When A 'Flop Song' Brought on a Kolaveri!!

Looking at the sudden craze over Dhanush's nonsense song from the movie "3", I really want to shout, "People! Why this kolaveri?!?! It's just a song!!!" 

But then, from the beginning, everything about this song has been odd to me. I just can't make up my mind on whether I like it or hate it!

First of all, I heard about this song from the most unlikely source on the planet - my husband. The man who is totally clueless about pop culture, who uses Twitter to read about world news, deleted his Facebook account because he had too many friends (more than 900!), listens to Beethovan and classical instrumental music on YouTube, and has no idea what an Internet meme is! Most importantly, I sometimes think he is oblivious to the Tamil movie industry! So imagine my surprise when he asked me "What is this new Tamil movie song that everyone is talking about? Some Dhanush song?" I would never have imagined that the words 'Tamil movie', 'Dhanush' and 'song' would come out of my husband's mouth in the same sentence, so it took me a couple of minutes to process the information. When I surfaced, he showed me a news story that NDTV was running on this new song that Dhanush had composed and sang. I saw our skinny hero, complete with headphones and nifty recording paraphernalia, belting out a 'nonsense' song. Everything made sense about the song, except that NDTV felt the need to cover this story on the morning news. Then I reasoned that it must be a really slow news day, no earthquakes, fast-unto-deaths, or pregnant celebrities. 

And then I looked up the video on YouTube. Whaa??????? The song had just been released, and on YouTube no less, and already it had hits somewhere in the six-digit area. Whoa! Where was I when all this was happening? Okay, so then I sat down to listen to the song.....

The first reaction from me was one of disgust and shock - "What the...? Is this the song that everyone is making such a big deal about? It's a simple, no-need-for-creativity Tamil gana song, with words that make no sense to any one! Worse - the song is absolutely predictable!" 

But I clicked 'Replay' and listened to it again....... and then I listened to it 5 more times.... and then I created a new YouTube playlist for it, and I had no heart to leave it all alone, and I added 50 more Tamil songs to the playlist, played the playlist and simply hit 'replay' everytime the "Kolaveri" song ended.....

I WAS HOOKED!

I shared it with a million friends, and also grabbed the headphones from someone else and listened, if I knew that they were listening to the "Kolaveri" song. I hate listening to songs on people's mobile phones, because I hate the tinny quality of the audio, and am totally disgusted with the audacity of the person who thinks that everyone will appreciate him and be grateful for forcing them to listen to his choice of bad music. But for the first time in my life, I listened to the "Kolaveri" song on a friend's mobile phone, in a public place!! I shocked myself!

So, if you follow a phenomenon so closely, you HAVE to Google it, amirite? So, yeah, I did a Google search, and I saw links to articles talking about what a big hit the song was, then I saw a couple of tangent videos - one was the original leaked audio of the 'kolaveri' raw version, another was the female version (not that impressive, by the way), and a kiddie version (absolutely adorable rendition by Sonu Nigam's little son... must watch!), an English R&B version (VOM!)and a thousand low quality uploads from fans of Dhanush!!! There was so much material on the Net, I was mind-blown!

Oh... and I forgot to mention the interviews! Switch on the television that week, and all you could see was mikes shoved in Dhanush's face, asking him "How did this happen?" (erm... people.... a song was composed. That is ALL! It was not the discovery of alien life on Mars, or the discovery that Dhanush himself  is alien life!! Sheesh! Now THAT would have been real news!) And Dhanush blushing (if that's even possible) and saying, "It is nothing, folks. Ignore it! It is just a nonsense song. I wrote it in 20 minutes. It's not that good...really... you all should just ignore me and my media-hogging wife with the superstar Dad! Really....." But the more he said it, the more people fawned over him and his super-successful family and their super-duper hit song, and the more hits the song received on YouTube, and the more it got tweeted, and the more hashtags it spawned, and the more celebrities wrote the lyrics down on a piece of paper and tried to sing it (badly) in front of a bunch of press cameras (looking at you Abhishek!) and the more people went berserk over a self-proclaimed "FLOP SONG"!!!!!!!!

Shame on you if you can't see the irony of it all!!!

Well. If you don't, let me explain....

1. The song calls itself a 'Soup Song' - meaning it's about guys who get unceremoniously dumped by girls who failed to see their usefulness. And yet, I can just picture every guy in the country singing it to his girlfriend, and making her laugh with glee!

2. It's a 'flop song' - Dude, can the song BE any more of a hit????

3. Every one from the director to the composer to the singer is asking us to ignore the song "It took us 20 minutes to compose.....we did not even have lyrics written down.... we just sang whatever came to mind... we made this song for fun... we were just fooling around.... it was no big deal! Ignore us!" - Then what the heck are you doing topping the charts in several countries and going all kinds of mad viral on the Web!!! Explain Yourself!!

4. Dhanush, singing, popularity, international appeal - everyone of those words is paradoxical to the rest. And yet..... every one of those things happened one after the other as if they were direct and predicable results of the previous.... Twist your brain around that, if you will!

Conclusion: Well, I guess the down-to-earth nature of the song is what appeals the most to people. And most definitely the customizability (is that a word?) of the song.... you can change it to suit any situation. There is one guy who rewrote it to talk about problems that Tamilians face in Jaffna, there is this IT version that laments the plight of IT guys in India working for foreign clients, there is a version by a couple of girls that is a sort of reply to all the "accusations" leveled against them in the song (probably not tasteful enough to be featured here), a flash mob version (always my favorite versions) and, well, there are so many versions, so why don't you just see for yourself!!! (scroll down in the flash mob video's page)

Anyway, we could talk about this all day, or you could decide for yourself if this song is really that big of a deal. So here you go:

And the flash mob, because I thought it was cute:

Hehe! Check out that guy in the striped blue t-shirt!!

My First Born is Moving In!

Hello readers, this is just a small announcement - I have made a relatively significant change in my blog space right here. As some of you may know, I have another blog called 'Ad Libitum' over at http://janeadlibitum.blogspot.com. This is my older weirder blog-child that just won't take form the way my second one is. She's (no clue why, but I just automatically decided it's a girl) always been a little lanky, under-nourished, and low-profile. I just cannot understand why. And when the second, more robust, blog-child came along, he (again, I just decided that) took so much of my attention that my older blog-child has been left unattended for quite a while.

As a good responsible mom of the blogosphere, I have decided that my first-born's voice, however feeble, should be heard too. So, I have imported all my content over from the 'Ad Libitum' blog to sit over here. This, though primarily a review blog, will also talk about my personal life and other interesting snippets that I would like to bring to the family dinner table.

I must sheepishly confess that the fact that this relatively newer blog was receiving more views and comments than my older child, was one of the deciding factors that drove me to scoot my older child in here, so she can share the spotlight. Also, this url comes up easier in a Google search than the other one... :P

So, before I wear this metaphor thin till you hear the logic snap, let me just alert you to the fact that as you scroll down, you will see all my posts from the other blog. If you have never visited me at Ad Libitum, well, there you go - I made sure that you are not spared! If you have, then you know that all my *air-quotes* words of wisdom *close air-quotes* are safe here, even after I have deleted the other blog. Now, please, for heaven's sake don't ask me (as I am asking myself right now) how I can use the word 'delete' when talking about a metaphorical first born. This is the Internet, and I just did. So there!

Aaaainyway, I will leave that blog up for a while, along with a redirect message. And after a while, it's gonna go. So, please continue to drop by here. I look forward to many conversations with you about stretched metaphors and tummy muscles... sorry.. tmi...

The Blind Side - John Lee Hancock

The Blind Side, directed by John Lee Hancock, can be seen as one of these things - 1. a feel-good movie with a hidden agenda seeking to convince everyone that everything turns out just right in the end; 2. a feel-good movie that will definitely bring out the cynic in every person that doesn't fall for that lie; and 3. a hidden racist comment that white people are the only ones that can rehabilitate and redeem all the colored people in the world! 

But here is where the movie shocks and stuns - The Blind Side is NONE of these things, because it is literally a true story!!! Yes, people actually did all the things that the director claims they did in the movie!

Based on the book on the same, The Blind Side is the story of the Touhys, and especially Leigh Ann Touhy, a southern lady from a very affluent family, and Michael Oher, the Afro-American boy that they lovingly take into their family. Okay, hold the cynicism, let me finish. 

Douchebaggery as an Art Form: V S Naipaul Excels!

V.S. Naipaul has been a constant source of irritation and disgust for me for a very long time. I know these are really harsh, one-sided and disproportionate words to use on an individual, that too a literary figure like Naipaul. However, the man has no qualms shooting his mouth off, and I am just returning his favor! 

So, Vee Ess Naipaul, first of all, dude, not loving your name... Hard to pronounce, and harder to type.

Second, I had to read your hot-air for a couple of Indian Writing papers in college, and I fell asleep in every class. I mean EVERY. CLASS. Man, why can't you be even a degree more interesting than you are?! Seriously, is that too much to ask? For crying out loud, you get published  for this crap.. at least make an effort!!

Thirdly, dear fellow, I get it - you don't like India.  You can't stand the dirty water running down streets, you detest the hypocrites, and you are sure that all Indians have 'slave mentality'. That's fine. Now move on.... You have not lived here. In fact, you don't belong here. Just because you have Indian ancestry in your blood, does not mean you get to say mean things about us. Go say something mean about someone else for a change, huh?! Get over yourself, seriously!

Fourth in a series of rants that is pure catharsis right now, is the fact that Mr.Naipaul, you, in general, are a douchebag. Wikipedia says so (dear reader, go directly to the 'Personal Life' section. That's the good (bad) stuff!), your former friend reiterates, and you sir, most certainly proved it!

Dear Reader, here is the entire text of the last article that I have mentioned. This one appeared in Guardian (a UK newspaper) and I simply couldn't believe what I was reading!

VS Naipaul finds no woman writer his literary match – not even Jane Austen

VS Naipaul, no stranger to literary spats and rows, has done it again. This time, the winner of the Nobel prize for literature has lashed out at female authors, saying there is no woman writer whom he considers his equal – and singling out Jane Austen for particular criticism.

In an interview at the Royal Geographic Society on Tuesday about his career, Naipaul, who has been described as the "greatest living writer of English prose", was asked if he considered any woman writer his literary match. He replied: "I don't think so." Of Austen he said he "couldn't possibly share her sentimental ambitions, her sentimental sense of the world".
He felt that women writers were "quite different". He said: "I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me."
The author, who was born in Trinidad, said this was because of women's "sentimentality, the narrow view of the world". "And inevitably for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too," he said.
He added: "My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh. I don't mean this in any unkind way."
The criticism from the author is unsurprising. Naipaul is no stranger to criticism. In the past Naipaul has criticised India's top female authors for their "banality" on the topic he is best known for writing about, the legacy of British colonialism.
He also had a long-running feud with US travel writer and author Paul Theroux.
Their 30-year friendship came to a sudden end, after Theroux discovered that a book he gave Naipaul had been put on sale for £916. The comments were dismissed by the Writers Guild of Great Britain, which said it would not "waste its breath on them". Literary journalist Alex Clark said: "Is he really saying that writers such as Hilary Mantel, AS Byatt, Iris Murdoch are sentimental or write feminine tosh?"
Literary critic Helen Brown described them as "arrogant, attention-seeking".He should heed the words of George Eliot – a female writer – whose works have had a far more profound impact on world culture than his."

Mr.Naipaul, women are awesome writers too! Just because you can't control your envy, and can't fade off gracefully, does not mean you belittle others. In your own words, "Take it on the chin, and move on."

Yep. He does have a general air of douche-ness around him!

You Searched for THAT and found ME???

So, I was looking at my blog stats just now, and found this:

Wait...what?!

oh yeahhh.... that's me. 'Tirunelveli tamil teen girl blogger profiles'. Yep. That would be an exact description of me.
Uh! 'teen' it seems. Thanks a lot. Now I feel the youth coming back to my bones....

On a side note, what the hell sort of search term is 'and where i usually would'?? ! Someone dissect that for me please?

Poem: Street food...

Written on 27 April 2011

Street food...

"... Is unhygienic, uncovered, and unappetizing",
Said mother, piling a mountain of rice
Onto a plate already sagging
Under the weight of healthily boring home-cooked food.
Grumbling, sniffing, dipping fingers in gingerly
I question...
"Why can't I have a snack instead?"

Crisp samosas are the best.
Waiting near the familiar heat of food
Sizzling in hot oil,
Eying the one that you will choose
If you had a choice,
Peering into the cart
At sauces and spices,
Making a mental note -
'Remember to ask for
The sweet and sour sauce.'

Jaws clench at the tangy thought
Of salted gooseberries
That bring back memories of
Dead-broke college days,
When a rupee earned you a bag of those sour gems
That set the saliva flowing 10 years later!

Corn on the cob
Luscious, spicy and crunchy
Satisfy the sharp hunger that comes
From trudging up the lanes
Of little towns on hill stations
In search of the perfect bargain
On a thick woolen sweater.

Ice cream in a park -
Dripping water and icicles that takes the place
Of real cream and flavor,
Cold chunks breaking off
Onto tongues,
Causing brain-freeze
And the rush of guilty pleasures
That mother would scorn at.

Vadais are good too.
Crisp exterior giving way
To warm dough and stray chilli bits,
The accompaniments as beckoning and cozy
As the kitchen at home...

The kitchen. Where mother
Would always have food on the table,
A soothing word
A listening ear
A tearing eye
A smiling face
For me, the wayward child,
Who ate too much street food...

No One Killed Jessica - Raj Kumar Gupta

"No One Killed Jessica" read the headlines of The Times of India newspaper, on 22 February 2006. The entire nation did a double-take when it realized that what should have been an open-shut case was now one of the most shocking testimonies to corruption and double-standards in politics and the justice system.

The case in question was the murder of Jessica Lall, an aspiring model and part-time bartender in New Delhi. One a particular night, 3 men had walked into the bar she worked in. One of them was Manu Sharma, the son of Venod Sharma (a wealthy Congress politician in Haryana). He demanded for a drink at 2:00am when the bar was all out of liquor. When Jessica refused to give him a drink saying that they were all out, in a fit of rage and as a foolish dare, Manu Sharma shot Jessica Lall point blank in the temple. Jessica's sister Sabrina Lall fought for justice for almost a decade, and was sure that the three eye witnesses (one of whom was her sister's close friend) would definitely testify favorably. Instead, tables were turned unexpectedly when all three eye witnesses said they did not see a thing! It later became apparent that the aforementioned politician had bribed all three witnesses to lie in court.

Following the trial, the newspaper headlines read "No One Killed Jessica", and the accused were acquitted based on insufficient evidence. You can read the full story and details of the trial in this Wikipedia entry. It was only through the inquisitive reporting of Tehelka that the real story emerged and Manu Sharma was later sentenced to life imprisonment in December 2006 by the High Court. He has tried to appeal further but with no avail.

Rani Mukherji as Meera Gaity in No One Killed Jessica

The movie No One Killed Jessica is a thrilling and close-to-truth portrayal of this true story. It is the story  of the fight for justice of the brave sister Sabrina Lall and the daring reporters who unearthed the true story and released damning evidence. Vidya Balan does a great job as Sabrina Lall. It is nice to see the actress minus her seductive temptress makeup and body language. Frankly, I was beginning to suspect that that was all Vidya Balan could do! I think she looks better in the down-played ponytail, the cute t-shirts and ubiquitous glasses than in the over-the-top wardrobe choices that usually mar her performances in other movies. She looks nice in 'simple'. 

Rani Mukherji, as Meera Gaity the journalist, delivers whatever was asked of her, I think. Someone told her to be an obnoxious, foul-mouthed journalist who doesn't follow the rules, and she is being that. I think they could have taken the 'I'm-a-badass-journalist' a notch down and made her into a more realistic character that the audience can relate to. 

Vidya Balan as Sabrina Lall in No One Killed Jessica

I loved the scene where Meera confronts Sabrina about fighting one more battle for 'Justice for Jessica'. Sabrina has given up on things, and is all cynical about the law and the justice system. It is at this point that Meera approaches her saying that there is a chance for justice since the public is involved and now the courts have to do something. When Sabrina refuses to cooperate, Meera berates her. The scene is powerful and really brings home the strength of well-played journalism.

The movie is a brave attempt. Dissing politicians is not a new thing in Bollywood, whereas relying on a an entirely female main cast is another risk altogether! Vidya Balan and Rani Mukherji take up the challenge well, and do justice to their roles. The story is fast paced enough to keep interest going, and deliberate enough to place all the key points of the story where they should be. 

A good watch if you're into political and crime thrillers or a fan of Rani Mukherji. 

Watch the official trailer of No One Killed Jessica: