Raja's read only memories

At first sight, the killing of two Indian fishermen by Italian marines off the coast of Kerala and the murder of three Pakistanis by an American government official exactly about a year ago seem to be starkly different. However, scratch the surface and the similarities can be startling: There was an absolute denial of wrongdoing on the part of the accused (for obvious reasons) – the American, Raymond Davis, which it would be revealed later that he was a covert CIA agent, claimed that he fired in self-defence; the Italian marines, too, made a similar claim, despite others aboard the fishing trawler asserting that they weren’t in possession of arms. Note that Indian fishermen are not allowed by law to carry arms. Davis and the marines, despite their “innocence”, were incarcerated swiftly. Their respective homelands, the USA and Italy respectively, swung into action, demanding their immediate release citing international human rights ...

Touching upon competitive spirit, the legendary writer George Orwell, in an essay dated 1945, had described sport as war minus the shooting. He could very well be referring to the ongoing veiled battle between two of India's English dailies. When “India’s national newspaper since 1878” and the “Largest read English daily in the world” decide to slug it out over Chennai’s newspaper readership, rest assured that the battle would spill over to the TV media, as was witnessed recently. Cheeky indeed were the ads that thumbed the nose at one another; though, few were in doubt over who the target was. To the uninitiated, the two newspapers – The Hindu and The Times of India (TOI) , respectively – have modus operandi that are as identical as chalk is to cheese, or uppu (salt) is to upma , a South Indian snack. The "war" in question is the race to get hold of the average Chennaiite, and eventually the Indian, newspaper reader’s attention. And no, this piece of opinion isn...

Bollywood fare, served with Tamil niceties When the recipes of Gobi Manchurian and Chicken Tikka can transcend national barriers and become a rage elsewhere, can’t we have different versions of an intra-national rage: a remake of a successful Bollywood movie in another language, for instance? Director Shankar answers the question with Nanban (friend), a faithful reproduction, nay a spitting image, of its original, the Aamir Khan-starrer 3 idiots , comprising its highs and lows with equal measure. The hero and the anti-heroes The flaws in our higher education system, especially engineering, and campus life unite to form a heady theme, with Vijay, reprising Aamir Khan’s cool dude-cum-Buddha-like role in the original, offering ingenuous solutions to many a conundrum. Did he levitate on screen? I don’t know; however, I am not willing to bet against it. Jeeva and Srikanth (after a hiatus), portraying Sharman Joshi and Madhavan’s roles in the original respectively, are hi...

It is OK to smoke. Yes, you read that right. If you have started pondering over this stupefying declaration, the right side of your brain is functioning well. So raise a toast to yourself. However, before anyone decides to disprove this statement, I urge them to finish reading this piece of literature (if it can be called that). Going by the Supreme Court's not so recent, and much violated, smoking ban in public places, I am supposed to get nothing but clean, fresh air every time I step out. And therein lay the paradox.   I decide to wake up early one day and venture out. However, I realise that I need milk for my morning coffee and head for the nearest shop. “Mornings are ideal to get some fresh air and rejuvenate the respiratory system....” I remember telling myself as I open the door, when cigarette smoke hits my nostrills. I crane my neck to see the offender; it’s my neighbour, his head surrounded by a haze of smoke, just as a halo around a god. Not only has he risen earl...

Reports that a Russian court has dismissed the ban on a commentary titled The Bhagawad Gita As It Is , based on the Bhagawad Gita, a holy scripture of the Hindus, reach the heavens, where Lord Vishnu, a form of whom – Lord Krishna – was one of the protagonists in the scripture; the other being his disciple, Arjuna. We now attempt to hypothesise what would have been a conversation between the Lord and his disciple in the wake of the dismissal of the ban. O Lord, forget me, save the Gita from the controversies clouding it Arjuna: O Mahavishnu, have you been acquainted with the latest developments? Lord Vishnu: My child, you seem to be agitated, as you were at the start of the battle at Kurukshetra. What is it that bothers you now? A: The ban on the Bhagawad Gita. L:  Oh, the trial in a Russian court against what was once an old conversation between us? Do tell me, O Arjuna, what has happened now? I must confess that I have failed to update myself on happenings in the ...

Appeared in City Express , the daily supplement of The New Indian Express , on Tuesday, December 27, 2011 A still from Rajapattai... Has the director bitten more than what he can chew? Despite having an enviable star cast, and a noted director and music director at its helm, Rajapattai (king's way), a masala movie in essence, has a storyline that makes the viewer realise that stifling yawns is more daunting than playing rapid-fire chess. No surprises in this love plot 'Annal' Murugan (Vikram) is a gym instructor who aspires to become a villain. A righteous person, he saves Dakshinamurthy (Vishwanath) from goons who are out to bump him off. It transpires that Dakshinamurthy was fleeing his greedy son (Avinash), who wants him killed for his wealth. In offering support to the geriatric, Murugan makes many an enemy, and by extension a slew of fight sequences follow. In exchange, the senior citizen helps his protector in his conquest for love, who is cupid-struck wi...

Flipping through the newspaper the other day, a report caught my eye, for reasons far too obvious. It was titled “Former Israeli president jailed for rape”. The article detailed how the former President, Moshe Katsav, harassed his women colleagues sexually, including rape, while serving in different capacities, and how he was forced to step down when matters came to a head that his continuance in the office of Israel Presidency was untenable. And yes, he did, all along the while maintain his innocence, to  no avail. The irony was that he had to begin his jail term not long after his 66 th birthday. A fact one needs to highlight here (bold, italicise and underline) is that he was forced to step down from office to face trial, and get convicted eventually. Contrast this with some events that happened in our country: a) A woman went missing in Rajasthan; Bhanwari Devi to the uninitiated. Although the needle of suspicion pointed to senior Congress minister Mahipal Maderna, the gov...

Bellary, synonymous with illegal mining, rampant corruption and ex-minister Gali Janardhana Reddy, is in the limelight, for the right reasons, for a change: it is all set to get its representative to the Vidhana Soudha, the seat of power of the Karnataka Assembly, after it went to the hustings recently. If C and HTML programming and even mundane tasks like cooking can have a dummy’s guide or a dictionary, then the chequered past of the iron-rich district of Karnataka, too, can have one. So, here goes: A – stands for AP Mines and Mineral Development Corporation (APMMDC), whose director V D Rajagopal (not to be confused with this author!) was arrested in connection with illegal sanction of mining leases to the behemoth that is Obulapuram Mining Company, owned by jailed former minister G Janardhana Reddy; also stands for Anantpur district in AP where OMC was also said to have obtained the permits for mining; also stands for ‘able independent’ which JD(S) state president H D Kumaraswam...

Mayakkam Enna , a captivating love story Bolstered by sterling performances by actors Dhanush and Richa Gangopadhyay, Mayakkam Enna (What’s the dizziness) – a romantic drama directed by Dhanush’s brother Selvaragavan – is a movie that comes out with flying colours on all counts. Mayakkam...’s biggest pluses are its ability to sustain the viewer’s interest well into the second half (although it does get a bit predictable by then) a pellucid first-half and a background score by G V Prakash Kumar that gels with the movie. The story is woven so expertly that you would forgiven for being lulled into thinking that this is not your usual, hard-hitting movie that Selvaragavan so specialises in, when, bang... a string of surprises bombard the viewer.                 Wielding the lens is becoming the wannabe profession of Kollywood’s heroes, amply demonstrated by Jeeva in Ko. So does Karthik (Dhanush), an orph...

Shall I aim for a Grammy next? Actor Dhanush strikes a pose while recording for the song Why This Kolaveri , Di ? If SMSs and online status updates carry quirky messages such as ‘cow-u, cow-u, holy cow-u, I want you here now-u’, you can blame it on the actor-music director duo of Dhanush and Anirudh Ravichander, the people behind the hit song Why This Kolaveri, Di. Bangalore: Outlandish as it may seem, you would hardly expect the singer of a chartbuster that is doing the rounds in social networking sites to completely play down the phenomenon. But, actor Dhanush - better known as the son-in-law of Superstar Rajinikanth - who is also the singer of the latest internet sensation that is Why This Kolaveri, Di (which approximates to, why this murderous rage, girl), chooses to do exactly that. "We cannot plan such things. It was an honest effort," he insists.   The actor says he does not know why he had to zero upon the word kolaveri as the catchphrase for the song....

Should ever a book titled ‘The Art of Deception by Flattery’ be authored, A R Murugadoss’ 7 am arivu (the seventh sense) would probably rank atop in its index; it could even be a case study on how to crash land viewers’ expectations after building it up to a crescendo. The movie begins with a flashback, when we are told that a Pallava princeling (Surya) migrated to China and became the Shaolin master we know today as Bodhidharma.  Six-pack that packs a punch Cut to the present. Subha Srinivasan (Shruti Hasan – actor Kamal Hasan’s daughter making her Tamil debut) is a student of genetic engineering whose research causes the jitters to the People’s Republic of China, forcing them to send a spy, Dong Lee (Hollywood actor Johnny Nguyen, who was also a stunt double in Spiderman and Spiderman-2 ) to bump her off and spread an epidemic in India. (Are we taking a cue from Hollywood, which during the Cold War era vilified then USSR?) Thrown in the conundrum is Aravind (Surya again) ...

What you are about to read is not an original article, for it is an agglomeration of media extracts of the health prognosis and treatment of two of our political leaders - former Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa and AICC president Sonia Gandhi. H igh blood pressure and sugar levels, severe body pain and stress are just some of the ailments jailed former Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa was suffering from. If ever there was an incident to exemplify that this was the age of information, it was the ignominious turn of events leading to the arrest of this person. The charade that followed when he went missing and was forced to show up only when a court decided to issue a non-bailable warrant against him could have inspired a score of satire writers.   He was remanded in judicial custody, when he mysteriously developed chest pain, and was expeditiously shifted to the Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences. Doctors vied with one another to give sound bytes t...

Chugging along, rather belatedly T his morning I was jolted by an advertisement in our all our dailies, and no, I am not decrying the falling standards in journalism – paid news, content that could have gone under the watchful eyes of an editor or poor quality of printing. Reading it made me wonder whether the Indian bureaucracy, wallowing largely in insipidity, was handed a crash course in sarcasm. Had it been the first of April, I would have taken it for a joke without batting an eyelid.   The advertisement in question was titled “Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) congratulates Bangalore Metropolitan Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) on the LAUNCH of NAMMA METRO” (produced verbatim). This statement could qualify as the biggest misnomer of the century, with one unwieldy, utterly mismanaged, politics-ridden organisation lauding another of its ilk for launching a service, which among other glaring acts of omission, commenced work on a project after a full-year’s delay wh...

Sadananda Gowda & Manmohan Singh - Different at the outset, a lot in common Karnataka Chief Minister D V Sadanda Gowda, at a BJP meeting in Belgaum on October 10, said that he met the “accidental prime minister” Manmohan Singh recently in Delhi and empathised with him as he too was an “accidental chief minister” - a statement that was, predictably, met with instant laughter and choreographed applause. If anything, Gowda was at his subtle best in conveying the truth. None expected either the Oxford educated Singh or the incumbent chief minister of Karnataka to be pitch forked into political prominence as they find themselves in today, and were done so only after other options in the respective party armouries were either exhausted or impractical. Despite them being their party’s mascots - their soft demeanours vital to the survival of the two parties - the decisions and statements of the two continue to be viewed as that of their ‘supposed’ masters, Sonia Gandhi for Sing...