4/29/04

Quick Lollu - 2
1) That was an overwhelming response for my Blog, wow! 8 comments till now. Thanks to all for taking time to read my Blag oops Blog. A doubt was raised “what is Slog”, Slog means to hit hard, to work hard and steadily, in cricketing terms they way our “VeeraRagavan ” (aka Shewag) bats, why I called my blog a slog, Srikanths log = Slog :)
2) I am getting out my next song this week; hence I am too busy to write my Blog or may be I am running out of stuff!

Coming Soon..near your ears[Cheap promotion]
kaduvelliChitar "Ananda kaLippu"
Lyrics : kaduvelli Chitar, Crew : (introducing) Suren , Sunder and Srikanth. Additional Backing vocals: Sunder & Srikanth.
Music : Srikanth, Recorded at Studio1234, USA.

3) Pension to Cricketers: What is this fiasco? Why there is big fuss about it? A puny amount of Rs. 5000, this is about $110 per month or an hourly pay for a SAP consultant, but on the long run, it is about Rs 60,000 a year. More than a government employee’s pension. Will players like Mohanty, Rajesh Chuhan or Maninder Singh get it?
4) Been following “Anandam” in SUNTV, yesterday somewhere from blues they introduced a new Brahmin Orthodox lady. She has never been featured in any of the episodes till now. She was just added to complain about a so called widow giving “kunguman” to married elite ladies, she screams at “Sukanya” with a cheap cloned Braminical tone. You too “Anandam”.
5) Watched first 10 minutes of Kolangal “Che!”, Ananda Vikatan produces it and a porn movie has a better story line and structure.

6) Very imporant : Don’t forget to check CNN about the ventriloquist show on the Capital hill today,
a chance for everyone to know who is the "real" dummy, if you know what I mean

4/28/04

LIFE Rolls inspite of my academic weakness

As life rolled I began to prove that I am no good at other subjects too. My weakest link was considered to be Science. I really did not get how it is going to help me in future. After all my science teacher was living a middle class life,
may be Newton’s “every action has equal and opposite reaction” might have worked somewhere in my life, the bottom line was most thing I learnt academically at school was to get away from my teachers punishment.
If you see I have used the word “academically”, I really did not enjoy reading text books, Hence I tried to poke into other things, just to keep me away from academics.


Quick Lollu,SUNTV

The Itchy and scratchy show, I am talking about Medimix Dinakaran, The Tamil Cine award fiasco.
In a nut shell, medimix is supposed to be a medicated soap frankly after watching this nonsense for 3 hrs, everyone who watched this show must get a soap bar free just to clean themselves. I really do not know how so much money could be wasted to a program that was totally itchy and scratchy right from the start.
Master of ceremony: Dindugal Leoni, I agree he is a very funny guy and he knows to talk etc. it is madras and it is hot agreed, But some one should teach him to use a kerchief at least to wipe his face at regular intervals. In fact, his face made Indian Oil Corporation jealous. He is a great Oil resource. The lady sidekick with him, I never bothered to check her name, the ground rule for show side kicks are “you should not know to pronounce any word properly”. Quite horrendous pronunciation, I think music directors these days pick words from these kinds of programs. Now to the awards, Kadal konden got awards and on the contrary AnbeSivam was given for the best movie that gave a message to the society. by this do they mean "kadal konden" did not give any message? and Leoni did not talk about Kamal hassan who was the real architect of this movie. He forgot or may be he did not know it was kamal., kamal was in a different "getup" right. A skilled Mimicry guy did the climax of kadal konden well, did he try to prove that acting like danush is quite simple.? I dont know. Dhina was given the best music director award; by all fairness “manmatha rasa” was the most popular song in tamilnadu. But he should be fined heavly for vandarkuzali, which was a total lift from "dance papa dance papa kobam koLathe". Shanker mahadevan was denied an award and Harish Ragavendra took the prize for a song from Bharathi, lady singer Malathy deserved it fully. Vikram got the best actor , deserved for it in Sami but not for pithamagan. I am still wondering what is so big about pithamagan?, Viramuthu was the only person who gave a good speech. I am seriously considering to ask for a credit on such shows in future. Dam! I am paying $15.99 to watch this rotten junk.

One such thing is music, I really don’t want to lie that I had great music sprit in me by birth, like any other kid I just had a natural attachment to it. During 1970-80 there was an explosion of musical bands in Chennai. A.V.Ramanans Musiano , SivaraRaj Anand were few notable bands. By virtue of my late grand father, who served as the president for a local Sabha, took me many light music shows. His tenure was quite short in this post; however I managed to watch many light music shows. This got me on to film music.
Just like other kids of that age, I loved the drummer, wanted to be one. I started to bang doors, steel chairs etc, got banged from my parents for breaking few things at home. My parents patronized Carnatic music to a great extent, but I started to be rebel and listened only to film music. At this time, I saw an advertisement in school notice board. School band was inviting new students to join the band. I was excited, begged my parents and they nodded their head. I got signed up with a monthly fee of Rs5.00.
The auspicious day came, my school closed at 4.05pm, we were asked to assemble by 4.15pm in our school playground.

I got there excited and thinking about film songs I was very keen to learn “Enaadi meenashi”, The “Manmada rasa” of that period. ,

We were asked to select instrument, thanks to my name that starts with “S” I was the last but one person. “vidhi” played its game again. We were left with 2 instruments to choose. I was forced to choose an instrument that was going serve my life all through. If you think it to be a keyboard you are wrong. It was a “cymbol” technically called “Jalra”. Added to the agony this was the school march fast band. I was asked to strike the cymbol on the count 1 2 3 4. The senior kids were strangling their trumpets, tubas and clarinets. They gave me a pondichery police man cap to wear and made me stand in the last row near the bass drum. With that hat on my head I looked more or less like a mobile light house.
The songs we played were “janda uncha rahe hamara”, “sare jahache acha”,
though these are good patrotic songs, they way they played it was sheer cacophony, I was demoralized totally.
And if you wonder what the person after me got, it was dam puny little “triangle”. I really don’t know what he was feeling my feeling was I went to play “enadi meenashi” but ended as a “jalra” to a band. My music sprit at that time “katrodu poiachu….”

[Life rolls....]

4/27/04

My Weak Written English -- II

The actual answer in my previous story was “Preacher”, I am sure my teacher will still remember me for this. After this, I happened to move to a new school for my 6th standard. Big leaders often boast in their portfolio that they went 10kms for their basic education [if any], I also did the same and I traveled about 18kms in the jam packed silver colored electric train, from Chromepet to Chetpat. I joined the MCCHS; when I took my entrance test everyone was watching as though Asish Nehra was taking a high dolly catch. Other than Nehra himself no one could predict the result. Likewise, no one other than me believed that I would pass this test. I don’t blame them at all my skill and my potential I displayed made people assume that I will definitely end up as a school dropout sooner or later. But “Vidhi” [Fate] had its own game plan I did get admission in MCCHS.
It was my first English class, my teacher started of with a great inspirational story.
A very rich Tamil parent wanted their kid to learn English. Since both of them were from Tamil medium, they had great hopes for their son to read and write English. Hence, spent big money and sent their kid to the best convent in the town. They went on telling everyone that their son would come home and call them “mommy” and “daddy”. They were very proud. Finally the day comes, he goes to school, and they wait all day expecting he would come back and call them “daddy and “mummy” and he comes back home and calls them…“Dummy” instead.

My English teacher told me this story that too on the first day of school, that’s it, my interest towards English went down to the lowest in my priority list. The blind Tamizan belief during that time was, good English is automatically cultivated if you force your kid into a “convent”, however as of today it is a fallacy , I am the best example to prove it.

Next, I would attribute my English downfall to game a called “Scrabble”, one more reason for my weak English. For people who have not played this game, it is a game where you arrange English words in Cross word style, each letter has fixed points and the grid will have bonus points like Double or Triple. For some weird reason the game creators awarded high points only to letters like X, Q Z, Y which people [not me] rarely use. The pity is people who introduced me to this game told me to score points rather than to learn the language. So I went to spell words based on points, like once I remember spelling “Socks” as “SOX”, just for the reason X has about 8 points. If “X” is placed on a triple point square! think about the score I would get, you may wonder why no one corrected me, being a natural “adAvadi” [bully] by birth no one dared to correct me.

by now my English was too weak hence I decided to take up another Indian language, “Hindi” But!, The world knows from my name that I am from Tamil Nadu. I was born, brought up and spoilt in the great city of Chennai. Or I call it as Republic of Madras.

The common feature you will find among 80s young breed from Chennai is their love towards the language called “Hindi”. The “kazagams” who rule my state have taught us not to learn Hindi. We all from the 80s supported this theory quite blindly. Took every word from them while the entire nation was conversing in this language we started to paint all the Hindi letters found in stations, banks with “tar” and felt very happy about it. This view on HINDI language continued for a long long time. Frankly it is very hard for anyone to guess the last Hindi movie that I watched on the big screen [theater] , Answer: “Qurbani”, I am not joking, I have never watched a Hindi movie in theater since“Qurbani” Though anyone could come to similar conclusion after watching Freoz Khan, Zeenat and Amjad khan in one screen, I never saw another Hindi movie again.

As of today, I failed to learn neither English nor Hindi properly. If you jump to a conclusion may be "his Tamil might be good", don’t blame me later, better check with Mr. Sundra Krishnan my Tamil teacher, he would vouch how I suck right royally there too.

With all this potential trust me I managed to pass out high school.

4/23/04

My Weak Written English

My friends remember me for one another thing than my music. My written English. Do not jump to conclusions at once.
They remember it because I am not good at it. I suck right royally, It is not my mother tongue so I am not angry or upset about it . But there had been many incidents that made me not to concentrate much on written English.

All this started right from school days. I still remember in my 4th or 5th standard,
It was quarterly exam, there were a question, which had a clue and students are asked to guess the right word.

Q: Person who spreads spiritual and religious thoughts
A: P.............R [second clue: starts with the letter P and ends in the letter R]
It took about 20 minutes for me to spot this word. I was thinking about many words and finally "bulls-eye" wrote the answer. And felt very happy for it. Later after the vacation evaluated papers were distributed, my name was called upon, I took the victory march to get the answer sheet, but teacher stopped me and asked me this question again.

At that time my over confidence assumed that I am the only person who should have answered it correct. Boldly I gave the answer loud and clear, but to my surprise the whole class laughed as though they were watching a standup comedian.
The question was -- Person who spreads spiritual and religious thoughts ---
my answer was "Prohithar"

Being from Chromepet, Chennai, I have been to the Thiruneermalai temple on quite a few occasions, I have seen the person who spreads spreads spiritual and religious thoughts and he was called Prohithar,

Wasn't I "write" in my answer???

[To be continued...]