Life and other weird things

New day. Finished with my first project in my company.

The project took me from Pune to Chennai to Luton(England) to Bridgend(Wales) to Coventry(England) to Chennai and finally back to Pune.

My two bits about this experience.

o Chennai is a nice city. Good roads. Busses that take you pretty much anywhere. But home to a unique species of disease causing organism called 'Autodrivus Madrasis'. These organisms cause an instant dislike of the city within anyone coming to Chennai from any other place. They are a rude species, prone to pulling numbers out of their asses at random and terming it as 'auto fare'.


o Competition is cut throat. You got to be the best to just get ahead in the game. The winner however, need not be the best player in the game.


o In one day, I met a taxi driver in Chennai who was offended as I thought he was a Malayali, and a taxi driver in Mumbai who wanted me to trust him so far as to leave my laptop with him as I took a leak just because he was from Pune and not Mumbai. Verbatim 'Mai Pune se hoon sir, Bombaiyya nahi. Kuch nahi hoga aapke samaan ko'. Made me think a bit. There are a lot of people out there who think that their credentials as members of a certain city or community automatically labels them as paragons of virtue. Stereotypes. Like I can't imagine someone seeling the idea 'Mai Bihar se hoon sir, de do aapka laptop. Kuch nahi hoga.' to anyone today. Pity that is not the case though, as I have been looted on various occasions by various people, not all hailing from places connected with crime. I'm not kidding; I have faced a situation when a MONK tried to con me into buying his glasses which he claimed were authentic Ray Bans.


o London is one place I would go back to, given a chance. It's THE most exciting and vibrant place I have ever seen, and probably ever will see. Not that I will not see more places. I just don't think any city can get any better than that.


o In India I have been to and/or stayed at the following places: Bangalore, Chennai, Goa, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Delhi, Jamshedpur, Pondicherry, Agra. That's in recent memory. Of these, my first choice of a great place to live in would be Hyderabad. Next would be Pune. Goa would be third. Then comes a mix of the rest. Oh yeah, I would NEVER stay in Kolkata. The reasons for the above : Hyderabad has a good mix of nice people, fantastic food, cheaper than average living rates, amazing infrastructure, good jobs, and places to see. Pune has crappy roads and vague people, but some amazing climate and my friends crowd. Goa, well, is Goa. Kolkata has traffic that snarls, crowds that smell, people that suck and climate that makes you want to move to a cooler part of the world - like the Equator. The food, however makes Kolkata a place to visit often, if not a place to settle down in.


o The fabled London underground (and other train services in the UK) is a rip off (like much of the things in the UK). Inordinately overpriced, and often malfunctioning.


o Russel Peters is a goddamn funny guy. I watch his videos when there's nothing else to do and it sure does lighten my mood.


o I don't know if I will live to see a day when there is a 'Speaker's Corner' anywhere in India akin to the one in London.

o The variety in India is unimaginable. We all take it for granted. I was at Chennai at 12 am one night boarding a bus, and the bus broke down at about 2am. I don't know where the place was. All I know was that the people there spoke a variety of Tamil the likes of which I had never heard. In 2 hours I had entered a place which was as foreign to me as Timbuktu would be.

o I spoke more Hindi on London roads than in Chennai.

o Bengalis are everywhere. I didn't hear Gujrati or Marathi being spoken in the malls in Chennai, but you can bet your last bullet that you will hear a shrill voice every time you visit there screaming something like 'Ai Mishti, babar hath charish na!' ( Mishti, don't leave daddy's hand) or 'Bobo....Bobo edike aay, bathroom ta ei dike'. (Bobo, come here, the bathroom is this way). Also there is serious talk of changing the name of Whitechapel area in London to Banglatown.

o If anyone goes to Chennai, stay clear of Shollinganallur.

o If anyone comes to Pune, stay clear of the roads. You could hurt yourself just breathing on the roads. If you decide to hold your breath to avoid breathing in copious amounts of carbon monoxide, you could be helped on your way to the other world by a motorist who thinks driving on the wrong side of the road will please his 'kula deva'.

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Procured a good copy of Kaaka Kaaka finally. Had watched it before in Pune on some seriously crapped out camera print.

It had been some time since I watched such a slick and well directed movie. Of course, there's a kick ass story and good performances to match.

Most of the story is told in flashback, with the grievously wounded cop Anbuselvam (Surya) - left for dead - having his life pass before his eyes. The story is filmed in a gritty no-nonsense style, showing how Anbuselvam and his posse of cops go about with their 'encounters' - which is plain and simple murder - of criminals in the city.

In the course of their city cleaning drives, they cross the path of one Jeevan (registered Hindi abuse spewing psycopath), who is baying for Anbuselvam's blood. Reason for baying - Anbu has killed Jeevan's brother Sethu in, yes, an encounter.

What follows is a series of ambushes and counter ambushes (with one sequence mercilessly ripped out of that master movie Seven), which predictably ends up in Anbuselvam's girlfriend-turned-wife(played by Jyothika) being kidnapped by the evil psychopath on their wedding night.

Unluckily for Jeevan, Anbu doesn't die in the skirmish. Instead, he gets his act together again to come back for Jeevan, whom he does get - after treating the audience to a staple diet of Tamil movie fighting techniques, complete with sound effects accompanying each punch loud enough to wake the hounds of hell.

Though the story seems pretty typical for an Indian cops and robbers film, the reasons for this movie standing out are as follows:

1) Very very few Indian commercial movies have a good treatment of romance. This film is an exception. Surya and Jyothika's chemistry is brilliant, and their performances are completely believable. Surya and Jyothika behave gracefully with each other, and not with a childish craziness(by the girl) or downright insolence(by the boy), which is the norm in most Indian films.
2) The screenplay is tight, and even with such an obvious story, manages to keep the audience on the edge of the seat. Gautham Menon's direction is really, really good.
3) The cinematography is brilliant. The look of the film is gritty and the romantic scenes are filmed with soft color which add a great deal to the mood of the film.
4) All the characters - from the trigger-happy cops down to the autorickshaw driver with one scene in the movie - give believable performances.
5) The music. Harris Jayaraj's score is simply amazing. The Uyirin Uyire song that kick starts the movie is simply amazing. I read it was filmed somewhere in the Andamans. Treat to watch.

Summary in two words : Must see.

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Vettaiyadu Vilayadu seems like a follow up to Kaaka Kaaka, and I won't be surprised if Gautham Menon makes a third cop movie to do a Ram Gopal Varma-esqe 'trilogy' (think Satya, Company and Sarkar).

Gautham Menon was obviously able to attract larger funding for this movie after Kaaka Kaaka made thumping collections everywhere (there's even talk of the film being remade in Hollywood). The story this time revolves around Raghavan, played by the redoubtable Kamal Haasan. I was really happy to see one of my all time favorite stars back in the saddle and doing what he does best - acting. Please Kamal, stay off the directing, the music, the screenplay and other aspect of your respectable trade. Stick to acting. You are great.

Though the story here tries very hard to outdo Kaaka Kaaka, it's mainly let down by two things - a story pulled on for a bit too long, and the weird villains. The story here, like in Kaaka Kaaka, is not very inventive. We have 2 serial killers on the loose who get their kicks from raping and killing young women and dismembering them. It's our man Kamal's job to get them.

Kudos to Gautham Menon for using an ordinary plot like this yet again and pull it out of the ordinary. Almost half the film takes place in New York, where Kamal's friend and mentor Arokiaraj has been found murdered along with his wife.

What follows is a series of gory encounters with the killers doing their job, and Kamal trying to outsmart them. As with Kaaka Kaaka's Anbuselvam, Raghavan is hacked up and left for dead by the killers in NY. Turns out movie villains never learn.

The story shifts to India, where the chase continues, till Raghavan finally gets his men after a well executed trademark Tamil movie fight sequence.

Sounds ordinary again, but here are the plus points :

1) Again, a very beautiful and unique handling of the romantic angle with Jyothika.
2) Amazing cinematography
3) One great song
4) Kamal Haasan.

The freaky let downs :

1) Too much focus on the gore. Gautham should know that one can pass on a message without zooming the camera on slitting throats and dismembered fingers.
2) King weird villains. They are supposedly brilliant medical students from Brooklyn university. Hmmmm. Apparently they are gay as a Christmas tree as well. Well, why do they go around raping young girls then ? If they are such uphill gardeners and fruit picking sodomites, why are they so insistent on girls ? No answer.
3) The last third of the film goes on for too long, with the chase going on endlessly into various Indian towns.
4) What's with those date markers ? Don't think they were really necessary for a film like this. Once in a while maybe, not all the time all through the film.

Summary : Good film. Kamal saves it. Without him, this would be ordinary.

Was curious to know what the BJP CD that was causing all the controversy was all about.

After days of forgetting to do a Google search, finally hit on it today, and found this report on the Hindu (7 April 2007).

Some clips from the alleged contents of the CD.

.....Pakistan wants to break India into pieces. Hyenas hungry for political power are egging them on. They have forgotten what the consequences of this will be. Now, ordinary people of India have to think, do they want slavery again or Ram Rajya in their independent India.

The present government is giving full support to butchers. Cruel atrocities are being committed on Gaumata.

Hindus will produce two children and Muslims will marry five times and produce 35 pups and make this country into an Islamic state.

That Aurangzeb earlier cut your choti [tuft of hair] and took off your sacred thread. And now these tikas on your forehead will have to go and in their place you will have to grow beards.

Ha ha ha! When Hindu girls get ensnared by us, they scream and shout but sadly there is no one to listen to them and we have great fun. Ha ha ha ha ha!

And now, that day is not far away when we will be afraid to even call ourselves Hindu, and you will never be able to find a Sohanlal, Mohanlal, Atmaram, or Radhakrishan anywhere. Wherever we look, we will only see Abbas, Naqvi, Rizvi, and Maulvi. All schools and colleges will be shut down. What will open are madrasas from where fatwas will be issued to drive Hindus out from this country, enslave them — because they want to rule over here, they want to make India into Pakistan. Then it will be difficult for Hindu girls to ever venture outside their houses. Muslims will seize their houses.

Just as the slogan of Vande Mataram inspired us to throw out the British, today we have to take an oath to drive those traitors out of the country.

I don't know how much of this is true, but then again, I have never stayed in villages, and more importantly, I've never stayed in Uttar Pradesh. What goes on in vote bank politics is a complete mystery to me.

I'm not the biggest fan of the Indian Government's handling of minority issues. I think we are the weirdest country in the world to have different laws for people belonging to different religions. I would support people who protest this pandering to minorities to secure votes.

But if the alleged contents of the CD are this inflammatory and disgusting, I really don't know what to say. I can't believe that a propaganda CD like this has come out without the knowledge of the BJP higher ups.

I can't see where this hate mongering will get us as a country. This politics of hate. Instead of uniting people to rise up in spirit, the agenda seems to be to create as many divisions as possible.

I'm quite happy with my opinion of religion that I expressed almost exactly a year ago.

After watching this interview with Ashley Judd by Prannoy Roy , I found myself wondering how tame Prannoy Roy looked in front of Ashley Judd.

I hope he is not withering away. He looked like a shadow of his former 'The World This Week' self.

I would encourage anyone who comes by the link to this interview to watch it. It's really good. There are celebrities who do public service for show, and there are those who don't. Ashley Judd is among those who comes across as one of those who is committed, speaks her mind and very eloquent.

Hope there are more like her.

I have long thought, that if someone were to ask me what the most astounding event of the last 50 years has been, I would say it the fact that South Africa achieved it's removal of apartheid without massive bloodshed.

The black South African population was living under absolutely inhuman conditions for well over 60 years under a psychopathic government, and when the time came for justice and a change in the system, the inspired leadership of people like Mandela and Archbishop Tutu made sure that there wasn't the mass uprisings and revenge killings everyone had expected.

Given the enormity of the injustices perpetrated by the Afrikaans government on black South Africans, it seems to me that if there is anything more astounding than the largely peaceful and smooth change of power, it is the fact that this event in history is not a major part of history lessons worldwide. Seems to me that Mandela and Tutu should be compulsory study for any student of any school anywhere in the world.

The principle of their spirit of forgiveness is drawn from the Sub Saharan concept of "Ubuntu". The word, I feel is untranslatable. The dictionaries give the meaning to be a concept such as "I am what I am because of what we all are". It's the equivalent of the "Circle of Life" concept from the Lion King movies. Only here, we are not talking about cartoons. African cultural concepts like these made a person like Mandela able to forgive his White enemies for locking him up in a cell for 27 years, for the "crime" of speaking out his mind and having a free spirit. Twenty Seven years. I haven't lived on this planet for 27 years, and this man spent 27 years in prison, and lived to forgive those who did that to him. I can't understand it.

Why is all this ranting coming out all of a sudden ? Coz I watched this movie called 'In My Country' last night.
It's not the greatest of movies, but it's one of the few (the only one I have seen) that brings out the how the "Truth and Reconciliation Hearings" took place in South Africa.

The story is fairly typical, as movies go. A white South African radio journalist Anna Malan (played well by Juliette Binoche) meets a black American print jouno called Langston Whitfield (played with panache by the always superb Samuel L. Jackson) on the road while following about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into the remote villages of the country. The principle of the hearings were simple. It encouraged perpetrators of human right violations to come out and tell the truth, make a full confession of their role, and prove that they were politically motivated and were following orders. If they could do the above, they were promised amnesty.

The hearings bring out hordes of people, some of which the film shows. To be fair, there were some whites came out to voice out their complaints against assaults by black South Africans as well, and the film does show that. The principal players in the film - Langston, Anna and her assistant Dumi, hear gory tale after gory tale, and learn about 'ubuntu' in the process.

One of the most poignant scenes in the movie shows an old man asking a white ex-policeman why he broke 5 of his trees which he had planted and tended for since years. At times, the audience, like the journalists in the film start to lose their minds with the excesses committed by the state. In one scene Anna Malan just loses control and starts laughing to hear that a man went back to a farm one day after his son's death to pick up his son's brains so that he would have something to bury.

The film led me to ask myself a few questions :

1) Just how beautiful is Africa ?

2) Just why are film makers get tempted to add needless romance in an otherwise involving story ? The chemistry between Jackson and Binoche is as visible as a lot of nothing in the Sahara. The romantic angle was completely dispensable.

All in all, this was a good movie, which brings out an important historical event of our times, with strong performances, and beautiful photography.

If only it had left out the lovey dovey bits, this would have been a clincher.

Now, off to read more about Ubuntu.