Tuesday 27 December 2011

HAPPY NEW YEAR...

It is that time of the year when it is customary to say Happy New Year all!
And so it shall be with me too.
But not before I invite you to take a moment to reflect on the year that has been and on the defining moments and debates of 2011.
Last year this time I did draw your attention to the great debate, almost the only one worthy of our time and effort to wrap our heads around and understand. It was the great debate involving two diametrically opposing views of India, Munni and Sheila. I did hint then that it was not just about two "item numbers" in Hindi movies. Very important and defining elements of our modern culture as the item numbers are, Munni and Sheila go a bit beyond popular culture and entertainment and actually frame the great national (non) debate. I mean the Urban vs the Rural debate that has been going on since 1947. Interesting political-economic discourse though it is, it is not my intent to get into that now. For those who did not get my mail last year, I am attaching at the bottom of this post the contents of that famous debate.

The issue has been joined this year by yet another worthy - Silk Smitha so ably portrayed on the celluloid screen by Vidya Balan from Bollywood. The actress upon whose life this biopic was made had Tamil movie goers in a vice-like grip for a few years. I would even venture so far as to say that she was the reason that the "item number" found a permanent place in Indian movies. She also framed the Great Indian Debate in a different way - Quality Vs Quantity, firmly coming down in favour of Quantity. Its the same viewpoint that makes us churn out Engineers and Doctors by their tens of thousands with scant regard for what they have learnt, for what they know. But in her case it was applied to the human female anatomy and the myriad grotesque ways in which the latter can be used to raise a gullible, repressed audience to a fever pitch of sexual excitement. I think you get the picture. I shall not elaborate any further, and shall leave it to you to make your own conclusions.

On that note it is time to say Goodbye 2011 and Hello 2012 and wish everyone the very best in 2012.

Here is the original debate as framed by me last year:


Dear all
We have all identified many defining debates of the year 2010.
We have felt strongly about them - sufficiently so as to hang a label of greatness around their metaphorical necks.
These came in a wide variety of topics:
There is the one raging in the US of A about what kind of president Obama is
There is even one concerning his eligibility to be President of the aforesaid US of A
There is another one on the same subject, but far more dark: Does Middle America hate Obama  for the audacity of a black man to become President? And are they showing it in every which way but the most direct one?
Then there is the one about the (inevitable) rise of our Chinese neighbours - on the mechanics of how they got here and how far will they go and in which direction?
There is even one about whether the term  The Ugly American will return to the global political discourse with "American" replaced by "Chinese"
There are many homegrown ones:
How many G's are there in the telecom scam in India? Or, more generally how many G's are there in India? Wags have it that India has only 2G: Sonia-ji and Rahul-ji (third G is a possibility:  Priyanka-ji). Many conclude sagely that that is the real scam.
Who benefited from the 2G scam and how much was scammed? The usual suspects are mentioned : the aforesaid 2G's and Karunanidhi and his many consorts and their offspring. Answer depends on whom you ask. And a few more names who picked up the crumbs and licked their fingers along the way.
There is even a debate on was there is a scam at all, or was it all a result the dubious counting techniques that CAG is partial to?
Then there's the debate on a decade old concept of the reflectivity and shiny-ness of India: India shining. Is it really shining? If yes, who is it shining for? Will it shine for those who never see the sun / who never come in from the sun? Or only for those privileged enough to coin such phrases and wealthy and clever and powerful enough to capture most of the shine for themselves in a kind of "economic black hole" which bends and then captures all the shiny stuff for itself.

You get the point: there are many debates raging around the world with various sides to the debates taking immovable positions and arguing passionately first about the importance of the debate itself and then about their position in it.
I find all that stuff pretty childish and insubstantial. Ephemeral even. Presidents come and go and seemingly to affect their respective countries for a while (some, not at all), but nothing really changes for ever in the larger picture. China will rise, China will fall and in between make a lot people very uncomfortable. But the only certainty is China will fall as surely as it rises much as economies do and because of the latter. India will shine for a while; India will be tarnished (by the political class and, equally likely, by the Babu-dom). The G's will multiply (although some aver that one of the G's is of such orientation as to render multiplication not possible) and grow numerous and fight among themselves and lose their G-ness (I should have said G-spot, but that designation has been taken by an altogether more interesting branch of inquiry).
All the above debates are about cyclical stuff. What goes up must come down sort of things (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi9sLkyhhlE&feature=related). And confined to the top 6 inches of ones physique, assuming of course one hasn't lost one's head literally or otherwise. What about the issue that is visceral in nature? The one that not merely tugs at your heart and soul, but kind of props you up at your very core? Central to any one in India and shared by all?
I am of course referring to the great Munni Vs Sheila debate. Ahh, here is a debate of some substance, of great import and one which raises strong passions on both sides of the debating forum.

For those unaware of the central characters in this debate, a brief introduction is in order. Munni is decidedly Indian, of rural stock, curvaceous and is a woman of considerable allure in ways Indian men like. Sheila couldn't further from this image. Slim, svelte and decidedly sophisticated in her mien and disport. Even the names say it all: Munni is of the earth, earthy. Sheila is anglicized, suggestive of western origin, and is not of this land. Munni is your woman-next-hut type and therefore desired, coveted and lusted after by the Indian male, and is suggestive of the attainable. Sheilas of the world reek of sophistication, westernized glam-girl stuff; of sex-symbol for the thinking men (assuming of course sex and thinking men is not an oxymoron). The two roles are also played by real life women of matching persona. Katrina of Sheila fame is born and brought up in England, is half-English (no quibble please on English not including the Scottish, the Welsh and the like; you get the idea) and can hardly muster Hindi, and when she does, then only with an East India Co accent. Munni is the short, curvaceous Malaika Arora Khan who is best described in PG Wodehousian terms as "going in and out at the right places".
The voices, ahh the voices. What can one say about the voices? Except that the choice of the playback singers is sooo appropriate. Munni is rough edged, rustic, crude and totally devoid of any sophistication and of sophistry;  Munni's voice means business in a quick-tumble-in-the-nearest-bale-of-hay sort of way. "Suggestive" doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. Sheila? Hmmmm Let me think. That is exactly it. Think. Westernized beat, voice put through some electronic wringer and removed of any semblance of human origin and appeal.  Here, go ahead and judge for yourself:

Munni
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoRMObjVhQM

Sheila
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n0XfvX1Zr4

Lyrics of Munni: Lyrics of Sheila
Munni badnaam hui, darling tere liye - 3 times
Munni ke gaal gulabi, nain sharabi, chaal nawabi re
Le zandu balm hui, darling tere liye
Munni badnaam hui, darling tere liye
Munni ke gaal gulabi, nain sharabi, chaal nawabi re
Le zandu balm hui, darling tere liye - 2 times
Munni badnaam hui, darling tere liye - 2 times

Shilpa sa figure Bebo si adaa, Bebo si adaa
Shilpa sa figure Bebo si adaa, Bebo si adaa
Hai mere jhatke mein filmi mazaa re filmi mazaa
Haye tu na jaane mere nakhre ve
Haye tu na jaane mere nakhre ve laakhon rupaiya udaa
Ve main taksaal hui, darling tere liye
Cinema hall hui, darling tere liye
Munni badnaam hui, darling tere liye - 2 times

O munni re, o munni re
Tera gali gali mein charcha re
Hai jama ishq da ishq da parcha re
Jama ishq da ishq da parcha re
O munni re

Kaise anaari se paala pada ji paala pada
Ho kaise anaari se paala pada ji paala pada
Bina rupaiye ke aake khada mere peechay pada
Popat na jaane mere peechay woh Saifu
(haye haye maar hi daalogi kya)
Popat na jaane mere peechay Saifu se leke Lambhu khada
Item yeh aam hui, darling tere liye
Item yeh aam hui, darling tere liye
Munni badnaam hui, darling tere liye

Hai tujh mein poori botal ka nasha, botal ka nasha
Hai tujh mein poori botal ka nasha, botal ka nasha
Kar de budaape ko kar de jawan re kar de jawan
Honthon pe gaali teri aankhein dulaali, haye
Honthon pe gaali teri aankhein dulaali re de hai jiya
Tu item bomb hui, darling tere liye
Munni badnaam hui, darling mere liye - 2 times
Munni ke gaal gulabi, nain sharabi, chaal nawabi re
Le zandu balm hui, darling tere liye
Munni badnaam hui, darling tere liye
Baat yeh aam hui, darling tere liye
Be-Hindustan hui, darling tere liye
Amiya se aam hui, darling mere liye
Le zandu balm hui, darling mere liye
Seenay mein hole hui, tere tere tere liye
Aale badnaam hui haanji haan tere liye
Le sareaam hui, darling tere liye
Darling tere liye x3





I know you want it
But you never gonna get it
Tere haath kabhi na aani
Maane na maane koi duniya
Yeh saari, mere ishq ki hai deewani

Hey hey,
I know you want it but you never gonna get it
Tere haath kabhi na aani
Maane na maane koi duniya yeh saari
Mere ishq ki hai deewani
Ab dil karta hai haule haule se
Main toh khud ko gale lagaun
Kisi aur ki mujhko zaroorat kya
Main toh khud se pyaar jataun

what's my name
what's my name
what's my name
My name is Sheela
Sheela ki jawani
I'm just sexy for you
Main tere haath na aani
Na na na sheela
Sheela ki jawani
I'm just sexy for you
Main tere haath na aani

Take it on
Take it on
Take it on
Take it on

Silly silly silly silly boys
O o o you're so silly
Mujhe bolo bolo karte hain
O o o
Haan jab unki taraf dekhun, baatein haule haule karte hain
Hai magar, beasar mujh par har paintra

Haye re aise tarse humko
Ho gaye sober se re
Sookhey dil pe megapan ke teri nazariya barse re
I know you want it but you never gonna get it
Tere haath kabhi na aani
Sheela
Sheela ki jawani
I'm just sexy for you
Main tere haath na aani
Na na na sheela
Sheela ki jawani
I'm just sexy for you
Main tere haath na aani

Paisa gaadi mehnga ghar
?ani na mainu ki gimme your that
Jaibein khaali bhadti chal
No no I don't lie like that

Chal yahan se nikal tujhe sab laa dunga
Kadmon mein tere laake jag rakh dunga
Khwaab main kar dunga poore
Na rahenge adhoore
You know I'm going to love you like that, whatever

Haye re aise tarse humko
Ho gaye sober se re
Sookhey dil pe begapan ke teri nazariya barse re
I know you want it but you never gonna get it
You never gonna get my body
I know you want it but you never gonna get it
Tere haath kabhi na aani
Maane na maane koi duniya yeh saari
Tere ishq ki main deewani

Ab dil karta hai haule haule se
Main toh khud ko gale lagaun
Kisi aur ki mujhko zaroorat kya
Main toh khud se pyaar jataun

What's my name
What's my name
What's my name

My name is Sheela
Sheela ki jawani
I'm just sexy for you
Main tere haath na aani
O no no sheela
Sheela ki jawani
I'm just sexy for you
Main tere haath na aani
Sheela
Sheela ki jawani
I'm just sexy for you
Main tere haath na aani

Ain't nobody got body like sheela
Everybody want body like sheela
Drive me crazy coz my name is sheela
Ain't nobody got body like sheela
Everybody want body like sheela
Drive me crazy coz my name is sheela
Ain't nobody got body like sheela

Look at the lyrics - can there be a greater contrast? Munni is all so coy and indirect; suggestive yet subtle. Its all in her voice and in her gyrations. And the imagery is sooo Indian and so rural and so ineluctably clever in a rustic sort of way. The native smarts, if I may say so. Who would imagine being someon else's "zandu balm" or "cinema hall" for that matter. She soothes like an emolient, she tingles like a balm and she can entertain like a cinema hall. Shiela on the other hand reminds you that you want it but can't have it and then goes on to exhort you to "come and get it". More than a bit flirtatious, I'll grant you; but too direct like the West in such matters ("give it to me baby" type of stuff). Lacks in allure. Its-yours-for-the-taking, in your face kind, direct sort of stuff.

I have given you the evidence and pointed you in the right direction -decide for yourself.
I know this debate will rage on for all of 2011

Now tell me is there any other debate worthy of our time in 2011 ??

If I have kept you debating this in 2011, even if only to yourself, I will have achieved my purpose of dsitracting you from the filth , the meanness and the pettiness that is so rampant all around us.
Talk to you again in 2012
Have a great New Year
Murali   

Thursday 22 December 2011

I CAN MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE

No I don't mean it in the sense of the first person singular. Not that I can't - I can (I think..)
Not even in the sense of  "I" as one's ego - the absence of the "I" actually.
If this is not about my abilities (as I perceive them) nor about my modesty (the lack of "I", you know), then what is it about?

I am sure everyone is aware of the war of words and more raging between two southern states in India (Tamil Nadu and Kerala - why is Kerala not Malayala Nadu? Is it because its people are comfortable in their skins as Keralites, whatever that term means? Why do we define ourselves in terms of our language and they dont? I sense an interesting line of inquiry there). At the centre of the dispute is a century-old dam across a river which starts on one side of the mountains separating the two states and runs off to the other side to disgorge its flows in the Arabian sea. The dam was built by the British colonial masters presumably to feed the tea estates owned by British companies. Here's the thing: the Brits, as is their wont  took the land and the river belonging to one side and gave it to the other side, albeit on lease (a pretty long one). This is very aptly captured in a Tamil saying which doesnt translate very well into English: propitiating a roadside  Ganesh idol  with coconuts from a wayside shop. Unpaid for, naturally.

Having created umpteen such mischiefs, the Brits upped and left all of a sudden taking a lot of our tea with them.

The border crossing points between the states have been closed, people living in the border area have moved to the relative safety of their linguistic side,  the war of words escalates and so on. We shan't send any tomatoes to the Malayalees; let them stew in their coconut milk (and a jolly good stew they make too). And when the tomatoes begin to rot, we shall have our own version of the Tomatina festival - sorry Valencians, when giants fight, the earth shakes. We could even possibly have an annual Tomatina festivals which pit  Kerala teams against Tamil Nadu teams. Ideally teams should consist of state and central legislators. Refereed by Moanmohan Singh (not a typo) with Sonia as referral umpire (does he do anything without referring to her?). Yuvraj (not the cricketer, you asses; if you must ask who that is, then you've been living on the dark side of Mars a while) will throw the first tomato and then presumably withdraw to the relative safety of a dalit widow's hut in U.P.

On their part, the Malayalees will stop all coconut and coconut products crossing over to this side, bringing chaos to countless Tamil kitchens. No more cabbage poriyal made with coconut oil (the only way to make it, let it be known). No more banana chips fried in coconut oil. No more "araichu vitta sambhar" - no coconut, no a.v. sambhar. Minus the coconut, sambhar reverts to being a pedestraian kuzhambu. And no avial! That is a culinary crisis indeed, especially with Pongal round the corner in a couple of weeks. A dire future awaits us if this issue is not resolved quickly and cross-border trade in coconut resumed.

In politics, it is Tamilnadu versus Kerala, and everybody against Moanmohan. Yuvraj stays away from this area and his mum is busy taking on an eccentric old man and showering the countryside with rupee notes. JJ is protesting about everything like a 60's college student which she would have been had she not chosen to stand under a waterfall in a transparent white sari. I have a sneaky suspicion that the river involved in the wet sari episode is the disputed river which explains her strong attachment to it.

The river is called Mullaiperiyar in Tamil and Mullaperiyar in Malayalam, the difference being an "i". This is the "I" that is making all the difference. 


Wednesday 21 December 2011

THE PAGE 3 PEOPLE OF CHENNAI


Page 3 

Page 3 is where the English Tabloids put all the interesting stuff. The idea is, after seeing all the depressing news about wars, deaths, political and diplomatic fiascos, riots, inflation, deflation, being part of Europe, not being part of Europe, etc you need to quickly get your blood racing so that you can face the day as an honest British factory worker turning out cars, steel, planes and the like. It is a different matter that the only thing British factories are turning out these days are their employees. The idea very well understood by the British Tabloid press was that the reader needed a quick pick-me-up after reading the first page replete with bad and depressing news. So they created The Page Three. I don’t know when exactly this started, but the concept was already well-established when I reached their cold, dank and depressing shores in the Eighties. After a cold journey to work, buffeted on the way by gale-force winds, rain and sleet, a quick glance at Samantha Fox, Linda Lusardi et al in all their pneumatic glory on page three warmed me up for the day. Thus fortified, I never looked back the rest of the day.

The Indian page three is of a more recent origin and pioneered by Times of India in Mumbai. In fact this respected paper created an entire supplement for this purpose instead of just page 3. As icing on the cake, the page 3 of the Page Three supplement (somewhat innocuously titled Mumbai Times) contained pictures of movers and shakers moving and shaking. Its denizens however are pneumatically challenged to be spoken of in the same sentence as aforementioned Ms.Lusardi and Ms.Fox. But the movers and shakers who inhabit Mumbai Times page 3 are generally good looking (not just in comparison to Ms Lusardi & co) while being differently abled. While from time to time some appear whose faces resemble London’s famed Routemaster buses, mostly they are pretty. Notwithstanding some dark mutterings about instances of stealing husbands / boyfriends of fellow page 3 denizens, their lives are generally conducted on what would be described in Chennai as “acceptable” basis. They all have two names: a first name and a surname. That goes for men too. There are some who prefer single names, one of which is with an obvious reference to royalty which is probably more in the mistaken hope of royal attachment than any real royal connection. That their “designer” clothes are designed by their own brothers/sisters/cousins or friends’ brothers, sisters, cousins is neither here nor there. By and large the page 3 “hotties” as the current slang has it are easy on the eye.

In Chennai we too have page 3.  We did not invent it but we are catching up fast. We don’t conform to Western or Northern ideas of what is beauty and what isn’t – we have our own. After all we gave the world  Silk Smitha celebrated in the pruriently named movie “Dirty Picture” - albeit with a not too substantial woman in the lead which is a bit of a betrayal of the original concept, but you can’t trust these Bollywood types to stay true to the original. Chennai legs may not go on forever as Jethro Tull fantasized in “Budapest”, but we gave the world the concept of “thunder thighs”. So it is natural that this is the sensibility that informs our page 3.Our Jebin, Jenaan, Linita, Vimmi, Shilka et al  are clearly establishing new paradigms of page 3 beauty. They also  have developed a strong sense of sisterhood and do not steal husbands and boyfriends and live very moral lives. They even go to temples regularly and dress up for Margazhi music festivals.

They waste no opportunity to tell the world of their strong sorority bonds. Which is why the preferred pose for photographs is one resembling conjoined twins joined at the hip. Any salacious conclusions are the result of grotesquely immoral minds.



WHAT'S IN A NAME III



A person's name is his very core, his very identity. It knid of defines who one is, in a way. Don't get me wrong, I am not oversating the case. For example being Manmohan Singh is not what made him a supine, spineless sardar given to inaction, misdirection and even, as in the case of his address in the electoral roll, downright liar; those are the key elements of his character. But when we say Manmohan Singh we immediately recall a picture of this pusillanimous person in a flowing white dress and wispy white beard concealing a dark heart.  No, this is not a tirade on Manmohan the seat-warmer.  On the other hand this is a note on my observations of Chennai names. So, let's move on....

The West, as in all things modern, set the agenda in the name game. They have a First name, Last name and Middle names. Whereas the First and the Last are one each, with some exceptions which I shall come to in a moment, the middle can be any number. If you are of high birth the chances are that you have many middle names in order to please all those ancestors living and dead who contributed to your high birth. Sometimes last names come in double-barreled variety  with  a hyphen in between, especially if you are English person of noble (what is noble about reprobate bankrupts is the matter for another blog) ancestry. In Iceland they have a first name followed by one which says whose son or Daughter you are. Sigmund's son is unsurprisingly called Sigmundsson – the missing apostrophe identifies them as not native English speakers.   In the case of daughters, it works the same way but with bad spelling – Sigmund's daughter would be called Sigmundsdottir. Of course Bjork the singer is an exception to the rule – just as she can't sing and is still classified as a singer, she has no “dottir”attached to her name, but is still an Icelander. The Czechs and Russians follow similar rules. Pavlov's son is a Pavlov but the daughter is a Pavlova, and, interestingly enough, so is the wife. Something to do with the fact the wives and daughters carry eggs (ova, anyone?) and the sons and fathers dont. They knew a thing or two, the Russians. Czech system is similar. Hannah Mandlikova is the daughter of Mr Mandlik (there is a large body of opinion in Mumbai that he was originlly a Maharashtrian; but then Mumbaikars claim anyone worth knowing as one of their own). I have no idea how the lesser members of European Community name their sons and daughters.

Closer to home, the Maharashtrians have a very systematic way of naming their children: Your own first name, followed by father's first name followed by the surname. Gajanan Wamanrao Akolkar for example would be the son of Wamanrao Grandpa Akolkar. The daughters confusingly exchange their father's name for that of their husband's first name. To add to the confusion, they also change their first name. Poonam Kantak all of a sudden bomes Priya Desai one day after her wedding leaving you wondering when did you employ this new person and who exactly is the new person until someone explains the metamorphosis. Perhaps its symbolic of the larva metmorphosing into a beautiful butterfly but in actual fact the metamorphosis works the other way:  beautful young ladies become pupae (all swaddled and covered up) and then larvae. Syrian Christians of Kerala sometimes use a curious system: my friend Thomas Philip is the son of Philip Thomas who was the son of Thomas Philip, and it goes like this ad infinitum. In addition to being confusing this did not provide for a second son who, if he existed, ran the risk of being niether Philip nor Thomas which is all very well in the normal course but not when Philip and Thomas mattered so much to a family. Besides, this system does not provide for Susamma, the daughter of Sramma to name her own daughter Saramma who in turn would name hers Susamma. As I said it is a mere diversion.

Chennai, as in many other things leads the way in cutting through the clutter, shining a light through the fog, as it were. We do not depend on our fathers to prop up our names in the middle lest it sag. We put our fathers where they belonged: right up front. We dont need sly hints as eggs-carriers to identify our women – they are clearly women unlike the anorexic Czechs with 6 foot long legs and built on Euclidean staright lines. When you see one of ours, you exclaim “there goes a Chennai woman”. We have simple names like M. Shanmughavalli, R.Thirugnansambandam K.Thiruvenkatanarayanaswamy, P.Akilandeswari, and the like. Or even B. Sundar, M.Aruna,  R.Mona, K.Meena etc.
 Its your name standing alone in all its glory and alongside no one else's. We dont depend on our ancestors for legitimacy; we are who we are and that's that. We do make concessions to marriage lest the husbands feel inadequate: we take their initials instead of our fathers. The said P.Akilandeswari would become R.Akilandeswari should she marry S. Ramalingappamoorthy. Akilandeswari remains who she was; she does not become Subin or Audrey all of a sudden.

We also keep the names short these days, a a means of saving ink and paper (we are green and always think of all ways to save trees) as a sampling will show: Mona, Mini, Leepika, Jenaan, Jebin, Asin,  etc. And Vimmi. The last one I suspect is a tribute to eponymous yester-years Hindi actress. Her career, as I remember was as brief as her name. These days we don't name our girls thus and instead scrub our frying pans with Vim.

My absence from Chennai in certain crucial phase of my life (and theirs as well) deprived my children of the magnificently logical and simple Chennai way of naming. They are not M. Something and M.Somethingelse. I let my son study abroad after school and his name got shortened to mean “a residue after fire” (3). To  add oil to the fire, my daughter hasn't even taken her husband's last name (being from another part of the country, he does have a last name) after marriage. She continues to be A(+7letters) M(+1letters).

My mother maintained that introducing her to The Feminine Mystique, Female Eunuch, The Second Sex, Dialectic of Sex, etc and Kate Millet, Betty Friedan, Simone de Beauvoir, Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer, Shulamit Firestone et al in her teens was a big mistake.  She would have preferred that A(+7) was named Soundarya and learnt Vishnu Sahasranamam instead of Feminist polemics.



Tuesday 20 December 2011

Whats in a name II ?

When Cliff Richard still belted out of the radio on Friday night at 8 pm, when most "listeners" seemed to live in a place called Perambur and had names like Ryan Gosforth, Arnold Smith, Kenneth Barrington, Leslie Ann Jones etc etc who vaguely referred to some distant unseen place as "back home", names had a ring to them. Including the ones from Perambur, Pallavaram, Royapuram, Egmore, and St Thomas Mount. Which were all western, or in the local parlance, "English" names (at times also known as "European" for, names like Roque D'Souza and Alfonso Albuquerque hardly sounded "English" and were vaguely Iberian). Much to my personal consternation and to the detriment of  multiculturalism in this City, most of the denizens of the aforementioned locales have gone to greener pastures; and some, no doubt, to the damp, dank and cold "back home".

But the ones  for whom this is "back home"  are the ones I am concerned with here. And indeed it is a matter of concern what they are called now. We had Amrtihavarshinis, evoking images of a rain of divine nectar; and Tripurasundari, which of course is the great beauty of  The Heaven, The Earth and Hell combined. (why one needs to reference a beauty to the women of hell, beats me. I would assume they were all uniformly ugly in addition to being of a despicable and disagreeable disposition. But on the other hand, our forefathers  knew a thing or two perhaps - good girls went to heaven but they usually had mustaches. Hell is where the bad ones went because they had the looks to be bad....But I digress.). And we had Meenakshis, Kamakshis and the like where we now have Sonakshis.

Then there was a period when names began to "modernize". That is, we had names with "Jaya" or "Jai" prefixed to perfectly traditional and adequate names, prompting that great Chennai gadfly, Cho. Ramaswamy to remark that his maid Muniamma went home one day and returned the next morning as Jaimuniamma. This phase was followed by the prefix changing to "Vijay" or "Vijaya". For some reason these changes seemed to apply more to women than men. Did the parents believe that men were less in need of a makeover? Or that women were in greater need? Whatever the reason, the whole effect was magical. We suddenly had  prefixes to traditional names, evocative of Victory and victoriousness if there's such a thing.

But there's a fly in the ointment. Important though victory and references to it in ones name are, it is not as important as being the Teacher's Pet in the class room. In America and elsewhere being Teacher's Pet may earn you some opprobrium and worse among your peers, but in Chennai it was a Good Thing and almost an Unmixed Blessing.  And how do you become the Teacher's Pet? This is where the parents came in. It was believed that by naming your child with a name beginning with the letter A, he/she would be on top of the roll call at school and was more likely to be familiar to the Teacher. He / she was also more likely to be picked for various tasks, mostly unpleasant, but no pain, no gain.We Madrasis were the original Calvinists. We would have invented Calvinism had John Calvin not been born a Christian in France- of course he would have been known as Pasumpon Muthuramakrishna Tamizhvanan and the movement would have been known as Pasumpon Muthuramkrishna Tamizhvananism and the world would have had to wait five hundred years more for P...M...T...ism.  But I digress, again.

Through the aforemntioned trick of endowing your child with a name beginning with A you kinda gave him / her a leg up in life as early as age 3 which is when we generally sent kids to school in Madras ie Chennai - we are a people of academic bent (some might simply say bent). More on that later. I myself  am guilty of naming my children A.... and A..... One of whom went on to marry an A...(we certainly did not require her to choose a person whose name began with A, it was coincidental, believe you me. Now we are a Triple A family.).
We never found out if my daughter or son became Teacher's Pet - we were gone from here before they could  reap the benefit of this thoughtful act on the part of their parents. Unfortunately A(+7 more letters) M(+11 more) which was my daughter's full name then was not an easy one to say in England. She never ended up being the Teachers Pet. She didn't get bullied in the playground either.

Now we have names like Shilka, Roshina, Rozina, Pinerna, Linita, Nosh, Ziorta, Leepika, Jebin, Simbu etc etc. They are all true names picked out  from Chennai Times page 3. What are these, pray? Do they mean anything? Is there a purpose behind these names? Some recall a cartoon lion, and some others are slang for food. What will Maneka Gandhi say about them? Will she even acknowledge them as Indian?

Trilokanarayani please come back.



Whats in a name?

A lot, it would seem. Especially if you lived where I live.

When I left Madras, MGR had just become a "doctor", Miss Jayalalitha had yet to achieve "doctor"hood or motherhood ("amma"), she was still Jayalalitha and not Jayalalithaa. Heck she hadn't even become Revolutionary Leader (Puratchi Thalaivi). Headaches were still ordinary, common headaches and not revolutionary ones (puratchi thalaivali). Later on some mischievously tended to conflate such headaches with certain leader's title.

First take the city itself (although we tended to feel that it was less a city and more a large village then;  news of you - especially about your dalliances- got home quicker than you did, with predictable consequences). It was called Madras, lending itself to some wonderful limericks which rhymed with that. Take this one for example:
There was a young lady from Madras
Who had a magnificent ass
Not round and pink,
As you'd probably think;
But was grey, had long years and ate grass.

Yes, those were the days when Pansy was a flower and gay meant being happy and you didn't refer to female anatomy, period ( with or without three-lettered American anatomical terms). Not in public anyway. There is yet another limerick which we all learnt furtively and giggled at even more furtively which made use of the same rhyming scheme, but with references to brass, human rear end, some dangly bits, and stormy weather. Where then did the name Madras originate? No one knows. The issue used to be debated even in erudite conferences. One answer was that it came from "Madrassa" but no one could pinpoint one such establishment in or around the city as it existed circa early 18th century. Another explanation, albeit a laboured one, was that it derived from "Maadarasi", or a "great woman / Good woman", purportedly a princess whose dowry included the town (do I detect Bombay-envy here? It is well-known that the latter was part of the dowry of the Portugese princess who wed Charles II). Having failed to find an adequate explanation of the name, it was decided to change the colonial name in favour of something home-grown. Contrary to mischievous suggestions the change of name had nothing whatsoever to do with failure to uplift people, alleviate poverty, make lives better, etc etc. Some would say anything to discredit political classes.

Thus was born Chennai. Some mischievously suggest that Chennai is not really Tamil , but diminutive form of Chenna Pattinam which in Telugu meant Good Town.
There is no pleasing some people

Herein lies the key to the "revolutionary" aspect of the popular Tamil honorifics: all vestiges of colonialism have been mercilessly and systematically erased through re-naming of the city, its avenues, roads, streets, plazas and public spaces.People have been gifted a spanking new city (in name) for the cost of none. Isnt that wonderful?

The detractors continue to crib about the lack of / condition of roads, hospitals and the like; but there is no pleasing some people....

A martial race.......

Way back when Beatles were still together, Jethro Tull was rocking the world with its whacky rock  and Mick "rubber lips" Jagger was "painting it black", every Madrasi of any substance aspired to be a doctor. Mostly of the medical variety. Until they discovered a different route to doctor-dom: honorary doctor-hood. I do not imply anything derogatory by the use of the aforesaid four-lettered word "hood" although some aver that the "honorary doctor" was acquired mostly by "hoods". Be that as it may.

To get back to what I was saying, those were the days when we discovered that you don't necessarily have to go to the Medical College or slog towards a PhD to acquire the "doctor" title. If you were a sufficiently important politician one was given to you. Gratis. Without the hassle of learning, exams and long years of peering through microscopes or telescopes or whatever scopes that you had to peer through to get a PhD. Every other politician's highest aspiration was to affix a "doctor" in front of his name, some rumoured not to have been even conferred.

Times changed. Winds of revolution which were sweeping through South America blew over the  South of India too. Suddenly there were revolutionaries everywhere.  "Puratchi" (revolution in Tamil) was the name of the new game in town. Doctor-hood was temporarily cast aside in favour of "Puratchi". The leading revolutionaries were too well known to need introduction here. They were revolutionising, er.....um.....I forget what; but they were revolutionising something, else they wouldn't have been bestowed those titles. There was even an amalgam of the doctor-dom and revolutionary credentials for a while as in "Puratchithalaivar Doctor so-and-so....But that was a short-lived phenomenon and did not capture the public's imagination.

What did capture the public's imagination was military titles. So now you have Captains and Majors galore with a sprinkling of Field Marshals ("thalapathy"). There is even a case of "puratchi" making a hesitant though determined attempt to come back into vogue as in Puratchi Thalapathy (Field Marshal of the Revolution). No doubt a sumptuous title reflecting the achievements and status of the holder of that sonorous title. If landlocked Latin American countries can have Naval Admirals in resplendent uniforms gold braiding and all, we in Chennai certainly deserve Field Marshals of the Revolution.

After all  we are a martial people with a great military tradition just as we have a great medical tradition.


The English Alphabet

Some years after leaving Madras I happened to live in England for a while. It would come as no surprise that my initial days and weeks were a series of embarrassing moments. Looking for radish to buy for good old "mullangi sambhar" (my daughter observes that you can take a man out of Madras, but cant take Madras out of a man), I was asked by the shop assistant in a fairly posh accent - put on for a purpose, it wasn't her normal one- if I kept horses.The implication being that they only fed radish to horses and an Indian was unlikely to keep horses. Worse, whenever I tried to spell out the words which sounded unfamiliar to their English ears (years, as I would have said in my best Madras accent those days) I would start spelling them out and end up in a right soup: yea for an aye, eye for an ouy, yum, yex and so on. So I had to relearn the sounds of the queens language and its usage too. School dinners were at 12.30 pm, I ate the soup, and so on. So one had to neutralize the Madras accent in order not to stand out in public.

I returned to Chennai to the familiar sounds of yeas, bees, hetches, yems and yexes. Not to forget the Izzeds. The complete alphabet for those of my followers not from this part of the world is as follows:
yea, bee, see, dee, yee, yeff, gee, hetch, eye, jay, kay, yell, yem, yen, woh, pee, kyoo, are, yes, tee,yew, vee, doubleyew, yex, woy, izzed. The aitches and R's to be pronounced everywhere possible. That reminds me of a story an american colleague in London told me once . He had taken the obligatory trip to Scotland to trace his roots and admired the waitress' Scottish accent at the hotel where he was staying: "you roll your R's very well, young lady". Reportedly she replied very coyly "only when I wearr my heels sirrr". I think our ancestors in the South learnt  English from Scottish missionaries in the nineteenth and early 20th centuries.

To paraphrase Mark Twain (I think it was), one travels the world in search of adventure and returns home to find it. In my case it is certainly true. 

Monday 19 December 2011

The prodigal returns......The first impressions second time round.

Well not really very prodigal; but somewhat so. What I mean really is that I am back in namma Chennai after being away for 41 years, a lot of it in amchi Mumbai. I just thought "Prodigal" sounded quite "cool" as the young ones might say these days. I mean I didn't exactly squander my fortune and then return to the home of my father. I went outside to find a fortune and not having found one in 41 years I am back - not so much to seek the old man's forgiveness, as the biblical story has it, as to pitch tent here for the simple reason that a home here is so much more affordable than in Mumbai.
I left Madras as a teen, bound to explore the exotic world of quanta, Pi- and K- Mesons, space-time curvature, fields, strings and stuff like that; I returned to Chennai after 41 years, having never really understood any of that exotic stuff. Along the way I acquired a wife, two children, many expensive habits and few pounds. But the fortune continued to elude me.

I left a leafy, leisurely Madras to return after 41 years to a frenetic, dusty, noisy Chennai. Many things had changed in the intervening years, not all for the better. When I left, JJ was still a movie star and DMK a party newly come to power and learning how to wield that power. Have things changed since then! And how! As I said earlier, not all for the better. Perhaps that's the nature of change.....

I find some of these changes irksome, some very amusing, yet some others strange, even weird, some acceptable, some not so, and so on. In these pages I shall try to recount my impressions of Chennai and how they measure up as compared to my recollections of Madras. In doing so I fully acknowledge the fact that remembered places and events somehow look far better from the vantage of distance in time than the people places and events as they are now. The idea is also not to belittle the present as compared to the past nor to hold that the past somehow was better as most people of a certain age are known to do. Nor is my idea to denigrate anyone or anything; it is merely to cast a fresh eye on things around me and try to find as much humour in them as possible. A sort of coping mechanism perhaps?
Keep visiting these pages to find out more first impressions the second time around.