Untold Story

Ramesh * is an upcoming sports writer working in a major cricket based website as its Assistant Editor. He is an alumnus of The School- K.F.I where I studied from class 8 to 12.He passed out the year before I joined. His is a tale of hope with a fairytale ending to add the icing on the cake. Ramesh wrote poetry when he was in high school and had wanted to do his graduation in English. His parents forced him to prepare for IIT entrance exams.He was not remotely interested in any course which this institution had to offer. He flunked the entrances and won the immense displeasure of his parents. He was thrust into doing Bsc Physics at the Loyola College. He battled his way through depression and pangs of self-doubt through his years in college. He got hooked onto drugs and managed to write a few publishable poems. Somehow he also managed to get the gold medal for Bsc Physics. Thinking this would console his parents he told his father about the prize. His father merely told him not to sound as if he was an IIT gold medallist. Ramesh was shattered. He joined a new cricket portal 22yards.com* as a reporter. He covered both regional and international matches in the Indian subcontinent. Slowly he made his way up and shifted to the Bombay office of his website. About a year back he became Assitant Editor of his organization. In a recent talk show on NDTV he was one of the panalists. The underdog had arrived and I felt mighty happy for him. I don’t know Ramesh personally .He was the longhaired, pony tailed, hippie looking, ex-student whom I used to catch a glimpse of during alumni meetings. My knowledge of his life is solely from word of mouth tales I have heard from my seniors and mainly from our English teacher in school Sumitra Akka^. But I see in his story universal hope for all of us that success may not always come in the most obvious form. I wonder if there is a single person who can claim that his or her life has been a bed of roses with no disappointments. Acceptance of life comes with the acceptance that failures and disappointments are a part of it. There is a Ramesh inside all of us and as long as we remain honest and sincere in our endeavors we shall triumph in the final analysis however distant this may seem at present. * names changed ^ in the school where I studied we call our teachers akka and anna. title inspired by the name of a tamil film,solla marande kadai

Music review / Original Soundtrack of Pudupettai

Lyrics na.muthukumar Music Composed by Yuvan Shankar Raja Recorded at Bangkok orchestra a selvaraghavan film

Trend breakers must be appreciated and the OST of Pudupettai is certainly one. It is out of the box and in tune literally with the gangster/underworld milieu the movie is set in. Yange area the rap song for instance captures the scorn of a typical lower middle class person for the upwardly mobile. Nerupu Vayinil sung by Kamalhassan in his trademark base voice is another track in which Yuvan Shankar Raja has done justice in creating music capturing the violent theme of the film.

However, tracks like, Survival of the fittest, the instrumental theme song of the film, for instance comes across as pretentious and I am sure have been generously inspired (plagiarised?) from Hollywood themes. While these instrumental pieces definitely sound good the listener is left wondering about how original they are. For the uninitiated nenjodu kalandire was partially lifted from a TheCorrs song called Runaway. Walking through the rainbow the theme song of …Rainbow Colony is supposed to be copied from none other than Ilayaraaja (Yuvan's father!!!)’s BGM for the film Johny. With this kind of history one tends to become a bit sceptical.

My favourite song in the album is oru naalil, which Yuvan has sung himself. It is fresh, melodious and stands out. Full of pathos this song offers na.muthukumar, the lyricist the scope to showcase his talents as a poet. Pul pesum, poo peesum is a gana pattu types, probably set in a similar situation to the sapno me milte hai song in Ram Gopal Varma’s Satya.Fast paced and peppy the song is sure to follow the success of thi pidika, an earlier Yuvan song in the same style.

The OST concept is new here and must be embraced . There is not a single song in the soundtrack, which can deteriorate into a duet on screen. I am pretty sure that only one or two of them will appear as full-fledged songs in the film. In the past Selvaraghavan has got Yuvan to give his best and with Pudupettai the tradition continues. The music promo’s claim to bring “world music at your doorsteps”. Regarding that I am afraid I have to disagree. I thought I would finish with these provocative lyrics from the yenga area song -

Hey Padicha Naaye Kitta Varathey

Enga Area Ulla Varaathey !!

A/C Potta Bathroomil Enna Varum Ponga

Thandavaalam Kitta Othunguvom Naanga

Nethu Vecha Meenkozhambu Kaathula Pesum

Malli Poovum Inga Pootha Meen Vaasam Veesum !!

lyrics source - lazygeek.net

My Rating of the soundtrack - * * * out of * * * * *

Splendor Of Our Boyhood

It finally happened at 4.45 last Saturday evening. The boy wonder who we all grew up idolizing reached the summit of the cricketing world by becoming the leading centurion in test cricket. The last couple of days have been full of how it shall be asked for eternity, where you were when Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar, the cricketing monarch of India, took another giant leap towards immortality. Well, I was at work and around five I got a call from my father who told me that Sachin had just scored the 35th ton. I found it hard to control the tears of joy, which were threatening to pour. Millions of fathers, sons, friends, and fans of Sachin must have rejoiced similarly as they shared the glad tiding of Sachin’s feat. The curly haired, chubby teenager, had just done what he was prophesied to do all those years ago. Is Sachin Tendulkar the greatest cricketer of his era? I guess Lara and Warne have a few inches lead over him in that race. Is he the greatest player India has ever produced? No, a certain Kapil Dev Nikhanj holds that honour. Then what exactly makes Sachin such a hero to so many of us? Putting it simply, for an entire generation of us who grew up in the 90's he was the splendor of our boyhoods. Is it possible to put a prize tag over the countless moments of joy that he gave us with the majesty of his batting? Even the most die-hard Tendulkar fan knows in his heart of hearts that Sachin is past his best days. I don’t see his career stretching much beyond the 2007 world cup. Cricket pundits are sitting and hairsplitting about how he was never a great match winner like the Viv Richards and Dennis Lilee’s of the game. I would like to point out to them that Sachin did not have the privilege of being in near invincible teams like those gentlemen. For most of his career he had to play under the atrocious captaincy of Azhar and with a bunch of uninspired teammates. Cricket is not the all-consuming passion it was to me till my late teens. My best of memories of the game are those of the little man from Bombay trashing the best bowling attacks in the world. In a country still resting on laurels from bygone eras, starved of real life hero’s in the present tense in the 90’s, Sachin gave us so much cheer. His appeal and impact is far beyond cricket. He is a national icon who whose worth can be summed up in one word. Priceless.

Tavamai Tavamirunde Cast – RajKiran, Saranya, Cheran Written & Directed by - Cheran Tavamai Tavamirunde is a flat out masterpiece. It is the story whose fulcrum is the relationship between a father and his two sons. Muthiah (Raj Kiran) runs a printing press in a small town. Despite several hardships he brings up his sons along with his wife (Saranya) without knowing the hardships of life. As the sons grow up various incidents lead them to drift away from their father. How their lives unfold and how their father reacts to the situations forms the crux of the tale. The thing about …. Tavamirunde is that every single scene and character is unforgettable. Whether it is the deaf helper who works in Muthiah's press or Muthaih himself, who is the pivot of the film, every character is sensitively etched. The authenticity with which the situations are portrayed is such that only one who knows the milieu can depict it as such. No one other than Barathiraja has managed to portray the Tamil heartland and its people with so much of love, sensitivity and realism as Cheran. Rajkiran comes up with a performance, which according to me is on par with Sivaji’s in Mudal Mariadai.His underplayed performance in some of the scenes, for instance the one in which he is informed by a police officer that his elder son was among those boys caught visiting prostitutes, is just right and never deteriorates to overacting. Some incidents in the second half could have been portrayed a trifle less melodramatically. The weakest link of the movie performance wise is Cheran himself who plays the role of Ramalingam, Muthaih’s younger son. His bursts into tears are sometimes unnecessary and it is obvious that acting is not his cup of tea. In the final analysis …Tavamirunde is without doubt one of the all time great Tamil films. It is a tearjerker, which will give you the proverbial goose bumps. Like good old Pasamalar, which my grandmother’s generation keeps raving about this film, will be eulogised for a long time to come. Like 16 Vayadinile and Arangetram …Tavamirunde is one of the defining films of Tamil cinema. It reaffirms my belief that Cheran is a potentially great filmmaker and the best thing to have happened to Tamil cinema in ages. My Rating of the film - * * * * * out of * * * * *

"The Raaja still reigns supreme" – The Hindu

Celebrating 30 Years Of Isaigyani Ilayaraaja Some days back this boy called Ajit mailed me the URL of his blog dedicated to music. He had said there were some pictures of, and write-ups on Raaja sir. Naturally I was excited and landed up there. The absolute euphoria I felt on reaching there can be compared to the paravasam of Guna in the song partha vizhi. His site is a virtual eulogy to our panaipurathu raja. The immediate Friday review following the October 16th concert of Raaja carried a review by Malathi Rangarajan called “The Raaja Still Reigns Supreme”. What touched me most about the review is that it was like one written by a fellow fanatic fan of Ilayaraaja.Very few articles by ‘professional’ writers escape the trappings of moribund, wannabe ‘objectivity’. This one was a rare exception. 2006 marks 30 years since The Anakili Revolution when Raaja first burst onto the scene and changed the landscape of Indian music for eternity. I was planning to start the fireworks a little later. After reading Ajit’s blog and The Hindu write up I have decided to declare the tiruvila open right here, right now! I have also decided that I will do a short 10 – 15 minutes documentary film on Raaja sir sometime in the course of the coming year. The other day I went to Besant Nagar beach. I was humming anda naal nyabagam,vandade kanmani, when I got on to an auto. The autokaran’s radio was tunned onto to an FM station ,and would you believe it, a few moments later the song was played! I felt like a little kid who had just got his favorite chocolate! There is this song from Forrest Gump called turn, turn, turn that basically talks of how there is a time for each and every thing. Well, now is the time to celebrate Raaja, the real Jonathan Livingston Seagull in our midst. May the festivities begin!