Howzzat!

Anirudh’s one of the rare composers who has made conversational Tamil sound more like music and it’s a good thing. His latest offering is “Maan karate” which has a sugar-and-spice combo of Sivakarthikeyan and Hansika in the lead with debutant Thirukumaran wielding the megaphone. “Maanja” has Anirudh crooning to his own tune. It is peppy and believe this- it is a love track. Karky belongs to the breed of “research-poets” still left in Kollywood. All his research on the Madras dialect seems to have paid off for the Chennai lingo is transliterated in style. The funky and the wannabe folksy “Darling Dambakku” (penned by Yugabharathi) scores with the brilliant vocals of the incredible but underutilized  Benny Dayal and ‘ kamli’ Sunidhi Chauhan. Anirudh does throw surprises. Non-Anirudh moments such as ‘Did- I- just- hear- a- flute?’ and ‘was- that -a- Sitar? ’ were aplenty. The Reprise version of the song (the same track with the vocals replaced by Nivas and Ka...

Admit it. Whatsapp has been eating into your Facebook time for quite a while now. Though the stats say Facebook users are as active as ever, status updates like “Movie boring..zzzzz”(never mind the trailing lines “..at the Cinemas with Cute Kavi, Bala Boyzz, Banu athai, Kowshi kutti” with the last two not being FB users) and “Had the craziest vaazhakka bajji ever! #semataste ” are growing fewer in number. Credit goes to Whatsapp for its no frills status updates with huge user pleasing capabilities as in, 1. Nobody, I repeat, nobody can add a Vadivelu meme as a comment to your status. 2. Opportunities to start a Vijay Vs Ajith presidential debate are considerably less. 3. You don’t have to feel bad for a Selfie that has been “liked” only by 5 people. 4. You can get people to know the kind of loverboy you are by updating “For every beat, my heart keeps saying happy birthday to the one it belongs to… <3 <3 <3 “ without your mom/dad/uncle/HOD-cum-FB account holders snoo...

  The White Tiger By Aravind Adiga         2008 was a year reminiscent to most Indian book lovers.  Chennai born Aravind Adiga and Delhi bred Amitav Ghosh were the Indian names among those shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. It was the then 34 year old Adiga who walked away with the £50,000 award for his ambitious debut novel ‘ the White Tiger’ , a book whose complex take on the whimsical  notions of Indian modernity were marvelled yet criticized by literary figures and readers alike.      Adiga’s protagonist Balram Halwai , a self-confessed scoundrel cum “successful” entrepreneur, writes a letter to the visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in which he narrates his rags-to-riches story, a tale devoid of all traits bearing resemblance to honesty, loyalty or kindness and where greed unashamedly greets you in its entirety.      Balram, son of a rickshaw puller, is drawn out of...

There are quite a handful of movies that bored me the first time I watched them. Later on, I kept thinking about them, reminiscing their scenes  which made me realize how bad a movie buff I've been. Here is a pick of such movies (in no particular order) that have enthralled me every time I watch them(pity not the first time..) Apur Sansar (1959)                       -Satyajit Ray         Satyajit Ray’s genius unfolds in each scene like poetry. The final part of “the Apu Trilogy” shows us a struggling, aspiring writer Apu (Soumitra Chatterjee) tricked by fate into loving and losing a charm of a wife like Aparna (a rather young Sharmila Tagore) to childbirth after which he abandons both his manuscript and his son, Kajal . Apu’s subsequent acceptance of his son and therefore his life ends the movie on a poignant note.               ...

It has been a long time since I posted something.. I know. There was no lack of events, movies or books all this while but I've been feeling a lot less inspired lately. Third year at college is slightly demanding....giving a glimpse of what the IT sector has in store for me after one year. All I can do is hope for the best.                                    So what was I doing all this while...?        Read a little, watched a lot of movies, dabbled in a songwriting course in coursera (one more week to finish it!) and most of the time, sitting on my couch eating Rasam saadam ..thinking absolutely nothing! If I'd only closed my eyes while shutting off my thoughts I'd have done something close to meditation.        My copy of Orhan Pamuk's "My Name is Red" is gathering dust. So is Rolf Dobelli's "The art of thinking clearly" and Nassim Nicholas...

         I do not endorse the method LTTE chief Prabhakaran chose to protest against the crimes against his people. Neither did the Srilankan military. That’s how the 2009 Eelam war came about where several thousands of innocent Tamils were killed. A war, of course, claims lives. But nothing explains the photos released by channel 4. Death by accident is clearly not what killed Balachander. The eyes of the 12 year old sitting in the bunker having a snack, only to be killed in cold blood in less than 2 hours, haunted us more than we could bear (I couldn’t help but cry for 2 hours straight) and have caused this uprising in Tamil Nadu by students and public alike, though three years too late.       The indifference to Srilankan Tamils is what formed the radical group LTTE in the first place. If this issue was sorted earlier, we wouldn’t have lost Rajiv Gandhi. When Salman Khurshid says we can’t act as big brother to any other country...

11 academy award nominations…to a film featuring just an Indian skinny vegetarian boy and a CGI animated royal Bengal tiger, for almost the entire length of the movie. It made it to the screens here with little hype but garnered surprising responses in the long run. What made “Life of Pi” appeal to the local masses..? The Indian connection..?  The 3D factor..? Or was it the way in which a story of survival and hope was visualised amazingly lifelike on screen?? Maybe all the three if I could guess it right ! The story A middle aged Pi Patel (Irfann Khan) narrates his survival story to an on-the-lookout writer (Rafe Spall), hoping to revive the latter’s spirits and restore his faith in God.   In this narrative, Pondicherry-based adolescent Pi (Suraj Sharma) leaves for Canada with his family (and animals from his dad’s zoo) in a Japanese cargo ship. A storm leaves the ship wrecked and his family dies along with the rest ...