Of Sentis, Chennai and Sameera Reddy..

It looks like I can't keep myself from writing on my personal posts. I always wanted to be a Shankar dishing granduer masala topics but I repeatedly end up being a mega serial director constantly churning out repetitive stuff. Well, Let me cut the crap and start the main course. I am keeping this short and simple.

After a relatively huge gap of six years, I am back to my hometown as a kid, as a native and most importantly, NOT as a guest. Last week, I left my job in Bangalore for my higher studies and I have a good, priceless two months before I embark on the journey of my life. Evidently, there are some never before seen changes. The necessity to come to Chennai with a return ticket in my bag is no longer required. I wouldnt be forced in any way to take the train, the very next day I arrived home. And the happiest news is that my dreaded alarm will not be the first thing I hear at 6.45 in the morning. I sincerely hope that I forget how to set an alarm in my mobile phone. Such has been my long drawn hatred against waking up early and catching return trains.

Coming to the chennai connection, I had been a guest to chennai right from the day I left to Coimbatore for my Engineering. I was a small boy when I left home and I still remain the same whenever I return. In a way, I am addicted to that feel. I like the way people in my apartment see me as the same old Raja (as they call me at home) who along with his group of friends absconded for many hours after breaking the apartment tubelights. I like the way I looked innocent even though the fruits of notoriety intermittently peeps almost unknowingly. Just realised that I have been living like an Anniyan with shades of Multiple Personality Disorder. I play a role of a responsible office-goer in Bangalore, while I remained the same old schoolboy in Chennai, atleast to myself. Infact, I may not be a technically qualified as a proper Chennaite as my home is in the suburbs, but I am one of those blessed souls to have ready access to our homegrown 'Madras' dialect. It never gave me a chance to feel alienated. I have always had the right to feel that I belong to the city. I read in one of my friend's blog that there is always something local about Chennai. Thats something I endorse.

All the above ramblings doesn't mean that I am in complete happiness of the situation of leaving Bangalore. There are things that I do miss and the most important one is my frequent travels in Bangalore-Chennai Trains. I am not aware of others, but whenever I travel alone, I had this weird and shameful habit of looking at people around me, guessing their backgrounds, cooking stories and building an imaginary map around them. All the people in my coach would become unfortunate, innocent victims of my imagination. There was an instance where I framed a complete story about a couple sitting right in front of me and was embarrased to know later that they were siblings. So, if there were any strangers reading this post, and if you had travelled from bangalore to chennai or vice versa during weekends over the past two years, you would have had the dubious distinction of being characters of my stories (Courtesy: My fateful imagination). Mokkais and confessions apart, the train experience let me see every possible situation from missing tickets to booking wrong train. Only thing I missed out was a Sameera Reddy as in Varanama Aayiram. 

While I rave about my association with my hometown, the bittersweet truth that this could be my last few months at my hometown in a long time to come is always on the back of my mind. The heat, sweat, sights and sounds of Chennai will definitely be missed. 

Post-it!!!

I agree writing a new post eats up considerable amount of man-hours. When I entered the blogosphere, my all important goal was to write whatever that comes up in my mind, be it foolish or heavenly. The self proclaimed aim was to do three things. Write, write and WRITE. What followed wasn't as expected as it ought to be. For someone who prefers channel-browsing and PC-Gaming to Book-reading (I meant BOOKS ;)), writing is always like mountaineering. Well, I took the plunge but never stayed afloat. Just nine posts in as many months is a classic proof for the same.

I am being brutally honest here in confessing that I struggle to put to pen my thoughts. I should accept this as a harsh reality. I am not a natural writer, not a good reader, not inspirational and not easily inspired. These are my problems in a nutshell. All my above proud qualities have been successful enough to prevent from posting one wretched post. As a result, the previous posts were difficult and remarkable by-products of patience and painful perseverance.

Also, another major reason for this non-involvement has been the dearth of topics. I have defined myself some set of stupid rules like no cliched topics, no cricket, no IPL and no politics in writing posts. That leaves only with my personal experiences and movies to frown about. I am just-another normal person in Bangalore whose experiences are not that noteworthy and comprises only traffic woes and high cost cries. I am myself fed up with posts on my past and it has already reached its threshold. Here on, If someone wants to recall my past, I can only write about my previous life.

While I am writing this post, I have made up my mind to come out of my shell in terms of topics. I didn't want my only creation thus far, this blog, to be history and hence this historic decision. Lets see how my patience stands the test.

PS: It took me little less than one hour to complete this post ;)

Getting older by the day..

At various instances in our life, we realize our growing-older hallucinations and that we are not kiddos anymore. This happens gradual, it is a transition we fail to comprehend and it happens to every one of us and its no holds barred.

My set of realizations dawned long time back, though it happened in an intermittent fashion but never thought of them as a wholesome package that would inspire me to write a blog on the same.

Below are few of them, some not so serious thoughts, that struck my mind showing that the clock is ticking fast.

-- It is the general mentality when you come out finishing studies at school and college to consider fellow guys as maamas and machis and the slightly younger ones as thambis (Disclaimer: This is not the case when we see girls). At least that is how our mind perceives. But suddenly out of the blue, one fine evening, when you are coming back from work tired, a boy in search of a cosco tennis ball comes out from nowhere just to hurt your ego and asks you, 'Uncle!! andha ball eduthu kodunga!!'. At the heat of the moment, your first reaction would be to snatch his bat and hit him on his head for uttering that fateful word 'Uncle'. But, one has to accept such straightforward, naive insults.

-- Cricket has always been a companion. I have been traveling with it for years where every World Cup marks a new era. Personally being a passionate fan of Sachin, following his scores and praying for a century every-time he comes out to bat was inevitable for quite a long time. I always considered him a young player who would play cricket till the next millennium. It is only when talks of his retirement surfaced few years back, the sense of mortality creeped into my mind. I started realizing the growing age of him and with him mine. The thought of me being a 12 year old and Sachin being a 25 year old vanished in thin air.

-- There were times when I practically tried every trick to increase weight and hip size (Yes!! I was once mercilessly thrown away from a shop for asking for a jean of size 26 not many years ago). Now, my rate of increase in kilos competes hard with the rate at which US Dollars shoots. Ironically, I touched my all time high recently on the same day when dollar rose to its highest against rupee. Such a meteoric rise was a perfect example of how things change quick and a stark reminder of the ticking clock.

-- Hair-fall. When this happened at my college, I brutally blamed my hostel's hard water for this and hoped things would get better at work. But, it failed to cease even after that and only went from bad to worse as days go by. My current situation is not intolerable, but I have nightmares of being a Cho-Ramasamy if things go this way. Classic example of increasing years and decreasing hair.

-- I am firm believer that one can be branded old when he/she regales a lot about the past with stories and mini-incidents. Unfortunately, this post and one of my older posts served as a fine example of my impending old age.

Well, I sound like a 35 year old moaning about old age. I am not that old too. I am just 23 now, but I considered myself a little boy until some of the above thoughts crossed. I believe there is no means of escape from this, either getting old or getting these thoughts.

I feel I should stop here, insomnia or sleeplessness is another symptom of the 'nasty word' a.k.a Old age we hate to associate ourselves with. That is something which made me write this post.

Aham Brahmaasmi!!

No prizes for guessing what this blog is all about. It is my take on Naan Kadavul which was in the pipelines for nearly two years and finally released last week amid huge expectations.

The expectations are justified to an extent where Bala takes us to a realm, the sphere of beggars which shows how they 'live' or rather how they 'survive'. They are a bunch of people whom we see quite often but never cared to delve deep. It is a brilliant portrayal of the deprived ones who have nothing to do in this materialistic world and how an eternally detached 'Aghori' from Kasi brings out the God in himself.

The plot unfolds in Kasi where a father comes back in search of his outcast son and much to his shock finds him as an Aghori who gives out blessings to the dead ones. He takes him back to his hometown in Tamil Nadu where he refuses to move around in the society. The premise of the movie sets here. The small village is a host to a unruly beggar kingdom of Thandavan where he exploits the deformities of lesser mortals and makes a living out of it. The sequence introducing his urupidis is particularly intriguing and the worth of a Ilayaraja background score is realised. On the other side, Arya finds a place for his asanams in the hills of the temple where he crosses path with the urupidis' lives. He remains non-committed to their sufferings and finally unleashes his gore when disturbed. The plot is ably supported by small characters and their humourous chit-chats. Music forms the essential part in realising the weight of the situation and who other than the Maestro to do it the best. Pooja as a helpless blind girl gives out a good performance, probably her best till date. Arya's performance deserves special mention. He has put in a lot of homework for his appearance and it has paid off. He surely has a long way to go when compared to the likes of previous Bala's other heroes, Vikram and Surya. This might come as a big break in his fledgling career. This is basically a director's movie and Bala takes cinema to a different level. You cannot compare this with his previous works, but deserves a special place.

I always had the notion that Bala never knows the meaning of commercial cinema and this movie upholds my view. There are no duets, no good looking leads running aroung trees with hundreds of dancers behind them, no crass double entendres and no mindless bashing up of villain's men. In fact, Arya, the movie's protagonist is seen in the movie for only around 40-45 minutes. We know the director is known to break sterotypes, E.g, Pithamagan's first scene was based in a graveyard breaking all industry conventions to start in a temple/something auspicious, and this movie follows suit. There were instances in the movie where the characters badmouthing the God.

The movie falls under the 'rarest of the rare' category of 'stunning yet not watchable even once'. The Kollywood concept of repeat audience may never work for this flick where watching the complete movie once stirs out the butterflies in your stomach. It is advisable to walk into the movie hall with a bottle of water in your bag. This is definitely not the one for those feel good movie lovers and it could turn out to be a horrific experience and may disturb your sleep. The movie has its downside as well. Some parts of the movie is never explained like how the father identifies Arya in Kasi and how he gets to kill Thandavan. Editing is a letdown where some scenes show abrupt ending.

My rating would be 3.5/5. It is a classic of its own kind and minus the gore and filth could have brought more people to the theaters.