Problem with Realism?

Now that all the pundits have passed judgement over 7/g Rainbow Colony I wanted to give vent to the urge to write my opinion on the movie and the response it has drawn.Despite of its stupendous success at the box office both the critics and the general public have been mixed in their response to the movie. The beauty of 7/g is its realism. The characters are normal people we encounter in day to day life. The protagonist Kathir( Ravi Krishna)is not an all conquering paragon of male hood, but an ordinary middle class young man with no special god given trait.It is indeed his normalness which endears the character to ones heart, because one is made to think, “Hey that could be me!”. The wastral activities that Kathir and his friends indulge in are things which most of us have indulged in to a lesser or a greater extent at some point of time in our youth. I believe that 7/g succeeds in making the prudes in our society feel uncomfortable, because here is a movie more close to reality than they would like it to be. There are people who would rather believe that Adam and Eve have not yet indulged in the ‘Original Sin’, than face truth portrayed without gloss. A perfect love story? 7/g is anything but one. There is no love at first site. The female lead Anita(Sonia Agarwal) despises Kathir. And Kathir does not help matters by his misplaced shows of machismo or the lack of it. Once in love he is like a loyal puppy and discovers ingenious and needless to say silly ways of conveying his love(which only makes Anita despise and misunderstand Kathir even more).As he himself admits “yanake teringe love iduthan.ongalekke pudicha madri roja povun greeting cardum vetchu sollala enake teriyadu’’(this is the way I know to express love. I dont know to sugarcoat it with a greeting card and a rose). Are we made to accept that some women expect there men to be Adonises? Finally? This again is too close to reality for some of our likes. Songs.One needs to realise that these are an integral part of our cinema and when used intelligently as in 7/g ,enhance the story and its progression rather than making it stagnate. As in his previous film Kadhal Konden(2003) the director Selvaraghavan uses songs to reflect the mood of his characters and situations. Premarital sex.For the love of god it happens!One would not be mistaken in thinking that we live in a society of blue eyed virgins,the way certain sections of people(flattering themselves by self imposing their selves as the moral guardians of our society?)have reacted to this one scene in the movie. Or is there a problem with the heroine initiating a sexual advance in the land of Sita? Rather than appreciating Selvaraghavan’s guts for portraying something which is quite common place but still a taboo,there are those who criticise it as ‘soft porn’.The very same people digest a Hollywood couple shown sleeping together as portrayal of reality! Double standards or what? In short 7/g Rainbow Colony is about you and me.The real boy next door and not his romanticised celluloid alterego. As the director says, “You walk on the street for a mile, you may bump into at least 50 or 60 of them(young men). I would say 70 percent to 80 percent of the guys you meet in Chennai are like my hero.” If you appreciate honest and good cinema 7/g is a definite must watch.” Truth is beauty, beauty truth”-one is reminded of John Keats’s immortal line as one leaves the theatre.