Living The Moment

Improvements in digital storage technology may go on to ruin our lives. Here is a familiar sight: go to any tourist spot, concert, game, show, event, temple functions - essentially any place where stuff happens - you will see 10 morons with cell phone based image/video cameras, recording that stuff. Nobody really knows why they record it. What is evident is the fact that they are not paying attention to the event and instead are focused on operating the recording device.

If you look at their faces you may notice that they have a serious air about them. They give an impression that they are experts in the field of the stuff being recorded. It is a look that misleads us to believe that it is their profession to capture such events for archiving. Probably they want us to assume that they are interested in this stuff more than the average person. That they are recording this event to pore on it it, study it for 300 years and research the heck out of it for several years to come. In reality these morons don't even know what the event is about and probably don't understand any aspect of it. They are just passing tourists who record anything, including them going to the toilet, as a matter of reflex. There is no sight that is more irritating than 10 or 15 morons, blocking your view by raising their hands and recording events that they will never see again.

Even more irritating is the fact that these morons are recording the event purely to post it in facebook.

Leads me to suspect that humans may have already lost the ability to soak in and live the moment. At one point they were capable of going to a (a) place for vacation and truly enjoying the place or (b) concert or a discourse and simply listen. Enjoy. Feel the moment. The intense experience of the moment caused them to remember the moment for years to come. But that was in the past.

I realized this recently during the course of two Jesudas concerts - a carnatic one at Madras during the last music season and a film songs based one in Seattle a few months ago. There was a noticeable theme in both concerts and probably all concerts to do with Jesudas: he prohibits video and audio recording of his concerts. This clause is his contract with the sabha or show organizers. I have to say I love that. I don't really care about his intellectual property rights. I loved the reason he provided for prohibiting this - when yet another moron with a cell phone, right royally went to the front of stage and began to video-record a song.

Jesudas stopped this moron and said: "There was a time where we could recollect a concert from 10 years ago. It is because we didn't have any distractions during the concert. We went there and applied all our concentration and attention on enjoying the concert. As a result our memory held on to the experience for a long time. Nowadays people are more focused on recording the concert. For what reason? How many people play this recording again and listen to it? How many people see these photos that they take now? It simply resides in some corner of their computer unattended"

This is what life has become in the world of Facebook, Twitter and blogs(in the case the blog this is probably known old news). I actually know people who attend events for 5 minutes or just long enough to take a photo of the event, post it in Facebook and leave. Humans have started to do things so that they can TPT about it later. The only purpose of taking photos is to put them on facebook and orkut. They have stopped living the moment and committing anything to memory. Instead they bring surrogate memory along with them and deposit their experiences there. And certainly nobody goes back and listens to audio recordings of a discourse or views videos of an old event. These recordings rot in some corner of their computer. Once they have TPT'ed about it in the Facebook, the event for all purposes is meaningless to them. As a result people miss out on great public events, personal life events (marriage, birth of child, functions) and even interesting events (concerts, meeting a celebrity etc) by focusing on a recording device instead of the moment.

I suspect that people will lose the ability to attach an emotion to a moment because the only emotion they had at that moment was a sense of panic to quickly take the recording device out and click the record button.

Disclaimer: Stating the abovious again: This commentary is more about excesses and less about Internet travelogues and Facebook TPT done in moderation.

The Farex Wars

There is a moment in parenting life when parents try and feed food to the infant. And we are talking about a human being which has lived on this planet only for very few months. It probably does not even know that it has fingers, legs and a mouth. It has no case history or assessment of the reputation of its parents. This infant, at this stage, decides that its parents are wrong. Thats simply it. It turns its face the other way and refuses food. In effect it is telling the parents; "you are wrong. you don't know stuff. I know better and I am saying I don't want this food". This is the beginning of several decades long Farex wars that happens between a parent and a child. This is the first foray and a harbinger of many such things to come.

The parents and child are locked in a tussle on a variety of subjects: school, marks, sports, lunch, breakfast, dinner, tiffin, mid-tiffin, special dinner, going to cinema, not going to cinema, talking to relatives, paying respect to elders, religion, diet, weight, height, color of finger nails, slipper choice, dress choice, boyfriend, girlfriends, friends, marriage, work, spending money, choice of sofa, having children, naming the children, shashti-abhda-poorthi, booking cook for shashti-abdha-poorthi, sadha-abhishekam, booking cook for sadha-abishekam, driving scooter after 80 years, travelling in second class, travelling, not travelling, booking tickets to America, staying in America for 6 months, old age home, will, and finally love.

Here are two germ-sized people standing on a rock of dust hurling through space, locked in a tremendous tussle. A long line of ancestors are standing in line trying to push upwards and downwards. They are standing with arms locked trying to push the other and the other won't budge. Yet there is love. Like a rough and sturdy coconut cover that wraps around its tender kernel, the farex wars wraps itself around the purest love in the world.

Where the mind is lost and knowledge absent

She is very small now, almost the size of her great grand daughter. They have locked her up in a room, where she lays in her bed day and night, oblivious to the smell of her own feces. What is she thinking of? About the time she threw the plate full of food in her daughter-in-law's face because it didn't smell right? The only person who agreed to do this job walks in to clean her: "ennai kulipaata vandhirukkiya" she asks gleefully and is carried into the bathroom almost single-handedly. She goes in singing "maru kelaraa" loudly.

In the other bathroom her great grand daughter is also being bathed. The child was carried in wailing and crying and continues to cry as it is bathed. Meanwhile, she is having fun. She goes into high pitch with "O' raagavaaa..". Both are bathed, powdered, dressed and made to sit in a chair. The grandson is introduced and question is asked "yaar theriyarha sollu" ("do you know who this is "). The baby cries and looks away. When it is her turn, she says "theriyume. ennoda peran". And then asks "amerikkavula irukkiya nee". Upon receiving confirmation, she says "nalla iru". . The boy asks "eppadi irukke paati"? And she gives back a blank stare. She suddenly has no recollection of him. They give up after an hour of trying.

Two people are fed and tucked in their bed during daytime. Both have dodgy memories and won't remember the events of the day. They are waiting. One for life and the other death.

Deepavali in Madras

Sadly, as evidenced this deepavali, the concept of fireworks has reduced considerably in Madras. This is a a great disservice to the magnificent minds at Sivakasi who conjure up so many varieties of firecrackers. There was a time when you could hear crackers at 2 AM. This was a time when I lived in Mylai and deepavali crackers were 50% over at the break of dawn. That was a time when Red Fort 56 Deluxe was a huge thing and you only bought 15 or so of those for the entire day. Red Fort by Standard Fireworks is my favorite cracker. I can burst that variety alone for the entire day. There is something about a 'sara vedi' that is very sexy. There is a thrill associated with lighting it, backing away and watching it zip through. My watchman would shout - as I reached out and wafted the air like a blind man trying to somehow connect the 'killi vitta thiree' and the 'oodhuvathi'. "Pottai pulla madhiri thiriya killittu.. appadiye ethu da..." he would say. 'killi vitta thiree' is now a thing of the past.

Atom Bombs generated a fear that 10,000 walas did not. Sivakasi introduced the hydrogen bomb, the bullet bomb and many other bombs that were designed to scare you before the bomb was lighted. The beauty of the design was that these atom bombs carried a large fuse. It would be coiled around the bomb and when you removed it - it was a good 30 second worth of fuse. The wait was more terrifying than the blast. Rockets are evergreen like 'sara vedis'. They are famous because of their unpredictability. The charm increased because people used innovative methods to launch them. Plastic bottles, used flower pot, holes dug in the mud were the great launch pads. Of course "Colour rockets were for the wusses. Real men fired bomb rockets". Afternoons were mainly for atom bombs, lakshmi vedis and bijilis. As a child these were fascinating things that held enormous opportunity to have fun.

Yesterday, I got used to the latest deepavali trend in Madras. More of aerial shows and less of bombs and lakshmi vedis. This time my purchases had a distinct Kaliswari bias and very less Standard fireworks. As is well known now, Deepavali begins very late these days and it was almost 5 by the time I heard the first sound of something bursting. By 8 AM things were brought to a close and I did not hear another cracker sound until 5PM. Gone are the days were you could continuously hear something from 2AM to 10PM. The fun is getting killed year-by-year. Children prefer to watch TV rather than burst crackers outside. Children today will not know the thrill of lighting up a bijili with a hand and throwing it into the air. The modern world will suck the fun out of life and eventually turn everyone into walking zombies.

Part of that is because fireworks are more expensive than cars. In the 90s my father purchased fireworks for about 4000 - 5000 rupees and those crackers came in 2 big boxes and a plastic bag. On Friday I saw a boy buy crackers for 7000 from Standard fireworks. The entire lot fit into 1 small plastic bag. He wouldn't be able to burst those for more than an hour. Remember the MRP prices that they put on crackers in the 80s. You'd look at them and wonder "The guy who put these prices was smoking something". Well those are the real prices now. 1 Redfort 56 shell Deluxe is 63 Rupees. 1 box of 30 cm Sparklers cost 120 Rs. The trend is moving towards air shows - like the ones we see on July 4th. We bought a few of those and they lit of the sky well but somehow one felt that the thrill was missing. I did the 10,000 wala thing though. I love 10,000 walas. While in Mylai, I had to walk to chokkalingam street to see Crazy Mohan's family burst 10,000 walas like it was nobody's business. People used to discuss what chokkalingam street would burst a few days before deepavali. The whoe street would be covered with paper at the end of the day. Unfortunately, in the case of my 10K wala, one spark from the lit (and bursting) side of 10,000 wala flew all the way to the unlit side of it and the giant 'saram' started bursting from both ends. The show got over quicker than I wanted it to.

There is sadness when deepavali ends. It is a majestic festival. Not many countries in the world celebrate life this way. This I thought was true cavalier Indian style. Full of fun, life and energy. It is an expression of joy that is unique and very demonstrative. Whatever it was, it was certainly not dour. People didn't wear suits, exchange gifts and sat down for dinner. Finally there was a festival that wasn't just about food (and a stupid dance to loud music). Literally a whole country 'bursts' into celebration. It allowed people to let go and vent out the stress of daily life. It was a vacation that allowed people to escape into something that they wouldn't do any other normal day. Such a pressure valve has rarely been designed in the history of civilization. Standing in the terrace and watching the sky getting lit was an amazing sight. Madras night is beautiful on Deepavali.

TPT, Facebook, etc.

1000 years ago people were aware that human beings loved to talk about themselves. People wanted to be heard, considered important, be valued and appreciated. Everything we do involves, to a certain extent, pretense. We pretend to be a certain kind of person or drop hints to make the audience form certain opinions towards us. Favorable opinions. Which is why Shakespeare, apart from saying "no god is equal to sabapathi", also said "the world is a theater". Humans derived pleasure when their deeds, virtues, and struggles were recognized, called out as great by a large group of unknown people. Yes! blogs are a great example of that. But first things first. In that order. For over 2000 years, it was hard for human beings to achieve this easily. You needed to be a great warrior, a king, a poet or a religious leader in order for people to sing praises about you and appreciate you. So essentially, only 1% of the entire population had their cravings satisfied. The rest were starved or simply resorted to singing their own praises to other unlucky listeners. In the early age instances of self-trumpeting (TPT) was rare as there was too much emphasis on humility etc.

After several thousand years of suppressed cravings, humans sprung a leak. In the 80s, some very sad parents vented this suppressed craving by relentlessly, ruthlessly and really tirelessly singing praises about their children. You could never shut those parents at all. They would go on and on about "my son is so awesome. he is class first, will get into IIT etc". Such parents exist today and can't stop yapping about their how great their 6 month old baby looked when it pooped.

Leaving parents aside, there are some luminaries we see everyday who innocently exhibit these cravings publicly. They remind us that this trait is present in all of us but it manifests itself in the luminaries because there is opportunity for them to display it. Take a classic example of 'Koffee with Anu' for instance. For a year she interviewed other people and allowed them to sing their praises and sometimes even sang their praises for them. But really what she was waiting for was a chance to speak about herself. She didn't really have an acting credentials or any other credentials, so voluntary praise wasn't necessarily forthcoming. So she did an anniversary show and got Prakash Raj to interview her, sang praises about her own struggles (which as expected very extremely trivial and told us what we knew already - that she was a moron). One should have expected this TPT from her because her cousin Suhasini, is an expert TPT. She inserts "when I was cameraman.." or "when I was god and knew everything under the sun" in almost every sentence she gets to speak on TV. The only reason why she has agreed to do the 'movie review' show is to tell us how great she is. The reviews are incidental and if she could she'd do without them.

Take Anuradha Sriram, the playback singer, as another example of humans displaying this trait. She reminds me of the time when Joey Tribbiani ( a character in FRIENDS who plays the role of an aspiring actor) gets to make a wedding dinner speech. Once he finds out that a movie casting director is on the table, his whole speech changes. He starts by saying a few words about the newly wedded couple and goes on to display range of emotions - sadness, happiness, shock, fear and ends with "as a person who can emote, fight martial arts and do partial nudity...I wish the couple a happy married life". His speech had nothing to do with the wedding but everything to do with showcasing himself to the casting director. Every time Anuradha Sriram talks on TV, it is about how great she is. Even when she is called upon to praise KJJesudas, she first praises herself, sings a note or two herself, and mentions a few irrelevant things about herself and in the end says "As a person who is so awesome I can say that KJY is sort of cool"

But praising children, getting on TV, talking to others about yourself requires a lot of work. Probably even talent. What about the average idiot who can't get on TV. Us? Where do we get to sing praises about ourselves. Enter facebook, twitter and blogger. Facebook is the subject of focus here. Facebook has removed any and all subtlety that was previously required to do TPT. It allowed Users to forthrightly say 'I am awesome, please know that as a fact'. The common theme among all facebook messages is "look at me, I am so awesome". 99% of status messages has people saying "I am soooo busy" or "Working like a dog" or "I am doing work and if I wasn't there an entire country of people would need to work for300 years to do what I do in 2 days" or "I jog 300 miles in 2 nano seconds" or "I lifted 3000 pound dumbells with my little finger". Some subtle people join the "Become a fan of 4.0 GPA" and others become fans of "high performing employees group".

Then there are these freakin' facebook quizzes that showcases unknown traits of the user. These quizzes are carefully designed to trumpet the User. You see a post that says "Margabandhu took the 'how long is your dick quiz' and the answer is '20000 million miles' " or "Vishwanath took the 'What kind of person are you quiz' and the answer is 'you are sensitive, awesome, great, fantastic, chicks should dig you, chicks should strip and surrender to your love'". "Ganapathi took the 'what kind of car are you' quiz and the answer is 'Ferrari, chicks should dig and dig and totally dig you'". Facebook is to satisfy the cravings of mediocre boneheads, who cannot and will not gain any sort of acclaim in real lives. It makes them feel that others will read their quizes and status updates and go "oh my god! what a fantastic supertastic awesome guy he is, i am a piece of dirt if front of him, i should go lick his feet". The correct quizzes these people should be taking are "Muthappan took the 'what fart smell are you quiz' and the result is ' you smell like fart after person has eaten 8 dhonnai puliyodharais, 8 eggs that have been spoilt and 2 kilos of potatoes'". Unfortunately those quizzes don't exist.

Note1: TPT refers to Thar Perumai Thanigachalam. 'Dabur' from OSU was the first ever TPT the world has known.

Note2: The scope of this post obviously includes blogs, this blog and its author. It is uncool and pointless to restate the obvious that I draw from my own experiences while writing this post.

Mahan Gandhiye Mahan

Whenever this time of the year approaches, I am reminded of a song that has been my favorite song for many many years. 'Naam Iruvar' is a very good movie that was telecast several times in DD. It is such an old movie that most of the actors featuring in the movie might've died by the time I first saw the movie. It depicted good values and in general was a very goody goody type movie. The running time for 'Naam Iruvar' movie was 3+ hours but it felt more like a few years. There was a song every 2 minutes in that movie. As old technology and cheesy as the movie was it was certainly very endearing. My feelings towards Gandhi has changed over time from intense liking to indifference to critical to ' i don't care about having such opinions anymore'. But this song still remains one of my all time favorites

The Reunion

Pleasant Surprise

I could tell you the exact minute it comes. But I'll let you watch it. It comes for 2 secs max. So don't turn away.



Also visit this

Thenkachi Ko Swaminathan

I listened to his "Indru Oru Thagaval" (Message for Today) every day in AIR at about 7 AM'ish every morning. His name and his voice reminded me of van rides to school, and for strange reasons Kerala Saloon and other barber shops where I listened to him. His voice had a deep bassy tone to it. Sometimes a person's voice inherently has a tinge of sarcasm. Even if it is unintended, the sarcasm sort of adds a nice touch to what is being said. Thanjavur folks would have liked him. They would have said "pisuru padaama pesuvaar avar" (he does not stutter or use fillers when he talks).

A year ago I thought of writing a post about him wishing that AIR compile all his short stories and releases it as a CD collection. It would be a priceless collection that we could play for future generations. Unfortunately, I have postponed that post to the point where it became an obit. Thenkachi, for the uninitiated, told short stories in All India Radio and capped it off with a 'moral of the story'. He had a nice way of taking very little of our time and at the same time make us feel that he was telling the story with a relaxed pace. I liked him for doing the R.K. Narayan like thing of taking us back to simple times.

Dreams

Some dreams can be frustrating because it can easily cause you 3-4 hours of needless tension. While this tension is as futile as anything else you get tensed for in the real world the futility of dream triggered anxiety seems more obvious and irritating. And you can do nothing to change the dreams. For the past several years I have a recurring dream that I have to take my 12th standard board exam again. The context is generally - the board has introduced a new subject in the recent years and everybody who has completed 12th must go back and write an exam on this subject. The other contexts are (a) they have changed the XIIstd Chemistry syllabus and so everybody has to take Chemistry board exam again or (b) I have travelled back in time and find myself a few days away from exams. There are some rare occasions where the dream has no courtesy and does not tell me why I am taking the exam and directly throws me into a situation where I know there is an exam and I have to write it. Of course occasions where I am the only one naked is not rare and - sigh - quite frustrating

The dreams have a variety of settings too. Sometimes I write the exam with my college classmates as opposed to my XII std classmates. Sometimes they are office colleagues or grad school buddies. Sometimes the class is in America but the teacher is my XII std teacher. Suddenly, I find myself sitting next to my milkman who is also preparing very hard for the exam (The aluminium milk can is on top of the desk during class hours). Tension begins when I know that there is a lot of syllabus to cover and I can't get myself to read anything. I never get to the point where I open the book and read. My dreams begin and end before the exams. So I never get to know if I did well or not. I never get to prepare at all. The entire 4 hours (or what seems like it) is filled with tension that exams are coming and I am not preparing or doing anything about it. Occasionally there are 3 or 4 chemistry related words dropped in and I become aware that I don't understand any of them. So I get more tensed

Today morning, I had set my alarm for 5AM. It rang, I switched it off planning to get up immediately. But unknowingly I went back to sleep and got transported into yet another exam situation. Woke up sweating and really really afraid. There may be a thousand Freud'ish explanations for these dreams but what use are they? I can't do anything to avoid the tension.

Cricket

In order to align everything with my larger theory that this the stupidest generation to walk on the face of the planet, I made an observation on this blog several years ago that twenty20 cricket - tailor made for the idiot generation - will kill cricket in general and test cricket in specific. Twenty20 is like the twitter of cricket (Interestingly, I also compare Tests to book publishing business). Much like the way twitter allows any twit who can type random 140 characters to be popular, twenty20 will allow 'gaada' suthifying batters to be stars. Recently, I watched Twenty20 after a long time and it was really painful. The world is gravitating towards brainless fast food type sports and reading habits.

A popular blogger wrote a post that Twenty20 will benefit Test cricket rather than kill it. He was right. We have stopped playing test cricket now. Thanks to the country which has the least vision and most idiocy. India. Goes on to show that the "west", especially Britain and Australia were probably better in safeguarding the beauty and charm of cricket than the 'mutta kammanatis' at BCCI. In about 10 years when someone does a CPR to revive cricket, one of the key lessons they will take forward is that India cannot be given any authority/responsibility to determine the future of cricket.

Unnaipol Oruvan

This was an engaging movie with a very simple and straight forward script. Liked it. Kamal Hasan plays an anonymous person (subnote: curiously many reviewers have caught on to the term "common man" that he refers to in a dialog and repeat it like a parrot. They say "Kamal Hasan plays "common man:" like the way they'd say Christian bale played Batman or Christopher Reeve plays Super Man etc - wonder why?) who threatens to bomb selected spots in Chennai if they don't negotiate with him. He tries to make us forget that he is 'kamal hasan' by making his appearance rather modest or ugly to say the least. This is important given the context of the story. Because if we see too much Kamal Hasan it may work against the movie. This effort works to a great extent but there is a little bit of Kamal hasan still sticking on to the character he plays. This sort gives - deliberately or not - many clues as to what the end of the movie would look like. I was not surprised at the ending. At all. I guess many wouldn't be.

Overall - I liked the movie and I am glad I saw it.

After Thought: I did not think that this movie had a lot of scope for major level emoting or in general displaying excellent acting talents. This is in a way very cut and dry movie wit limited focus on character development. So the benefit this movie gets by the presence of Mohan Lal is simply just that. There is not a lot of scope to make Maraar, a better done character. Mohan Lal makes it look smooth. But there is nothing extra-ordinary in either Kamal's role or Mohan Lal's role that makes anyone go "wow! superb acting" unless one is compelled to say so because it is Kamal and Mohan lal. Something needs tobe said of Lakshmi's role though. Pretty Yucky. Needless role. Her dialogs were inane and sometimes senseless. Very poor (over) acting to boot.

Kanye Vs Taylor

I know it has become obligatory for people to diss Kanye for what he did because it is the politically correct thing to do. Since I don't really care about any of the parties involved (except that I believe Beyonce is way more hot than Taylor), I don't feel the need to get angry or offended at what Kanye did. Don't feel the urge to call him names or criticise him. This post discusses a different aspect surrounding such incidents. I believe that if someone is embarrassed very publicly then the crowd is embarrassed as well and actually feels for the person. This is true. The crowd cringes along with the person being insulted. I have often wondered about this particular kind of embarrassment while watching the Oscars. How it would feel if someone jumped on stage and insulted the award winner, grabbed the mike and told the Academy that the award belongs to someone else. What a thrilling moment that would be purely because of the rarity of its occurrence?

The 'cringe moment' in this case was thrilling and hilarious to watch. You have been seeing award functions for such a long time that purely because of the way probabilities and law of averages work, it is about time such a thing happened. And the amazing thing about the human mind is that it processes embarrassment in a disproportionate fashion. Taylor couldn't bring herself to speak at all after Kanye handed her back the mike. Not everyone thinks she is undeserving. Probably Kanye is the only one who thinks so. But her mind wouldn't absorb it that way.

Putting the 'Pool' in Car Pool

So - many years ago I had a roommate in grad school who like many desis before and after him multi tasked as a NFL coach, College football coach, President of USA, Supreme Court Chief Justice, Prime Minister of India, Sankaracharya, Expert in comparative religion and of course also spent few hours teaching undergrad kids MS Word for $1,100 per month. Typical of many desis of that time who hadn't touched a drop of alcohol or hadn't tasted egg until they landed in US, he'd fill his weekend nights with several rounds of 'chivas regal' and several plates of chicken. At the end of it, he'd develop sudden expertize to comment with absolute certainty on vegetarianism, the source/reason/state of religion, how stupid his parents-living-in India were and why he became N times more "fundoo" than them by simply stepping into the US soil etc ..etc.

So this boy within 1-month after landing did all the customary things: started referring to the state as "my state" the football team as "our team" and of course the country as "inga namma oor'la". He had to travel 30 miles once-every-week to do some team-based research for his professor. He did not own a car. The rest of his lab mates had a car and they took turns to car pool. The person who was chosen to drive that day picked my roomie up and dropped him back home. However, when he referred to these trips during the weekend, he'd say "I car pooled with my friends to go and do research for NASA". He didn't really own a car and was simply bumming a free ride. So for a while we were confused, thought he'd picked up the word "car pool" from somebody and really liked to use it. So we let him go. But he kept saying that again and again like "I didn't want David to car pool with us because David is so out of the way. But I am okay with it because it helps to discuss the project on the way". One day while he went on for the Nth time about car pooling, a drunk guy stopped him mid-sentence and asked him "dei nayee... ungitta car irukka da". Confused, our man says "No I don't have a car". Pat came the reply:

"appo mathavangellam car kondu varanga nee {refer_to_title_of_post} kondu poriya ?"

This Ghantaknaath must be very similar to my roommate. Look at him say this:

"Because I don't want a public option or any surrogate for it, which just puts the system in an even worse position than it is now.

But, if a public option is indeed passed, then I will be really pissed if it excludes end of life counseling or does not cover abortion expenses."

If I remember correctly, saar is on a F-1 visa. As part of the stipend rules and immigration rules, the university compulsorily withholds some money from his stipend to pay for his insurance. The university chooses his insurance provider. Even if he wanted to change his insurance provider, he has to work extra hard and convince quite a few people. Ivanukku indha altaapu thevaiyaa? 3 more years in F-1 + 9 years to a green card + 6 years to a citizenship. He is almost 2 decades away from having a say on such topics. Pammittu irukka vendiyadhu dhaane.

Someone Like You

Larry Gelbart

He was the writer for M*A*S*H. The series was great only partially because Alan Alda was glib or the slapstick pranks he pulled along with B.J were very funny. It was great mainly because of the usage of words. M*A*S*H was simply magic with the English language. You were often left thinking - I didn't know I could construct a sentence like that. Larry made humor a weapon.

Deivamee

Jeppiar's opening day speech to students of Sathyabama Engineering college is so legendary that one need not introduce it to people at all. It is part of the folklore. When boys discuss college stuff after several rounds of (OH)4 this speech certainly figures in that. I have been fortunate to witness it once. I promise you, I can never forget it. Here is a sample of the eloquence, precision in language, and sophistication he brings to the table.

FUW - I

There are some words and phrases that you get tired of reading (or writing). Maybe because you have used them frequently or you see everybody use it frequently (because it is considered fashionable). I'll kick start this series with 3 words/phrases that have annoyed me in the recent past like no other word.

Sanctum Sanctorum WTF?! Seriously. What doe this even mean? Romba bandha thaanga mudiyalai. I would prefer a long 'that room inside the temple where they keep the idol of god' as a better alternative to this rubbish phrase. I don't know what religious writers in the 1940s wee thinking when they began to copy this word just to impress the British. I certainly don't know what writers today are thinking when they use it incessantly. If people who use too much English are 'peter' then people who use too much Latin should be called 'litter' or 'thaadikaran' etc. What do they email their relatives "I went to the sanctum sanctorum of thirupathi and they said ''reight reight.. jaragandi... jaragandi"

Hype and the Hoopla: Stop. What is this 'hoopla' 'goobla' crap. Appadinna enna da? It is almost as if the keyboard instinctively types 'and the hoopla' after it types 'hype'. If you go to a mental aaspathri and they ask you to do word association, I am sure most of the mental cases would correctly answer 'and the hoopla' the moment doctor says 'hype'.

Protagonist: Now people who use this are downright pretentious. It seemed fashionable at some point and so I used it but then later I couldn't help thinking 'what the hell does this even mean?'. To put it simply, I don't like the way this word sounds inside the head. It is like referring to people from Kumbakonam as 'kumbakonist'. What about 'simble' words like actor, hero, person with yellow shirt etc. 'protagonist' 'pootagonist' sollitta nee enna periya Newyork Broadway theater performance reviewer'a?

She has not sunk/drowned and She will be a green bodied woman

The amount of personal information strangers begin to share with you - when you announce that your wife is pregnant - is simply incredible. The moment you announce, It feels like a secret door opened. Strangers, even desi strangers, suddenly assume that it is appropriate to discuss stuff about the reproductive system that is normally considered private. Most good Thamizh boys know nothing about the intricacies of female reproductive systems. While they skipped chapters to peep into "The Female Reproductive System" chapter in the 8th standard biology textbook, all that precious knowledge was soon discarded to pursue much higher intellectual stuff - porn. So naturally going back to 8th standard biology is a retrogression of sorts.

Now, these strangers are people who were mild-mannered and silent until they heard your announcement. But after the secret door opens they tell you the scariest of details. They discuss all that they ever knew about pregnancy. Like "my wife's sister had a discombobulated cervix" "Susan's egg formed in the fallopian tube" "you know how it works right..the egg flows down from the ovary to the uterus" " it attached to the uterus wall near the cervix" " one of my friends had a partial placenta previa". The desi male's brain cannot comprehend so many tubes, pipes and complicated mechanics going on there. The thamizh boy has one word for all these scientific jargon.

'keezha'

Down under. Somewhere down. Down there. It not much of a word. But it is simple, humble and has a lot of love. If you feel a question is too personal (or too 'teginigal') you can simply say 'ya ya vayathula keezha baby form aagum' and leave it at that. It can explain many things, which half-baked science experts, who can google very fast, cannot. Simply saying 'kizha anga engayo' can answer all questions. Take this very real conversation for instance with a google-searching desi engineer.

Stranger: Do you know where the placenta has attached itself.
Me: Keezha
Stranger: You know my friend had a ectopic pregnancy and ruptured one of her fallopian tubes. How is the pregnancy facilitated ? Is one fallopian tube enough?
Me: It is facilitated 'Keezha anga engayo'.
Stranger: Does the cervix have to dialate 10 cm before the baby comes out?
Me: Baby comes out from keezha.
Stranger: Dei keezha seri da. Keezha enge?
Me: Adhaan da. Keezha anga engayo.

'keezha anga engayo' is a fantastic PG-13 phrase to respond to several over-enthusiastic questions that seem intrusive. In fact it is very dignified and impersonal. It gives out enough detail to let others know that you won't fail in Geography but hides a lot of Carpentry, Engineering Drawing, Physics and other difficult 12 mark questions out of it.

We always knew that women are comfortable discussing this with other women. Here is another surprise - once the wife is pregnant, other women feel the need to dole out advise to the wife in front of the husband. Now men get to hear the gory details of the whole pregnancy process. What horror!?? They discuss it as if they were discussing computer hard drives. Little do they know that they are committing the sin of taking a 40-year patron of Woodlands drive-in restaurant to its kitchen and let him see the gory details of how his favorite food is cooked. We don't want to know how it all works and how things are made. For men it is sex. It is sacred. From Emmanualle to Erika Eleniak - the various goddesses have symbolized this sacredness. Don't spoil it for us. Mr. Johnson has spit so many times into the sunlight and into plastic covers. He had no idea that if he spit 'keezha' he'd potentially be slaying a holy cow. If he had he would have thought twice about it.

I fell victim to this 'get biology knowledge' mania. I got caught up in accumulating useless knowledge under the assumption that" a modern husband who is progressive mannangatti etc has to know all these details to be perceived as supportive". I mean what is the point of doing "viradha homaam" on the morning of the marriage if you cannot have a intelligent conversation with the Radiologist? So I tried my best to learn the pipes, the different containers and the whole flowchart diagrams. Every 'aaspathri' has wall-size pictures and diagrams. You can't miss them. It is sort of like trying to look at the source code of a video game you are playing.

But I kept saying the wrong things. Kept confusing one pipe and the other. Mixing up containers. Kept saying there were two uteruses and one ovary. Just the way all Chinese people look the same to people from Mannargudi, to men all female body parts pretty much looked like "keezha". The 'illustrative' videos to get the man up to speed were all hazy. Apparently the doctors are used to over enthusiastic men who pretend to be mild-mannered software engineer during the day and super powered gynaecologists during the night - capable of jumping tall ovaries in a single bound and stop speeding sperms. So they never cared to describe what the hell anything meant.

Meanwhile at work and at many social gatherings people are bombarding you with unheard of words. I am not a prude and don't get offended that easily but my god! are the details awful. It is almost as if there are two worlds out there. One is a world where people don't talk about reproductive organs in gory detail. The other is where they see you enter into the "parents world", see you get access to some sort of privileged member club benefits. In this world complete and total strangers discuss the most intimate private body parts in a matter-of-fact way. The transition is sudden and if a person is caught unawares he is in for it.

The modern desi living in amrikka needs to know pages and pages and volumes of stuff that the SBI officer 20-30 years ago simply referred to as - "keezha anga engayo" or "edho ladies matter saar yaarukku theriyum"

Movie Review: Pasanga

A movie about events surrounding a couple of kids presented to us the way those kids see themselves in the illusionary world they live in. Falls in the category of low-budget minimum expectation movies that manages to not suck by keeping the story simple and within limitations. Your expectations are so met near the end of the movie that you sort of overlook the vayishal climax scenes. This is by no means as good as 'Anjali' but really really better than those Baby Shalini/Shamili/Simbu movies.

With this - Sasikumar related movies have nearly saturated the effects arising out of small-town Tamil Nadu look & feel and the 80s song nostalgia triggers. It is not a novelty anymore. Unless he has some radical new story to offer under the same construct, he needs to make movies that follow a new formula with actors who shave regularly.