Gounder's Counter - 1

பொம்பளைங்க காதலத்தான் நம்பிவிடாதே.. நம்பிவிடாதே..

நம்பியதால் நொந்து மனம் வெம்பிவிடாதே.. வெம்பிவிடாதே..

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பெண்ணுக்கு தாஜ்மகால் கட்டிவெச்சான்டா

எவளாச்சும் ஒரு செங்கல் நட்டுவெச்சாளா?

Gounder's Counter: அடேய் டபரா தலையா! தாஜ்மகால் கட்டர அளவுக்கு அவுங்க வொர்த்து! ஒரு செங்கலுக்காச்சும் நீ வொர்த்தா? இதெல்லாம் யோசிக்கர்து இல்லையாப்பா?

[Note: Inspired from Rukmini Sandesam... yea, this is one neecha upamAnam, but still... ;-) ]

Definitions - 1

Education : is the one that entitles a person to own a house within a 3 mile radius of Mylapore, and that empowers him to read the morning newspaper regularly and utter the phrase "This country will never prosper" before sipping his morning filter coffee (without even having the courtesy to pour it into his mouth)

10 Things about being braught up as a South-Madras Middle-Class kid

1)

You get to have an extended childhood, upto early 17. Till then, you have the privilege to get slapped for your mischieves in front of about a half a dozen till about 14 and behind closed doors after that, at home and school (not sure of the closed-doors thing with the later ;-) )

2)

You tend to get more possessive of your paatti than any other person in your life; being envious of a cousin with whom she had to stay for a while. You also strike a deal with your friends to borrow their granny for an afternoon tale when your's is away, with a promise that your Paatti will have a fresh new tale to tell them too, when she is back.

3)

A Cold war that has picked up, for your group chose to live with a cricket bat and bruises in elbows and knees, while the other half took a comb to groom their Barbie dolls and their little Ponies, does get a temperory patch up during Navaratri, when they shed a little of their ego to light up your girl-child-less home with their colourful presence. Not to deny your part of shedding the ego in the tolerance you show towards the "thaenja-record" singing of 'vara veeNA' and 'rAravENu gOpApAlA' :P

4)

I remember, most of my daily wear that I put on to go to play, had buttons stitched in 4 different coloured threads; also the shorts with some mending, for not that we can't afford or take more care on looks, but for it was decided to be enough. These things change at 17! And quite a drastic change will that be.

5)

The apartment/street association meetings will be so acrimonious that women and children are generally forbidden from being in the vicinity. Nevertheless, such animosity which ought to have warranted no eye-to-eye greetings amongst our Dad's, will all subside for their children play together. We were the peace-ambassadors unaware :-)

6)

We make challenges about being the first to burst on the Deepavali morning. It started off with a 5am Redfort, then to 4:45 Redfort Giant, then to a 150 wala at 4:15 and finally to a bullet bomb at 4. I am an unbeaten(able) champ you see! B-)

Poor Appa!, had to get up 15mins ahead of my (challenged)schedule and get the cracker ready with the thread pinched and agarbathi light, to wake the VIP up to go royally escorted to win the challenge :P

7)

You can't help but to live with the build-up around, when you reach that stage in life, the stage of being in 10th grade (Matriculation or Secondary School). You would be forced to buy the story that you will end up feeling guilty of not actually feeling the pressure. I just couldn't resist, and went out to play the evening before my Mathematics-II exam. I still wonder, how many of the households saw me as a maverick then, lest they would know I scored a 97+ in that exam ;-)

8)

Once you complete school, even before you reveal the results to your neighbours, you will be surprised to see that a person, whom you had thought had no connection with you, knows exactly what you have scored and would have a list of suggestions to make, on what you should do further!. But Beware! Beware of all the 40+ people. Society will have a planned Tsunami attack on you. If you manage to escape the wave, you will actually have a life. You have one example... in Me!

9)

When I said extended childhood, one need not panic. Your teen typically starts at 17 and goes on till 24: So nothing is lost. You can get the signs of your Teen-age when you dare to give up your street cricket for watching a live telecast on TV :P. You will have occassional rumours and news about incidents of romance and romantic pursuits and more of that what has gone wrong, but you seldom feel the pressure of remaining single, for your close associates, who still are associates, have all been losers as you are :D

10)

Elders talk a lot to you, especially in your Teens (17-24 in this case, for a reminder). They think, it is their responsibility to transfer their wisdom to you, by all the talking they do. Listen to them. Atleast I did! When you reflect on what they told a few years later, you would have learnt a lot from them, not from what they thought had taught, but from what they Inspired!

God Save Them! :-)

Perhaps the most shared video among the Tamil Speaking, yesterday

Borrowing words(not exact) from Sreekrishnan, 'Master! oru coffee: extra strong with double decoction; and hanh!... sugar konjam kammi'

Thank Goodness, I am saved!

[Note: 'Goodness' is not a name of any person. (I know! that was a bad/sad one :P)]

Where is your Eye-Dee Card?

A couple of weeks ago, my mom had the company of ONGC'aathu maami to go to some function at BSNL Aunty's, when she got to know that the boy in SBI'aahm got his US-visa rejected twice already. I was zapped!; and went about thinking who am I? - The Bank of Baroda'aathu periya payyan?.

People, especially middle-class ones, give rather too much importance to their ID cards. I have heard quite a few saying 'their daughter is happily(?) married to a software professional'. Well, to my knowledge, say TCS employs about 1.2 lakh lot, and assuming atleast 70% of male population in it; hasn't their Son-in-law got an identity beyond that?

In the case of my family and quite a number of them in our locality for that matter, were originally from the city (most likely South Madras), and moved to the sub-urbs for the dreams of the Heads of the respective families to live in an independant house. We all settled in slowly and got acquainted to each other. At first we were known by the name of the organisation the HOF worked for. About a half of them had retired before moving in and a half of the rest now have now retired from service in the 6years that has passed, but the original tag stays on. Wonder why? Did I mention South Madras?... Well, then, none of them would have had more than 5 good things to tell about their workplace, but still would retain the name, but for, it is not they themselves who identify themselves with it, rather the identity is imposed by their neighbours on them.

This tagging goes further, to matrimony. If one looks at the modern day wedding-cards, traditional phrases like "ubhaya kucalObari", "wedding arranged for by elders with Bagawat Sankalpam and/or acharya katAksham" all have gone into fineprint. Only the list of degrees earned by the Groom and Bride, and if the institute happens to be some top-tier(?) one, gets bold fonts, position in the firm they work, etc, find prominence. It does not stop with theirs, for the Sambandis also get a chance to throw their weight all over the place, while lest one has been observent of a "SriRamajayam" or a "SrimathE Ramanujaya Namah:" that has gone missing.

Also, I happened to hear an interesting proposition to my friend's mom : "I heard your daughter works for Microsoft, my son is with IBM; I was wondering......" :P What next? ID-cards have matched ahead of their Horoscopes ?

Coming back to what am I called as... happened to know that the main road vendors(the natives btw) refer to me as "despite-being-US-return-dothi-clad-boy-who-sports-naamam-allthetime". Honoured indeed! So, the need for tinkering is only for the invading South-Madras-Middle-Class and not the locality, then.

Passenger - THE Story and then THE Movie (Malayalam, 2009)

I am not drawn into any kind of sibling bug*, but, this indeed is a movie review.

Passenger is a kind of story that gets overshadowed by a larger-than-life flick like A Wednesday. We all will certainly agree that A Wednesday cannot come, is not going to come and will never come. But we can be a Passenger every day, or atleast a day every week - say every Wednesday.

I remember when Director Shankar was asked the question, soon after the release of Anniyan (##), if he was playing it safe with his usual "Cleansing of the Society" story after the Boys debacle?. He replied saying Anniyan was his biggest risk, for all his previous films had a Macro issue to counter coupled with personal vengence, while Anniyan targeted seemingly trivial issues that reflected lack of personal integrity** and responsibility in the individuals, which has eventually lead the society they form, into an irresponsible society with practically lost integrity.

Our story has two heros. One, hero of the story - Advocate Nanthan Menon, who actually is a Hero. Such Heros do exist even today, but we can't get close to them. Let them better stay where they belong. His wife is a TV journalist who is covering a special story that was rocking the state politics at that time, while Nanthan was fighting a related litigation in Court.

The second one is our Passenger Mr. Sathyanathan, who is the running character of the plot. Sathyanathan is a guy-next-seat salaried-middle-class person who is among million daily commuters by train, whose biological clock is rooted to his daily routine. He is a person with integrity and social responsibility, but not by any means an-activist kind, but with a motivation to do his might to do something about a problem that irks his eyes.

One day, he decides to break his routine to work over-time at office for having applied to take leave on the next day, manages to catch a later train home. His bio-clock fails him as he misses his station and happens to meet Advocate Menon, his fellow passenger. They part close to midnight, when Sathyanathan witnesses something Big. What our Passenger does for the next 16 hours, from what he thinks is the best for the situation, forms the story.

All of us, who are grateful to have had good parenting and been braught up with values, are expected in the society to be like Sathyanathan. But we all need a push to become one at some point of time. We do face situations, situations that brings out an urge to do something, but more often that not we try to supress the rush-of-blood with the word 'fear', like the Station Master in this story. In most cases, like the Taxi Driver, it is the lack of self-belief and a feeling that we are trivial entities to contribute anything significant to this large society, that stops one from doing what is right. We all are caught between this Station Master and the Taxi driver. It is when one manages to cross these two barriers, a Sathyanathan comes out.

The story is about evolution of character of a person in a matter of hours. Sathyanathan who still hasn't conquered fear, dares risking his life, when he gets a stimulus upon understanding the gravity of the situation after meeting Anuradha Menon, and the Taxi driver steps out of his shackles on seeing his Passenger's motivation.

The movie, runs for about 115 mins, is well scripted and filmed with a gripping pace in narration. The director has done his work in including subtleties in a middle-class household and camarderie between cummuter friends to keep the script tight and natural. The parting words from the Taxi Driver took me back to Rashomon's Monk. And, for one negative point in the film - The courtroom scene was too shallow and was not essential. The director could have done with a corridor conversation after the hearing.

Sreenivasan and Dileep, as the lead artists, are brilliant, Sreenivasan in particular, after having witnessed his annoying performance in Bhargava Charitram, was relieved to watch him in this one and Oru naaL Varum. His latest flick Traffic is supposedly good; equally good. Dileep, I fear is on the verge of becoming another Suresh Gopi when it comes to playing stereotypical roles, but this was very well underplayed. If you need a frowning worried old-man, you have Nedumudi Venu, as the Taxi Driver. In my opinion, only Prakash Raj has a wider variety and ease in acting than Venu. It was heartening to see Mamta Mohandas cast in a worthy role, but disheartening that she had King and Kedi releasing after this :P. Jagathy was adequate and I am happy that Tilakan was not slotted in his place.

* The Author's kid-brother is a guest reviewer at Claps&Boos ;-)

** Integrity may find many meanings in different readings, but my personal definition would be the inwardly-honesty in a person. Every person will have his own framework for rights & wrongs. It is when a person commits something he conciously believes is wrong, and has a twinge in his heart in doing so, he is still a person with integrity, but not brazen to stand by his values.

## I am not a big fan of Anniyan. To me, it was a Painting made on the canvas called Vidathu Karuppu, by brushing Primal Fear paint over SE7EN sketch.