Chaplin speaks......

"Friends have asked how I came to engender this American antagonism. My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist. Although I am not a Communist, I refused to fall in line by hating them. Secondly, I was opposed to the Committee on Un-American Activities - a dishonest phrase to begin with, elastic enough to wrap around the throat and strangle the voice of any American citizen whose honest opinion is a minority of one.”

The song of a convict

The scene is inside a prison and there is a cultural show going on and there is a song and dance show by one particular prisoner. This guy is on a death sentence. He should recollect and relive the events of his life, his first love, the death of his father mutilated and killed in a caste skirmish and other events of his life. Though he is afraid of death, he tries to put on a brave face. The song should start on a brave note and then move into pathos with the guy ending up crying about his fate in the process, showcasing his attachment to his "paRai". paRai('pa' pronounced as in Param and 'ai' pronounced as 'I') is one of the many percussion instruments indigenous to Tamil Nadu. It is generally played by a certain section of people who have for ages been illtreated. The paRai in this context represents a lof of things. Most importantly it represents something essentially Tamil, something which is a symbol of the freedom and uniqueness of the Tamil.

If the director had told me this situation and had there been even one of the Grimm brothers around, we would have got a story called "Blinking Beauty". But the director being smarter gave it to Vairamuthu and we got a Black Beauty in "Putham Puthu Pattuedutha Thandavakone". The song starts with the quintessential and beautiful Indian way of saluting everyone right from the audience, to the traditions, to the hovering moon and most importantly to the dead beast whose skin was used in making the paRai. Vairamuthu dazzles throughout the song. Any thing might remind us of the past. The character here being a paRai player sees his past through the window of songs.
"pattu ennum jannal vazhi thandavakone,
en pazhaya kaalam theriyuthada thandavakone"
So simple but yet so profound.

Such songs can turn out to be brilliant or plain dud depending on who the singer is. Generally for such songs the directors straight away ask for SPB. This song is however sung by Pushapavanam Kuppusamy. And rightly so. Kupps brings the necessary rustic feel to this song. And Kupps also comfortably scales the upper octaves. This is probably his best number in Tamil.

Now here comes the important issue... I read somewhere that Vidhyasagar first suggested that this song be sung by (hold your breath) Udit Narayan and Thankar Bachan(the director) seems to have even considered it for sometime. But when Udit Narayan could not get the pronounciation right(what is new about that?) they asked Kupps to do it. If this news is true, this is something similar to asking Loose Mohan to first act as VeeraPandiya Kaatabomman and then after realising that he is too thin for the role asking Sivaji to do it.

"Irruko illayo theriayathu, oruvela iruntha" Aandava, save Tamil from Udit Narayan and the rest of the world from America.

Best Raaja Song IM(Not so)HO

Finally, after years of exasperation and indecision I found out my favourite Raja song. And not surprisingly, it is not a very popular song among the masses. But critics have always spoken high of this song. The song being Illanjolai Poothatha Enna Jaalam from Sivakumar, Nathiya starrer Unaakaga Vaazhikeren.
To quote this guy Lakshminarayanan Srirangam Ramakrishanan:
"illam cholai is one of the mile-stones in his career. I would say that it is one of his top bests. It has been sung by S.P.B. He starts lke Ma2 Pa Sa (illam cholai) Sa Ri2 Sa Ni3(poothadhaa). He prolongs the kaakali nishadham and beautifully gives a gamakam and then travels down to panchamam. Initially he uses tabla for accompaniment and then in the charanam there is wonderful mridhangam, the usage of which is very typical of him."

Now if you find the references to Nishadam and the Panchamam, Greek and Latin, you have company. But then I can appreciate the beauty of the mridangam joining the tabla after a few lines. And so can I appreciate the absolutely stunning aalap by SPB in the beginning.

So why is ths my favourite song? I never believed that a song can actually uplift a person's mood. This song proved me wrong. It is really an experience to listen to this song. Wonderful music, beautiful lines(who was the lyricist?) and brilliant emotional rendering;the song takes me to a different world each time. I am remain awestruck at the beauty of this song. Somehow given my liking for Indian music, it seems fitting that a good Dharmavati with heavy usage of the Tabla, a quintessential Hindustani instrument be my favourite song.

I will stop here. After all the eulogising, I feel like listening to the song again.

Don't say sorry

I had gone to have my lunch at a fast food joint parking my vehicle outside. When I come back I see a guy sitting on my vehicle having his coffee. He mumbles a sorry and gets up when I go near my vehicle. I ignore the incident. A couple of days later I had gone to same fast food joint at about the same time and when I come out I see the same guy sitting on my vehicle. Now this was sheer coincidence that he happened to sit on my vehicle again. He obvioulsy dd not recognise me, but I did recognise him. But what put me off was that the guy again mumbled sorry and got up. I was really fuming now. I didn't buy that sorry. This guy didn't obviously know what "Sorry" was. He was not sorry that he was sitting on my vehicle without my permission. He was sorry that I saw him sitting on my vehicle. So the "sorry" was used merely as a formality. He didn't mean it.If he had meant it he wouldn't have done it again. I would have actually preferred if he had just got up without saying a sorry and acting as if was within his rights. Rude it may seem, but it is actually better than being hypocritical and insincerely apologetic.

This incident happened a few years back. After that I started noticing many more such incidents. Then I realised that most people don't know what sorry really means.
They don't use sorry to apologise for something they did, the effect of which they had not expected to affect others or affect them in a manner they had not predicted.
Neither do people use sorry to apologise for doing something which they would not have done had they had the benefit of hindsight. People say sorry to diffuse serious or dangerous situations. People use sorry, not because they are sorry that they offended you, but because you caught them offending you. If you had not caught them, then they would not be sorry.

PS: Itheya thaan enga Captain, Ramana'la sonnaru.

An absolute shame

If I were Brian Lara, I will corner the Jamaican curator and give him a piece of my mind. Darren Ganga gets one which pitches two feet outside off and hits him in front.Even an Indian dustbowl like the ones Ahemedabad and Delhi produce regularly would not do that on the second day. I really don't understand the mindset of these curators. None of the pitches the tests were played on, suited the Windies. Had there been even a slight hint of green, we would have seen the a different result. If Windies have to start on the winning ways they should produce faster pitches wwith more even bounce which encourages the likes of Taylor, Lawson and Edwards. That should do their batting too a lot of good. Lara has been more than vocal about the pitches and the team he gets. Will anything change next time? Only time will tell.