movie review

No one wore make up and everyone looked normally healthy, by which i mean they were mostly squat. By  squat I mean that most of the people were five feet tall and two feet wide. The clothes, every bit of material used by the characters, are used ones, mostly faded to the point of being non-distinguishable in colour. It was possible to relate to every single character in the film and observe all their doings with interest. And all through the first half an hour of the film I was conscious of the fact that no main character had been introduced and i was still trying to guess what the title of the film was all about.But I was  watching it with involvement.When a contrastingly good looking pair of young lovers are shown, they seem to be intrusive and their presence is barely tolerable.

 'Azhagar samiyin kuthirai' turned out to be a unique watch.  There are some unforgettable characters in the film. The kid who notices everything and questions grown ups with amazing logic; Azhagarsamy, the utterly convincing country bumpkin, with his pot belly, shock of curly hair and boundless energy; the spunky middle aged widow who thrashes the village lecher with a broom stick and defends the main character; the malayala mandharavadi (magician from kerala), the policeman in plain clothes who joins the bogus magician in exhorting money from the superstitious villagers, the smart and sensible Inspector of police. These characters are depicted by actors who not only look their parts but add life and power to them with their realistic portrayal.
You never know what to expect as the film proceeds. The narration seems so real that it is as unpredictable as any given day in our lives. The mystery of the lost horse is solved and peace and plenty are restored and there are two happy marriages. But this story has two romances, one of the standard variety involving the good looking pair, who elope from the village to escape the tension an inter-caste marriage could create. The second one, the cream filling in this cake is undeniably Azhagarsamy's romance with the beautiful girl and their affection for each other.
The locales have been tastefully selected and the camera moves along the winding paths of the hills used by village pedestrians and hovers over village landmarks where the quaint asbestos roofs are held in place with stones in a poor hamlet. A very subtle satire on rural Indian life, this film has you laughing aloud all along. Worth watching was what a friend told me when he recommended this film and to me and I second him heartily

What is the logic here?

Since my previous post was pretty dumb, I decided to stir up things a bit.

I have a question for transexuals. Why do you claim to be women? Does the lack of manhood entitle you to womanhood?

Lots of sympathies for your not getting your due. Our society should include you in all kinds of group projects provided you are qualified and willing to work. We should be ready to recognize your talents and value your contributions.
On my part, I can adopt you into my family if you are ready to share my values and be responsible, hardworking, affectionate and creative. But I will not accept you as women. Why do you dress like women when you look like men? Those clothes don't suit you.

If you don't have male hormones, does it mean that you have a uterus and can bear children? Is woman hood nothing but the lack of manhood? Is there no other way to draw attention to your plight?  Can't you wear male clothes that suit you better and face your complex issues?
When a woman has her uterus removed due to cancer or something else, does she pretend she is a man? Will you accept her as a man?  NO, because she is not a man. Why do you pretend to be women? Women may wear trousers for comfort or fashion....but not because they have an identity crisis.Everybody has problems , some simple, some complex and some that cannot be resolved. I cannot understand your problem and want to know why you behave the way you do.
 

A very exhausting week! Reasons could  be as follows.
1. Doing unfamiliar work
2. Working out without a trainer
3. Eating infrequently

4. Inability to sleep
5. Working without a break
6.Working on mundane tasks
7. forgetting to listen to music while doing mundane tasks
8. interacting with emotionally exhausting friends, who have high blood pressure and have a tendency to yell and be rude.
9.trying to make them work on a project together and networking constantly on the phone.
It could any of these and I particularly suspect reason 8, because i don't usually get involved in emotional dramas and now am in the core of one.  Of course, reason 4 is an equally taxing problem... so....

how i helped two girls

The first girl is a student from a local community college. I teach English for school drop outs who can get a diploma from the university if they did a one year course in this college. ok? This particular day one of the girls seemed to be out of sorts. She is a tall, very skinny and dark girl; a very intelligent and a little unsocial, kinda stubborn girl. ok?
Raji: What's up ? you seem out of sorts
Antony: (that's her name) (looked at me without expression)
Muthu:(that's also a girl's name) her brother beat her
Raji: Why?
Geeta: He wants her to come to thirunelveli and get married immediately

Muthu: She cried all morning
Raji: you refused to go with him?
Anthony nodded
Raji: What did your mother do? She did not stop him?
Anthony: They both beat me. They beat me all through Saturday and Sunday.
Raji: What!!!! How could you let them? How can you allow anyone to beat  you ( I rephrased this several times like, " NO one should touch you, no one has the right to touch you blah blah ) ( ofcourse i didnt say it emotionally  but slowly and dramatically)
Anthony just stared at me. A 15 year old boy sitting next to me kept nodding his head , which encouraged me.
Raji: You should glare at him. Did you try that?
Anthony: If I did that he would beat me for that too. You are a girl and you dare to glare at an elder brother? That's what they would say.
Raji : So what if he still beats you. He will hesitate for a second. If you accept his beatings silently, he would go on beating. You should not let him beat you ....( again repeated this 2 0r 3 times and again the boy nodded, more to himself than to me.)


THE NEXT DAY.....
Anthony has styled her hair with a clip and looks charged
Raji: Hey what happened? Your brother left?
Anthony: Ma'am I bit him when he beat me. First I tried to glare at him. He said," How dare you glare at a brother?" and came to hit me, then I caught his hand and bit it.
Raji: Did he beat you after that?
Anthony: No, ma'am.. they were quiet and didn't beat me.
Raji: That's great. See... I told you...but you should be careful now. If you are careless, they will try to hurt you again.



End of that story
Then again I helped another girl write a mail  to her boy friend and dump him. In this case too the girl was an affected party.  Since I can't give the details, this goes into my CV in the most brief form as possible.Ofcourse, am messaging her a couple of times a day to check if she is ok.

End of both stories. interesting, huh?

personal evolution

I think people in their twenties are the best behaved... teenagers want to impress others... preteens are super smart though...people in their twenties seem to have time for some soul searching as well as the mind set for an objective appraisal of the world. They are conscious that they are adults and underplay their teen tendencies. But people in their thirties are often obnoxious, and more so when they become secure in their careers.I too was a sickeningly right about everything busy body in my thirties. People in this age group seem more prone to make mischief. Even movie villains, particularly vicious ones, are often people in their thirties. The forties and the mellowing.. never felt so comfortable with myself. Not that I am a better person, just a better behaved one, though....

Self- discovery

8This is a continuous process and as the wise would warn can comprise fascinating finds as well as horrifying heartbreaks. In my case I found these things about myself over the years.
1. When school re-opened in seventh standard, I saw that all my friends had grown taller, all except me...and realized that I would not be tall like Hema Miss when I grew up, but short like Usha Miss.
2. Poetry gives me a high..this I found out in std eight.
3. In class nine I made several discoveries...I could make people laugh, I'd be very happy if I studied English, I could make friends easily...public speaking is not difficult....I loved writing...being vindictive and hurtful to others makes us feel worse, never helps
4. Dirty jokes were supposed to be cool in class ten. I was repelled by them and was an alien among teenagers that year.
5. I discovered Yoga, breathing exercises and the importance of exercise in general in class 10
6. I found out that making people laugh was somehow not as interesting as it initially was in class 11.
7. I also found out that I hated it when others were ragged. I learnt to fight for the underdog in class 11.
8. I was a rebel and knew it in class 12.
9. I discovered that there were thousands of beautiful, creative and talented girls, when I joined  college and that I had the power to do anything i wanted.
10. I understood the meaning of the proverb, "Fools rush in, where angels fear to tread" when I got married.

Let me take a break. Other important things that i discovered could be summarized with the following words: love, love, lots of love, my growing skills of persuasion, awareness of  my poor financial status and that I had been a fantastic counsellor to myself as much as I had been to others and that proper disciplined writing can be more motivating than random writing in blogs. hehehe

Dried tomatoes

Most of the things that i write about in this blog are things I thought of  a long time back. They don't reflect my life or what i do...they don't give the smallest clue to my current reality. It is very difficult for me to treat my blog as a journal. They can be compared to sun dried tomatoes and are tasty titbits...
One of the reasons I dislike writing about the present is the aversion I feel for some blogs that i read, that show the writer to be sane, creative, observant, smart, loving, intuitive, puzzled by the oh so weird others and daring, while he or she would have exposed their crummiest, worm-like and craziest sides to us in real life.
Another reason is my habit of not sharing my private thoughts with anyone. I am not talking about  my numerous opinions that I flaunt around freely for all to hear and see.

But of late I have come across some blogs where men and women document some parts of their lives, not just the picture perfect ones, but their ordinariness and the validity of their being important to themselves, in spite of being ordinary, in such simple and touching ways that I realized that there is a freshness to this approach, which is worth emulating. For instance, I saw a blog where a lady is talking about how she baked a cake after she lost her job. She had posted pictures of the process of cake making and explained how the cake turned out as well as it did.Another lady had put up pictures of some rashes that she was getting on her face and how all kinds of treatments had failed to help her.It was so sad. And of course, there is a student of mine, whose writing appears to be such an instant response to things around him that it prompted me to write this blog.