Ripples on the brain

Not so long ago, we South Indians were peeved at the lack of air time given to news from the South in the news channels based out of Delhi. While I think that was mostly justified given that even worst cyclones in the Bay of Bengal never used to even find a mention in the Weather Reports of Pranoy Roy’s new channel (when he was with Star TV), I don’t think we are any better today.

Look at the this news about the death of Maniratnam’s brother, for example:

He (Srinivasan) was 49 and is survived by his wife Sandhya and three daughters — Shreya (18) and twins Divya and Akshya (15).
Sandhya is the sister of renowned film producer G Venkateswaran, who had committed suicide a couple of years ago.

GV’s brother Srinivasan’s wife Sandhya is GV’s sister? I mean, this cannot happen even in a K.Balachander’s movie. It’s sad that people at CNN IBN do not even have this much basic information about Tamil Nadu, its politics, movie folks etc. Moreover, this is not the first time it has happened. When the Dinakaran controversy was at its peak, CNN IBN started its prime time news by saying that Stalin was elder to Azhagiri.

With such factual errors in their reporting, I think these Delhi-based news channels should be banned from reporting South Indian news.

I have been watching quite a few movies these days (weekends actually), but was too bored to write my impressions about them. I though I would just scribble down my thoughts on these before it gets too late.

The Namesake directed by Mira Nair
A film about a particular kind of people will be appreciated better if it appeals to any kind of viewer. In this case, I could never relate to the family of NRI’s and their American born children. Though some of their travails were understandable, the sentiment about Gogol throughout the movie wasn’t something that moved me. Not even after the reason behind it was revealed. To me, it appeared to be dragging too early into the movie and I had to force myself to sit till the end. Also, I don’t understand the all the attention that Tabu got for her role. I think she was actually okay, but not too great. Irrfan Khan was his normal self.

The only thing I liked in the whole movie was the way the family’s visit to TajMahal was picturized. Though we get to see the Taj so many times in the media, some shots of it still appeared very refreshing to me.

Spiderman 3
I have little more to add to what most of the prominent bloggers have already said. The screenplay looked straight out of a Tamil movie with a love story, apparently unsurmountable obstacles and multiple villains for the hero to tackle, the hero’s friend mistakenly seeking revenge, the hero not heeding to the heroine and mending his ways towards the end, the friend undergoing a change due to an evidence that his house-keeper thatha chooses to reveal only towards the climax of Spiderman 3 when he could have done it far earlier and ending his life to save the hero. I was actually expecting the hero and heroine to garland the photo of the friend (Harry) and then perform wedding rites in front of it in the climax .

Lack of logic in a fantasy film is understandable, but lack of consistency is not. If the symbiote could attach itself to Peter’s competitor, I don’t understand why it didn’t attach itself to Mary Jane herself when it had so many chances? The screenplay writer seemed to be taking easier way out to dispose off the alien symbiote and the sandman (atleast temporarily).

Nevertheless, Spiderman 3 is, obviously, creating records at the BO in the strength of its predecessors. Anybody who had watched the first 2 movies in the series wouldn’t want to miss the third inspite of the not-so-good reviews.

Chennai 600028
It is good to see recent Tamil movies coming out of the compulsions of love (one-sided, mutual, triangular, etc.), revenge and retribution, chastity, amma/thangachi sentiment as their themes. Though some of these are not entirely absent in this movie, they have been dealt with less importance than usual.

A director undertaking a movie of this genre is on a knife-edge. While on one side he has to ensure that the plot is light on the viewers, on the other side, the movie can end up being without a premise if the plots/sub-plots are loose. I think the latter is a serious problem in the movie. While the director manages to evoke instant laughter through some unexpected light moments throughout, almost all the threads in the movie are incomplete and this leaves the viewer to doubt the sincerity of the director. As a viewer, I felt that the director only had the ending in mind (an unexpected and appreciable one, I must admit) and the rest of the scenes were just padded up after the theme was decided, for most of the scenes in the hour before the climax didn’t seem to have a bearing on the course of the movie.

While many reviewers called this a risky venture for a newcomer to invest (his time or money) in, I beg to differ. The movie had 11 low cost heroes and 2 ultra low cost heroines. Most of the scenes were either shot in the Corporation playgrounds or some TNHB (or other equivalent) apartment complexes. Camera work and music also do not offer much to write home about. In most places in the movie, the intention of the director to keep costs down (by avoiding retakes, shoddy camera work etc.) is very apparent. The producer had upfront sponsorships from Radio Mirchi, Raaga and other such corporates and made it a point to feature their names prominently as much as possible. After all this, I think he had very little to lose if this film was a failure. A name such as this, the theme (galli cricket) and multiplexes would ensure first week viewership and the rest is a bonus.

A post that waited as a draft for quite sometime now. ..

If an Indian cricketer with some stature were to retire, what would his retirement speech consist of? Or specifically how would he want himself to be remembered as? The answer will definitely feature “playing for the country” somewhere. Read how Lara wants to be remembered as:

“I want to be remembered as a batsman who provided entertainment to the fans and in adversity tried my best to perform…”

The one innings that I remember of Lara was during a test match when West Indies toured Down Under. If my memory serves me right, that was the last test in the series and West Indies had performed abysmally in the earlier matches. When Lara walked in, McGrath was at his best, having already captured an early wicket or two. That’s when he did something, that I thought was very ingenious. To counter the outswing of McGrath, he moved his back foot outside the off-stump just before the bowler delivered the ball. By this he ensured that he didn’t have to play any ball that goes on his off-side. He played only the balls that came to his body. Balls directed at the middle and leg stump were at his legs and so he could despatch them to fence very easily. The commentators at that time, mentioned that this was a very defensive move and he could never score. Lara not only countered McGrath, but scored a century in that match.

I loved Lara for the beauty and elegance of his game. Ofcourse, he was highly inconsistent and probably arrogant with his board (especially in the company of Carl Hooper) and his players. But that didn’t matter to me as I didn’t have the burden of wanting West Indies to win. David Boon or someone, in his autobiography, mentioned that three best batsmen, at the time of his retirement, were Sachin Tendulkar, Steve Waugh and Brian Lara. But I think, he also said that Sachin stood out among the three as he could score at will irrespective of the nature of the bowling. I personally think that complement should go to Lara more than Sachin. Even in Test Cricket, Lara would suddenly hit consecutive boundaries even of excellent balls.

I haven’t seen a lot innings of Lara, but hope to catch up with some of them sometime.

A few weeks ago, Ashok Desai of Business World, commented on the recent credit tightening efforts of RBI to fight inflation. Even in the previous weeks, he had argued that current inflation had little to do with demand and hence monetary tightening would do little to curb it (this even when RBI defended the tightening sighting that credit growth had neared 30% and bad credit had increased considerably).

In this particular column, he comes down hard on Dr.C.Rangarajan’s policies earlier as RBI’s Governor and now as the advisor to the Prime Minister. He’s especially severe on CR’s monetary tightening measures undertaken a decade ago which led to the destruction of many businesses and banking institutions and eventually, loss of growth for years together.

It was interesting to read some criticism of Dr.C.Rangarajan, after having been taught by him at the ISB. During the course, he had taught us in detail about the monetary policy instruments with the RBI and its advantages over the fiscal policy instruments.

With the sort of cycles that the economy goes through every few years, an observer gets an impression that growth invariably leads to inflation and over-heating and credit tightening by RBI which brings down growth. The only difference between now and a decade ago is probably that RBI is not tinkering with the exchange rate presently. But while RBI maintained the exchange rate when rupee was going down a decade ago, thereby hurting exporters, until a couple of weeks ago, rupee kept climbing and reaching new highs against the dollar. Any intervention by RBI in this instance would have anulled the effects of its tightening measures.

While RBI is probably justified in taking some measures to curb inflation, I’m not sure if there’s a scientific way to arrive a “cut off” for inflation. In India, “less than 5%” seems to good and “above 5.5%” seems to make people uncomfortable, though nobody clearly explains how these cut offs are arrived at. I read somewhere that the inflation numbers we track do not reflect the actual inflation experienced by an average household. In fact, inflation started reaching uncomfortable levels since last September or so, but it was not reflected in inflation numbers we track till a few months ago.

I have been going through a very monotonous patch in my life. In fact, the only saving grace in the last one month or so has been spending time with my lovely niece. In that context, I think I had something to look forward to - my birthday. Not that it was any different from the other days, but just that a good feeling remained with me throughout today.

That also reminds me that within another month, this blog will be 2 years old. I am going through a phase where I find hard to post anything in my blog. Not that I don’t have anything to post, but it’s just that I suddenly detect an internal resistance to write about anything. Let’s see if I get back to writing frequently. (either way, I know that it is not going to impact anybody other than myself).