Does Amma deserve sanctity?

My mobile flashed. “She is dead and this time it is irrevocable”; said dad’s pun intended text message. After all the media tantrums about Amma being dead and coming back to life several times, dad finally confirmed that she is really dead. The only little perks of dad being in the press are that I get breaking news a little earlier. Since yesterday evening, the way media is fostering her accomplishments and her life, her path to righteousness and so on, I’m pretty sure she’ll attain sanctity after death. But does she really deserve it?

Even Superman is Amma fan!

I don’t know much about her past and since I grew up in the early and late 90s, I’ve been hearing/following her only from the past decade. If she has done very noble deeds in the pre 90s, by virtue of which she is getting this sainthood, then probably I am off beam. But I don’t believe that is any true. She was never a great admirer of democracy. I have always seen her narcissistic conduct in front of media, in party meetings and many other public forums. Not just common man, she made even the ministers in her own cabinet fall on her feet “literally” and receive blessings. Although my TN friends tried to convince me that they did it out of pure respect for her, I fairly disagree to it. Oh! Come on. In a democracy like India, there are lots of other ways to show benevolence to your superiors. Amma in locket, Amma in wedding ring, Amma’s picture in wedding card instead of bride, I mean that is ridiculous! Above all, Irony committed suicide when O Panneerselvam kept her picture in the Chief Minister’s armchair during her prolonged illness and he sat next to it giving public statements that Amma is still the Chief Minister and that I am just following her orders. Her dictatorship made Tamil Nadu a totalitarian state which in other words is a great blow to democracy.

O Panneerselvam taking blessings from Amma

Coming to her arrogance, the whole world knows about it. It was like she always flaunted arrogance and displayed it, carried it with her in forums where it was totally uncalled for. That stance of her only showed her self-importance. I do not know why people called her voice of aam aadmi and sensationalized the whole interview when she ruthlessly ill-behaved in a TV interview with Karan Thapar. I’m not a Karan Thapar admirer. But according to me that was a premeditated way of winning confidence of certain section of the society; an opening that gave her secured access to votes of particular class of people and nothing more. She was accused of changing ministers in her cabinet who was against her strategies and ideals. I’ve also heard from many that Nepotism was at peak in entire TN State during her tenure as chief minister.

Amma is in supporter's heart!

She openly accused Marans and DMK of corruption but herself had few cases against her. Among them, funds misappropriation and disproportionate asset cases gained national importance. When she was acquitted, she came back with more power and egotism and she used it to further her authority in the state and national politics. My memories of how public life was thrown out of gear whenever she visited Bangalore for case hearings with Z grade security is still afresh in my mind. When Chennai had severe floods and relief material was sent, her supporters stamping every relief bag with stickers of Amma spoke volumes on how much power hungry and autocratic she was. Her conceited image was actually celebrated by many subordinates and followers across her state.

I believe even for the native Tamilians and their economy, she has done more harm than good by giving freebies to secure more votes. Every Amma supporter in the state of Tamil Nadu state today has a color TV, mixer grinder, Laptop and many more things to lead a comfortable life and they even get a sumptuous meal for just 10 bucks, thanks to Amma canteen. But on the other side, in the name of freebies, TN’s debt has increased to more than 2 lakh crore. Currently TN’s fiscal deficit is at 40,000 crore.

Ksheerabhishekam (milk bath) for Amma by her supporters

But why media is sensationalizing her death by calling her “Iron Lady”, “Lady who broke Gender barriers”, Revolutionary leader” and so on? If death can obliterate all the terrible deeds of 60 years of one’s life, what is the difference between a true saint’s life and hers?  Does she really deserve it? It is for us to decide. This whole thing reminds me of a saying which I read somewhere:

Death changes everything… Time changes nothing!

Image courtesy: ThUnrealTimes and Indiatimes

Everything you want to know about kannada movie LUCIA

When I wore a Lucia T-shirt and walked down the aisles of Mantri mall, I was pretty impressed to see that lot of people giving a sneak peak at my tees as if they know about Lucia. Their gestures and smiles told me that you’ve done a pretty good job by supporting project Lucia. However, when I wore the same tees to my workplace, I was asked by many of my colleagues, both Kannadigas and non kannadigas What’s LUCIA, What does it mean? And so many other questions. And I thought; why not post it on my blog? Read on!

LUCIA poster

LUCIA needs no introduction, but if you don’t know, it’s the first public funded (YES!) movie, a first of its kind experiment in the history in the Indian Cinema. Apparently, there are a lot of regional directors who make good cinema, but they seldom push it to the audience. So exceptional film makers like Girish kasaravalli don’t come to limelight until a national award is conferred on them. By the time we get to know about it, we’d have missed watching it. Thus a good movie misses reaching the audience. Pawan, the brain behind Project Lucia, very well knew about this atrocity. He knew that a good director should also be good at marketing, so that it reaches the right set of audience.

Why he went public: Even after 6 months of completing the script for Lucia, he couldn’t find a producer who was interested to listen to the gist of what Lucia is. They made fun of him. They mocked his idea and approach. Many producers told him that they’d give a chance to him to direct for a remake script.  Pawan was hell bent. LUCIA or NOTHING. His gut feeling was that Lucia can become a cult film for kannada industry. That’s when he decided to come to “US”, the real critics of the movie. For detailed discussion in his own words Click here

Pawan Kumar - brain behind LUCIA

How he went about it: He got offers to make it in other languages. But Pawan was very determined. It’s LUCIA in Kannada or nothing. But Lucia was only in script. There was a problem. The mother of all problems. Who will fund it? The project had to be shelved. But some of his admirers, supporters and followers gave him the idea of making Lucia with public funds.Yes. Collecting funds from the audience, by making “them” the producers of the movie. Making a movie with Public funds..??? Oh yeah..?? Really..?? 

But the option did not seem impossible. He started with no hopes at all. But he kept himself a 100 day deadline to reach the 50 lakh target. After working out all the pros and cons he decided to take the suggestions of the audience and opt for Crowd funding model for making the Film Lucia. That’s when the revolution started. Within a few days of announcing how he would go about it, he started getting mails that people were ready to invest in his venture. Within 12 hours more than a lakh had arrived in his account, all from people he doesn’t even know. How awesome is that. How he raised funds in detail – Click here

Another LUCIA movie poster

The making: Now, there were enough mails in his inbox to boost his confidence that this could be a reality. Now all he wanted was actors and technicians with flair; A passion, a fervor to deliver good things. To reach out to the right talent, he launched a 72 hour challenge, which was very simple. He asked the role seekers to make 4-5 min long Promo video about Project Lucia. They were free to be as creative as they want to be, use any medium to shoot, it could be live action or animation, but please use copyright free music and visuals only. And you have 72 hours to make this promo.

Ninasam Sathish offered to join. Auditions for actors also happened. Siddhartha Nuni took the director of photography on his shoulders, Poorna Chandra Tejaswi, a budding musician decided to create lovely music. Shashidhar Adapa offered to create sets which are as creative as himself and with so many others joining and taking the ownership, LUCIA team finally created the magic.

Now, next and the later:

Now: LUCIA has won the YCE (Young Creative Entrepreneur) award by the British Council. Lucia was selected for the London Indian film festival, won the award in the Audience choice category for the best film. All the international dailies including The Guardian and all Indian dailies have appreciated Project-Lucia for its accomplishments. 

Next: Theatre rent, television promotions, ads and other forms of marketing for the film needs an additional budget of 1.8 crores approx. So Project LUCIA has come up with a plan where you the audience can be the distributor. Yes! You can pre order it to watch online. Pre-order is an opportunity for you to play the role of a DISTRIBUTOR at a very low price/low risk. 

Later: With a Pre-order, not only are you getting a copy of the film, but you also get an opportunity to make money of the film. And we want you to do that. The more the money you make, that many more audience we get to watch our film. And that is what we want – more audience. For more details on “YOU” as a distributor click here

 There is already a buzz in the sandalwood that LUCIA has come very good and it’ll thump the box office. People are humming “Tinbeda kammi” merrily and gleefully. People who’ve watched it at the London Indian Film festival have given the audience back in India, a green signal. Momtaz of asiana tv says

“Lucia is a real ‘milestone’ in South Indian cinema, and a film everyone should watch”.

Click here for complete review

Another audience Roopa Upadhya says

“Pawan Kumar lives up to his words, he has made a film that is young, intelligent, complex but still lot of fun”

Click here for complete review

For a man with Penny in his pocket and dreams worth million, this is much more than just achievement. His efforts are weirdly impressive. They say “Be the change you want to see in the world” and Project LUCIA and Pawan Kumar is an archetype that proves it. He deserves a standing ovation for this venture. I wish him all the very very best.

Watch LUCIA not to support him, but to appreciate what he is able to create out of nothing; to appreciate his endurance in driving this transformation; his taste for original scripts and his zeal for movies.   And of course for good movie watching experience, which has become a rarity in Kannada these days.

The confessions of an insomniac

Today morning, when I posted this quote “The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good” on thinkitover,  it was a facepalm moment for me; The real Self Thoo time. I just reflected on what had happened the previous night. And felt bad; very bad that I behaved so discourteously with my grandmother.

Prologue

For the records, my granny apart from being the sweetest grandmother on earth is also Alzheimer’s patient. Most of her reliable memory now is of her past and she doesn’t remember most of the new and fresh events of her life. She hallucinates that whatever has happened in her life is actually happening in the present day, at the moment.  The trouble is actually here. She thinks her uncle died today. But in real she is recalling the event which happened 65 years ago. And the part of her brain which decides between present and past (like the planned v/s actual in agile) isn’t working to its full potential. So if we try to make her understand that it was 65 years ago that her uncle actually kicked the bucket, she just can’t comprehend it. 

Her uncle kicking the bucket is just one thing. There are n numbers of things that she recalls and hallucinates that it happened just now. And the most helpless part is we can’t make her understand. Of late she has started this new thing of getting up in the middle of the night and wanting to go out of home, call someone, take bath, wash clothes, do the dishes and so many other things (Yes in the middle of the night), which has disturbed my sleep to a greater extent.

On the other hand, I’ve just recovered from the pigeon menace which gave me sleepless nights for more than a month or so!. Most of you know about it. So I’m not going to get into technical details of what insomnia can do to you. May be god has decided to test my endurance under the absence of melatonin. Long travel hours have forced me to get up early to reach office thereby reducing my sleeping time further. All this had the combined effect on insomnia on me.

Last night when my granny got up at around 2 in the midnight for whatsoever reasons, it resulted in the outburst of all the fury and rage concealed in me for more than a month. I yelled at my grandmother so badly and so loudly that she was petrified totally. A part of it may be because of the fact that I’ve always been her love thy kid and she never expected such a retaliating behavior from me. But before I realized what had happened, the damage had already been done. Thanks to my insomnia. On the other hand, I was caught in the emotional clutter for my rude behavior and was full of guilt for what I did to her. I couldn’t sleep. More insomnia!

Epilogue

My cousin Sameera's wife (Navya) has given birth to a baby boy. It was her sweet desire (or orders, I must say) that my granny should hold the child first before anyone else does. For obvious reasons, my grandmother is on cloud nine (She was “in” cloud nine too) on being promoted to great grandmother. The arrival of baby has cheered her to a great extent. She is overwhelmed. I too was relaxed to see that she had come out of yesterday’s episode. I decided that at the least I should say sorry to her and of course, she deserved it. While coming back from the hospital, I slowly said sorry for what I did yesterday and that I’d never repeat it ever again for which her reply was………

“What are you talking about? I’m not understanding”

I’m so glad that she’s forgotten it. I cribbed so much about her medical condition all these days, but finally it was the same Alzheimer’s that came to my rescue. I was out of my guilt within a second; feeling much relaxed and happy. It was a sure shot lesson to me.

"No matter how intricate your problems are, the best solution to it lies within!"

Lessons from my forefathers

I’ve have had so many nostalgic moments in past. More often after I started travelling to Electronic city. Nowadays, I badly miss being amidst sensible people. Some fun loving colleagues; cubical mates with cracking sense of humor; witty managers; discussing love, life and other impediments with friends and so many such moments which have now become a rarity. Thanks to my company and 5 hours of travelling. I’ve comforted some that it happened and regretted few that it won’t happen again. But today I experienced a totally sublime moment. It was such a bliss that I don’t have enough words to explain how I felt.

Of late, I’ve developed a kind of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) for cleanliness. Not sure if it is the effect of taking too many Information Security trainings at office or my being an Aries man, Nowadays I can’t stand shabbiness of whatsoever form. After lot of plan, and since I was observing Earth Hour (March 23^rd) I decided to clean one compartment of my cupboard which was muddled with some century old stuff which no one in my home was interested in. 

While cleaning them, what I found was something really interesting.

A post card written by my maternal great grandfather to my paternal grandfather which had the information that my dad was born! Yeah. Dated 30^th July 1946, the information of my father’s birth typed with blue ink (yeah.. it is not written) on a ½ anna post card. Believe me… You don’t know how terrifically nostalgic I got. Oh my god! I read the letter again and again. I couldn’t believe my great grand father had such an awesome English vocabulary! That too in 1946… Whoa!! I had a feeling that – My great grandfather slapped me hard and said “We used to wait for 2 days to know when a new member has arrived in the family… And here you are..  Not able to travel for 2 hours on Hosur road?” Am I seriously maturing too much or life itself has decided to teach me lessons in a nutshell with real life examples like this. I’m not able to comprehend.

I also found some old books (Tattva Vaada - A magazine which was subscribed by radical Brahmins of yester years). Now I can trace my household customs to early 19^th century. Yeah. It all falls in place. Old novels and some old letters each of which tell the tale of yesteryear. Through these small artifacts of my forefathers, I’ve been able to borrow from them a proud feeling of how culturally rich my family was, how educated they all were.

For a man of my age, I'm shamelessly hoping that besides all the whining that I do nowadays (actually I only whine and complain nowadays). the courtesy of such simple things will be of ineffable help to change myself.

Marriage hall – A bizarre bazaar

Yet another post about marriage. Honestly, I’ve no crazy idea why I’m writing/tweeting so much about marriages. Yesterday yet another friend of mine went into conjugal bliss. And this time, I want to jabber about the agony that you may experience in a marriage hall; that awkward moment when you really don’t know whether to feel happy for the ones getting married or sense that awkwardness that you come across in the marriage hall. 

Face-off: At 26, I just can’t stop my mind from setting an expectation on the probable honeys and sweeties around.  My eyes will be constantly running algorithms in the front end for a match against my expectations. But most of the times my eyes end up on mirror cracking materials and Asian paint endorsers, and on the other hand – Gold miners from Bappi Lahiri khandan. Yielding bad search results. Even though there are no syntax errors in my algorithm, it couldn’t yield better results because the database itself is corrupted. Sheer disappointment or rather my fortunes.

Flash it on: By any chance, if there’s no television display in the marriage hall, you owe a BIIIG thanks to the almighty. I mean it. Because that graphics you see on television is the most awkward graphics that human eyes can tolerate. If you stare at it for some time, you’ll lose your vision. A little more than that; you’ll put yourself in the grave danger of losing your mind as well. This is what happens: First, the bride will dissolve in from the middle of Niagara Falls and the Groom will join her in lightning speed from a mountain that looks like tundra region; as if the bride and Groom are diehard fans of Edward and Bella. And suddenly you’ll see a man with yellowish teeth gulping pani puri and from inside his mouth both parents will crawl in like some insects followed by bride and groom disappearing to Times Square like a boomerang. And again bride will blossom from inside a flower. Watching this will make you curse Adobe for coming up with flash.

Food for thought: Whoever came up with the idea of taking videos in marriage dining hall should be punished by making him eat until his stomach literally detonates. This is the most hatred part of all the marriages that I’ve attended. How’d you feel if 1000 people are watching live, what and how you eat?  I really don’t understand why on earth some one wants to cherish the memories of how or how much a person EATS! In case this happens in your own marriage, you’ll only end up being disgusted to watch your own marriage video because of the fear of seeing people eating in their own ishtyle (Please consider Indian dining etiquettes here). 

Indian weddings, if done in the way they are actually supposed to; they’re a treat. Weddings are the moments for a lifetime. I’ve seen people competing with other weddings to make it more vibrant, richer and more colorful. I feel sad for them. The richness, culture and traditions of a wedding today are meddled with technology, show off and unwanted opulence. I feel that the whole essence of marriage has taken a phase shift from celebration to flaunt and status symbol. Marriage is no more a marriage.

Just go home and open you parents wedding album. I’m sure you stand by me!