Latest from PakkiLeaks

Do you think India should be included in the UN Security Council?
Answer (Yes or No)


The much maligned website PakkiLeaks today published
top-secret government extracts. A unknown person
leaked extracts that claim that senior
government officials are considering adding the above
question to the Indian visa application form for foreign
nationals. A certain unnamed top official apparently claimed
that if the applicant answers No, then visa would not be
granted to that person. Those whose visa request
could not be denied for diplomatic reasons, inspite of their
negative answer to the question, will be interviewed on TV
(and declared anti-Indian and risk to the Nation's security)
by top media person "Kalnap Kandsami".

My condolences to Murali's family and fans. Murali was a good actor especially when the director worked on him, e.g. in Desiya Geetham, Atharmam,Puthu Vasantham. Like Ajith, Murali's voice was his biggest drawback, especially when he put on the mantle of the action hero, e.g. Iraniyan.But unlike Ajith and a host of "Tamil" actors, this guy could speak Thamizh correctly.

Murali (along with Rajini and Vijyaknath) proved that a black/dark skinned actor can be as successful as any light skinned one. One of the admirable things about Tamizh movie fans, in addition to the fact that they are not insular(Murali was by birth a Kannadiga), is that they traditionally have not bothered with how an actor looks to accept him as an hero (Wish I could say the same about their attitude towards actresses too). This often becomes a problem when these movies compete with the ones from Mumbai, as Sivaji and his fans discovered to their chagrin post Muthal Mariyathai. The committee consisting of Jaya Badhuri and others decided not to honour the National Award by giving it to the Icon on the grounds that the man, playing the middle aged village head, was too fat.(Refer Parantha Pona Pakkangal, Komal Swaminathan's autobiography. Komal himself was on the committee that year.) This is enough reason I suppose to justify the anti-Hindi/Central feelings in Thamizhs.

Post Murali, only Rajini, Vijaykanth, Parthiban and Vishal are the remaining dark heroes in Thamizh movie industry. In a society which subtly and bluntly derides and ridicules the black skin (for reasons ranging from caste,race, to plain colonial ass-licking), these men have worked against odds to become popular and successful. But their numbers are dwindling alarmingly. With increased mixing of the distinct cultures of India, we see a shift towards non-regional features storming into regional identities and atttitudes. This is just a part of a wider pheneomena of the constant attack of the "Super-cultures" on the "Sub-cultures". Non-local and global markets further add to the disappearance of regional features even in a relatively democratic medium like cinema. When the intended audience is the NRI and her cohorts in US and Europe, all relevance to, and connection with, the local populations is lost.

Reel Metal Fanalca

unnai enna paNNa sonnen,
kuppathotti vechu kuppaiya edukka sonnuneenga
kuppa thotti vangineeya?
unn vaanginen....
jananga kuppaya athula pottangaLa?
unn..pottanga..
kuppa inga irukku, kuppa thotti enga?
athuthanga ithu.....

The Indian Groucho Marx

Dagalti's comment on Goundamani

"Goundamani's life message seems to be irreverence to all and sundry, people, institutions, history, what not."


Perfectly put. Can't catch the essence of the man better than that. Doing the Kamal Hassan thing of bringing in Hollywood even when talking about Chockalinga Bagavathar, I will go ahead and anoint the one and only Gounder, "The Indian Groucho Marx".

Objective history ?

"I've said two things about it. One, that it's not possible. Two, it's not desirable. It's not possible because all history is a selection out of an infinite number of facts. As soon as you begin to select, you select according to what you think is important. Therefore it is already not objective. It's already biased in the direction of whatever you, as the selector of this information, think people should know. So it's really not possible. Of course, some people claim to be objective. The worst thing is to claim to be objective. Of course you can't be. Historians should say what their values are, what they care about, what their background is, and let you know what is important to them so that young people and everybody who reads history are warned in advance that they should never count on any one source, but should go to many sources. So it's not possible to be objective, and it's not desirable if it were possible."

--Howard Zinn

Taking the RTE seriously

Critics may tell what they want, but India is taking the Right To Education very seriously. So seriously that I fear that we are taking it farther than "where no man has ever gone before". In fact we should be renaming it the "Duty to Education" or rather "Duty to go to school". What else can we call the plea of our politicians to not close schools, even if it meant exposing the ultra vulnerable GenY,GenZ,Gen omega, Gen lambda etc to the dreaded "swine flu". I mean one should appreciate people for their concern that many Indian school children may spend their time going to parties and socialising right left and centre if they don't go to school. I mean what other job does the GenY,GenZ,Gen omega, Gen lambda in an ultra poor country have. I fully understand the logic.

But why should we crib about exposing a particularly age group to the swine. Our bank staff have the onerous job of striking as frequently as MTC bus breakdowns and further spend their time watching the classic "india tolaikatchyil muthan muraiaga" movies on krishna jaynthi, aadi ammavasai, avani avittam and the other extremely important religious festival days. And the government staff obviously have more important jobs than working at their desks, to which no one in the right minds will object. If all this has to happen who will lead the country to 2020. What ever will happen to Dr Abdul Kalam's dream.

So all those who demand that schools be closed, just acknowledge that there is superior logic at work and shut up. Period.

What shall I be ?

I used to have this CBT(maybe NBT) book titled "What shall I be". It was one of my favourites in the bygone days when I had more hair and less opinions. A young kid ponders over the various kinds of professions he can take up, typically the jobs of an engineer, doctor, astronaut and a few other stuff. And typically the father advises him to study hard for the moment and do the dreaming later. And typically I hated the father. The jobs I never intended to pursue were that of the doctor and engineer. The Doctor set I used to have as a child singularly failed to fascinate me. And I suspect most kids just liked the syringe injecting part in the doctors profession (provided it is not injected into them). A Gandhian disdain for violence and the absence of a good syringe in my doctor set meant that I never fancied myself as a doctor. Engineer...ah... I never managed to even build a chair using my mechanical set. So engineering was out of question. I probably wanted to be an astronaut to escape the boredom of school. But after school I realised that it was hard work. And proceeding in this manner I exhausted all the opprtunties listed in the book. Period.

As I grew up I began having problems with the rhetorical question. Why should what shall I be, be a question regards profession? I felt it was typical of a middle class Indian's obsession with Work. Thomas Friedmann may be in awe about how Indians don't mind working for 100 hours a week...I am not. Born in South, into what considers itself an upwardly mobile community, I have generally been an odd man out. I mean I was pretty hard working at an age when boys consider it girlish to study well. My zeal for knowledge was high and I did fairly well in sports too. But the paradise was lost during class 11 and class 12. My friends got serious about studies and post school life, while I became more of a rebel. And by choosing to do physics and ignoring engineering altogether, I became offically an outcaste. After three to four years of being an outcaste, I scraped through into IIT. And lo and behold my social status improved atleast ten-fold. But then I was back to doing what i did best, rebelling and theorising even as my academics went downhill. But my English and Analytical mediocrity got me into one of India's leading software companies. I took the job because my physics was somewhere down the hill out of sight. But then a year of being the "cream of the cream" as the HR used to call us (nasty sense of humour you know), took its toll on me and I quit to rejoin physics. But even that did not happen without me taking a detour into wildlife conservation, a course I should have pursued, but dropped out at the last moment (intha maari nerangalthaan arivu irukkana santhegam varathu..). Till 25, I was firm believer in Sarah Harding's comment in Crichton's Lost World, "You never know what you want to be till you are 25". But then 25 came and went and even after an year I was still wondering what i would like to do all my life. Money failed to motivate me. I had zero ambition. I live in the present and do not intend accummulate for my grandson. You may choose to call it zest for socialism or plain laziness.

That being the short history of my adventures in choosing a job, I am still stuck with the question, what shall I be. Of course I fancy writing. The fly in the ointment is that the literary world does not reciprocate my feeling. So as the literary cognoscenti continue to ignore me, I am forced to look for jobs elsewhere. Maybe you can help me get one. Here is the criteria. 8 hours of work per day. Five days a week only. No boss required. And that is a necessary condition. Performance should not be rated. Prefer to live on campus. Access to libraries and books is a necessary condition. Work skills involve ability to sleep well and argue and moralise on topics on which I am not particularly moral about. Salary is negotiable as long as the food is free. TV and other recreational sources not required. An outlet for self expression is a must. Now maybe the smart folks who glean some inspiration from this blog can help me find a job with that profile. While at it, maybe you people can find out whether there are any "Head of State" vacancies.

So it is that trivial an issue ?

"Tamils complain of marginalisation at the hands of successive governments led by the Sinhalese majority, which came to power at independence in 1948 and took the favoured position the Tamils had enjoyed under the British colonial government"
---C. Bryson Hull and Ranga Sirilal, Yahoo India News

To the best of my knowledge this takes the cake in terms of "awful" journalism in recent times.

PS :(Well wait I saw something on the TOI about the barter system..I'll dig that up and come back..)

NAGESH.....

We owe a lot to this man...for sprinkling in many a mundane and weary life a few moments of worryless mirth....Mikka nanri thalaiva...

(The choice of the picture was deliberate.....this man could make "god" laugh..)

"Guidelines for Tamil movie makers" ,circa 2020

The following document is a copy of a proposed state legislation from the year 2020, titled
"Guideline for Tamil moviemakers of 2020 and beyond.....".
I just happen to return from the future and brought this along with me. I hereby officially join Abdul Kalam in eagerly waiting for 2020.

1. Only real life Hindus shall play Hindus on screens. Similarly only Muslims shall play Muslims and Christians shall play Christians. Brahmins have to be played only by Brahmins and Thevars only by Thevars. And same holds for other castes too.
2. Only Tamils shall play Tamil. Non-tamils should play non-tamil's roles only.
3. No negative character shall be named after Gods or Godesses or mythological characters. So names like Ram, Sita, Ramesh, Mahesh, Murugan, Kumarsamy, Kandasamy, Padayappa, Rajeshwari, Lakshmi, Umadevi and so on are banned. Further if any character is shown having even one bad characteristic, then he/she should not be named after Gods and Godesses. There are a plethora of other names like A, Pi, Sqrroot, theta, gamma, alpha, onnu, rendu, athu, ithu, ivan avan, aval, porul,ange, inge, etc that can be used. Same rule holds for Muslim and Christian names too.
4.Also no one including alcoholics should be shown drinking. Same for smoking. Sex can only be implied, as has always been the case.
5.No woman shall be shown in bad light. This requires that women will always be good characters and will never play a negative role. Further all women shall wear traditional decent dresses only. No exposure of skin (except face and hands upto elbows) shall be allowed. Dream sequences as norm are excepted.
6.Family values will always be upheld in movies. So family members shall not be shown in any sort of bad light.
7.NRI's should not be shown in bad light. Especially the rich ones. This is bad for the stock marke and the country's economy.
8.Because of strategic relationships with USA and Isreal, no American or Israeli citizen shall be shown in bad light. And similarly no Pakistani shall be shown in good light.
9.Corporates shall not be shown in any kind of unfavourable vein. Also rich industrialists shall not be portrayed in any unflattering form. Such acts are bad for the economy.
10.Since Hindus believe that food and paper are very sacred, scenes displaying tearing them, stamping on them, throwing them etc won't be allowed.
11. Old people will always be shown respectfully in movies. So even if an old man is shot with a Bofors tank at almost point blank range, the man will fall at the same spot. Also no old person (55 years for women and enuch and 60 for men) shall be shown in bad light.
12. Similarly Politicians, government workers, police and army and ex-army personnel, lawyers, doctors,farmers, bankers, software engineers, BPO employees, scientists and filmmakers shall not be shown in bad vein.
13. State and society (past, present or future) as entities shall not be criticised in any manner.
14. It is expected that movies will generally help towards making a better, brighter and happier community and promote peace and harmony. So it is advised that only such stories be filmed only in such manner lest any one feels hurt, embarassed or unhappy.
15. As a special gesture we would like to honour Mr Vikraman, whose films have followed most of the above rules, even without our asking him to do so. If only all the movie makers had emulated Vikraman, such guidelines would become unnecessary.