Tamil. Pleasantness.

Yedho ondru ennai eerka,
Mookin nuni marmam serka.

Yennodu vaa veedu varaikkum,
Yen veetai paar yennai pidikkum.

[Nenjukul Peindhidum, Vaaranam Aayiram]

How Theobroma fails with my mom.

1. Brownies: Rajesh, idhu, ennapa. Idhellam yaaru saapiduvanga (What is this. Who eats these btw?)

2. Lemon Blueberry Cake: Aiyayo. Idhu kettu pocha enna? (Oh. Damn. Is this spoilt or what?)

3. Chicken Pasty: Oh. Idhu ingaye kedaikumae (Oh. I get these stuff in Chennai.)

4. Chicken Croissant: Idha appadiye saapidalama? (Is it alright to eat it like that or should I do something to it before eating?)

5. Pain Aux Raisins: Idhu yen ippadi irruku? (Why is it like this?)

She had more such punchlines. Will try to recollect.

Conversations.

A boring conversationalist being compulsively talkative is such a depressing thing to be.

I wonder how one copes.

15 sure shot tricks for a successful career.

1. Wear a tie everyday. It gives that suave, serious look. Dots are for condoms, not for ties. Go for the stripes.  More stripes = more serious image.

2. Don’t do any work. No one expects you to do any work. The idea is to still find things to keep yourself occupied between 9:30 am to 7:30 pm.

3. Keep a excel sheet with numerical figures filled up to the 5th decimal open in your monitor at any point in time.

4. Take print-outs every one hour. Give print command to the farthest machine in your floor. Walk hurriedly to collect the print-outs.

5. Laugh loud to all your boss’s fucking dumb jokes.

6. When the boss/dumb team mates bore you showing pictures of their kids saved in their cellphones, be polite. Tell them the kid is cute.

7. Buy sweets for your team mates when you return from a long holiday. And a sweet box to the boss.

8. Treat that ugly, fat senior female at work like you would treat the hottest girl on the first date.

9. Make up reasons to send at least 2 e-mails everyday. Cc them to your Vice-President. The man should know you exist. Doesn’t matter even if the mails are sent to your ex-girlfriends.

10. Laugh to everyone’s jokes.

11. Pretend that the work is killing you and that you are stressed out.

12. Compliment people’s clothes mindlessly. No fucker refuses compliments anyway.

13. Reach work early. No one cares that you dont have any work. Because according to the dimwits, coming early = working hard.

14. Generously kiss boss’s ass before leaving work. He/she should carry nice memories about  you for the day.

15. Bitch about work in your blog but dont share its address with workmates. Or you are fucked.

The Tamil New Wave has arrived.

‘The film of tomorrow appears to me as even more personal than an individual and autobiographical novel, like a confession, or a diary.’

Francois Truffaut, one of the important film makers of the French New Wave once mentioned those lines in an interview. And that is where Tamil Cinema is fast inching towards today.

With ‘Pasanga’ that released a fortnight back, Tamil Cinema has reached a level of intellectual honesty and sensibility, unimaginable in the last two decades. There has been intelligent cinema in the past, but only in spurts and never a sustainable trend to change the way people appreciate movies. But now, with a swamp of new comers, surprisingly from very smaller towns, narrating celluloid tales of the places they hail from, about ordinary, everyday people, Tamil cinema is quite entering its Golden Era.

The success of ‘Kadhal’ quite helped a whole lot of budding filmmakers to muster courage and tell real stories, honestly. Also, interestingly, the new comers didn’t restrict themselves to the serious, tragic drama genre in the name of realism. They stretched to frivolous stories like ‘Chennai 28’, comic thrillers – ‘Saroja’ and even stories that work backward from real life incidents – ‘Kallori’.

In some sort of way, the new wave has restored the Auteur theory back to Tamil Cinema. With shoe string budgets, no big stars, it has helped the creative control lie with the film maker. This is exactly what French New Wave did. When American production houses shelled out huge amounts in extravagant film making, French New Wave worked on personal, daily stories that changed what the audience can expect from the movie halls.

The most important factor which has contributed to this change of scene in Tamil Cinema is the increasing easy availability of cheap, pirated World Cinema DVDs. There was a time when only the likes of Kamal Hassan had access to such movies and they without hesitation flicked heavily from them and passed it off as their own. But now, with increasing piracy, these movies are accessible even in a place like Salem. Or at least downloadable.

The gang of new film makers thankfully have stuck to their original content based out of their small towns, but borrowed narrating styles heavily from World Cinema. It is hard to dispute the arguments that claim ‘Subramaniapuram’ has Tarantino’s style (which again was borrowed from Japanese revenge drama), ‘Anjadhey’ has the dark, cruel narration of the Coen Brothers, or that ‘Chennai 28’ has the zaniness of Korean comedies. No harm done though. Even Satyajit Ray did his quota of borrowing from Jean Renoir.

But it is important that Tamil filmmakers stop there. From what one hears, if makers like Myskkin push it more and try a redo of ‘Kikujiro’ into ‘Nandhalala’, we are in danger again. It is important our film content is deeply rooted to the Tamil life, whether we take inspiration from World Cinema in terms of film making sensibilities or not. That probably is how we could sustain the New Wave for long and also help Tamil Cinema gain more recognition.

Capturing Ordinariness.

I don’t exactly look for lessons about life from movies. Not certainly from a teen date movie like ‘Marley and me’. In fact, on the unfortunate day I watched the movie, the cinema hall was full of teen aged women who made the most loud and annoying ‘aww!!’, every time the dog appeared on the screen. And their boyfriends using such moments to do compromising activities. The whole scene was so repelling.

I am growing old.

The movie didn’t really work for me. The lovely ‘aww’ing audience only made it worse. But somehow, after a coupla days, the movie quite slowly did grow on me. And I felt that it did infact have some poignant moments.

Though while watching, it seemed like the movie was hardly about anything and it quite didn’t hold my attention. But on retrospect, its simple, ordinariness was actually touching. The mundane struggles that a normal couple go through was well narrated. I liked this one line. Paraphrasing it as I remember. “How come no one told us that we have to make so many sacrifices in life”. That line exhibited such maturity which one doesn’t exactly find in a teen date movie. [Alright, am assuming it was really meant and not my own interpretation.]

That reminded me of what my mother had told me about her own life. “When you were few months old, you used to cry in the middle of the night. I had to stay awake fairly the whole night changing nappies. Then once you grew a little older, your brother was born. Then I stayed awake the whole night to change his nappies. Once he grew up a little, I thought the toughest part was over. But I only was proved wrong once you both went to school. I had even more things to take care of. I used to be worried until you both reached home safe. I had to make sure you both grow up as nice boys, and not exactly like your dad. I was thinking once you both can take care of yourselves, my work would go down. But once you were teenagers, it was even more difficult to handle you guys. Atleast, until then, you used to listen to me. But now, you were angry, teenagers who might throw up a tantrum any moment. And trust me, I spent more sleepless nights than in the past, during your 10th, 12th board exams. Then yours brother’s. Once you both were out of school, I though it was all done.

But then not. Once you were in college, the issues I had to worry about just changed. It never did go down. And now you both are working. I still stay awake till late night, waiting for you to return for dinner, only to realize that you were out with some new girl and happened to already have your dinner. Hmm”

I thought thats exactly what ‘Marley and me’ captured. The struggles of a very ordinary family. There was hardly a heavy dramatic scene. But the mundaneness is what its beauty was.

Old Tamil Songs.

Maybe I have repeated this too often already.

But can anything ever be more pleasurable to listen to than old Tamil songs?

‘Chithiram Pesudhadi’ from Sabash Meena is absolutely my all time favourite. The song is so bloody soulful. Do not know who sung it. But God, what a voice.

I particularly love the way the following lines are sung.

‘En manam nee arivaai.

Undhan ennamum naan arivaen.

Innumum oomaiyai pol mounam eenadi thenmozhiyae?’

A lousy but quick translation would be like, ‘You know what is in my mind. I know what your thoughts are like. Why are we still being quiet and slow about this whole thing, my sweet lover’.

Ok, I said it would be lousy.

The lines by themselves dont mean much. But the way they are sung almost makes them look like no one can compete with their poetic quality.

So is, ‘Enn sindhai mayangudhadi’ ~ ‘Am on a high’. The singer parts such lyrical sense to the simple lines. How beautiful.

‘Kana Inbam’ from the same movie is another beautiful song. The song creates such strong emotion that it makes one desperately wish he/she was in love, in some sort of  fantastical, ideal, dream like way.

If you want to listen to these two songs, do check this page.

The other beautiful song I could think of at this moment is, ‘Iravum Pagalum‘ from Karnan.

Its a well sung song. No doubts. But the lyrics themselves are far superior. They render such easy, fluid sound to the song. The language and the metaphors used are quite complex for a Cinema song. But the fluid quality makes the song convincingly pretend that it has simple layman lyrics.

There are more such gems from the past. But later.