The Wordsmith

P.S: If you don't understand this and its relevance to my life..... you are a dork. yes, I am very polite. Thank you very much. Now I will go paint some beautiful lines.

I remember when I was in class 7, in a remote town in the west of Gujarat - yeah my father's job was such that we would go to the remotest corners of the country where my father being a mechanical engineer would build whatever it was that mechanical engineers built and when there was the sign of even a leeetle bit of development my dad would be transfered to the next undeveloped place. My childhood hence was spent studying in a lot of loser schools which had no teachers and mostly no
students - we had this HUGE and beautiful school with lovely classrooms, lots of playground area,
excellent infrastructural facilities, lovely swimming pool and the works but no teachers, because
everyone refused to come and work in such a godforsaken place. So I remember my dad commenting, "Your school is like a beautiful woman....... with no hair". Which was absolutely true coz in spite of the fantastic facilities and all that jazz, we had no teachers. Raavan, I would say is pretty much like that. Breathtaking locales, excellent cinematography BUT no story whatsoever, no logic whatsoever. I was so shocked the whole time I was watching the movie that I could just watch open mouthed and most people thought I was over awed by the movie.

Some random thoughts from the movie.

1. Suhasini's dialogues are EPIC blade! Madam I can barely understand poetic tamil but even i thought your dialogues were terrible. Especially the ones where Beera and Ragini are in front of this huge idol of some God. What the hell were you thinking? "Anyway Mani has taken care of finding a picture perfect sexy location for the scene. So while people Wow at the scenery let me fit in some shitty dialogues"?
The dialogues are so run off the mill and fail to touch a chord except probably the chord which makes u squirm in your seat. JUVENILE dialogues!

2. Some, a teeny weeny bit of credit could have been given to the audience. We are Indians. We KNOW our Ramayan. We KNOW Hanuman was a monkey and that he found Sita. We KNOW Jatayu was the first person to give news of where Sita is and was injured by Raavanan. We KNOW Raavanan had 2 brothers, one full of brains (Vibhishan) and the other full of brawans (Kumbhakarna). We KNOW Raavan had 10 heads.
I do not have a problem with people adapting from epics. Hell, Dalapathi is one of my favoritestest movies ever. The extremely subtle references to Mahabharatha made Dalapathi so beautiful. Which is why I found Mani's in your face reference to Ramayana in Raavan very jarring. And the scene where the policeman pulls Beera's sister's nose and asks "Shall I cut it?". Not.At.All.Suggestive.Of.Any.Epic. Eeeeeks.
And like a friend of mine commented, maybe Priyamani demands that there be a gang rape scene in the movie she stars in or she refuses to act.

3. Ok. So they base the entire movie on the premise that police is searching for Ragini who has been
kidnapped by Beera and taken into the heart of the forest where no one can find her because Beera keeps moving from one place to another etc. And in the end Ragini gets down from the train in the middle of nowhere with deep valley on both sides of the train track and 20 seconds later she is front of Beera. I can understand that they could not have shown her trekking through the jungles up the mountains, across the rivers to find Beera but her face, her pearly white dress show absolutely no signs of having lumbered through deep dense forests to find Beera. She looks like she is fresh out of a bath and going to a temple. :-\

4. And whats with the IRRITATING camera work, Mr.Mani. I do NOT want to see Abhishek Bacchan's left bicep's nerve or Aishwarya Rai's cornea. Neither do I want to know how close can u come to Aishwarya Rai's boobs without actually touching them physically. I am equally uninterested in the brand of sunglasses worn by Prithiviraj and in Ragini's heaving bosoms. I would have liked to see entire humans, walking, talking etc but all I could see was snatches of flesh here and there.

5. And my complete sympathies with Vikram. I am sure he loathed Suhasini's dialogues so much that he decided to improvise and say extremely profound stuff like, "chaka chaka chak chuka bak. dandanakka. danakanaka" instead of mouthing the insipid dialogues. I really cant think of any other reason why such gibberish would be present in the movie.

6. I think the EPIC WTF moment of the movie for me was when Dev tells Ragini, "Are you willing to take a lie detector test?". Eeeeeeeeks. We get it. Ramayan. yes. Agni Pariksha. Yes Yes. WE GET IT. ok? You didnt have to go out of your way to adapt Ramayan to modern times and in SUCH a lousy fashion Mr.Mani.
I had GREAT expectations of you. I am one of the many people who can watch your movies again and again and again and not get tired. But I think that is 3 agains more than what I would employ for Raavan. I have some advice for you - actually one

a. Stop teaming up with your wife. Please! :-

7. A lot of my friends are going, "tch. you just don't know how to appreciate art man. What stunning locales, what breathtaking cinematogrpahy. and the climax. Ooooh! What a place to shoot it". Ermmm. I could get ALL this and MORE just by sitting at home and watching National Geographic or Discovery Channels and plus I get the added benefit of not having to look at Aishwarya Rai's disgusting face. I also do not GET a lot of other things which people are talking about. I see what is there on the screen. I do not try to guess stuff like, "what could Ragini and Dev's relationship before her abduction be". "Whats going to happen after the end of the movie" (I think it was a feat that I survived the movie so I am not going to torture myself further by thinking what could have happened after it). Hell! I GET Mani's movies. I always have. But Raavan. I am glad I did not GET it or maybe my "getting" the movie was lost in Mani repeatedly nudging me saying, "Get it? huh? huh? Ramayan. Get it?"
Enough of "getting" there and I would not surprised if you don't get me! :P

8. In the words of my dad, the wisest man I know and who NEVER watches movies but watched Raavan AND Raavanan by mistake, "Mani Ratnam made Raavanan after he underwent a lobotomy". You can NOT argue with logic like that.

With the family having a veritable baby boom in the year 2000 suddenly the house is filled with a lot of 10 year old children, boys in particular who have arrived from different parts of the world to finally get inducted into brahmin hood by having the upanayanam (sacred thread ceremony). While I believe in things like upanayanams and brahmin hood and sacred thread as much as I believe that India will one day win the FIFA world cup the elderly folks in the house think that unless a thread is worn around a young boy's neck and unless lots of money is spent on feeding already well fed priests the boy will be impure and will be *GASP* considered a non-brahmin. Oh the horror!

Anyway I digress. The one good thing of having inane functions which have about as much significance as Aishwarya rai does in Hollywood is that it helps the family gather and meet and a chance for me to meet cousins after a really long time. It is fun to have cousins over, especially when you are meeting them after a long time and MORE especially (can u say more especially?) when they come to the same house in which you grew up and spent a major part of your childhood summer vacations in. Showing them the secret passageways to the house so they can quiety sneak outside the house and go play after 6 in the evening, the place where paati hides the murukku and home made chocolates and how you can reach it by precariously balancing a stool on a top of a chair. I also taught them how to play a lot of cool games like dark room, earth-water-air etc.

Dark room is a game where you make a fairly big room pitch dark and play hide and seek inside the room. not blind man buff mind you.it used to be one of my favorite games when I was a kid coz at the end of the game there would be at least 5 scraped knees, 1 broken teeth, 2 crying children, a few clumps of hair in each child's hand and some fantastic memories. Similarly it is my modest boast that earth-water-air was a game which i devised when i was a kid. basically there would be one person who would get to shout earth, air or water and the rest would have to move within 5 seconds to earth (the floor), water (any elevated surface like a bed or a chair) or air (suspend themselves in mid air). This usually resulted in the breakage of a lot of rather flimsy furniture and generally put us in the bad books of the adults. Actually till date I don't remember being in the good books of any of the adults in my family. The last time I got even remotely close was when I went to the shop and bought milk for paati, only to be cheated by the shopkeeper who sold 2 days old milk and which resulted in a lot of adults competing with each other to occupy the bathroom the next day.

Though my process of imparting this knowledge to the next generation was frowned upon by the adults, personally i feel that what is childhood if u havent endured a few spankings, broken some furniture and been in disgrace 70% of the times. Though I find it rather disconcerting that kids nowadays do not want to be naughty. This is about as shocking a discovery for me as finding out George Clooney is gay. To say that I would be shocked would be such a gross understatement.So my cousins consider playing on the PSP, watching cartoon network and surfing the internet more fun and interesting than *GASP* my sister and me. Agreed that the sibling is not very interesting but ME??? I am the fun-nest person I know (and nobody else knows! :P). So i got quite a shock when my cousins in their american accent went "You are B-O-R-I-N-G man."

Though it broke my heart when they said that, I had to accept the fact that I had no clue how to operate a PSP (and had no interest in learning), i couldnt recognize a single cartoon that they watched on TV. I don't even remember when i stopped reading Nancy Drews and Sweet Valley High (Shan't mention archies and enid blyton. I still read them voraciously). I am O-L-D. At my age my mother had two kids, my grandmother had 3 and my great grandmother had 4. I am constantly reminded of this fact by my mom when I say I don't want to get married. According to her, women lose their reproductive capacities by 27 and become menopausal after that. My grandmother thinks I have child bearing hips and should get married and have children. The child bearing hips part by the way isnt a compliment. It means you are so round around your waist that it is almost possible that you could be carrying a child.

Man, I ramble a lot. Coming back to what this entire post was all about..Hmmm. So what was the entire post all about? Ah yes. The cousins are here, the relatives are here, loads of family functions are here and the pressure to be married is here again and has reared it ugly head. When you are as old as I am the references to the M word stop being subtle. No longer am I asked "So what plans now" but unknown people directly ask me, "So when is the wedding?" or "When will I get my next kalyana saapadu" (A rather greedy person this. If i married every time my relatives wanted to be fed I would have had to be severely polygamous). One elderly relative even came to me said "See that boy over there? You like him? You can marry him". Oh thank you magnanimous aged relative. You sure are kind. :-\. Of course there is the odd "progressive" relative who comes and says, "Punjabi, Muslim, Malayali, Bengali a mattum kalyanam pannikadhe. Brahmanan a paathuko. Iyengar kuda parvailla". I have learnt the art of evading such questions by acting so busy at family functions that what relatives see, is not me but a blur of green, blue or whatever it is that I am wearing. Faster movements will ensure that the relative does not even recognize your gender and will concentrate on attacking the grape juice in hand.

With that wise piece of advice I shall now leave you and attend to trivial things like work, boss and the likes.

1. So while the rest of the journalist community has been capturing the unveiling of the statue of Sarvajna yours truly and a friend have had the unique distinction of covering the unveiling (Sheeesh!! That’s such an oxymoron. As journalists we "cover" the unveiling :P) of Sarvajna's bum. Yeahh!! You read it right. We have extremely aesthetic shots of his bum and the skimpily clad dhoti covering it. Why? Well because there were so many other "propah" journalists covering it that we students were pushed to a corner and when you are a student with an assignment deadline to submit a story the next day even Sarvajna's backside makes an interesting story. :P

2. I LOVE ALL the lectures at college (with the exception of a series of lectures by the 'N' brothers - N.Ram, N.Ravi and N.Murali of Hindu. It’s amazing how they can be soooo like their newspapers. BORING and INSIPID!! Bah!!). We are supposed to listen to all the lectures and make an "informed" choice about what subjects we want to take as an elective. My problem is I want to take ALL the electives, which is surprising given that when I was doing my engineering I had trouble picking one coz all sounded equally uninteresting. I am not sure if I should take gender issues or environment issues or arts and culture or cinema or urban studies or sooooo many other electives being offered.

3. For the first time ever I cried during a lecture. I mean yeah lectures during engineering made me cry but in a totally different sense. The lecture on environment issues moved me so much that I just sat there on the second row silently shedding tears listening to the havoc which we humans have unleashed on the planet

4. I am perpetually busy, perennially rushed, always on the run and always breathless finishing some assignment or the other or covering some inane activity in some corner of the city and this long weekend (Yeah. we got both Saturday and Sunday off which is like a blessing) comes as a breath of fresh. Two days of laziness - here I come :)

5. Quite surprisingly I don't miss my life in "IT" AT ALL. I thought I would miss my former employer a teeny weensy bit but I don't. I dunno if it’s the lack of time or what but I don't miss one single aspect of that life. A part of me is glad coz I had heard horror stories about how people cannot go back to studies after two years of work but the transition in my case has been pretty smooth and I am extremely happy here but strangely I CAN'T believe that having spent two complete years in a place and having made so many memories I don't miss a single thing. I mean I SORELY miss college (all said and done I liked engineering for the four years I spent in hostel and the friends I made), I still wish I could go back to college but I just don’t miss the last two years. It’s as if they didn’t happen at all. And the best part - I don't even miss receiving a salary at the end of the month coz quite honestly I never knew what to do with all that money and now I am kind of glad I am again living a life of penury :P

6. I am glad that propah Tam-Brahm boys have enough sense nowadays to say No to journalists as wives :P. I am ecstatic because two prospective "alliances" got "rejected" when they learnt that I was going to be a journalist. "Journalist na yengalukku vendaam". In times of recession most boys apparently prefer a working woman drawing a five figure salary and not someone who is studying ughhh journalism. Yayyyy!! I love you guys and thank god I chose to study journalism now :).

7. When I told a not-so-near-but-still-forced-to-keep-in-touch relative that I was doing journalism she said "Journalism??" in pretty much the same tone that someone would say "Syphilis???", "Gonorrhea". :P. It was quite funny when she came to me and asked in a conspiratorial whisper "Have you lost your job?" and probably meant "Have you lost your mind". :D.

The more the number of people who look at me like I have some contagious disease just because I quit a decently paying job to join "Journalism" the surer I am that I have made the right decision! :)


8. Two good friends of mine broke up last week and it makes me question the fickleness of human relationships once again. I don't think I will ever understand relationships. I don't think I will ever understand why people would want to be in a relationship just to get hurt and come out saying "I am hurt but I am at least a wiser, better person". I don't think I ever will. Sighhhh!! H and M - *HUGS*

So the other day two of my friends and I were trudging along carrying a heavy camera rushing to catch the metro at light house after spending a capital time interviewing some hawkers on Marina beach about inconsequential things just to get a decent "story" (That's what journalism is all about by the way!! :P)

Carrying a huge camera bag in one hand and a tripod in the other I agree we were an uncommon sight on a busy road but the following comments by the kids on the street playing cricket were uncalled for :P

Kid 1(pointing to my tripod): Deiii paaruda, AK-47 (heyyy look, an AK-47)

Kid 2: Paatha Pakistani madri irrukanga!! Pakistani a irrupanga da (They look like Pakistanis. I am sure they are pakistanis)

Kid 1 (addressing me): Ayyayo neenga Pakistani a? Please yengla konnudadhanga. Andha bag la yenna bomb vechirukengla? (OMG!! Are you pakistanis? Please dont kill us!! What do u have in that bag? Bombs??)

Kid 3 (the smart kid): Ada chiii. Padam pidika vandhurkanga da! (They have just come to shoot a movie)

Do i look like a terrorist? Do i look like a Pakistani?

No!! wait. don't answer that question!! :-\

1. Wandering all over Chennai, carrying a 6 kg camera bag in search of "news", making and doctoring news when you dont find one, forcing and literally threatening the slum dwellers to lament about their woes is what the whole of last week has been about!!

Me: ungalukku yedhavdhu problems irruka? (Do u have any problems)

Slum Dwellers: Ilenga. yellam nalla dhaan irruku (No. Everything is fine)

Me: Ila. Yedhavdhu prachanai irrukum. yosichu sollunga (No!! You must have some problem. Please think and let me know)

SD: Moonu naala thanni varala!! (Oh well!! We havent had water for the past 3 days)

Me: Super. Adha pathi pesunga (Good. Talk about that)

And then make a story on how the slum dwellers struggle to get water and take their interviews and make it seem like an issue as important as terrorism/global warming and end it as "Along with S and P this is Wordsmith reporting for ACJ news"!! :D:D
I don't know if i am actually doing anything worthwhile but I sure am having fun in the process :-)

2. After class 6th this is the first time in life I am actually listening to class. I mean when you have classes on subjects like "The world of Cinema", "Srilankan issues", "Critical International issues", "Bay of Bengal communities", "Gender Issues" etc. you do tend to listen because for the first time in life i feel like i am actually studying something which is relevant to me and which will be of use to me later in life and I know that this is stuff which i NEED to know.
I have never felt this during engineering when i would study subjects like "Semi conductor physics and opto electronics" or "Probability and Queuing Theory" and wonder why the hell was I studying totally irrelevant and inconsequential things.

3. I feel horrendously stupid and painfully inadequate when I look at HOW much some people have read and how they can hold an intelligent conversation without staring stupidly into space after 10 mins like yours truly. I just realized there is so much out there to read, to know and that reading fiction DOES NOT help. But i can't read non fiction. Sighhhh. we have been given a mile long reading list and none of the books even remotely interest me but I am going to try.

4. I started off my reading "The Age of Kali" by William Dalrymple and I LOVE THE BOOK!! one of the best books i have read it is to india what maximum city by suketu mehta is to bombay. Lovely bit of writing and its amazing how a foreigner can write such an extensively researched book about india. Wow!!! I love the language and the simple style of writing. none of the lah-di-dah stuff for me Thank you very much
Do suggest some good non fiction books!! :)

5. For a campus which is supposed to be "Smoke free", "Alcohol Free" and "Drug Free" I have seen more alcohol and smoke and people in compromising positions in the past 3 weeks than I have in the past 23 years.
I am trying to be broad minded about it :)
Its a new experience and I am meeting all sorts of people and I realise that with age does come maturity. I look at the l'il 20 year olds all excited about being in a hostel one instant, then crying because they are homesick the next instant, jumping up and down in class to answer the questions or to ask questions or vying to be in the professor's good books and i feel like going "Awwwwwwwwwww" :D
But seriously for the first time in life i feel "Whoaaaa!! I AM mature" when I look at the crowd around me.

6. It feels great to be a student again in my favorite city. Not that i was unhappy when i was employed and heyy the money at the end of the month did feel good but it feels great to be irresponsible, be a student, be perenially broke, attend classes, cry about mess food, sit up till 3 in the morning chatting, running around finishing assignments etc..

7. Now that I am not earning I think its a huge advantage that I have friends who earn coz whenever we go out and I have eaten to my hearts fill and take my wallet out to pay they say "Nooo. You arent earning we will pay" and I just pretend to protest and pretend to pay. :P
Ahhh!! Unemployment is bliss if you leave hostel with 200 bucks and come back with the same amount :P
Shameless you think? Oh well sue me :P


8. My last post seems to have triggered quite a furore and would result in the partition of India into north and south india, I think. :P
I have had quite a number of friends calling me and advising me not to fly off the handle and asking me not to generalise and caling me "Racist" and "Really Racist". So much so that I was almost inclined to pull down the post and would have done so, if not for the supporter(s) (one) i had. Thanks Goofy :D
I agree that I have generalised quite a bit and have been irrational at times and have stereotyped northies quite a bit (though not without reason i personally feel :P - Here I go again :P) but i just had to get it off my chest.

So today was my last day at Cognizant. I went to the main office, submitted my id cards, got my relieving letter and experience certificate. Whoever named it relieving letter named it rightly i think. I felt strangely relieved, like a weight off my shoulders but felt suddenly vulnerable and alone at the same time. Mixed emotions actually. Maybe I got into such a comfort zone in Cognizant because honestly getting decently paid every month for moderately challenging work is everyone's dream. So i had gotten into a nice comfortable groove, doing little work, chatting, blogging, trekking and had become resistant to any of kind of change. though realising frequently that my heart wasnt in what i was doing. A strange case of Stockholm syndrome. Hmmm.

So today for the first time I came home at 1 on a weekday had a nice heavy lunch, went home, put on the AC (ok!! all ye proponents of global warming I dont do this often but if you are a software engineer you will know how precious it is to be able to sleep on a weekday afternoon and you want the moment to be perfect) and slept like nobody's business without a care in the world, without worrying about errant java code, about pending work and the faces of anally retentive bosses. I slept as an unemployed person but felt strangely remorseless about it :P:P

Went and saw the college/hostel in the evening and came back with my apprehensions multiplied by hundred times. I know I shouldnt judge people by the clothes they wear and their apperances but as I looked at the girls who looked like they took fashion tips from Kareena Kapoor and Paris Hilton and boys who who showed liberal amounts of skin(???) and undergarments, with loads of gel on their hair and attitude that would put Raghu of Roadies fame to shame I gulped twice and asked myself what i was getting myself into. With my jeans and dirty black shirt I looked like an alien from Mars.

I know I am being unnecessarily paranoid about inconsequential things but heyy this is my blog
:P

Anyway tomorrow my first day at college begins. Orientation. Wish me luck :-)