Interesting Articles

Among the things which I read recently, I liked two articles(as a matter of fact, nowadays I am not reading much). These two articles have nothing in common except they are associated with the things that I love. One, is noble prize acceptance speech by Orhan Pamuk. The interesting thing in it is his opinion on writers, what make people to write and how far they feel secluded. His thoughts about his dad were also interesting.

Other is an interview by Gautham . During my good old schooldays I was much interested in reading film news. Then at some point it became banal. The only difference across different news are only the names, the contents were same. I began to read only if the news is associated with people like kamal, prakash raj, balumahendra as their interviews were slightly different. But this interview is a nice one. There are some surprise elements also, and I am not much serious about it. It was obvious all was not well between kamal and goutham in VV. Kamal looked like a reluctant player in it. In metro plus before the movie release kamal stated “this is a masala movie which doesn’t disguise itself as a different one”. But in my opinion it worked out in favor of the movie. In the movie, what I saw was the Kamal I used to see in television interviews. The only thing that raised my eyebrows is Gautham statement first half is my choice second half is Kamal and producer choice. I too felt that the second half is to cater ‘c’ centers. Well Gautham too showed the difference by using different colour shades. Might be Kamal don’t want to do other than masala in other productions, after aalavandhan fiasco and its repercussions. After reading “derailed” story I too believe it is not commercially viable with the star salary of Kamal. Generally Gautham films are with too much of violence and now he himself says “Quentin Tarantino kind”. Let us hope “pachaikilli muthucharam” is not so excruciating.

பனி.....பணி

Heater சத்ததில் விடியும் காலை,
பனி பெய்யும் வேளை,
மனிதரே நடவா சாலை,
பளிங்கு போல் மின்னும் நேற்றைய புல்வெளி,
அனைத்தும் அர்த்தமிழக்கிறது,
கணிணி திரையை உயிர்பிக்கும் நொடியில்.

கரையும் காலம்

வாரமொன்று கழிந்தால்
வருடமொன்று கழிய,
விசனங்கள் இல்லாமல்
விசயங்களோடு மட்டுமே கழிந்த நேரங்கள்,
கண் முடி அளவே......

தலை குனிந்து கை குவித்து
நான் பருக முயல,
விரலிடுக்கில் வழியும் நீராய்,
காலம் கரைய,
குடுவையின் மீதம் தெரியாமல்,,
நான் குழம்ப,
நீர் வழிந்து கொண்டே இருக்கிறது...

குடுவையின் மிச்சம் பார்க்க,
அடுத்தவன் சிந்தியதை பார்க்க,
பார்வையாளர்களுக்கு முகம் மாற்ற -என
தவற விட்ட துளிகளை துடைத்து விட்டால்,
நான் விழுங்கியதில் அதிகம் என் எச்சில்களே!
என்றோ விழுங்கிய நீர்தானே இன்றய எச்சில்..

வரும் நீர் மட்டுமே கிளியின் கன்னாய் தெரிய,
நான் ஒன்றும் பார்த்திபன் அல்லவே!!!

வழிந்த நீருக்காய் கரு வளைங்கள் பெருக்காமல்,
வாழ வாய்பதில்லை எல்லோருக்கும்......

ரசித்த கவிதை

காதல் தோல்வி, காதலி அழகு, உணர்ச்சிகரமன வரிகள் இல்லாமல் சற்றே இயல்பன தொனியில் சில கவிதைகளை இந்த தளத்திள் கான முடிகிறது. நான் நல்ல கவிதை என்று நினைக்கும் இலக்கணுதுக்குள் வரும் கவிதை Kuzhandhaiyin Dosai .

Personal note:
As I find his works different from other in this genre I clicked his profile. As usual an engineer with different interests. His profile sounded in line with my expectations. Patterns match but still i think that i read too much between lines. More evidences needed . Let me wait and see.

Ma Bhoomi

Watched one more Telugu film- “Ma bhoomi”. The film is the debut film for Goutam gosh, after this he started to make movies in Hindi. This is a B&W film shot in 1980. It is a screen adaptation of Urdu novel by Kishanchander. The story is about the feudal structure and telungana struggle in 1940’s. The film is produced by Narsing rao. I landed up in this film, as I liked Dasi. The film tracks the story of a guy who is born to peasant in telungana. His great grandfather had some land, his grandfather had 2 acres and his father had nothing and he works in a land of zamindar. Actually the British government gave the tax collecting right to nizam which in term gave it to zamindars, who using it usurped the whole land from the peasants and made the poor people as their bonded labors. The boy is forced to do cattle rearing in his childhood and he grows up as a bonded labor. At one point, he runs away from village. After some errands he ends up in a factory as a labor. There he joins local union and learns to read. In some strike, he goes to jail. There he meets his village friend and learns that people in village tarted to revolt. So he returns to village and starts guerrilla fight. With help of entire village people, he drives away the zamindars and burn all pawn papers and distribute land to landless.

The film is poetic when it shows the poverty in which the child is brought up, his life style, his ignorance, his reactions when he sees mirror first time in his life. But in the middle it becomes preachy. When it speaks about communist ideology, it fails to use cinema language, and looks like our poorly shot documentaries. The villagers fighting without knowing what communist or Marxist means is a beautiful idea. It makes me to remember what nalla says in “anbe sivam”. Communism is a concept that exists for so long, its just Karl Marx named it. It will never die and will exist as long oppression exists in the world. But after the protagonist returns back to village the director is in a hurry to finish the movie. The film which starts so beautifully, becomes in the middle something like a school student essay: “if I become a CM” and maintains same tone till the end.

I know naxalites in a way fight for land. But I thought it came into existence after freedom, somewhere close to MISA. But after seeing this movie I got a doubt whether it existed even before independence. Then I searched Google. It looks like naxalites as an organisation was started after independence but we can say this event back in 1946 as a precursor for those organisations. There are few interesting things that popped in my mind associated with this. These naxal activities are so strong in Andhra, Bihar and in some northern states also, but it looks as not so big in Tamilnadu. What could be the reason ? I can try to read more on this. May be I am wrong and some existed in Tamilnadu too. We have to consider this in the light that most part of present Tamilnadu was not under control of Tamils and under the control of Telugu people before British took complete control.

My belief that arm based struggle can give immediate advantage but can never give final solution, gets re-in forced. The telungana struggle changed its masks but it still continues. All the arm struggles lost their path in the middle . The final solution remains always elusive and they end up at a stage where they have no other option other than to fight and die. History is full of examples and still continues to produce examples.

I saw this movie too in Google videos. Interestingly it has lot of Malayalam movies but not a single movie directed by people like adoor. But in Telugu I was able to find these two movies. Even in Tamil “terrorist” directed by santhosh sivan is there. Though I have seen it already in DD planning to see it one more time.

Dasi- Telungana in 1920

I watched a telugu film dasi, directed by B. Narsing Rao. The film came in 1988 and the story is about the feudal structure existed in telungana state in 1920. For person like me who never knew much about it, it looks more incongruous, especially the ignorance of people, their exploitation and the associated poignancy. But it all existed. Nehru in glimpses of world history said something like this: When we read about tajmahal or other lavish richness of the kings what we fail to notice is the blood and toil of common man behind it. While the kings were spending lavishly without bothering about the plight of common man, majority of people in India were in pathetic condition. This film nicely captures this paradox. The story is about a girl (played by archana) who is sold for twenty rupees ; from there she reaches a zamindar’s house as a part of dowry. The story unfolds at this point. She does house work, sleeps with zamindar and his friends , convince a new girl and brings to zamindar and finally gets aborted. The film nicely juxtaposes two different worlds that exist in same house. The food the zamindar family eats, the prayer and worships they perform the entertainment that they have is shown in contrast with what archana and her coterie have. The life style of that period is nicely shown. zamindarini applies fresh butter over her hair and hand before taking bath, buys bangles sitting in other side of screen , drinks kallu, and stays in a separate room and comes to zamidar room if they want to have sex. Zamindar drinks, haves sex, worships before eating Non veg, hears parayanam, talks with people from nizam, orders to assault a person and orders to throw someone who died because of assault, with an indifference. The film runs for more than 2 Hrs, with minimal dialogues. In retrospection I could not see even a single frame as unwanted. As I believe that the feudal system no longer exists, there is no purpose for this movie in current world, but it stands as an epitome for nice story telling and the power of cinema. The immense possibilities available in the art called as cinema. One example for it is the scene in which archana getting aborted. It is shown with the function that is happening in zamindar’s house for his sister becoming pregnant.

The movie is available in Google videos with English subtitles. The print is not so good and so subtitles are not clear at some places.

தமிழ் கற்பதனால் ஆய பயனென்

I am not an erudite to say whether learning in mother tongue will help in understanding things better. I am neither pushing the emotional angle of Tamil-our identity etc..

I accept the fact that in the present scenario learning Tamil is not going to give one any monetary gains. But I belong to a group that doesn’t believe all we do in life should give us some monetary benefit. If you belong to that clause and if you believe life is all about experience, then I have a point to say. Learn Tamil just to read it’s exhaustive literature treasure. I don’t know any language other than Tamil and English. So don’t take it as I am comparing Tamil with other languages.

For me a literature /movie is good if it can be identified with one in some way.When I say it should able to identify with one what I mean is: “At some moment in your life (it can be a trifling moment) out of context, a piece of prose that you read somewhere, sometime , pops up in your memory and you feel it aptly fits what you feel at the current moment. Or while you are reading a piece the character in it undergoes or speaks about what you have / had underwent.” So one’s opinion about a book is dynamic, book which one liked a year back may not be in his wish list now. What one hasn’t liked at first read might be his favorite now. A book that I feel as good one might not be felt so by someone. Or different people could like it for their own reasons. In short “it’s a feel factor”. Everyone will have his own world to cherish. But there are few works that have something for you to cherish at any time. It could be written thousand years back, but today it could be relevant to you. Tamil have lot of works like that.I am planning to write a separate article on such experience.

The other point is the phonetics of Tamil-the rhythm, sound effects and associated limit less possibilities. To feel this just hear speeches of vai kopalswamy, dialogues uttered by sivaji ganeshan in films like manohara or read some works of annadurai, karunanidhi. One will like to read it aloud and hear back what they read. This is a thing which attracted lot of people towards tamil and I like the dravidan people like bharathidasan, karunanidhi, annadurai for this fact

Dinner @ Japanese Restaurant

I thought of writing last week itself. The reason for procrastination is my laziness. Valluvar said “ forgetting, laziness, long sleep all these are ships which people who want to hit failure will take” (I remember this because my dad scolds me only by saying that kural). I have all the three. I went to an Japanese restaurant. I went with my roommate who is in US for several years and been to these hotels for some time. So there was not any problem in choosing a menu. He ordered an combo for me which had an soup, spring roll, a piece of item which is similar to nugget but had sea food. He said it is of type clam. Well it was nice especially with the sauce that they gave. The main course was fried rice, steak and chicken. Before going to it I have to explain the table in which we sat. It was rectangular in shape and chairs were only on 3 sides. I was initially surprised why it had no chairs on other side. But it got clarified when we entered main course. A chef came with a trolley. The other side was actually a stove. They started to cook front of us. He made fried rice then fried vegetables, chicken and steak. To fry onion, He took an onion slice and separated each ring and placed them one above other like the tower of Hanoi and poured oil on it and lit a fire. The skillfulness, with which he did it, was a wonderful thing to look at. During cooking he was asking us about our country, our food style, culture etc.. It was a quite interesting thing to look out. Finally the bill came close to 26 USD per head.

Well we can see this kind of cooking in roadside shops of India also. Especially if you order an fried rice the way he cut and put egg in it and tosses the rice .. I love to watch it. The difference is there he will be in lungi, road side sound and dust will be the there, here the cook is in formal attire and speaks to us amicably and cooks.

learning tamil

Though I read lot of tamil novels and I have scribbled something under the name of புது கவிதை, my knowledge in tamil grammer is virually zero.Honestly I never took the pain to learn something seriously. It is one of the biggest costs I have paid for studying in an English medium -matriculation school in a rural area. All the subject were in English but staffs and everyone spoke in colloquial Tamil. There was a Tamil paper but it was always treated as something not a worth one. Net result products, which were half-baked in both languages. Well this can be seen just as blaming game, and one can ask me why didn't you take any effort to learn something by yourself. I accept it’s my fault, but what i try to say is environment is not much conducive to give an impetus.

My father is a Tamil teacher with a science background, but I never took pain to learn from him. Because of some unknown reasons I believed he is more interested in science than Tamil. Even in my higher secondary days we never sat together to prepare for my Tamil papers. I took an easy path of reading just novels and புது கவிதைகள். He used to ask me to learn thirukural, whenever he gets a chance. But I was always contended with easy to read stuffs.
It took some time for me to understand that whatever i read and admired and tried to replicate were not poems they were just beautiful lines. How can I experiment in something without understanding the basic of it?
I was searching net to learn my mother tongue. Even at this point I never thought I can get back to my dad. Accidentally I got a chance to read a piece of hymn in remembrance of a person written by him, then only it dawned to me,” I can learn from him". I have to speak to him on this and i hope at least in a year I can learn something from him

how far it can go?

well what aperson will do , if he feels extremely bored and couldnot find an ear which can hear all his musings? If the person is me I'll start an blog.I am not sure how many posts I am going to put. If I touch double digit it could be a big break through. Let me give a try. well I can count this as a post also.