Rants, rants, rants and books!

It has been a looong while since I wrote a blog. Of course it was surprising that was able to move my fingers across the keyboard to write three entries in my blog. I have this habit of watching a movie and then read in detail about the film on Wikipedia (wiki for everything!!!). I don’t know if it is true for everyone, but for me even after I watch the movie, I have this kind of satisfaction when I read the plot of the movie. After I finish reading a good book and find out that there’s a movie adaption of it, I feel excited to watch the movie. After the movie is over, I keep comparing the movie and the book and end up being extremely irritated because, the movie is so different from the book. Someone told me to forget the book when watch the film. “Watch the movie as just another movie and not the adaption of the book” was the advice given to me. After a while I came to terms with the disappointment, but still I held a small amount of resentment. I could just stop watching such films of course, but I guess I have a very subtle amount of masochism. Oh well!

I like to read books but only fiction. Not a big fan non-fiction (I have never read a single one actually), so you could say I am kind of a picky reader (meaning: I like the idea that I read books than actually read them). So, I was watching some movie and then I ended up coming across article (on wiki of course) on the movie “Angels and Demons”. I suppose anyone with decent reading habits would know about the book. If not that book, at least its sequel “The Da Vinci Code” (I never saw the movie adaption of either books, I am growing up). I ended up reading Da Vinci Code because everyone in my class was talking about it. When I read it, I was amazed at how good the book was. Once I found that the author had written three other books, I had to read the other books and I somehow accomplished it. After reading his other books, I was so disappointed that the glow of satisfaction I felt for Da Vinci Code waned completely. Now I wonder how the book became a best seller! All the four books have such similar styles that it became completely predictable (especially when you read one book after the other and the plot of each book is fresh in the mind). Protagonist having a phobia which they have to overcome at least once during the adventure, one of the very enjoyable and good and trusted characters in the book ends being the antagonist, the protagonists go through so much action, suspense, mystery and all for nothing absolutely nothing. You read some 300 pages for nothing. Well some would call it plot twist or something which becomes tedious when found in each book by the same author. Da Vinci Code was a huge success, Dan Brown was a huge success, movie was a huge success (I think, I am not sure and didn’t have the energy to find out). But all the success for a completely useless story (in my opinion please don’t kill me if you are Dan Brown fan). What’s more the author claimed that all the historical events found in Da Vince Code were true initially. But, they are in fact inaccurate. Makes it seem like every Tom, Dick and Harry could write a book if not much research is needed! I never realized the necessity of research until I read some Historical books. After finding out about the controversies and the amount of pains authors go through to write a book, my disdain for the books by the author grew. What adds salt the wound is the fact that, it is a best seller (cries continuously).

Another one of such books is the Harry Potter series. Of course when it comes to Harry Potter books, I guess I am just too old for the books. I am not sure how I would have handled the books if I had read it when I was in my early teen years (that doesn’t mean I am too old I was in the late late stages of teen years at the time when I first read the books). When it comes to Harry Potter books though, it was the other way around. I saw the movie before I read the books. If I hadn’t watched the movie which happened to be a complete accident, I would have never known about Harry Potter books. I wasn’t impressed with the movie in the first place but I still read the book because my cousins had got it and I didn’t have anything better to do during the vacation (of course I had to read it just to find out what was so great about the series). Again I found similarities in each of the books. Harry and Ron just stumble on something, Hermione keeps telling them to stick to the rules but helps them in their activities anyway, during the final battle Hermione and Ron each complete a stage, Harry does the final battle and oh the final scene between Dumbledore and Harry in hospital bed when he explains everything in the end but wouldn’t do anything even though he knows what’s going on and stuff and starting from the fourth book unexpectedly kill a vital character (or maybe the third I don’t remember). But then again the books were a massive success that managed to change J.K. Rowling literally from pauper to one of the wealthiest females. Even now I keep wondering if the reason I hate the books is because I am too old for it or if I would hate it anyway no matter how old I was. My friend, who is actually around my age, liked the books so much that she needed a personal copy of each book despite having read all of them. I was so surprised when she bought the books (since for me, buying fiction books is a big no especially when I have read it. I always read books that I can borrow from a library or someone). Another friend of mine was also impressed by the amount of imagination in the book. But for me I had read books that were more imaginative and impressive. So, I came to the conclusion that I’d have hated the book if I was young or old (the reason behind this conclusion is I refuse to admit that I would ever like the book). I did like the third book though. That book was good enough for me that the movie was a big disappointment.

After reading some more of these best sellers and popular books which I felt were complete waste of time, I came to the conclusion that contemporary popular books should be avoided at all costs and should be read only when they reach the classic status when it might be a good read. I would be either too senile or too blind or too tired or too dead when that happens. Or I should just stick to already classic books or less known authors who actually write some good fiction. If I do that my dose of rants will lessen, which by no means can I stop. God save us masochists (ahem masochism still on the very very very subtle side)!

தமிழ் nee enna anaai???!!!

Though Tamil is my native language I never learnt the Tamil Grammar. I did study in Tamil Nadu but I studied in a central government run school where Tamil was not one of the subjects I had to learn. So I never learnt Tamil properly. I only know the basics of the language like the letters and stuff which my grandmother taught me when I was little. I learnt it because my brother did (anything he can do I can do too dammit!!!) so I was never really that into it. I read Tamil like a 5 year old (I guess I should give myself some credit and say 6 year old) and write like a 2 year old (yes a 2 year old!!! I can hardly write three or four words. But I can write my name quite well which I am rather proud of). Most of my friends from college make fun of me because I don’t know to read and write Tamil in spite of it being my mother tongue. But my pronunciations are very good (even if I say so myself) I ridicule some of my friends (who have studied the language the entire time of their schooling) to the point that they are afraid to talk in front of me (sometimes though I do have trouble with those who can read, write and speak Tamil very well. Not fair!!!). I had this one friend who writes poems in Tamil (poems man can you believe it?) but his pronunciations suck. I can’t appreciate poems so when he shows his poems to me I criticized his Tamil to avoid false compliments (and have some fun at his expense of course).  When he writes the words, his spellings are correct but when pronounces it, it is all wrong. He wasn’t even able to understand that he was wrong when I pointed it out to him (I win ha!). That is the state of the language.

Tamil is the first language to be given the classical status in India. It is one of the most ancient languages and also a language that is developed on its own and not derived from any other languages. For all the arguments, fights, revolts, sacrifices to make sure Hindi is not forced on Tamil people or to include Tamil language as one of the official languages of India (anti-Hindi agitations) or to remove the influence of Sanskrit in Tamil (Pure Tamil movements), the quality of the language has been deteriorating recently (Why the prejudice against Hindi, Sanskrit and not English? That is something I guess I will never understand).

Tamils are a proud bunch of people who take pride in their language and heritage (afore mentioned agitations and movements are proof enough). Every lead actor from the Tamil film industry in at least one of their movies has to praise the greatness of the language to gain popularity. And every time someone makes a great dialogue delivery about the language the crowd goes crazy. But, the beauty of language is praised in the ugliest way since not many people can speak the language properly. The Tamil people celebrate Bharathiyar (Tamil poet) as ‘mahakavi (great poet)’. Bharathiyar finds Tamil as a language that sounds most beautiful to him. He is known for his love for the language and of course his poems. If he were to be still alive (thank goodness he is not), he would definitely either commit suicide or go on a mass murder rampage if he hears the quality of spoken Tamil now!

I was watching the movie ‘Aayirathil Oruvan’ recently. It is about the Chola and Pandyan dynasties. The starting of the movie, there is a brief introduction on the Chola and the Pandyan dynasties. The introduction is by far the worst Tamil I have heard in the entertainment business. It made cringe when I listened to the narrator butcher the language. Except for one none of the lead actors was able to speak the language properly. The depressing part is that two of them play the descendants of the two dynasties. The Chola and the Pandyan Empire play a vital role in the history of Tamil Nadu and the south India. The Chola Empire has seen some of the greatest works in Tamil literature. It was truly distressing to watch a movie that was based on two of the four Dravidian Tamil Dynasties to have such bad delivery of the language known as the ‘Senthamizh’. Another disturbing issue is the use of non-Tamil singers to sing for playback in movies. Listening to Hindi singers sing Tamil is like eating dry bread without butter when French bread with cheese is sitting right next to it (if I want to listen to Hindi songs I can listen to Hindi songs why Hindify Tamil songs? And what happened to the whole anti-Hindi thing?). And the actress lord save the actresses with their dubbing being horrible and the lip movement being unsynchronized (don’t know why everybody is bent on slow torture! What did I ever do to them?).

Few who are supposed to speak proper Tamil are debaters (‘pattimandram’), news readers, politicians etc. The Tamil spoken by these people are called ‘thooya Tamil’. Two of them have started speaking the butchered Tamil (since a large population of politicians is still ancient). It is difficult to listen to even news readers read aloud horrible Tamil. Soon enough there will be a time when even politicians start talking garbage Tamil (Bharathiyar is so lucky, Thiruvalluvar too). What is point in all the agitations, revolts and fights against other languages when the language one is fighting for is becoming dead because of oneself?  Shouldn’t we improve ourselves before calling the kettle black? If not for the present at least for the future things need to be done something should be done to stop the quality of the language from decline (or not it’s not it’s the end of the world is it?).

Now that doesn’t mean I am going to turn into a new leaf and start learning to read and write Tamil properly. It means that I am one of few who does call the kettle black and I am super lazy and no longer have the sibling rivalry motivation. And hey I am doing good (really?) by writing this blog (not that there are any readers).

Films causing Eve Teasing??!!!

I used to like this actor in the Tamil film industry, the so called Kollywood. Actor Vijay is known as the ‘illayathalapathi (young commander or leader)’. He looks like the typical Tamil boy next door and one thing about him that stands out is that from the start of his film career, he has neither gained weight nor lost any. Most of his films are crap. I guess I could say I just like couple of his movies yet I liked the actor. His movies are like any typical Tamil movie. The movies where the hero and heroine start with ‘modhal (fight or arguments)’ and ends with ‘kadhal (love)’ with the heroine insulted beyond reparation and yet falls hopelessly and utterly in love with the hero because he insulted her and of course the ultimate villain whom he overpowers single handedly and the usual family drama with some songs. These movies are called ‘masala movies’ in Tamil. Like I said, although his movies are tedious, I liked the actor solely because of his looks because I think the guy lacks talent in every other way as an actor.

I was watching a programme on TV where they show some of the scenes from latest movies like a teaser you know. The scene was from a movie ‘Sivakasi’, Vijay’s movie. At the time, the movie was released, the scene was being played a lot. In the scene, the heroine is dressed in revealing clothes when compared to the Indian standard of what is considered descent clothes. She is wearing jeans shorts, a camisole kinda blouse with a jacket which was transparent. She is with her father in the streets and one of the guys in the street misbehaves with her and she makes a scene. Our great hero now makes his entry. He finds the guy and rubs the guy’s hand with our heroines hand and says, “Now that you have touched her, are you satisfied?” and sends the guy away. And then the hero turns to the heroine and starts criticizing her way of dressing. He uses rather crude words to describe her clothes. And then he goes on to say that if she dresses that way, then she is bound to be harassed. All this happens in the middle of the road of course, and there are like fifty people watching. The heroine’s father is quite and she is visibly angered. The scene usually ends at this point in the show. I haven’t watched the movie and neither am I planning to watch it. But I later found out that after the incident, the heroine starts dressing conservatively and the usual hero heroine stupid love starts.

A hero I liked made me despise him after I watched this scene. There are three things about the scene that make my blood boil. First, the guy who caused the whole scenario is left to go without being properly reprimanded and what’s more his actions are actually defended (him being hero and all should see justice is served properly). Second, the girl is who is the victim here is actually being insulted in a vulgar language that makes you cringe. Third, men who do engage in such activities claim they are right and use movies like this to justify their behaviour. These kinds of scenes are just a drop in an ocean. If he is really a hero or is really an ‘illayathalapathi’ should he be ready to do such roles? What’s even more saddening is the actress’ willingness to act in such a degrading scene. Their justification being, “somebody else will take up the role if I refuse to do it. So what’s the point in me letting go of a job?”

A lot of girls and young women everyday face this kind of situation in real life where guys grope in public, crowded places like the bus, bus stops, railway stations and even crowded temples!! When I go to a temple that is quite crowded, I actually pray that I don’t get groped. I make sure somebody from my family is in front of me and behind me while we wait in the crowd for darshan. That’s how paranoid girls are because of this. India got its freedom sixty three years ago and yet girls don’t have the freedom to even dress the way they want. A few years ago, there was this incident where a dress code was imposed on women. This dress code was for all the girls in not only work place or school or college but in the entire city. My memory on the entire issue is hazy so I don’t know exactly what caused it and what happened later on. Should women who are the prey really be held responsible for such behaviour? Do the men who actually perpetrate such things not responsible?

India is considered the home of Hinduism. The only religion which has both male and female god and who are both equally revered and considered powerful. With such a history should the women victim be subjected to such prejudice? Girls face the fear of being a target in every aspect of their life. The most astonishing part of it is that not even a middle aged woman is safe from this! Girls are ashamed of it and find it difficult to fight it. Very few can actually stand up for themselves. One of the reasons is the whole thing happens so quickly that the victim can’t even identify the person! One of the ways to maybe make the men who indulge in such lewd activities is to make them taste their own medicine! Maybe then they could realize how disgusting the whole thing. But doing such things will be even more disgusting for women I am sure. But I guess more than the whole eve teasing situation, what irritates me is their reasons for their doing. But I guess no amount of law can stop this until victims themselves take things in their own hands and kick some asses like in the movies. Of course this wouldn’t be a one man show like the movies. :)

First Blog, Women, Men!!!

For a long time I have wondered why do people write blogs? I thought I would never write one but here I am writing my first blog ever! I am one of the kind of lazy people who are proud of being lazy so I knew for a fact that I wouldn't write one. Now don't ask me why I am writing mine cuz I am not really sure about it. For a while now I have been reading a lot of stuff and I ended up thinking so many things and I wanted to do something about them. I guess one more reason could be because it’s been a while since I wrote essays on random because the last time I studied English was half a decade ago. I like the language but have been more interested in talking than writing. So I am also testing my writing skills and sharpening my thoughts. So I guess I should start with the subject that can almost instantly gets me riled up. Battle of sexes! :D

The other day I was for some reason reading an article on Wikipedia on Srinivasa Ramanujam the maths genius from India. For me reading articles on Wikipedia  is like how human thought process works. You know how when you are contemplating on a certain thought and that leads to another thought and that in turn leads to yet another thought and it continues and end up with a thought that leaves you thinking what in the world made me think of this. So that’s how I ended up reading a blog by a guy who had written about the discussion him and his friends on how tamil Brahmin girls these days are sexually liberated and look for non-brahmin boys because they find them macho and some more stuff. I find girls going after non-brahmin macho men ludicrous because being macho has nothing to do with the religion. Anyway after reading the blog I continued to read the comments on the blog entry and of course this caused some exchange of insults between boys and girls about the usual why is it right for boys and why is not right for girls and the whole gender equality issue! Among the comments, I found two of the them very amusing. I think at this spot I should point out that I am a “tamil Brahmin girl”! So you can very well guess how it’s going to be. :)

One of the comments was by this guy who took all the trouble to find a huge (when I say huge, I mean huge, like really huge) list of Brahmin female actresses in the Indian film industries and claims that all these actresses sleep with non-brahmin for fame, money and popularity! Now I don’t know by his claim if he really proves that Brahmin girls are really sexually liberated and sleep around for fame and money but if his claims are true then the allegations that women sleep around for fame and money is not restricted to Brahmin women. But then, does that mean women get ahead in their film career by only providing sexual favours? Does that mean men get ahead by sheer hard work? Or does that mean men don’t need to do such things while women need to? So just because some women do it does that mean the whole community has to take the blame? 

The second comment was by a guy who found Brahmin girls arrogant and disloyal because of a personal experience and went on to say about how he had some trouble and that he shared with three of his girl friends (I am assuming friends who are girls here :D) among whom two were non-brahmin and one was Brahmin and how the other two girls were sympathetic and the Brahmin girl started distancing herself from him. Here again he judged the entire Brahmin girls to be arrogant and disloyal. At least the first guy's comment generalized his belief after a huge list, but this guy's opinions are from one personal experience!

It is a common knowledge in maths that a theorem holds true if only proven. You can never prove any statement true without proper derivation. Even million examples proving the statements true are never enough for generalizing if just one exception is found. I know maths and life are not the same. But for every statement there are always exceptions. I have always wondered why a whole community or society or gender in this case judged on few instances. There was this video on youtube about how people from America are stupid and don’t know anything beyond their world. In the video a guy goes around asking questions (the questions I must admit were on world affairs that most people would know about) and the people who were questioned gave some really dumb answers. But does this mean whole of America is stupid? Does that mean the country, the guy who questioned was from is more aware of the world affairs than America? Who knows what percentage of the population was questioned and who knows what percentage of the population that did answer right but was not featured on the video. Who knows how what percentage of population from his country is stupid to give dumb answers. I guess we will never know about that.

One more thing that has always baffled is men’s claim that they can never understand women. I could be wrong here but to my knowledge I haven’t heard women say that we don’t understand men as much men have. But what I want to know is, does anybody understand anybody at all? I was talking to an acquaintance of mine to whom I asked the same question and he said that that’s true but he understands his father sometimes but never his mother. In my case I have never been able to understand my father or mother. I have so many times been surprised by some of the reactions which are completely different from what I had expected. Maybe it could be different when it comes to parent child relation since my mother is mostly right about me. But then again we live with our parents, siblings for a good portion of our lives and when one can’t ever claim that she or he can completely understand how her or his parents or siblings think. So is it really possible to understand a complete stranger of the opposite sex in few days or few months? Is reading books going to help understand another person? What do psychiatrist really understand about their clients? At times I have really wondered if I understand myself. Again we will never know the answer.

I think I have been a wondering a lot today (he he). I don't know if it is alright for me to mention another blog here but I have done it and if I have offended the person if he somehow comes to read this I am sorry :).