70. Madras, Madras
Yes, I just got back from my annual trip to Madras. Like two thousand other folks before me, even I feel compelled to write about it. Warning: Since I am congenitally irreverent, you might find me deflating some of the typical holy cows of Tamil Nadu.
It was that time of the year when the stores doled out calendars to their favorite customers. And one of the guaranteed pleasures of Madras life is the glossy, 'Rani Muthu Daily Sheet' calendar, with a picture of Lord Muruga smiling shyly at you. You want to know when 'Marana Yogam' occurs on September 13 th or when they drag the chariot in Thiruvarur, just flip the pages. Pretty soon, they might even release the darned thing on a CD ROM. And already rival calendars have appeared on the scene and some even include Trivia and tidbit du jour on their sheets. Along with all the religious events and almanac specifics, the Rani Muthu calendar even mentions that February 20 th is 'Selvi Jayalalitha's birthday' ! Surely, a sign of the times we live in.
Talking of birthdays, it was Rajnikanth's birthday sometime in December and even though Bharatiyar's birthday was also around the same time (I believe), he lost out to the celluloid star. Every TV channel, with the exception of JJ TV, had a special on the 'super star' to mark the occassion. The Doordarshan stole the show with an exclusive two hour special. In the evolutionary chain, if Vijayakanth is poor man's Rajnikanth and Murali is poor man's Vijayakanth and Chinni Jayanth is poor man's Murali, the person who comes right at the end is Sharat Kumar, who recently jumped ships and declared himself to be the 'Number one disciple' of Rajnikanth. Sycophancy reached such low levels that some channel even interviewed Sharat Kumar as a Rajni substitute.
Of course, nothing substantive came out of any of the interviews or birthday specials. The 'super star' refused to say anything about his political ambitions except to generally complain and bitch about the way things were. Of course, we all know the Newton's law of TamilNadu politics - that for every political party, there is an equal and opposite political party within that political party. So no party appeared attractive to him.
Rajni delivered his Muthu dialog, paraphrasing the Bhagvad Gita that he would appear at the 'appropriate time'. Then there were lengthy excerpts from Rajni movies - mostly those war-cry songs, (featuring Rajni, the heroine and a huge army of dancing extras) aimed at his imaginary enemies, insulting them with 'vaadaa', 'podaa' and other irreverant second person invectives.
Talking yet again of birthdays, Vairamuthu actually stuck a huge foot in his mouth at Kamal Hassan's birthday party.
Of course, all of you know about Vairamuthu. He is the author of such memorable lines like "Sakkarai valli kizhangu, Samaindhadhu eppodhu ?" (Translation: "Sweet potato, when did you reach puberty ?") and "Adi, kizhinchi poyidum thavilu." (Translation: "Hey, the membrane of the drum will rip off.."). It seems in the recent past, Vairamuthu has been facing increasing criticism (including from me !) and finally, unable to take the heat any more, he chose to lash out at his critics - and unfortunately for him, he chose Kamal Hassan's birthday party to warn his critics of dire consequences.
Opinion polls were conducted immediately afterward by 'Kumudham' etc to gauge what everyone thought. Not surprisingly, many people found Vairamuthu's recent movie songs to be gratuitously obscene, tasteless and generally unremarkable. And given he is a public figure who peddles his ware for popular consumption he shouldn't be surprised by such criticism. And at any rate, he shouldn't have ruined someone else's birthday party. And this is a person who is so immensely talented he could enthrall you with his passion and command of the language. You must read some of his modern poetry. Sheer pleasure !
And guess who wrote the following:
"The clothing that covers (her) breasts
Is like a Blinder covering a mad elephant's eyes"
If you guessed Thiruvalluvar (Kural 1087) then you are right! By the way, check out the third part of Thirukkural - the so-called 'Inbam' or 'pleasure' chapter, which is never taught in high schools - for such erotic gems. In fact, he can beat Vairamuthu at his own game. Too bad we have a rather saintly opinion of Thiruvalluvar. After reading this chapter, now I am quite convinced that Thiruvalluvar is actually a 'cool dude' for sure ! It is really hard for me to believe that someone who churned out zillions of words of wisdom in a fortune-cookie like capsulated form could also come up with such X-rated nuggets.
In fact, I don't even think he looked anything like his ubiquitous portraits hanging from Madras City buses - beard, sagely posture and a cross-belt of sacred thread. Does anyone know if there is even an authentic picture or painting of Thiruvalluvar or is he simply deified by the subsequent generations ?
When I was in Madras, the entire city was decked up for the SAF(South Asian Federation) games - the other countries which took part included the Maldives, Bhutan, Bangladesh and so forth. As someone pointed out, this was probably the only way India could win gold medals. The organization and the amount of money spent were almost olympic in scope. The opening ceremony was massive, with songs and dances - almost straight out of a tamil movie. Even then, symptomatic of things in India, perfection was never quite achieved - there were audio failures, poor video work and simple mis-steps in dances.
At the Games headquarters, the international sporting delegates - at least the most sensitive among them - were welcomed by a huge banner proclaiming 'Welcome delicates'.
Shiny Wilson was awarded a Maruti car by Her Highness. It was quite a deserving award for someone who has been on the athletic scene for so long and who is a role model for a whole new generation. (although I wonder if she and her swimmer husband, with their big athletic frames can sit in the car comfortably together. They should perhaps remove the front seats)
A fat, ugly lion was chosen as the mascot of the game and was christened 'Leo' - a la Apu. There were posters of Leo plastered every ten yards and there was even a grotesque, larger than life, Leo toy on the beach. My friend Venkat (full name withheld for privacy reasons !) was the one who pointed out that if you take off the lion's mane ('pidari') the face of the mascot looked ditto like that of Jayalalitha's. His theory was that the cut-out artists are now so used to drawing Jayalalitha's face that now that is the only face they are capable of drawing.
TV watching in Madras can be an experience, now that cable dealers get forty or fifty channels. You want live NFL games, Kannada movies or a clone of Oprah Winfrey show, all you have to do is flip the channel. At any given time, you are guaranteed to watch 'Ottagathai kattikko' song in some channel or the other. There is always a top ten countdown going on in every channel, except that each channel has its own top ten list. Usually the 'Top ten' list is hosted by a post-college age woman trying to pass off as a teenager. And the hostess typically has a high pitched voice (like the generic dub voice in Bharatiraja movies) and tries to talk in 'convent tamil', while seductively squirming and stretching. I guess Priya was the one who started it. (Priya's hairstyle - if you can even call it that - is becoming more and more like that of Einstein's)
There is such an overabundance of Koundamani-Senthil comedy (?) footage on TV that even a sensible, family-value type can become a raving Senthil fan after just a week of watching Madras TV. The JJ TV broadcast a summary of important world events that occurred in 1995, including the terror bombing in Oklahoma City IN JAPAN !
Then there are those quiz shows. One of them featured four teams of what seemed like high school, rather, 'convent' students. The quizmaster asked:
"Fill in the blanks. 'Ikkaraikku akkarai -----' ('Grass is ----- on the other side')
Team 1: "?!?!!?" (= perplexed looks) followed by the buzzer.
At this point, the host decided to give a hint. "It is a color".
Team # 2 thought for a second and said 'Blue'. The quiz master passed the question to the third team which said 'white' and the fourth team cleverly passed the question ! I am not making this up. I saw this myself. The dumb kids didn't even know that the right answer is 'black'. (just kidding !)
The following is a second-hand tidbit. Also from a quiz show, and this one was a General knowledge quiz show.
The host: "What was the biggest scientific invention of Alfred Nobel ?"
Participant: "The Nobel prizes".
The host: (derisive laughter) "No, no. Of course not. The answer is atom bomb......"
Now for our own whiz-bang GK question.
Question: If you dig a hole at Madras straight through the center of the earth, where will you emerge ?
The answer apparently, is Lima, Peru. (I haven't verified it, of course. I am too weak in history)
I acknowledge Nattu as the source of this question (and answer) And I confess that I have 'kadichchified' poor N. D. Ramesh with several variations on this question. ("If you dig a hole in Pondichery....")
"Digging a hole through the center of the earth at Madras isn't such a bad idea" said another friend "Maybe we should do it and drain the Koovam river into Peru. Of course, kindergarten physics tells us that the river will simply execute Simple Harmonic Oscillations..., but then, the politicians won't find out."
Along the same vein, the smelly, dirty Buckingham Canal is now almost completely dry and the elevated train ('Sky train') has finally started running in Madras right over the now defunct canal. The trains are just the same old electric units and only two stations are functional. But, the stations are supposed to be really attractive with shopping centers located at the ground level. In fact, they are thinking of renting out the space underneath the elevated track as warehouse area. They better rent it out to perfume manufacturers.
What is a trip to Madras if you didn't catch some of the 'Tamlish' that is spoken and written all around you ? My neighbor told me that if I wanted to go 'marketing', then T. Nagar is the best place in Madras. The sign on a van read 'Hurt Never; Help Ever', whatever that means. And an obituary claimed that on the 12 th December Mrs Philips finally slept with Jesus. And then there are english essays with patently tamil idioms like "What does the donkey know of camphor". Voices are always 'mellifluous', services are always 'yeoman' and old actors are always 'thespians'.
Here is an excerpt from 'The Reporter's diary' column of 'The Hindu' (dated 18 December, 1995), an exercise in 'Tamlish'.
"...A pilot officer of the IAF tried recently to know his weight on a machine at the Tambaram Railway Station kept near ticket counter. The one rupee coin was returned by the machine in the first try, through the slot through which the ticket is normally ejected.
The officer decided to give it another try. This time, the machine made a whirring sound as if the ticket was being printed. It was then total silence. Not used to the inefficient ways of civilian machines, the officer tried to bang some sense into the weight indicator. The machine continued to maintain silence - giving neither the ticket nor the money back."
My English translation: (sticking very closely to the original author's intentions, although perhaps losing some of his intended humor)
"...Recently, an officer of the IAF tried to find out his weight at the Tambaram Railway station with the help of a coin-operated weighing machine situated near the ticket counter. On his first try, the machine simply returned his one rupee coin, that too through the slot meant for the ticket. The officer then decided to give it another try. This time, the machine made some noise as if it was generating the ticket - but then, quickly ceased all activity and stopped dead. Not used to such high inefficiency of the civilian machines, the officer even banged the machine, but to no avail. He neither got his ticket nor his money back."
(If I really had to write a story about such an inane incident, I would have simply said, "A dude from IAF got ripped off by a coin-operated weighing machine.")
And finally, here is a parting question: What is in common between Jiji, Gemini Ganesan's daughter (remember this one movie phenom from the movie 'Ninaivellaam Nitya' ?) and Kani Mozhi, Karunanidhi's daughter ?
The answer: Both of them are now journalists working for The Hindu/Frontline.
