How does one?

Go make an electronic story book in app form for a Tamizh story?

Would like to try my hand at making an animated story which my grandmother told us, which was told to her by her grandmother..

That means this story is at least a 100+ years old, probably older

The story is about an "eee" ஈ (housefly) who forgot its name and went asking different people/things if they knew its name.

Any suggestions for software, methods etc. greatly appreciated!

Would like to make this a weekend project of sorts.

While in grad school I helped create many educational self teach programs using a software called "Authorware Pro" on a Macintosh Quadra (yep, that was ages ago.. before internet days) and it was given good reviews by many students who used it.

It was difficult even to find these on google search and some of the pages open only on Internet Explorer and don't open on firefox. Was also sad to see my name not on the credits for some stuff I really put my heart and soul into, but I digress.. It does not matter now.

Things have come a long way since those days, what with Flash and Youtube and of course the internet!

Hopefully you will see an animated story titled:

"Kozhu Kozhu Kanne, en peyar enna?"

கொழு கொழு கன்னே, என் பெயர் என்ன?

(plump plump calf, what is my name?)

and the calf says "Theriyaadhe!" தெரியாதே ! (I don't know!)

and off he goes to the next person with the same answer till he finally gets his name!

Jr. and the little one absolutely love this story when my mom narrates it to them and my nephew thinks I am the greatest story teller in the world for my embellished version of this story!

This old dog is up for some new tricks!

So, please, point me toward the right tools..



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iPhone Tamil font

When reading articles in Tamil on the iPhone, the font is messed up. The same pages load okay on Firefox and internet explorer.







Considering that the fonts are in UNICODE, it does not make any sense on why this is..

If any of you iPhone Tamil news readers / Bloggers have figured out an answer, kindly let me know.



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Appa, she is kusu vutting!

Now that translates word for word from Tamlish to:

Daddy, she is farting!

When you have a household that speaks a mixed tongue, where words that are neither here nor there make up more than 30% of the vocabulary, life gets to be interesting.

The English speaking folks can only understand part of the conversation. The grand parents and relatives in India look puzzled in the video chats over the weekend because they are not sure if they heard things right. The only people who understand the kids and the parents in conversations are other kids raised in America or parents raising their kids in America who have the exact same mother tongue.

Yes. A tamlish kid speaks a different dialect than a Kannadlish or Telugish kid.

Much like a North Indian will perceive all south Indian languages to be similar sounding and lump them all as one, a Hindlish parent or kid might lump all these dialects as one.

That said, it is really funny when the parents also start talking like the kids!

Why we do it is beyond me. Maybe we think it will be easier to get through to them? We think it is cute? It makes sense being Tamil speaking people in America and somehow optimizes the total number of words that have to be spoken to convey the meaning in both languages simultaneously?!

We speak sentences like

"Appa, can you come pal thEch me?" = Daddy, can you come teeth brush me?

"Appa, the meen is kutty pOtting!" = Daddy, the fish is baby dropping!

etc.

Nakking (licking), kudiching (drinking), thodaching (wiping dry), etc. are one set of variants where the verb starts of in Tamil but ends up as some kind of gerund with the "ing" ending.

Then there are the variations like "doneaa?" which gets a response "donnu!" where the english word gets the Tamil ending added to it to convey question vs. answer, active or passive voice, or tense!

doneaa = are you done ?
Donnu = yes I am!

This is how a tamizh concept gets ported over to Tamlish

There is one more variant.

"Daddy, can you kadichy saap my tummy?" which kind of translates to :
"Daddy, can you bite eat my tummy?" which is their way of saying
"Daddy, can you blow raspberries on my tummy?"

Note that Kadichy is close to Kadichu (or bitten), but saap is shortened for Saaptu (eaten). Now when two action words are chained back to back, the second one gets chopped. An English concept now gets carried over to Tamlish!

Sometimes, we are misunderstood, but mostly we get the best of both worlds!



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Inspiration

During the recent Navarathri golu visits, we were treated to "Muddu Gare Yashoda". Both Jr. and the little one were so impressed by the A. akka's singing that they came home and asked me to teach them the song.

Having no clue as to the telugu lyrics or the tune, but remembering only the first line, found the clip on youtube, sung by Priya Sisters. They sing it sooooo beautifully. (note how the percussionists just stop at the right time to let them sing the last few words in each paragraph!.. just brilliant)




After watching this twice a day for almost two weeks now, they are singing it.




Note, that their Talams are impromptu and made up. While Jr. has been going to music classes for almost three months (she is learning dhattu varisai now) and has some idea of scales, sruthi and taalam, the little one is just trying to imitate the video and what she sees her sister do in class or at home.

The little one is also a lot more bold and is not afraid to look into the camera and sing. She is definitely going to get music lessons next year. (Jr. is also not very co-operative these days when it comes to doing anything in front of the camera. She deliberately makes faces while singing!)

A big thanks to A. Akka for singing this during Golu. Not every kid sings when their parents ask them to and with that kind of sincerity. When Jr. and the little one grow older, it would be a blessing if they oblige our requests like that!

On the lighter side, the kids were asking me for the meaning of the song. Found the meaning from the web and taught them bits and pieces. Here is a conversation during the earlier lesson..

Jr. : who is Yashoda?

Me : Krishna's mom. He had two moms. One who gave birth to him and one who raised him?

LO : I have only one mom. How can someone have two moms?

Me : You see "Dinosaur Train" right? In that Buddy the T. Rex is raised by a Pteranodon mommy right? Same thing. Krishna was given to Yashoda to be taken care of, but Devaki was the one who delivered him!

LO : But why does Devaki want to kill Krishna?

Me : !!!!! Where did you get that story? Devaki loves Krishna..

LO and Jr. : Because it says "Devaki suttudu.. Devaki suttudu" and suttudu means shoot someone with a gun and kill them!

Me : (ROTFL) The song is in Telugu, not Tamizh. It is suthudu and not suttudu. Suthudu means "son of". They are singing "Krishna, son of Devaki"!

Now the kids are getting used to Telugu words..


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A for Apple, B for boy, C for...

The little one came back from school. As usual she had a couple of sheets of her workbook exercises in her bag.

One of them had four pictures on each page and a row of three alphabets next to the pictures. She had to circle the starting alphabet for what was in the picture.

She had circled the 'c' for carrot etc. etc. and there was one mistake..

There was a picture of a bunch of potatos and she circled 'a' instead of the small 'p'.

Me : Why did you circle 'a' for this one?
LO : I circled 'a' for AALOO silly! but they said it was wrong.

the way she said "it was wrong", shaking her head from side to side was just amazing! Have seen kids who refuse to call a Tomato a "thakkali" at home, because it is not what their school teachers call it.

The little one is different.

A for aaloooo!

What can I say...


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A new genre?

After a long time, wife insisted I get out of the house and watch a movie on Friday night.

Guess the gray hair and visually obvious stress was a concern to everyone at home. So off they sent me to watch a new release Tamizh movie called "Sarvam". Did not understand even the title or the context, didn't know who was acting etc. etc.

Went to watch with the cousin and MIL. Before the movie started asked the cousin "so what is this movie about?" and the answer was "romantic thriller".

I was stumped. Romantic thriller? Did not know that there was a genre of movies like that.

In any case, the movie had a romance section in the front half and a disjoint supposed thriller section in the second half. It was a crying shame that the songs were done so well, with fantastic picturization and special effects, although in one or two places the locales and backdrops were so good that all the hero and heroine had to do was walk gracefully to carry the song and they screwed it up with some real bad dance moves. If you have seen the movie, you know exactly what I am talking about.

Sometimes you can give an architect the greatest of Italian Marble, Venetian stained glass, ocean floor sandstone, Burmese teak wood, etc. etc. but he could completely blotch it and make a freaking random heap of rubble out of the whole thing!

Sarvam brings to mind an old grandma adage "kurangu kayil poo maalai" (give a flower garland in the hands of a monkey). The monkey does not know how to appreciate the flower garland and will eventualy rip it to shreads. Someone gave this director a lot of beautiful elements to piece together or he did create a lot of beautiful pieces himself and he eventually......

made Sarvam out of it!

It was good that we went with no expectations. The first half of the movie was entertaining enough to compensate for the second half.

This movie is not just a romantic thriller, it also belongs to another genre, a nonthrilling thriller.



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Happy Tamizh New year

Wishing you a very happy Tamizh new year!

இனிய புத்தாண்டு நல்வாழ்த்துகள்!!










Love

Daddy, Mommy, Grandma and the Matching Salwar Girls


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Patience Little one

Grandma is back. Tamizh comes back with Grandma because she insists on talking with the kids in Tamizh. They usually reply to her in Tamizh.

The five month grandma absence has turned the Little one to almost 100% English.

A conversation between Grandma and the Little One earlier today:

LO : This is my bow bow doggie. (the toy pooping doggie)
GM : Tamizhla sollu! (say it in Tamizh)Say "idhu ennoda poo poo doggie"
LO : This is my poo poo doggie.
GM : say it "in Tamizh"!
LO : Gives her one frustated look and goes "This is my poo poo doggie in Tamizh!"

We pretty much saw Grandma's middle stick uproot. Clean bold!

The score : Grandma out for a duck and Little one has figures of 0.1-0-0-1

Let us see how Grandma does in her second innings!


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Happy Tamizh New Year

Wishing you all a very happy Tamizh new year!

இனிய புத்தாண்டு நல் வாழ்த்துக்கள் !!




Thanks to the Natesan's for giving them "matching" dresses for their Birthday!

Today's dressing session brought back memories of me and my brother, when we were the same age!

Wait, if you are thinking.. "oh so cute. Sundar and his brother must have worn matching outfits as kids!", you are way off base. There is only some truth to it!

When we were kids, our family went through tough times because my dad who worked in the insurance business was going through a labor strike. He did not have many choices. It was either sit at the picket line and forego pay or be ostracized. He chose picket lines, and that meant no pay! So we moved out of our big rental house to a small asbestos roofed shed the entire year of my 3rd grade(3rd standard!).




Naturally, there were no new clothes and we would end up getting new school uniforms stiched for diwali and no new clothes on our birthday. Somehow our parents made us understand what we were going through. For the next two three years, they were making a slow comeback, and that meant identical clothes for the two boys!

They would take us to Bombay Dyeing shop in Luz Corner and buy the same cloth by the meter and invariably ask the question "how much for him and how much for the little guy?". My brother and me would protest, take my parents to opposite ends of the shop to pick different patterns but invariably economics would take over. For a long time I used to see those books on my dad's shelf which said "Macro Economics - by Taylor" and would think that the guy at Art Land Tailors in Luz corner wrote those books!

Same pattern, same clothes and worse for my brother, he would get my hand me downs, which meant he would end up wearing the same pattern for another year or two. The horror! For some reason the parents, the relatives and even family friends would think this was "cute". Hopefully we were really cute, and they weren't laughing behind our backs. The phase finally came to an end, when I went to high school and my brother was as tall as me and eventually became taller than me. He was probably praying every day for some miracle by which the matching outfit, hand me down horror would end and was glad that it did.

Today it was so different watching the two girls, so happy to be wearing the same dress. Guess that is one of those things where, girls are different from boys!


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Movie Sequences

It is common these days to see Indian movies blatantly copy foreign movies with a small twist in the end. For some reason, the entire scene by scene lifting of another movie has reduced drastically in the last year.

The new trend is to just recreate segments of hit western or south east asian movies. Segments as in, a series of stunt sequences, family situations, drama situations etc. Needless to say, if they never gave any credit to the original after copying an entire movie, they are not going to give any credit for copying segments.

The funny thing is the arguments between me and the Mrs. on these sequences. Somehow she manages to forget the original sequence and is amazed by the creativity of the Director or actor or cinematographer! That gets to me more than the director. It is easier for me to show relation to the original when the source of the sequences is another Indian movie.

For example, the movie we watched recently can be expressed with the equation:

Thotaa = Thotti Jaya + Fanaa - Chimpu

where Chimpu is the fudge factor, or in movie terms the sludge factor!

Here is another sequence:

Hero is cornered on a high rise building
He is standing on the parapet wall on the top floor looking down
The old and wise cop is puffing and panting but nevertheless has a gun pointed at the hero
Cop delivers a dialogue about how the entire building is surrounded and it is "surrender" or "death by falling"!
Hero lets cop count
Just as cop counts one hero spots a train in a distance. (the tracks are not even close to the building, but what the hell!)
When the cop counts three, there is a .5 second pause and the hero falls, arms out
Then we see the rope he is holding
He swings a distance of around half a mile and precisely lands on the top of the train.
The hero looks back and smiles
The old cop who looks like he needs eye glasses rated +5.5 in the right eye and +6.5 in the left, gives a wry smile and identifies the hero's face from the train top a mile away..

Familiar??? Lets see what you think the original is!

Here is another one.

Boy comes to girls parents house to be introduced.
Boy has just lost his job before joining girl on the trip
He needs money
The prospective father in law figures out that he has money troubles
So they have a race (running, go-cart, whatever) and if the boy wins the girls dad will loan him the money, if not the boy should leave the girl alone and walk away!
In the same movie girl stops talking to boy because he hid his "losing the job" part from her. Eventually boy helps girls dad join girls mom (they are fighting as well) and the parents help girl join boy! The director of the Tamizh copy is even supposed to have attributed the sequence to a wrong original! If you are a movie trivia buff name the original, copy and the wrong original mentioned in the media..


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The Item Number

Was watching the movie "Polladhavan" yesterday. I had already made one attempt to watch this movie, got fed up of the comedy track and thought I would not watch it.

Then the wife and mother in law told me that after that 20 minutes of bad movie making, the thing actually picked up speed and the rest of the movie was "good"!

So, I gave it another chance. They were right. Once you got past the bad comedy routine, the movie did pick up speed.

Just as the movie was reaching the climax and all loose ends were being tied... out of nowhere, a Song!!! A skimpily clad woman with no relevance to the movie dancing around with some skimpierly© clad and skimpiestly© clad extras dancing in the background! Pissed me off to no end. This in Indian movie parlance, is called an "item number"!

Why would the director do something like this?

a. This is now the norm in all big budget Tamizh movies. It is like one of those chimp stories. If you don't know what I am talking about, no worries. I will elaborate as usual! In an experiment (read somewhere by Dr. Narayanöhe), they put 4 chimps in a caged enclosure. They had a bunch of banana's in a corner with an electrified fence around the bananas. All four learnt the hard way that the banana's were off limits. Then one of the chimps was replaced with a new young chimp. The other three would stop the young chimp from trying for the banana, for fear that the chimp might get electrocuted. Slowly they replaced all the chimps with new chimps. In spite of the electricity being turned off a long time ago, the chimps would stop each other from going for the bananas in that corner! So in essence, even if the director of today's Tamizh movie is new and has a fresh perspective, and the audience is mature, they cannot shake off the item number!

b. The director knows that his movie is already too long. Scientific experiments by BOGUS Institute have already shown that the average adult can hold his/her bladder only for 2 hours and 40 minutes and a child for 1 hour and 30 minutes. That said, all the kids get to go to the restroom during the interval break and the adults who never got to go potty during the interval are holding on as the movie drags towards its 3 hour completion time (Yes people! In India, the movies have a 20 minute intermission after two thirds of the movie is done). The directors introduced the item number, so that the men folk would not be able to hold their bladders while still watching the skimpsters shake their stuff on the big screen and would be forced to go to the restroom. When they come back they are able to appreciate the movie ending. If not for the forced restroom break, they would have cursed the director for a long movie! The women of course are never consulted in such matters!

c. The item number is in reality a necessity to sell the film. Audiences would rather see the movie with this soft porn song and dance sequence included than without. Now,that does not say much about the audience. Would they turn out in droves if instead of the item number, they show the hero watching porn and they zoom into his TV screen and show a 3 minute sex sequence instead of the item number? That experiement is yet to be done!

Before writing this post, I did a google search for "item number". I did not want to rant about something that obviously needs some ranting and would have already been covered extensively?! Was really surprised by what I found !

Looks like the answer may be "All of the above"!


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The little devil

What does it mean, when a married couple who have Tamizh and English as their default languages, are seen speaking in Hindi? This from a couple who were recently seen talking to each other in "Spell"!

If you do not know spell, here is an example.

Dad : Do I G-I-V-E her I-C-E C-R-E-A-M today ?
Mom : A L-I-T-T-L-E

or

Dad : have to G-O T-O O-F-F-I-C-E soon etc.

There are two reasons..

1. Jr. has now figured out the English language in its totality. She can speak, write and read! That means, she KNOWS spell. That also means she is privy to information that we try to keep from the little one when we talk in Spell and promptly goes and tells the little one. This makes it look like we are conspiring against baby and Jr. is her guardian angel!

2. The little one now understands Tamizh and English to a point where she can embarass us in public. Here is a conversation from our trip to the east coast over the last weekend:

Mom : enga pora ? (where are you going?)
Me : Bathroom (in hushed tone). Watch them for a few minutes.
When I come back towards the stroller...
Me : lets go
Little one : (with a big smile on her face on seeing me walk towards her)

Daddy? Pooh-pooh DONE ?

I have no idea how she heard or caught on to the fact that I was visiting the restroom. She announced the question, in a tone that would put the airport public address system to shame. Everyone in Terminals A through C would have looked up and thought "Good for you Daddy. But why tell everyone at the airport?", and continued on with their business.

Now the adults in the family only speak in Hindi.

We are also planning to enroll in Chinese classes starting next quarter at the local community college as a backup plan.


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Sivaji - Reviewview

Preface : This is about the Tamizh Movie "Sivaji" staring Super Star Rajni!

So what is different about this Re-view-view ?

Well, you have to see a movie to review it! I am going to violate all known ethical codes by writing a review for a movie that I have not yet seen. But I am not the first one. I have actually seen a lot of posts which say review, but talk about the hype and what to expect and promise to write the real review after watching the movie. I will join that bandwagon.

Who is who ? What is What ?

I will now proceed to set minds to rest over the various questions that people might have with respect to this post. Why should it be even relevant ? Well, people are asked a few questions in the United States and binned accordingly ! Are you a republican or democrat, are you pro-life or pro-choice, are you okay with homosexuals or are you a homophobe, etc. etc. But in Tamizhnadu they also ask you, do you like Super Star or not, do you like Sivaji or not, etc. Plus any post with Sivaji in the title is immediately judged. The author is judged on his % Pro Rajni-ness! and is promptly lauded or flamed. Considering I am sarcastic by default, I better answer these questions..

So lets proceed :

Do I like Rajni ? Yes
Do I like movies ? Yes
Do I like Rajni movies ? Mostly!
Do I still like him after he is old and tries to act young ? Yes (except the romance part).
Did I like Baba ? No
Did I like Chandramukhi ? Yes
Did I watch FDFS (first day first show) for Baba ? No
same for Chandramukhi ? Yes
When did I really watch Baba ? After it came out on DVD.
Will I wait for Sivaji to come out on DVD ? probably not!
Then why the $*%& am I waiting ? For tickets to drop to 10$
Have I made up my opinion on this movie yet ? No (seriously!)
Will my wife throw me out if I watch the movie and say it sucks ? No
Will my wife make me vadai, payaasam, etc. if I watch the movie and say I loved it ? No
Do the above two answers prove that I will express my honest opinion when I do see the movie ? Yes!
Do I expect this to be a good movie ? No.
Do I expect this to be a good Rajni movie ? Yes.
Will I watch it only for Rajni and ARR ? Yes.
Will I actually come back and write a real review later ? Hell NO! That would become an insignificant post. "Bay area man writes the 646,259,946745'th Sivaji Review" would be the headline. No Sir, not me.

Now here is my Re?View based on all the gazillion reviews I have read in the one week since this movie has been released to the general public! Practically everyone and their dog has a review of Sivaji!

Ahem...

Sivaji is a mass entertainer, where Super Star still shows that Style always rules over substance when it comes to this genre of movies. If Tom Cruise had half the style of Rajnikant, MI-III would have been a real blockbuster. It had the same hype and the money thrown in, with Cruise Star power, possibly the biggest hollywood could boast at the time, but the results were not even close. .(Well I havent seen Sivaji, but everyone else has and ergo, style has ruled over substance. As for lack of substance, that seems to be in unanimous agreement as well!).

That said, there are still a lot of gripes over the lack of a proper storyline, coherence, poor chemistry between the hero and heroine, songs that come up suddenly, length of the movie, etc. etc. The blogosphere seems to be polarized between two extremes on this one.

Some reviews say that these things while considered flaws for an average movie, do not really matter in a Rajni movie where the audience pays, just to see the man strutt his style on the big screen and utter punch dialogues. As a guy who stood 764'th in line at AMC Mercado to watch first day first show of "End of Days" or the dude who stood 1234'th in line to watch "The 6th Day" at the same theater, just to watch Arnold utter punch dialogues and throw people in the air, I can totally understand this type of review.

The next type of review goes on to pay its respects to "Thalaivar" (Rajni's nick name), his style etc., and bashes everyone else involved in making this movie with the exception of ARR. Shankar and Sujatha are prime targets with the producer being the secondary target, for wasting his money and not keeping an eye on the quality of the film! Now, how many of you can claim that you have watched two free movies in the same year, by just using your AMC movie watcher card? San and me can. That means, in the year we got married, we watched "at least" a movie a week, in theaters!! One day, we went to the 21 theater complex and found to our dismay that there was only one movie that was playing in all 21 rooms that we hadn't watched. So we watched it as well. As irony would have it, the movie was "Superstar", a film that left us speechless! We considered it an all time low in our movie watching life. As someone who has seen enough and more movies which lack substance or logic, my guess is that these guys are probably right. But a Rajni movie has to have all the Rajni elements or it would cease to be a Rajni movie. It is a self fulfiling prophecy! After Muthu was released, the Japanese have discovered the "Rajniberg Uncertainity principle", which states that it is impossible to have Rajni and Logic in the same movie and any attempt to precisely fix logic in the movie will make the Rajni part questionable!

Finally, we come to the hardcore "nay" sayers, who write, "Rajni is obligated to give his fans a decent movie", "A movie should not insult the audience's intelligence", "who will bell this commercial cat" (okay, okay, I came up with that last one), etc. etc. These are reviewers, who have either tried to judge this movie by the average movie standards or have reviewed it with an underdog mentality or trying to reason with mass hysteria, with an aim of being the sane voice. These are the ones who are promptly lauded for their guts and honesty for daring to say the truth and are also flamed in the comment box. I offer my deep condolences to this type of reviewer. India, or the USA for that matter is not free country. The internet does not have freedom of speech. If you do speak against mass hysteria you WILL be flamed! I can write a book about this! Once again, this is like saying bad things about WWF (and fear getting beaten up by some big dude next to you who is a fan), or saying bad things about Harry Potter (and fear getting beaten up by an angry teenager) or saying bad things about George W Bush (and fear getting beaten up by the government)! Apparently there are consequences if you dont agree with the general public. I would also point out to these reviewers that "Rajni is not obligated to do diddly squat!". He has made his money, and made his die hard fans happy, which were about the only things he was obligated to do, and even that obligation is questionable!

As for fans demanding more from their star and fans making or breaking a star, Rajni would have ceased to be a star a long time ago if his movies are judged by the average movie reviewer standards. The average Rajni fan is more of a fanatic. (Er, what I mean to say respectable Sir's and Madam's, is that you tend to watch Ranji movies with your FAN on in the AtTIC). That means box office logic does not apply to Rajni movies either!

Neenga ellam review than ezhduveenga. Naan reviewvukke review ezhudhuven! Idhu eppidi irukku ?

Translation (without Rajni style): You guys only write reviews. I write reviews of your reviews. How is that ?

:)


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Happy Tamizh New Year

Wishing everyone a happy Tamizh New Year.

The Tamil (Tamizh) calendar follows a sixty year cycle (like the 12 year cycle for the Chinese years). This year is Sarvasithu.

Happy new year to everyone or as they say in Tamizh "Iniya puththaandu Nal Vazhthukkal!".

Hope this year brings us a better world (an end to the Iraq war, the whole world embracing green technology, solar panels on top of every PTC bus in Chennai, no traffic jams in Cupertino, etc. etc.............). Needless to say, there are wish lists on the personal front, but I will keep those to myself! at least for now.

Looks like the New Year is indeed starting off on a brighter note!




A lot better than our previous attempt!


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Counting in Tamlish

Most of you have read this post from a year ago!

Since then Jr.'s grandpa taught her how to count 1 to 10 in Tamizh on the last India trip. She remembered it for almost three to four weeks. Then things disappeared from her memory and now she is back to square one!



Funny thing is, she did this once, did not even realize what she was saying was wrong and counted again for the video, and still did not realize her mistake! So innocent! Finally we had to remind her of Onnu, rendu , moonu!!


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Comic = Comedy ?

Saw a recent article which says Tamizh comedy actor Vadivelu, will act as Spiderman !!

While most bloggers who have reacted to this have expressed shock or have questioned if Vadivelu would actually be funny as Spiderman(warning X rated link!), they have left out one obvious fact!

Vadivelu, has pre-qualified for this role!! What is the one biggest thing which differentiates an ordinary (or "Saadha Man" in Tamizh) from a superhero-man a.k.a. (super, spider, bat, X, etc.) man?

Every 4th grader knows this joke!

"saadha" ordinary men wear pants over underwear
Super-men wear underwear over their pants!

Have you seen the way Vadivelu ties his dhoti (or lungi) ? His dhoti line is always above his underwear line!! Normal people would wear their dhoti (the variety of cloth refered to as veshti, lungi etc.,) so that it comes till your knees when folded. That way your underwear is still protected from public view! Not Vadivelu. Recently, at a special gala thrown by the movie industry for the CM of Tamizhnadu, he did a skit and even there he tied up his silk dhoti almost to his waist, exposing his boxers! He should have no issues with the spiderman costume!

This opens up other important questions. Does this mean Vadivelu will have a monopoly on all superhero movie remakes in Tamizh ? The answer my friends, is a resounding NO! Another Tamizh actor by the name of Vijaya T. Rajendar (the T stands for Teddy), can give vadivelu a run for his money. He could probably do the role of the Beast or Wolverine in X-men, without any make up!!

As an added bonus, he can rhyme and limmerick his way into the hearts of superhero lovers by saying things like :

Naan dhan da beast-u,
unakku vekkaren da feast-u!

(I am the beast, I am going to give you a feast!)

Can Kelsey Grammar top that?


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Mozhi

Last week, same time, I was finding the best seat in a near empty theater to watch Mozhi. It was a very well made movie in a great theater with a big screen. This theater usually plays English movies that have been taken off the mainstream theaters for lower fares. Now that they are screening Indian movies here, it is quite a blessing. Nice seats, relatively kid free! audience, great sound, not to mention super toilets! I am seriously considering watching more movies in theaters, after this experience.

This is one clean movie. No violence, no double meaning dialogues, no crude humor! Well, you probably got all that from the movie review pros! However, I couldn't help notice the similarities in some of the situations between this movie and "Children of a lesser God", something that was not mentioned in any of the regular reviews! I had no idea what Mozhi was all about, but within the first 20 minutes, I could guess how many of the scenes were going to end.

I guess "Children of a lesser God" was probably not a popular movie in India. It came out in the late eighties. I watched it on cable (in bits and pieces) when I was in grad school. Got to watch the full movie only a few years ago. But it is one of my favorites of all time. I just can't forget Marlee Matlin in that movie. She was gorgeous and she could speak with her eyes. Later when I learnt that she is deaf in real life, I probably felt something along the lines of what Prithviraj feels in the hospital lobby in Mozhi!!

The catch though is, if you liked "Children of a lesser god" , you would definitely like "Mozhi", but not vice versa. The english movie has some nudity and strong language. So, wouldn't exactly call it a movie that you can watch with the whole family. It is a very serious movie compared to Mozhi, which has you smiling for the most part. You have to watch this movie. It got a best actress oscar for Marlee!

Now back to Mozhi! I have really taken a liking ot the soundtrack of this movie. I must have heard the song "Pesa Madandhaiye" a dozen times!! Had actually closed my eyes for a second just listening to the song. Well written, well sung and nicely directed! I did feel that it was a cross between "Deivam thandha veedu" from the movie Aval Oru Thodarkadhai, and "Evano oruvan" from Alaipayudhe. Again, I was surprised to find out that the singer is not KJ Yesudas or his son, but Madhu Balakrishnan. Let's just say that Madhu has a new fan!

If I have heard this song a dozen times, then I have been listening to "Sevvanam .." a few dozen times. Just love it. It is also Jr.'s current favorite song ("in the whole world" if I might add!). The funny thing is that when I listen to songs where I have heard the song for the first time while watching the movie, I tend to get the movie when I close my eyes and picturize the song. I get to do my own choreography in my head if I have heard the song without seeing the movie! Yes, I am actually doing the dancing. This song however is unique. For some reason, I get San in my vision instead of the heroine!

Was humming "computer kandavalo, karate katravalo" (maybe she has learnt Computers, Karate) thinking "damn, I am one lucky bastard to have married someone who knows computers and karate!" and at that precise moment San tells me: "please stop singing that song. every time you start singing it, either Jr. is coughing or the little one starts throwing up or bad things happen. That song is not good for our family!".

I burst out laughing at the irony of the situation. Considering that Jr. is the president and CEO of Virus Inc. and the litte one has recently been promoted to CTO of Germcorp, my singing has little do to with the state of affairs in the house. But an order is an order!. So, I stopped humming, we took one look at the kids, and we both started laughing!

Jokes apart, do go see Mozhi and if possible watch Children of a Lesser God too..

Language transitions.

This morning Jr. is watching PBS kids and they show a small elephant.

Jr. tells her grandma:

"I think this is just a baby elephant!"

Just then, they show a bigger elephant.

Jr. : "I think this is the mommy and I think the grand elephant lives in Bombay !"

I guess the baby elephants grandmother could be called a "grand elephant".

Jr. is always creative (guess kids are creative by default) in expressing herself. The India trip has caused an upheaval of sorts on her English, err Tamlish!

We feel that Major Sundararajan's ghost is somehow circling our house! (FYI, Major was a Tamizh movie actor who used to repeat every dialogue in Tamizh first and then in English.. He would pick up the phone and say "Hello, who is calling? Yaar pesaradhu ?". Dont think the guy had a military background. Think he acted as a military guy in his first movie and got the Major title.. but I digress as usual and that is another post!).

Just to give you some examples of how her language has changed since the trip:

Before : I ate the apple pazham (pazham is fruit in Tamizh)
After : Naan apple pazhaththa eat pannitten ( I apple fruit eat did it)

Before : I am shy
After : I am feeling shy-aa irukken! (I am feeling shy I am)

After I put the lights for her in the bathroom and wait near the door :

Before : Go away! Stand outside the hallway
After : Go away pannu. Velila poi stand pannu. (go away do it. outside go stand do it)

She even says things like "naan read panni pannaren" which translates to something ilke "I read do am doing"!

Guess the message is being conveyed. No issues with that. But she has now one upped Major ! Major used to repeat dialogues in Tamil and English. Jr. does it in Tamlish and Engil. Yes, I have coined the term Engil to complement Tamlish. It is Jr.'s second language.

Yesterday I told her :

Either say "I am shy" or "shyaa irukken"!!, and I realized that I talk in Tamlish! I should have taught her to say "vetkamaa irukku".. but I have to hit middleground with the kids who respond in Tamlish when questioned in Tamizh.

Maybe after our next India trip she will talk 30% Engtamlishil and 70% Tamengilish.

Who knows!

Beta Beta...

I am not singing the Bhagyaraj song..

Beta beta
oh my beta
en aanandham onnodu dhaan..

(son son
oh my son
my happiness is only with you!) for those who care..

I am referring to Beta Blogger.

This harmless screen that said, great things await me when I switch to the beta version by just signing up with my gmail account, turned out to be a mixed blessing.

Beta is not different from the standard version. Except the obvious "republish blog" button is not to be found..

The minute I switched to beta

1. my sidebar went nuts
2. I lost all the original buttons I made (luckily I was able to hold on to my old template and was saved, but I almost got a heart attack!)
3. Worse, my Tamizh blog became )_&)(*^R^(*#^(*^$^(*#^@8 or something to that effect.
All the fonts, the profile everything , gone.. at the click of a button..

Took me an hour last night to put back everything, that too by playing with html (because you dont know what )*)&)(^(*&%&*(^*&%$ was and )_*)(&(*^*&^$%$ was originally!!

Finally, there is some order in my blogs again. My fellow bloggers, before you switch to beta, make sure you copy old template files, especially if they are in a foreign language..

other than that, enjoy beta blogger..