the very few movies where you know the hero is going to win , but still keeps you guessing what next. This movie is one of the few movies where I would say the hero is a cop and he already has kids and still the story does not have any flashbacks ! This is what Vijay Sethupathi can pull and I think nobody else can make it ! It is still a hero-centric film, but with grounded reality and still with enough scenes to give you goosebumps. Song sequences and the family portion of the movie is a huge plus in addition to the interesting twists in the story.

Pichaikaran:
This is a standout in this year, this story was tailor made for Vijay Antony and he would definitely be thankful to Sasi for making this at this point in his career. While many have done rags-to-riches or riches-to-rags story, this is different definitely! And the facNooru Samigal Irundalum is what Vijay Antony would do for an master piece of Pichai Paathiram by Ilayaraja for Naan Kadavul and Nenjorathil too is a nice melody which will keep you humming for the entire day!
Fact that it is based out a real life story simply leaves the viewer in awe! This movie has good songs to listen individually , and the placement in the movie as well is very good.

Pugazh:

This is a decent movie with Jai as hero, and just like his previous movie Valiyavan which went unnoticed this too faced the same. Both the movies had a good story and nice screenplay to keep one engaged, but for no fault in the movie, these go un-noticed. This is definitely a one time watch , it has good amount of politics, friendship and hero-centric, but still routed. Jai and Karunas play nicely their roles, and the villain ( I do not know his name) too plays his part well, the characters are written well, their motive is all clean and bang-on their target. It is very rarely that one would see in a political drama film, that villain does not have huge number of goons in his command, and both the villain and hero realize and act accordingly to what they can and what they cannot.

Vetrivel:
Vetrivel, where Sasikumar plays the hero says it all. Set in a rural background somewhere in and around Madurai, as always.
The movie seemed interesting to me for one, Sasikumar had references to his previous movies himself when other actors were referring to Rajini/Vijay/Ajith. This simply shows that he has grown as an actor and is confident of pulling things out himself.
Though it is the same love-against-parents story, this movies has good twists and nativity in it which usually goes missing in these kind of movies. Though the end was a bit dragged with some fight sequences added just for keeping fight sequences in the climax, this movie is definitely a one time watch.

24:

With Muni came the ghost-spree in Tamil Cinema, and with Indru Netru Naalai and 24 I thought its going to be series of time-travel movies. Though the spree never happened, 24 was a good one to come after Indru Netru Naalai. Though it did not get into the depth of Time Travel, or go into the areas which Indru Netru Naalai did, this is what a time travel movie would look like if a star does it. It should have good punch dialogues, and if Suriya does a movie, it should have good acting scope as well for him to explore and exhibit his talent. 24 stands out for its story and screenplay and way Suriya played the triple roles, and particularly the fact that story justified the star value as well as the actor value in Suriya. Only few movies would require different characterizations and mannerisms in double role or triple role movies which are actually justified and 24 is one among them. With AR Rahman and an intelligent story, and justified multiple roles, this definitely is one of my favorite for this year !

Uriyadi:
When lot of movies claimed to be political movies and failed, those movies which did not have promotions and budget were the ones which actually drove politics deep into the viewer. If Visaranai was very raw and crude, Pugazh was good-vs-bad politicans, Uriyadi is directly hitting hard on caste-based politics.I must admit that though the movie was set in the early 90s, it had too much of drinking scenes in college which probably was not the reality at that point in time in our state. In spite of that, I felt that it was a message in the movie that unwanted quarrel can happen when one is drunk and all the portions where the friends get into trouble was either in a bar or when they are fully drunk.

The movie is not just about friends drinking and wasting their time off in college, it deals with caste based politics and what politicians did and what could happen if things go wrong. This is definitely a must watch, the background score Agnikunjondru song is an perfect fit for the movie.

Iraivi:

There are some movies which you watch for the star in it, some you watch for the story in it. But there are some which you will wait eagerly and watch for the brilliance in ManiRatnam, Shankar etc.
Iraivi is like that from Karthik Subbaraj, though the movie had unwanted controversies for portraying a film producer as villain, the movie essense was something else. I must admit that I felt somewhere disconnected and was wondering did I get clearly what was conveyed in the movie, probably it was over my head and I need to watch it couple of times more. Iraivi is those kind of movies which you will watch to see the brilliance even if the message conveyed does not connect with you very well. This blog I saw covers the brilliance of the movie. I myself have some catching up to do here :)
If not for this, I would not have appreciated the actor in SJ Suriya. Iraivi is definitely those kind of movies which I felt that I did not understand it fully, not because the movie had something lacking, but I did.

Oru Naal Kuthu :
For its interesting premise, and build to the story and the climax or anti-climax whichever way you call it. Some may not like it, but it is those kind of movies which you will say its a good movie but I still do not like it, but definitely a one time watch. In short in its simple story lies itscomplications.

Metro:

Though it is violent, the entire premise deals with chain snatching and is expected to be so. With Bobby Simha, playing kind of a side-kick here, movie deals with what can go wrong if one runs behind money in illegal ways. It is like a good documentary as well with a neat message.

Appa:
For Samuthirakani, this is definitely a feather in his cap. I liked the movie, for it was shot in the place I grew up with and it was captured beautifully. The movie was definitely no
t intended at changing our education system, and making statements, it was a nice drama about a father-son and just to see the depth in their relationships, they needed a contrast a highlight the difference, some scenes went far-fetched. For in reality, all of us are a mix of three father-son pairs shown in the movie.

Joker:

A hard hitting reality movie, this definitely falls into the category of documentary type movies, but it is the message it drives makes the difference. You would definitely think about the crux of the story for a long time after seeing this.
The hero, played this character to brilliance, and it is the same guy who played the acting teacher in the movie Jigarthanda.
Worthy of a award winning movie and actor I would say!

Kutrame Thandanai:

A good crime thriller, with no songs. Not many times we would see this combination in tamil cinema, and this one was just good enough to live without songs or comedy tracks.
It had good dialogues and the movie was short and crisp. I particularly liked the tunnel-eye vision and how the story unfolded it and the sequence between the hero Vidharth and Nasser.

Aandavan Kattalai :

2016 was Vijay Sethupathi's year and this definitely stands out for his performance. He portrayed various shades in this movie, and the movie itself is very engaging you would not realize that it would take immense amount of talent to portray such a character and he does it with ease. Heroine too played her role brilliantly and court-room portion will make you feel that comedy need not be injected separately in a movie, and it can be neatly done with the flow of movie. They could have made it a dark comedy, or a documentary type movie but the one we have is just brilliant. Lawyer-Junior lawyer combination was simply beautiful. If we see the scenes separately we may not appreciate it, but the movie has a whole is a good one.
Everything about the movie is so beautiful, that you would always love to see the movie.

Kodi :

If the year started with Irudi Sutru for a good female role movie, it ends with Kodi. A good political thriller, with heroism, love , betrayal. A good dual role for Dhanush and unfortunately the songs were a bit let down in the movie.

I had kept out Theri, as I wanted to write only about the movies made in Tamil directly for the first time, though I must admit it was a good entertainer and I liked it. I had kept out Kabali as well , as I had scribbled something on it earlier which can be found here.

There is a next one for movies which I did not like as well, which can be found here.

Bye till next,

Trump for Kaveri

2016-09-26T11:33:00.001+05:30

Hi all,
I have believed in justice and the Constitution always. Of course I am not Ambedkar or the other lawyers out there capable of ripping through the pages and what we usually call as capable of doing an U-turn. The point is I know my essential basic rights and duties as a citizen of this country.

With the recent happenings in Cauvery water dispute, I kind of felt that what we read in our text books is just there in the paper and reality is totally different.
What we were taught in our schools was that India is a secular and democratic country, and every citizen of the country is entitled to follow his or her own beliefs without affecting the society in way, and we used to believe that we show unity in diversity.
Unfortunately that's not the case which is happening, everywhere we have some issues and whenever and wherever possible we get into the region or race or religious politics.
There have been instances even during this disastrous time that people showed enormous compassion and helped people in distress, but it is the problem with some people that it affects the majority others.
I am not pro or con to the judgement nor am I qualified to comment on it, but my only concern is that when somebody overrules the law and disobeys the judgement it is a serious concern and if it is the government which is doing this, it is natural that the fellow citizens follow the same.
If the government is not abiding the law, fellow citizens obviously won't.

I have lived in Bangalore for more than six years now and I have always felt it is a nice place to live in, every city will have its own flavour and like ways have its own pros and cons.

I have felt most of times that people are friendly and some times abusive of race or region as well. It is natural fit people to feel threatened when they are out of their comfort zones, and even a small dissent may be perceived as a scary thing to put up with.
It is not the common public who have problems with fellow people, it is the people who have vested interests who want to gain political mileage or publicity or people who are in the TRP race, and unfortunately it is the common public who are only going to face loss in all formats possible are being used for this and the sad ending to the story is that they do not even realize that they are being used and they are mere puppets and strings are pulled by some one sitting in an AC room with no sense or connect to actual happenings.

The problem with us is that, we like to follow the law when we want things in line with law and we don't follow it when law is against us, and we would say Law was prepared in stone age period and it is not up to date with new age practices.
Am not blaming Karnataka alone here, it is with Tamilnadu as well, everyone of us do this.
In Tamilnadu, Chief minister of the state is unwell and the details of her health is unknown. Governor of the state is hardly in the state and nobody has any clue who has to do that duty now, and people are being arrested in accusations of spreading rumors.
If that's the case the state can simply make an official announcement of what is the exact situation and be transparent. There is one thing which people say about network security, it is not by hiding details you say you are secure, it is by being open and then prove you are secure.
Unfortunately that's not happening anywhere in our country.
And whenever a bad issue happens, people go with caste politics or racial politics fully and divert the attention from the actual issue as far as possible.

This problem I feel is not just in our country, it's everywhere. The same people who opposed blacks in US now feel it is wrong and support Hilary now as Trump says he is against Blacks.
And there are some women who have now gone public in saying Trump misbehaved with them years back.

It is only after a particular person grows, haters come into the scene, and try all kind of politics.

And then there are some Indians who are currently residing in US actively campaigning for elections without realizing the following.
1. They do not have voting rights.
2. 99% of the people who receive their updates are same set of people who won't be voting in US election.
3. They never bothered about the elections back home.

As the popular saying goes, all of us are tagged with a caste in our street, place outside our hometown, state outside our state and we become Indian only after we cross the border.

But then, again there are some responsible people as well and it is for a fact that only due to the irresponsible ones that responsible ones turn irresponsible.
Like the conditions apply tag which comes with people, there are some people like me who are like Mannana veppenna velakenna, enda oorla election nadanda enaku ena.

Like the surgical strike evidence which we demand from our army, if we had asked for evidences of Kaveri committee, their data collection points and their findings for so many years things would have been different.

As a cue to Trump's team for wooing the eligible voting NRI population remember Kaveri issue and Biriyani.
It can do wonders which rajinikanth can't.

Bye till next,

Kabali... retribution and remorse

2016-07-24T17:58:00.000+05:30

Hi all,
After the previous post,this is one more regarding Kabali now.
There are 3 festivals in Tamilnadu
1. Pongal
2. Deepavali
3. Rajinikanth movie release.

The latest is what happened last Friday. Whenever a mass hero movie ( definition of mass hero can never be provided even by Google ) releases in Tamilnadu it will be the talk of the state for sure, for a state so closely following cinema. Getting the first day first show ticket for that movie is usually a tough task to ask for, as usually they release the movie on a holiday season making it a double bonanza. If thats the case for a regular mass hero imagine what would be the case for the superstar. Even an expert in booking tatkal ticket would struggle to get the first day first show ticket. When I mean first day first show it is not those were you will be able to get the tickets online, it is those where you have to reach out to n number of people to get your hands on the tickets to see the star back on the big screen.

In spite of the fact that the whole movie leaked online before the first early morning show in there country , people came in masses to the theaters. Only Rajinikanth can manage to do this with ease. In a state where the movie ticket price has a maximum cap of 120 INR , even when the ticket prices crept upto thousands the crowd just kept coming.
Such is the capacity of the superstar.
I was fortunate enough that my friends managed to get tickets for me and i travelled overnight and reached on time for the early morning show.
Coming to this movie, I felt we could see the actor in rajinikanth and surely a proof that the actor in him is still very much alive and for sure he is so capable of doing roles like what one could see in Mullum malarum , Johnny , Thillu millu and not just the trademark fast walk and other style gimmicks.
There were some scenes which I liked very much and I would surely say that this is one of the best movies in his last ten movies where he has performed well as an actor , but ranjith missed out heavily on using the actor in him fully and the problem he had taken was not shown in detail and it is a huge let down from his side particularly in the second half. The idea in which rajinikanth would have chosen the movie is very clear that he does not want to do the stereotypical movies, a move to be welcomed.
After all the fuzz of getting the tickets and the Nerrupu da trailer a fan would have had high expectations and after watching the flick would definitely feel disappointed. I am not an expert to say what failed in this movie in spite of a good emotional content and portrayal of the same. It is unfortunately the problem of being rajinikanth, similar to Sachin that we expect only the extraordinary from them every single time.
When one looks back and sees the movie on a lazy day a couple of months later we would realize that this movie is actually okay, and we would realize that this is very much like the 30 odd runs what MSD makes in the fag end of the innings which we won't reckon much on that day.
Apart from the mistakes on the screen in terms of moving the story, there were mainly problems in two aspects. The first one too much of promotions , and the second one the biggest blunder the posters of the movie.
The whole movie revolves around a search and the answer to the search is very obvious in the posters of the movie, which completely spoils the twenty minutes when the search intensifies.

Any person who observed the posters a bit would realize soon where the search is leading to. If one has observed the official playlist in YouTube where there were some photos in the lyric video answer to the search again becomes too obvious.

This problem of promotion in YouTube with official lyric videos apart from the teaser gives too much out and leaves very less for guessing. This is a generic problem in all movies of recent time which I observed in movies like vellailla pattadhari, miruthan , 24 , thangamagan , theri to name a few.
I did not hear any songs nor see the lyric videos of Kabali before seeing the movie , and now when I come and look back all the answers for the search is out so blatantly that if I had seen the lyric videos earlier I would have lost the interest completely when watching it.
What kabali tries to bring the emotional side of rajinikanth and has succeeded there , but the reason for the same and the other aspects around it is not done properly here. And since the expectations are always to the likes of Baasha, Padayappa one should realize that it requires a Mark Antony or Neelambari to bring out the best and not a stereotypical villain.
In my opinion the other aspects surrounding the movie done by themselves had done more damage than the movie itself.
May be Tamil cinema required a rajinikanth to learn this lesson, if that happens the movie had served is purpose.

Magizchi !

P.S: I found a brilliant write up on things which one could realize in the movie, it can be checked here.

Kudos to Ranjith for putting such a brave attempt in the script, unfortunately I think it did not translate much to screen.

Media Channels 101 with Kabali

2016-07-16T19:23:00.002+05:30

Hi all,
I am a observer of things shown in the media which I can say actively in social media and less in electronic media and very less in print media. But if a media person has to give a introduction for me,
yours sincerely can be counted as a media analyst.
It is easy nowadays to become a political analyst particularly in Tamil Nadu, all one has to do is to start a Youtube channel and actively comment on whatever the Government or Opposition
announces.
I can assure you that, you will be immediately called during the prime time in the News Channels for all debates irrespective of whether you commented on that particular topic or not, or for that matter whether you know Tamil or not.
You will become famous for sure the next day in all Social Media channels if you are lucky with all meme-creators following the debate very closely. On the other hand if your luck factor is pretty bleak, you will become famous at the right moment when you do not expect and when you would not like to, Courtesy: Nanjil Sampath, a.k.a 'Kaathirukiren' Sampath.
Anyways you will be famous.

Now how can one comment actively ? I wonder how all the media people get topics to debate on everyday. Once in a week is fairly okay, that you can wait for something to be announced from the Government but every day is a bit far fetched.
What if the peon goes on leave a day? (That is what happens everytime I go to some Government office to get something done.) I can assure you that no work would happen in Government office if a peon goes on leave and you will realize that the common public should respect the peon more than the office bearers, as peon can be equated to Rajinikanth's role in a movie and role of office bearers are equivalent to heroines in his movies.
Coming back to the point, in that case what the news channels will debate on? They do not have anything to debate on which will concern the mass population.
Thats where your skills as a media person comes into play and with Kabali just around the corner news channels have decided to have a show for Kabali, but unfortunately for them all they have tie-ups with are political analysts a.k.a Youtube Channel Owners

TV Channel : Why there is Hype around Kabali.
AAP Enthusiast from Delhi: I want to know why people follow Rajinikanth, I want the entire direction departments education level and Rajinikanth's degree certificate, and only then I will be able to give a quantified thorough well prepared statement for the same.

Keralaite : The literacy rate in Kerala is too high, that everybody is interested to understand how the stunts are done and on what conditions Newtons's laws does not hold good.

Telugu person : We are fascinated by Mr.Rajinikanth garu, as he does what the legend Balakrishna deems impossible to do.

Reality: This is one thing which Rajinikanth himself does not know.

TV Channel : What will be the story behind ?
Delhi guy : Rajinikanth, an IIT graduate who is very proud of his IIT degree and Govt job decides to leave the job and rise against the Government by forming a political party and contesting an election and forming a Government.(which he protested against in the first place.)

Keralite : There are hundreds of people who are reportedly missing in Kerala and it is told that they have joined ISIS. Rajinikanth gives them premier show movie tickets and gets them back.

Telugu Person: A big family where there are two prodigies trying to inherit the wealth of their grandparents and the fight between them forms the rest of the story. Rajinikanth plays the father, grandfather, and not to mention both the grandsons.

Reality: Even after years of release, nobody is able to tell the significance of the snake in Chandramukhi, the third Rajinikanth in Kochadaiyaan, and story of Linga his previous movie. How can somebody find out story of the movie when it is not released yet.

TV Channel : Why are so many people around the theaters before 1 week of the release?
Delhi Guy: It is classic example of an first bencher, who usually makes it to the IITs. Rajinikanth is a firm believer of AAP and hence people are behind him.

Keralite: It is due to the fact that Rajini has spoken Malay in the movie and it is to be noted that Malay is a half-sibling of MALAYalam and hence people are eager to see the star speak the language.

Telugu Person: Rajinikanth is acting at this age and he is still finding heroines for his movies while Chiranjivi is not able to do so. People want to find out why.

Reality: It seems that the developer of PokemonGo have decided to have Rajinikanth in their app, to compete with WhatsApp , and since even the pokemons are fan of Rajinikanth they will also be eager to see the First Day First Show and people who play the game have a chance of collecting them all at one place within a couple of minutes.

Okay, I get it the last point seemed far fetched , but everything is fair and possible in a Rajinikanth's movie.

It is to be noted that there was no Tamilian participating in the debate show, which is the case always in these shows that the persons who debate on the topic actually have no connection with them.
That is pretty much how news channel run the show now and this is the Beginners Guide to Media 101.

As you can see , I also do not have anything significant to write on, but as all media channels do to fill in their slots, I also used Kabali and my writing for the same has absolutely no connection to the actual movie.

Bye till next,

Curious case of Vijay Mallya and Tamil Nadu

2016-03-23T20:33:00.001+05:30

As we all know it is this time of the year where we have our appraisals. Employees have it in their office with their managers, Entrepreneurs will look at their progress for last year and chalk out the plan for future, and students have their grading examinations now.

All these happen yearly, one will definitely get used to it. But what comes after a well-defined interval is the elections, am not writing about the Cricket World Cup this time :).

It is this part of the year that people have a say in the Government and we get to do something for the society which has made us what we are today. We may crib about a lot of things in the society which we live in but nevertheless whatever we are today is because of the society and whatever we crib is also because of the society that it has made us realize that some aspects in our life are desirable and some the other way around.

It is the election season now in TamilNadu, and this time there is quite a buzz around it. Looking at the current financial status of our state, it is pretty bad.

Tamil Nadu’s debt has ballooned to Rs 2.11 lakh crore, around 19 percent of the state’s Gross Domestic Product (GSDP).

During 2011, Jayalalitha’s campaign was targeted around the DMK’s scheme of freebies, 2G corruption and other mismanagement of funds , she was over the roof with her statement that ‘ Karunanidhi had gifted the TamilNadu state with a debt of Rs 1 Lakh Crore’. She was given the power with full majority and the 2011 polls was one of the best in AIADMK’s history so far. She got the power in a thunderous manner and she could have done a changeover of the fortunes of the state, but unfortunately she did not.

It has to be noted that she proved that she can do a changeover to the fortunes as during 2001 when DMK left office , TN was in a deficit of some 2000 Crores and when she came in and left office at 2006 TN revenue was in surplus with some 2000 Crores. She had done a MSD with not only clearing the debts but doubled the revenue that TN revenue went into the surplus mode which our batting department used to do considering our bowling attack :).

It is a reality that she faces some issues now, with the state revenue dipping continuously and the coffers are literally empty, and considering the fact she lost the election even after making the coffers ring last time.

I am not an economist and hence I cannot judge those numbers with the current industry trend and GDP etc. There are simply too much of terms around that half of them almost mean the same for me and I am not able to even read and understand the rest of the terms. Now I realize why the department of accounts is always in a mess, and in any office the accounts department will always be in a fragile state, everyone always deep into some set of papers and series of numbers which can be used to test ones eyesight that for normal people all numbers after the second decimal will be the same and no wonder it takes a lot of attempts to become a Chartered Accountant, and most of the accountants wear spectacles :) . These guys are brilliant guys that they remember numbers more than words that they keep referring to all application forms with some numbers like Form 15, Form 16 while they could have named it to what they stood for in normal English.

Never mind, coming back to the topic considering the current status of AIADMK or rather than the party’s supremo Jayalalitha what she faces now is split into these facades in order of significance.

a. Her health issues

b. Internal issues in the party

c. Activities during the recent Flood

d. Scams which has rocked them

e. TASMAC issue

It is well known that the party supremo has some health issues and the Chief Minister of the state is present everywhere via Banners and can be seen in interaction only in Video Conferences.
It is this fact that the opposition targets mainly in their campaign, because the current CM is unable to meet people in person, DMK’s heir Stalin is going all over the state under the program ‘Namakku Naame’ .This is fairly a good strategy that you target your enemy’s weakness and whoever thought of this from DMK’s side should be credited with.

It is to be mentioned for sure that some gimmicks which they did in this program was unasked for and resulted in negative publicity than positive.

Vijayakanth the head from DMDK could have again used this to his advantage, but unfortunately did not. He would soon realize that politics is not easy, and it will take a lot of strategy as well as action from himself, and it will not work like films where the hero is always the winner.

The next aspect is the internal issues in the party, there are again various rumors around this, that some of the core loyalists in the party are not happy with the current proceedings and it looks like things are not okay with Sasikala and the core party members as well.

Comparing this with the others, DMK too have issues within the party, that there are various conflicts among the family members and some are in the party and some are already outside. And even for the apparent party heir Stalin there are still issues as not all party members are happy with him. Even yesterday there was conflicting announcements from Karunanidhi and Stalin in terms of alliance.
The other alliance group, will automatically split post the election provided they remain together till electionJ. It is like expecting the opening pair Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma to bat through the entire innings, it cannot just happen.

The third aspect is the activities during the recent flood, not much can be done by men in times when nature wraths its fury on us, but one can surely make out what one should not do in times of such a disaster by looking the activities done by loyalists of both the parties.

From the little media coverage which Vijayakanth had, I understand that he had done some good amount of relief works and I guess his only hope remains on that for this election. Though whatever good he did was not with political motive or agenda, it will help him at least to hang around for some more time in the political scene of the state.

The fourth aspect is the scams rocking the current government. This is something which Jayalalitha should have clearly avoided. Her party was elected to the power not because that people trusted her to do some good but was to the outrage after the 2G scam. While the ghosts of 2G scam is still haunting the DMK in some means or the other, Jayalalitha if she had been clean during her current term she would have clearly fancied her chances now. But unfortunately things have broken out loose on the wrong time for her, with respect to the Aavin scam where the state’s Dairy Minister Moorthy was involved in a scam of adulteration of milk supplied to the state valued at ₹ 23 lakhs a day.
But then it has been reported that this has been happening in the state for the past 10 years, which means that this has happened during the tenure of DMK as well and hence they will definitely remain silent on this aspect.
Next potential derailer for AIADMK is with the suicide of Agriculture Department Employee. It happened the same time last year and that suicide exposed the scam in appointment of the low level employees like drivers etc. and what it gave was the rough idea of the amount of money involved in those posts which people won’t notice much. There may be lot of news about the vacancies of an officer post or clerical post but on the other hand very hardly there will be any advertisements about those posts which does not require much of education qualification. Those are posts which the educated won’t think of and hence the scam. Though not much of money is involved for a post in one office, the amount of money involved considering all such positions in the state in all departments will be very huge.

The other scam is the money which the Government is paying the private vendors for procurement of power especially the Adani group and PPN power company. This scam is estimated to be around at ₹ 1 lakh Crore where money has been paid by the Government to these private vendors in surplus and many Government projects have been stalled purposefully to create the demand artificially.

The last aspect around this election will be the TASMAC issue, though all parties were very adamant about the ban of liquor sometime back, now everybody keeps mum on this. Like they say the real battle between good and bad is determining which is which, it is very difficult to decide where TASMAC fits in.

The issue with TASMAC is that like the Aavin scam, all the parties have some part in this and all of them know that and only we the normal common public suffer here. It is very difficult to get the stats of the people who consume liquor regularly from TASMAC to analyze the pattern there, but why would someone bother to do that when the business is booming and one is enjoying a monopoly there.
The interesting aspect around this is that the state’s election will influence the stock price of Vijay Mallya’s UB group. Historically it has been proven that with the change in power, some liquor companies have an increase in their profits while some bite dust.

May be the party which is going to come to power can have a ‘business agreement’ (actually a fix, but for legal reasons it is to be written as an agreement) with Vijay Mallya so that we can recover the ₹ 9000 crores from Kingfisher beer which will definitely make people fly, which the Kingfisher airlines could not do now :)

Bye till next,

In search for Life

2016-02-13T11:23:00.001+05:30

Hi all,
It seems as though with hectic schedules, in our continuous search for something we miss on most of the things, at-least I feel so. It was all fine until I got up this morning and started wondering what is the entire fuzz about weekends. I just realized how things had changed dramatically from my childhood times to now.
Like myself, people who were born in the late 80s till early 90s called as Generation Y or Millenials would be able to related to that very much.
Most of the Ys would have come from a conservative and secure economic background and we have been told and brought up in such a way that we belong to a very special story.
I meet lot of people of the Gen Y who belong to the fair end of spectrum in Gen Y and realize one thing in common, that we in this bracket of people are kind of unhappy.

So why is this unhappiness ?

Gen Y are people who are currently in 20s now and the people I speak about are the people who have just started their careers or just built the foundation for the same and have a long way to go still.

We have a job, but still unhappy ?
One thing which I realized overtime is this, we always continuously look for whats next and that has to be there as thats how the world we live in has evolved.
We look for new things to make our lives better, we strive to work hard to make our family live better.
As one of my favorite dialogue in a sparingly known Tamil Movie Moodar Koodam goes,

Aayirathla Sambadikravanuku Nooru   Silaraya Terium,
Latchathla Sambadikravanuku Airam    Silaraya Terium,
Kodila       Sambadikravanuku Latcham Silaraya Terium

( For a guy earning in Thousands, hundreds will look small,
For a guy earning in Lakhs, thousands will look small,
For a guy earning in Crores, Lakhs will look small )

For a person without job, job will look great,
For a person with a small job, a big job will look great etc.

But coming back, the point is that irrespective of whatever current state of life we are , the general feel is a bit unhappy. May be 'unhappy' is a bigger word here, can be repaced with 'not happy'.

So what is 'Happy' ?

Happiness in simple words can be put as a state of mind, where you feel you are comfortable very much and you have achieved your goals which you have in mind.

On drilling down a bit, we can realize that our mind makes us feel happy and not happy and it has got nothing to do with what others say/feel about us.
It is just a state of mind and nobody but you should be controlling that. It is easier said than done.

If we have to give a logical reason to this,
    Happiness = Reality - (Dreams or Expectation).

Depending on the value on the right hand side, our state of mind changes completely and hence happy and Not Happy.

We all know reality and how it turns out and Murphy's Law :).

So whats it with expectations, that's where the point of how we were brought up comes into the scene!

We have been brought up by people who belong to Gen X and grandparents belonging to the previous generation.
Their idea of life was to build a secure life.
Grandparents would have toiled very hard to get our parents a safe life, as they were the generation who witnessed the freedom struggles, famines etc.
Our parents grew up post independence, when our country was learning ( it is still learning ) to make its mark on the world post all the world wars.
So Grandparents would have naturally brought up our parents to build a life which has 2 fundamental things : food security, economic security.
So how was it done : By making on fundamental thumb rule, grass will turn green when one works hard over years.
For our parents , most likely the dreams of life would have been very limited and with all economic prosperity coming in the 80s their reality turned out a bit better.
So they kind of get the Happy feel, as they would have build a safe and secure career and they would have realized not all among them would have got the same.

So we were brought up in that period where they were getting a optimistic feeling and hence we too got that thinking that we will be part of a special story in life, and we can be whatever we dream of and what was just lawn for our parents, had become a garden for us !

Hence, those in early Gen Y have the 'American Dream' while now there is an inclination to 'My Dream'.
Irrespective of the dream, there is one thing which is common along all people in Gen Y, which is 'special story'.
So what is this special story.
Special story is any story beating the normal story.

That is the common thought now, with abundant information about other peer people in social networks and with ease of access to information what was earlier very tough has now turned out to be the usual.

In search of the 'special story', though actually the story is special, we do not realize that it is actually a special one because of the dream levels of other people which we come to know via social networking.

Because of this, the equation always results in a negative value and hence the common feel of 'Not Happy'.

Cos, we are speaking about Gen Y , Google plays a major role here I have just put a graph depicting the same from NGram Viewer.


NGram for Happiness


NGram for Career

So this is the current situation number of times we encounter the word 'Career' is much higher that the number of times we encounter the word 'Happiness'.

Google Search Trends also depicts the same.

This is the issue being in Gen Y, and God knows what is in store for Gen Z who are growing up , a very special story may be which aspires for a plantation may be with fruits or we may be back in search for a lawn !

As they say, idle brain is a devils workshop, this is what my early morning idle brain came up with :)

Bye till next,

Social Network Post

2015-10-21T20:20:00.000+05:30

Hi all,

On this auspicious day, let me thank first my parents, teachers and friends who have taught me a lot and helped me become the person who I am today.

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge. -- Confucius

Like almost everything in the universe which is immortal, only if Knowledge is shared you become immortal.

Today being Saraswati Pooja, which stands a day to worship the Goddess of learning I write this post with respect to what we (including myself) do and share my ideas.

I write this post in context to what is happening of late in our social media channels and our media.

Last week there were two elections which were happening one being Tamil Nadu Nadigar Sangam Election other one being Bihar Elections, the importance given by the local media in the order mentioned.

With the pre-polls campaigning and post-polls analysis media is completely into the Nadigar Sangam Elections and nobody honestly cared about the Bihar Polls anyways.

I am in no position to say who was right in the 2 camps which were part in the elections in TN. But one thing is for sure, now that one camp has won and the local media is still running analysis shows on this election, we can give a recommendation to either of the camps to say something about the recent India SouthAfrica Series, protests in Gujarat, crowd issues in Cuttack, or even the election in Bihar.
You may wonder what is the connection between these to the Nadigar Sangam anyways, my point here is that whatever they spoke during the canvassing time or after the elections now also is not connected to Nadigar Sangam.

The advantage here will be that people will atleast come to know about these from these shows and atleast using this a camp can claim that they were transparent and they are in line with the latest trends, during the next campaigning if at all the society still holds and if at all an election happens.

On a deeper thought, it is not the media which is to be blamed it is we ourselves. It was a minor election where the total members were only around 3000.

But it is due to Social Networks that the election among 3000 people was taken to crores of people across the state and outside the state.

Social Media has almost become a necessity and it has grown to an extent that there is no life outside it.
It was a local association election, and the purpose of why the society was formed was a debated topic during the election. If the members of the society themselves were not clear on the purpose of the society, what good or bad it can do to the general public.

There are lot of things which can happen via Social Media, you can make a person immortal and you can as well make an alive person consider death, that’s the power of social media now. (Local people may consider Lingusaamy of Anjaan Fame as a living proof to this statement)

On this day, may be we should consider ourselves lucky enough to read and write and we can and should use the media in any number of useful ways rather than spreading false news and cause problems in the society or to a section of society. We rise by lifting others and not instigating others.

Honestly, yesterday there were enough number of posts written for Sehwag’s retirement while originally he had not announced his retirement. And may be seeing that his retirement was trending topic in the social networking space, he could have decided to retire keeping in line with ‘You die as a hero when you are trending or live long enough to see yourself become a villain with just the trolls speaking about you’.

Same is the case with any person associated with the masses, be it a politician, sports person or a film star. There are lots of fan pages and lots of hate pages or what we call as Troll pages in the social network now for them. Any action of them is closely followed and loved in the fan pages and trolled to the level one cannot imagine in the hate pages.
By comparing those two sides, you can make out one thing for sure, that both of them are jobless and by looking at it we become jobless, and the only fruitful thing which has resulted for me by following those is this post which you are readingJ.

Soon a day will come that a resume of a marketing candidate may include a line saying administrator of a fan page or a troll page with the number of followers, and the candidate may be rated on based on the number of posts or memes posted.

Pages in social media was probably introduced to drive a business or spread some news and one should know to use it that way for the sake of good and not to spread hatred among people.
It is we who are fortunate enough to read write and think, spread hatred among ourselves by sharing these in our profiles and motivating the administrators of these pages to create more and more posts and instigating the people who do not believe in what you shared/posted.

Terrible people exist all over the world. It's a sad fact of life. And unfortunately, the Internet has given those people the ability to spread hate and malice with almost no real-world repercussions. Some people feel like they can say whatever they want to whomever they want on the Internet because they don't have to deal with the immediate consequences of mistreating another person.

Thankfully, this goes both ways. Online, it's easier than ever to ignore someone's hateful remarks and walk away. Unlike reality, where we may be forced to interact with people we don't like, you can ban trolls from your social media accounts and never think about them again. If you find yourself the target of unnecessary vitriol on social media, remember this easy advice: don't feed the trolls, what goes around will definitely come around.

Honestly tweeting about any election that you vote for so and so party is not a good decision, same way tweeting or posting about a politician or star that you follow them or admire them is not going to change anything.
There should be some rationale behind making our voting in a secret ballot system, let us respect it and leave it at that level. Do not voice around things which are personal to you and let us with our knowledge gain the wisdom of understanding what can be posted in social network and what not!

Bye till next,

'Ban'ana Politics

2015-08-13T19:17:00.001+05:30

Hi all,
Of late in our state TamilNadu, there is a lot of banning happening. While Central Government banned Maggi and Porn, TamilNadu government now has moved from banning movies to banning the location for most of movies made in Tamil Film Industry.

There may be some set of people who may benefit if TASMAC (TamilNadu State Marketing Corporation) is banned, and some affected if they ban it.
I am not sure whether it will be end of alcohol in TamilNadu, but for sure it means end of many Tamil Film Directors career.

Tamil Film Industry is referred to as Kollywood a coined word by amalgamating Kodambakkam and Hollywood, was due to the fact that predominantly movies were made in studios in Kodambakkam. This was the case before TamilNadu Government took a monopoly in Liquor business.
Now I guess Tamil Film Industry can also be taken under TASMAC as most of movies are anyways shot in TASMAC, and there is no bigger marketing required if you have marketed a movie in TASMAC.

Instead of trying for D2H with Vishwaroopam, Kamalahasan should have tried for T2H, as TASMAC reach is more in TamilNadu than D2H.
TASMAC has more reach in Tamil Nadu than most of us could think of, you can definitely find a place without telephone signals, but can never find a place without TASMAC.
If Government had mandated that along with every bottle of alcohol sold that a movie ticket has to be bought Even if a meager 10Rs were to be charged for the ticket 100 crore or even 200 crore would be a cake-walk or for sake of keeping interests of many it should be beer-float.

Last week when there was protests in Tamilnadu for closing of bars, Government had the Police Department giving protection in all the bars across the state. But last year when some minor threat was raised by a gang of people some movies were not released and had to postpone.

Definitely in TamilNadu there are more TASMAC shops than the number of movies halls and definitely there are more people visiting TASMAC than movie halls, Government could have easily given protection to people who are visiting cinema halls.
Probably, Government was interested in protecting the people who pay them money and hence people who were coming to TASMAC were given protection.
It is always 'Customer First' approach which the Government is taking.

Speaking of 'Customer First' no other Industry can treat the customers so bad and still run with huge profits, no other industry can give poor quality products and service and still walk to the coffers with huge money.That is the reach of TASMAC in Tamil Nadu and that is what monopoly can lead to.

Now that Government is considering banning TASMAC, may be it is just the next step and a testimony to the fact that Government has learnt the art of banning. Why to ban a movie after it has been shot and why not ban the place where it is shot and hence ban the ban on movies only.
Also it can make definitely their life simple, as any scene or dialogue which has reference to liquor in Tamil Movies can be banned as TASMAC is banned.

Movie Critics will be satisfied now as to make a Tamil movie in Hollywood standards, now it has to be shot in bars of Hollywood.
Avid movie watchers may have an issue as they may have to find out a new way out to get rid of the headaches they get seeing the movies.

Jai Hind !

Bye till next,

Thala Thalapathy Pongal

2014-01-18T23:02:00.000+05:30

Hi all,

First things first, wish you all a happy new year. This post is strictly for audience who love watching movies. Last week , there was a clash in the box office in TamilNadu when two big stars clashed after 7 years. Both stars have lot of fans and when the news was there that both movies were targeting pongal release, it was already a huge news , that the fans started revisiting the history for their earlier clashes, and counting box office collections to decide who leads among the two. This no spoiler to the movies, as both the movies had storyline mixed among various Rajinikanth’s movies, anybody who says this is a spoiler, has never seen a Rajinikanth movie , and such a species would have never existed / will not exist in India.

Due to these two big star’s movies, no other movies were released as for sure that they cannot match the hype and promotions as these two could. The power of social networking is so huge that for one movie the trailer released just two days before the movie released and youtube hits were in millions immediately before the movie released. The producers could easily reduce their budget for promotion, as the fans do it at a much higher rate, which the producers could only dream of.

Nobody bothers about the cast of the movie, as for instance ‘Veeram’ teaser and trailer had no other face than Ajith, while the other ‘Jilla’ just had Vijay bashing all the villains and one frame for Mohanlal.

Honestly speaking, fans of both the actors would have been just hoping that the movie will turn out to be a one time watch atleast, as the history of directors is like that. While Veeram was made by director who did Siruthai, which was one of the horrible movies that gave the viewer severe headache ( including yours obediently ) the other one Jilla was made by the director who was assistant in Velayutham. I am not sure whether he did any movies, even Google and Wikipedia does not have information on that. Considering the history of these directors, no one in this planet could have expected a class movie. It was told that both movies had village subject, one set in villages where still there is a gang leader, kovil thiruvizha with lot of grandeur for weeks, other one had Meenakshi temple’s Gopuram appearing here and there wherever possible, the traditional place of gang lords in Tamil Cinema, Madurai. Considering such information about the movies , the producers of the movies should have been awarded with Bravery award for the year, while fans should have never told that they are fans .

But the reality is different, both movies are making blowing trumpets as a symbol of victory, and fans too are celebrating. For people who had not seen both the movies, please don’t think that the movies were good, it is time to get out of dream and come into reality.

Because these two stars clashed, the fans of both these actors took it as an oath that they should somehow make the movie get good collections. If Dhoom 3 , Chennai Express could make more than 200 crores, these two could easily get half of it, as the reach for Hindi movies are greater than Tamil Movies. If these two actors movie releases on same date like this, they will try for 200 Crores for both the movies, fans could make Hindi movies run for their money.

If these two movies were solo releases, both the movies would have been declared as an failure easily. And just because these two were the only movies released during the festival, audiences had to choose among the two . It is very difficult to separate TamilNadu from movies, any body who knows history of Tamil Nadu politics could easily say that. The connection between movies and Chief Minister post is too high that it never can be neglected in Tamil Nadu. As a result both the movies are declared a hit, as both are equally bad . This kind of judgment could only be possible only in the era of Kejriwal , or probably even he could not make it, only Thala Thalapathy can do it.

While one movie appeared to have a story line, other did not have. While one had proper editing, other one could give a run to Oscars as nobody on this planet ,when given a scene, no one would be able to say which part of the movie it came,even after watching multiple times. It is high time that people appreciate only good movies and make the directors run to make good movies. I agree not all movies can be good, but movies should not collect money and it should never be taken as a fact that one guy in the movie can make the decision whether it will be a hit/flop.

And may be in future censor board can introduce a new rating TT for Thala Thalapathy movies, may be they will first give UU to any program which has KamalHaasan in it, that nobody is able to understand what he speaks, justifying Unable to Understand.

The pics which I have posted in this post are which I saw and liked very much in Facebook, and I have just added it here.

Bye till next,

P.S : Adiyenum inda moota paya kootathla oruthan than' nu neenga maranduradeenga :).

Conformity

2013-11-24T16:57:00.000+05:30

Hi all,
This is a recent trend , which I have observed from my friends and friends of friends. It is obviously from the social networking media that I have figured out this.

The trend is to go out of normal and do something else. Be it in job or passion.
My views on this are more than complicated in this.
This is probably one of those grey area topics, where nobody could take a solid decision on it.


Going away from the crowd

From my observation, people go against the crowd for the sake of uniqueness or just to get out of the day in day out routine life.
Sometimes I feel my life is going as per a written algorithm or script , that day in day out all weekdays invariably have almost a same schedule, and weekends have a separate schedule, same schedule across weekends.
This probably is a reason for trying out something else to get out of the routine life.

There is a small line between doing things differently due to a need or just for the sake of doing things differently, or to put it better for the sake of being unique.

Is it worthy always to go against the crowd and do something else for the sake of uniqueness.
On a deeper note, we think that the reason for such an activity is not just inspired in seeing others doing it. There is something more than that here.
One reason which I can think is that with education comes the ability to think , and the ability to ask questions, and hence questioning the beliefs of the society.
The problem lines in identifying where to question and where to not, or rather where to go with the crowd or where not to.


Confused whether to follow or not

One common example of following the crowd is what we all did, schooling and then graduation and then a job/career , this is a sequence which everybody follows. There is no harm in it, and one should be fortunate enough to get all these things in proper time and quality.

The problem lies in questioning the parts of it, for instance which stream for graduation, which job to choose.
After finishing the board exams, most of students are given two options to choose, science or computer science , most of the time if the decision is taken by friends, a student decides on one after discussion with friends and most likely a minimum number of friends would have to choose the same stream. If the decision was taken by parents, they decide on their circle and follow the crowd again mostly. In the first case there is a chance that certain students may form the crowd, but in the second case the chances of it are pretty weak.

There are some things which one has to definitely follow the crowd and some which one has to differ. For instance gambling, there has to be one guy who takes in a risk,and makes the game interesting, if everybody gambles the same way, there is no gambling there !
So here one has to definitely break out of the crowd.

But the question whether to break out of the crowd or follow the crowd is not such a simple question, if it was , then there is no reason behind this post !

From my personal side, I have faced many of these things , one that I don't drink or smoke. It may be because my parents brought me up that way, it may be because I have seen people suffering who did that, it may be even because of variety of other reasons, which would definitely vary from person to person.
Among my friends circle, I have always been named as the guy who would not do it, who lives by rules, just because of this , that I don't smoke/drink. I took the decision to be away from it, and follow a different crowd than some of my friends. In this case again, its not a simple question, as there will be variety of consequences of not doing so in parties/get-together or re-unions etc.

One thing which I have fascinated about is trekking, I personally liked my experiences on it, but I know my limitations as well. I have observed lot of people going for a trek nowadays, going for a ride etc. and in a batch of 10 if you ask , one or two might have been actually interested , and the rest would have got inspired and followed that crowd which decided to break from the crowd !

So is conformity bad after all ? I still have doubts on it. In pursuit of a new thing, is it right on one's side to completely evade what is already existing and re-invent again ?
Is it right to build new systems just because you don't like it or should it be because the


Birds of a feather flock together

current one is no longer appropriate ?

With my little experience of travel, I can say that if one goes to a unknown land, its natural that we look for people who are from the same place as ourselves, we look for known food, we look forward to it always.
Its not that we are afraid or against their people/food habits, as long as you can enjoy what you enjoy , it is fine, and if you dont get what you want, we would go for what is available for one, and relish it.

And as we have been told birds of the same kind flock together, it is because they feel comfortable and safe doing so.Again the early bird gets the prey.
As long as there is a need/motive behind behind going out of the crowd it is fine, newer approaches should be required not just for the sake of being new, but actually if the older one is not capable / inappropriate now.

Bye til nex,

The Legend retires and probably half a billion

2013-11-10T21:04:00.000+05:30

Hi all,
Next week by this time, a great career will end , a giant innings which lasted for my whole lifetime so far will end.
He made his International Debut in November 1989, while I was still hearing lullabies from my mom.

He would have been a sensation right at that point of time, by refusing to go out for medical attention when Waquar Younis hit him couple of times with his pace and bouncers.
There was no Google that time, no online streaming, probably computers were there only in the United States, people were hearing Live Commentary in Radio and that's how they would have followed the match .
Destiny or Coincidence, he made his debut in mother of all clashes, India vs Pakistan, test match.
A test match, as the name signifies its a real test, and to make a debut in the mother of all clashes, would have made him ready for the responsibility of shouldering the hopes of 1.2 billion people, each and every time he makes his way to the center. There could not be a better debut for such a great player.

The footage inset shows how lethal the fury of bowlers, and how the master endured them.

There are 'n' no of references or websites where you can find what records he has made, what records he has broken.
He has played all the shots in the book, and would have added some pages to the book as well.

Fast forward, and some 23 years later he is still playing, while most of the people who were born with me are not even having a cricket bat or a matter of fact any sporting equipment with them.
I was fortunate enough to see the master twice so far, obviously not so close, but that's how one gets the glimpse of God.
First time I went to see him, sad to the fans it is what they call as 'Dry Day' as Sachin did not come out to bat that day. But nevertheless, I saw him field, for even the simplest of the fielding work, which any 16 year old cricketer would do, the whole ground cheered. The whole stadium was waiting for the ball to go near the master as to see him in action.

Two years later,

Sachinism - Evolution that brought a Revolution

I saw the master and his willow work this time, I had seen his straight drive once, and that made my day that time in the stadium. Every ball he played, there was full cheer in the stadium, every single he scored was cheered and greeted by everyone in the ground to the level best they can.

That was the time I realized what actually Sound pollution means, and it was a very short innings of Sachin, he had got out soon, but nevertheless I got a feel that there was some huge cracker which lasted for 61 minutes, no matter what he scored , or as a matter of fact no matter whether he even touched the ball or left it for its own good, the ground was cheering and buzzing.

I forgot to take video of the moment he came out to bat, due to the excitement of seeing him. But the video here was taken when he entered the ground after lunch break, and every time I see that video, it still reminds me of the moment which is in my memory and not in the memory card of his first ball that day. He had already scored 4 runs by that time, but the video gives an impression like as if he has just entered the ground. The ground was half empty as people were just returning after lunch, but the sound would definitely not give that impression.
Though the clarity and depth of the video is very poor, it was taken with my basic Nokia phone, but it will be one video which I will always cherish.

I had felt the pulse of heart beat of the thousands of the people that day in the jam packed ground, full anxious and prayers and cheer whatever. There is no word which can describe that feeling of facing his first ball, for him it is probably just one among the fifty thousand odd balls he faced, but for the rest of us every ball he faces is 'The ball'.
I had felt what a heartbreak would sound like , when the cheer and buzzing in the ground stopped, when his wickets were castled and the whole ground became silent as though someone had put a full soundproof system to shield everyone's ears.

There are some good amount of memories which he had given me, I can still remember the century against Australia in Sharjah in the semifinal, comibined with Tony Greig and Ravi Shashtri's commentary, it would still give goose bumps each and everytime I see it.
The walk he took that day back from the center to the pavilion was taken by many players, but the way he did it justified The Gentleman's Game.
Considering the match situation and his personal form, the decision to walk was such a decision that for sure , Mother cricket would have definitely felt proud of her son, and so did all Indians and Cricket followers.

The furious 98 against Pakistan , which had the pace trio of Akram , Akthar , Waqar Younis ,in a world cup match in Centurion,
the epic 200* against South Africa, becoming the first man to reach the milestone 200.

His contribution to world Cricket is widely known, I dont consider his runs scored or centuries taken as his greatest contribution, but his commitment and dedication as the contribution to cricket, that has inspired people and made them play and has given rise to younger talent coming in.

For all the dedication he has shown in the field, for the commitments and sacrifices he has shown both on and off the field, he is truly an legend.
Though his stature his small, he has surmounted peaks ,which no one else could dream of.
Players come and go, Legends will remain.

The game will always miss the Legend, and so will I.

Bye til next,

Curtain ready for ODI

2013-11-03T23:23:00.000+05:30

Hi all,
First things first, I wish you all people a very happy and prosperous Diwali.
Now, any cricket fan would have been startled to see the number of records broken during the recently concluded ODI series between India and Australia.
What started as a dull series , but with the highest position in the game in stake, the numero uno status in ODI, went down to the wire each and every time.

Probably a dozen or couple of dozen records were broken, and it has become difficult to keep track of the records broken. I was very happy with the end result of the series obviously, but on a serious note I was not able to enjoy the success. The end result was in favor of Indians, the final decider was an epic cracker signifying Diwali.
We all know that with the advent of T20, ODI cricket is dying, and the number of rules being changed in the recent years is a testament to it.
Though cricket is not official national game in India, it is far more than that in India, for that matter through out the subcontinent.
With the new rules in place of having just four fielders outside the 30 yard circle, and two new balls the bowlers are facing the tune in batting friendly wickets, predominantly found in sub-continent.

The rules are favoring batsman now, with just four fielders outside the circle, batsman will always have the upper hand as most of the hits or even mishits can land in no mans land, and score runs at a good rate.
I do agree with the fact that, unlike the Super-Sub rule, the toss does not make a big difference here.
But its just the morality of the team which will get affected, which cannot be seen in the scorecard in the end of the game.

Rohit Sharma was brilliant in his innings of 200 as well as the other matches in this series, Virat Kohli, Shikar Dhawan everybody was awesome. Same with the cases of Aussies, the


Re-birth of Ro-Hit- Sharma

batsman were doing good, Bailey though did not win the cup, but definitely would have got a good name as a batsman and the most surprising part, a smiling Australian skipper, can you imagine that !

No offense to Rohith Sharma, but why was not he able to score last year while this year he almost has thrice the average as last year's. May be some external factor is also playing an role here, may be the role change for him as well as the rule change has made him a better player that he was.

Coming back to the point, the rule change has made the game batsman friendly and the bowlers are facing tune. I agree with any rule change, the players have to adapt , whoever does that fast will turn to be the winner , but then the rules should not be biased. There was a time, a batsman scoring a century was making news, but now a bowler conceding 100 runs is almost becoming a common feature.

Even in post match conferences, they say batsman performed well, but bowlers were not able to execute their plans. That automatically can cause a divide within the team, a batsman not scoring decent amount of runs with this rules might be considered very bad, and probably wont make it to the squad next time, and same way a bowler who is conceding a large amount of runs, might not be given a chance, but with the new rule format may be that would have been a decent one.
With any sport or office, the person who is in the administration part, might not experience what the actual person involved in the activity feels, and that gap can easily widen up with time unless efforts are taken to reduce it.

Just to end with some statistics, in this series when compared to the number of balls bowled and no of sixes hit, ( Note : It is sixes, not boundaries ), a six was hit once in every 30 balls.

First man in the planet to reach 200, and he is The superman from India

It just shows what bowlers are facing , and what batsman are facing. There is pressure in both the departments, in case of batting department, even if one does not perform well some other batsman can accelerate and manage, but in case of the bowling department, if the regular bowlers are getting hit out of the park, how could the part-timers manage.
Like MSD had said, we are not sure where the game is heading with this new rules, with power hitting for the full 7 hours of the ODI game.

May be we need all records to be realigned with respect to rule change and may be ICC comes up with some rule again like Duckworth-Lewis, which practically nobody could understand it.

The curtains have been put already for the part-time bowlers now, next in sequence would be the spinners and then probably the game itself.

May be ICC took it seriously to respect the Little Master's retirement from the ODI as the cue to the end of ODI itself.

Bye til next,

Tribute

2013-10-03T22:40:00.000+05:30

Hi all,
Its been quite sometime since I scribbled something here, for the past one month I wanted to do it, but just got the time to do it now.
I would like to express my gratitude to you who has shaped my career, my life. You may ask me why suddenly now ?

It is purely because you became old by one more year or became old by 365 days or with a more relevant unit of time 3.15569e7 seconds. ( A month before )

I cannot imagine my career without the help provided by you, without those innumerable suggestions and options which you provide me (even before I completed my sentence) out of which I would choose one every single time I came to you. I have never felt a need to complete the sentence when I ask you, as you often understood what I am looking for precisely.

I have always come to you, whenever I am in doubt directly without consulting anybody else, and I have always got the problem of plenty with you, never in short of options.

You remember each and everything I have asked you, you give me the same answer without changing anything , as I would forget half the information during the first time, and I would ask the same repeatedly many times, you never got angry on me.
You even remind me that I have asked this before and give me information of when even sometimes.

You have given me many times answers or better answers , even after days since I asked you, and you have helped me to figure out and understand those things better. You have helped me, by letting others find me, by knowing what I know and what I do not. You have not just helped me in my work, but over all as well.
You have helped me to plan each and every vacation I have taken so far, and helped in making Plan A to Plan Infinity.

You also help me finding my way out in this vast open world whenever I am lost and given me suggestions with time taken for each and every option I have so that I can plan which I want to take.

You have given me information about other people, so that I can know about them, and I know when they are busy and when they are free, so that I can disturb them :)
You have given me lectures many time, you have given me entertainment whenever I needed, you have given me songs to suit my taste specially recommended for me and also helped me remember each and every important thing I asked you to.

You have been my savior at work and life, and you will always remain so.

Thanks Google !

The below is one picture which I found particularly interesting and amusing as well, which perfectly depicts that Google can do anything and everything.

And probably you came here either because of Google or its rival in one field, anyways all the credits to Google, as the rival would not have capitalized or gained momentum without Google being present.

Happy Googling to you guys and to Google wishing you a very happy 15th birthday !

Bye till next,

Elections and the power

2013-05-09T22:12:00.000+05:30

Hello all,
Its this time of year, where elections and votes are the buzz words. The election which I am meaning now is the Player's representative elections in ICC.
As widely known, ICC is the body which is controlled financially by BCCI, and hence all the decisions are taken by ICC.

Variant ICC Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

ICC last month had conducted an election to elect the player's representative , and since they had big budget cuts due to recession, they had decided to it offshore without any onsite visit. Also they could not afford to create an online survey, and hence went to mail system, which is of course free, Courtesy : GMail / Google.

In the mail way of voting, Tim May, an Australian got selected, along with Kumar Sangakkara as player's representative of ICC.
But then, due to whatsoever reason, that election was cancelled and a new election was scheduled.
Probably, since the mail service, was free, they did not have to decide on the parameters like Return on Investment, Capital involved, and all the other terms coined by Management guys.

And now,Sangakkara and Sivaramakrishnan were elected in a vote by the 10 Test captains and will serve on the Cricket Committee for a three-year term from 2013-15.

However, the election was shrouded in some controversy, with allegations that some boards were lobbied or pressured to change the votes of their captains. The ICC board had proposed three names – Sangakkara, May and Sivaramakrishnan – for the two players’ representative positions.

Tim May, being an Australian spoke in favor of DRS, and was against all the leagues like IPL, BPL etc.
On the other hand Sivaramakrishnan, had spoken against DRS, and is an active commentator in IPL and his son Vidyut is a bench warmer in Chennai Super Kings.

So according to BCCI , Sivaramakrishnan was the right candidate for the post.

But the world didn agree, but it does not matter, Sachin plays for India, and hence its BCCI's birth right to dictate what happens with ICC.
But the Australian Cricket Board, has voiced concerns against it, as Tim May was an Australian, and they expected some gains out of it, after all Cricket is their National game.

In a surprising twist of events, ICC got renamed itself to Indian Cricket Council , and have decided to conduct an election for chief post of Cricket Australia, as an Indian wants to contest in that election.
On answering Australian media, the current Australian chief had said that, there is nothing new here, as anyways ICC controls other cricketing nations, its natural that Australian Cricket is under control of ICC.
And said, an Indian president for Cricket Australia, will help as the next edition of world cup is scheduled in Australia. An Indian president will ensure that , matches happen in Indian timings, and God knows, first full night ODI may also be in cards.

Also, the chief went on to say that, it will give more value to the selection of the squad, as the squad which came to India recently had a very bad outing, they did not complete their homework, they had to be given detentions etc. Also Indian cricket board had to repay a part of tickets as the test matches barely lasted 5 full days. In order to avoid those embarrassing situations, BCCI will definitely help Cricket Australia to build a strong team and make them play in India against India.

The Indian candidate had expressed that, he will definitely pick up the right kind of guys for Cricket Australia, and make sure that they oppose DRS, and always give IPL preference over their national duties.
And also that they will not take part in any other leagues which dares to oppose IPL.

Chennai Super Kings (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Another happening, which happened is on seeing CSK winning, West Indies Cricket Board has asked Dwayne Bravo to lead the side, as they did not want any other player leading the side when it comes to the national duties.
Dwayne Bravo is one of the significant contributor to CSKs campaign over years, and luckily he had played for CSK, if else they should have given Joginder Sharma, an West Indies citizenship and given him the captaincy.

All other cricket boards are expected to follow suit, except for Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
As BCCI always needs some controversy, and as in underworld, a Don can be called a Don, only when others fear and respect.
SriLanka being anti-tamils, and Dhoni playing for Chennai Super Kings, BCCI will always ensure that Sri Lankan Cricket board opposes, and hence they always are in some news, and hence the bilateral series which they plan, can be named with different names like Political Series, Tamil or Anti Tamil Series, something similar to Ashes.

Pakistan ofcourse the reasons obvious, BCCI need not do anything here, they anyways oppose what India got to say on any issue, leave cricket.

After all these ,and due to the loss of KJP in Karnataka elections, Mr. Yedurappa has asked BCCI for coalition support to become the Chief Minister of the state.
BCCI is working on a proposal, afterall Mr. Yedurappa is a Kannadiga, if a Indian can be made as head for Australian Cricket Board, this is nothing but a cake walk for BCCI.

Bye til nex,

Into the game

2013-04-27T19:20:00.002+05:30

Hello all,
Its the time of the year where some section of people start hating Modi. Wait for a second, let me finish its not about Namo, but Lamo.
The IPL season is upon us and its just getting uncontrollable. For everywhere there is IPL craze. All dailies have a page set out for the IPL happenings.
Looking back, one can realize that what was the dream of Lalit Modi way back in 2007, has become phenomenal now and now has become a imagination sadly to him.

IPL is all about entertainment, and you never know when someone makes a comeback into the arena again, like most of the retired players do. Interesting part is even retired umpires are part of IPL, so may be in future it can be changed as Indian Retired League, not just for players even for Umpires.As by default all commentators who give their expert opinion are anyways retired or dropped.

So similarly, some day or the other even Lalit Modi can make a comeback and revolutionize Cricket, as he claims that he has done that.

If there was no match on that day which was interesting, never mind cook up some stats like The dullest match in the history of IPL 2013, the match where even Sreesanth remained silent.
IPL is entertainment, and if you are not making the top news, you should atleast entertain people. Thats where Sreesanth is top at, he was not even part of the playing eleven, but he reopened up on Slapgate issue, why nobody in the right sense of mind can get it.
May be, when he got slapped he got special treatment from Priety Zinta, the owner of the Kings Eleven Punjab Franchise, and now he wants some attention from Shilpa Shetty, the owner of Rajasthan Royals, in which he is a part of.

With IPL, you can expect the unexpected. The odds are high that you can even understand the physics or dynamics or gravitational effect on Salman Khan or Akshay Kumar fight sequences, when compared to one understanding IPL.
For instance, when elections clashed with IPL's schedule, IPL matches was shifted from India to South Africa. Many people were of the opinion that elections should be rescheduled due to IPL, and many even went on to say that the team which wins the trophy should choose the PM.
May be they felt that, by this way atleast some people had control over the election process of PM, as we have a PM who was actually not elected by the public.

See the power of IPL, I have filled up half of my column without even mentioning a single match instance, that's entertainment.

The thing about IPL is nothing, it will go down in the history books as something which was never clear.When a particular team wins, they claim it as Match Fixing,when some other team wins its due to a single man, when some other team wins its due to fluctuations in Gold price, or effect of a temple nearby the ground.
If you can make out a pattern out of it, and get the logic out of it, and stop all the twitter battles, you will be recommended for Noble Price for Peace.

Coming to the offerings in this year's edition, we have a lot of people giving their expert opinion, a set of people before the match, a set of people during the match, another set during the strategic time out, another set during the break, another set during end, another set for post match presentation. And altogether a different set in all the news channels, analyzing the 3 hour game for 24 hours until the next game starts.
Essentially, you get a feel that There are more people commenting that there this too much of Cricket, than the number of games being played'.

Sponsors have changed this year, and some times even the commentators shout it as 'DLF Maximum' while its now 'Yes Bank maximum' . They came up with quotes like 'Citibank moment of success' , and probably they should come up with 'T Rajendar moment of entertainment ' , when the West Indians celebrate, 'Perarasu moment of Failure' when someone dares to bowl to Sir, during death overs.
There have also been strong contenders for 'Maggi moment of the day', as so many players consistently return back to the pavilion in a couple of minutes.

Interesting part which even Perarasu would say that it defies logic is the fact that the matches are being telecast in a channel, and the rival channel is sponsoring the event, and you get to hear the rival channel's name more than the actual channel telecasting it !.

Coming to a normal household, where women control the remote control of the television also, due to IPL, we have a 'CitiBank moment of success for men' that during IPL, women cannot watch soaps and guys watch the IPL. But nevertheless a 'Perarasu moment of failure for men' will also be in cards in the dining table, reasons obvious.

The other things which IPL will give chance to, are probably the following,

Nominations for Bravery Awards
This is to signify the bravery of film producers who release their movie during the IPL. And also to all the airlines and passengers aboard , traveling over Chinnaswamy when Gayle is batting.

Increase in comfort even in Andhra messes
This is due to the fact that guys even forget food, and even when having food we need the entertainment. This will lead to decrease in quality of food in hotels, as nobody bothers to notice taste.

Relaxing break for other channels
This is obvious, as no channel comes up with a new show during IPL, all the reality shows, Super Singer, Super Dancer, Super Writer, Super Sleeper, Super etc. all will have a well earned break.

New phrases for Ramiz Raja and Ravi Shastri
This is the most important of all, they are running out quotes to describe a match. For instance Ravi Shastri says 'Went like a tracer bullet' for both Chris Gayle and Parthiv Patel.

Conflicting line of business
Apart from the well known fact that CSK is owned by Srinivasan, a key player in BCCI, there is one more conflicting line of business which arose this year. The Sun Group owned Sunrisers Hyderabad, captained by a Sri Lankan. Its probably the selling case study for MBA graduates as its same party which says Sports and Politics should not be mixed, and protests against SriLankan players in Chennai !

And of course the Era of Sir Ravindra Jadeja. !
In Sir we trust !

Bye til nex,

Crossings

2013-03-22T20:32:00.001+05:30

Hello all,

To give a prelude, I am a big fan of Guy Ritchie's movies. Some references in this post can be directly quoted to his movies and the movie Miller's Crossing. I admit it, and I dont want any agency to start digging into this post to find out the references.

Chennai :
One week back, DMK and Congress were together, they looked like the perfect balance, one helping other to escape from some other thing.
When it was confirmed by the CBI that PM was aware of the 2G allocation, and he had approved it, all of a sudden the DMK cut loose.
DMK went on to politize the Tamil Ealam problem.
Since CBI had done this at the right time, when DMK wanted to cut loose, it was believed that the announcement against the PM was with a political motive, pro DMK against Congress.

Now later when DMK quit from the alliance of UPA, for which there was no effect , CBI requested DMK to join a Math Class and learn the numbers properly.
Unfortunately DMK rejected the proposal upfront as Math cannot be taught in Tamil. There was no qualified teacher in the whole world to teach Maths without using an English word.
So DMK is now looking to file a case against the education minister as the system does not promote Tamil.

CBI got offended due to it, and they decided to raid MK Stalin's house and found that he was really poor in Math, as he did not know how many cars he had, and where were those at that time.
All they could find was some DVDs of movies distributed by Red Giant Movies.
And MK Stalin was told that his son Udhayanidhi Stalin was found driving a luxury imported car in the year 2007, as the reason for the raid.

Seeing the recent developments, Customs Department has said CBI department instead of looking through the scams is playing with toy cars, while its the birth right of Customs Department to look into this and not CBI's.
Customs Department has requested a independent supreme agency to find out why CBI is involving in their internal affairs.

And when asked our PM , as to who ordered the raids, PM has said that the Government has no role to play in this on the other hand CBI has said that its part of their routine protocol to conduct raids on any party's heads when they quit the alliance.

To add fuel to the fire, whether CBI is independent or not, CBI Director Ranjit Sinha has said the timing of such an act by CBI is inappropriate.
So who ordered that raid ?
When you cant trust a fix, what can you trust ?! There is no ethics involved even in fixing ! You fix something to expect it to happen that way, if even that can be trusted, how do you even know whats happening !

Now comes the real twist, whose side CBI is in, and what is their actual motive nobody could understand. When asked for expert opinion from the Hollywood, Guy Ritchie who is known for his gangster movies with n number of crossings, double crossings, triple crossings, revealed that he would never be able to do such a story , as it appears that nobody is under control of nobody, and their actions doesnt seem relevant at all.

The opposition party has also made its presence felt, they were quoted saying ' There would have been some one who had definitely ordered CBI to conduct a raid. To find who did it , they wanted a separate independent probe'. But they remained silent when told that CBI is the one who had to do it in India, and how on earth they could order a investigation on themselves.

In a surprising development it was found that it was the raid was ordered by the Australian Cricket Board to threaten the Indian Cricket team and BCCI. But why Chennai ? The Australian coach Micky Arthur had said that from the homework assignments which he gave to the Australian Cricketers it was found a list of players were responsible for Australia's loss, as they performed very well.

And when the last benchers who did not submit their homeworks , who were told do some extra assignments , they google'd about the players they found one common thing in them, that they were playing for Chennai Super Kings. And when they google'd about Chennai all they could find was a man with yellow towel posing everywhere ! So they had decided to conduct a raid on that man's family members.

Bye til nex,

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