Raja's read only memories

Bittu (Tamil slang for porn) movies in Tamil Nadu may have finally found a worthy competitior: TV programmes doling out sex advice. Prior to the advent of internet, titillation in TN would have meant ‘record’ dance bars – where women in skimpy dresses gyrate to item numbers in front of raucous crowds– or theatres screening dubbed movies of the soft-porn virtuoso Shakeela. Today, it might mean turning on the tube late at night to watch a sexologist hearing out woebegone callers and advising them on everything related to sex – from intercourse to periods and masturbation. What could have been a healthy trend gets reduced to a caricature, and even worse, a misinformation campaign. And that – for a state that has made remarkable progress in curbing the incidence of AIDS (remember, it was once bracketed with the likes of South Africa) and showed the rest of India how welfare schemes for transgenders could be implemented – is a blot of gargantuan proportions. The “professional” opin...

Households in Bangalore may have witnessed a sudden spurt in the number of Tamil cable TV channels – virtually all and sundry – that they have started receiving in their set-top boxes. There is a strong possibility that this could be linked to the upcoming general elections, by providing much-needed eyeballs to poll campaigns of TN’s political parties Tamil TV channel viewers in Bangalore have never had it so good. Over the last couple of weeks or so, the number of these channels has nearly trebled – from around 10 to nearly 30. Viewers who would have to otherwise restrict their options to those offered by the big four -- Sun, Jaya, Kalaignar and Star Vijay -- now have a smattering of options to put the TV remote control to further use. As if this weren't enough, any talk of subscribers being charged extra has gone unmentioned, at least till now. Viewers on the other side of the Cauvery have now started confronting hitherto unknown channels such as Sathiyam TV, Moon TV (...

Logos of the leading Tamil TV news channels Puthiya Thalaimurai (top) and Sun News Of late, TV news channels, and not sitcoms, seem to have become a source of comic relief. Not that this is a new phenomenon, but it has been rather pronounced of late. The other day I decided to tune in to a Tamil TV news channel and boy, I wasn’t disappointed. The channel was running a talk show, receiving grievance calls from public who had yarns of woe to relate, especially those relating to governance (in particular its deficiencies). One such caller said how sewage percolating into water supply lines in the suburbs of Chennai was proving to be a health hazard. It was the charade that followed that would prove to be a bounty of mirth. The caller then nearly choked on his tears, as the talk-show host listened on intently, asserting that this would not have happened if Kalaignar (DMK chief M Karunanidhi, to the uninitiated) was the chief minister. The host perked up when the caller ...

Disclaimer: This post is not to cast aspersions on Mata Amritanandamayi or her Ashram. It is for the readers to decide their allegiance. So there A somewhat inconspicuous sentence in a report on the latest controversy involving the Mata Amritandamayi Ashram in Kerala, published in the National Standard this Sunday, caught my eye. It read “… prominent dailies in Kerala remained silent on the issue”. To the unititated, the “issue” was the alleged sexual exploitation and promiscuity involving senior members of the ashram, on which a foreign national had chosen to author a book. The person in question had been an attendant to Amma (as Mata Amritanandamayi is popularly referred to) for close to two decades. I am yet to read the book, but I am positive that the revelations in it may not really be a powder keg. Going by the rate at which godmen and their institutions are involved in controversies, the day may not be far-off when they get slotted along with corrupt politicos (or a...