Dravidians Vs Devanagri

Is Tamil Nadu against Hindi? This is a very old debate, older than me in fact, so I was a tad bit surprised when it resurfaced among contemporary people. I am no advocate of insularity or `cultural preservation'. But I do think that insularity is a rather unfair charge being laid on Chennai today; it may have been true some thirty years ago.

The English always claim that the French are insular in protecting their language and indeed I have faced immigration officials or airline people insisting on speaking in French, which made me feel rather indignant. Even in admittedly insular France, I have come across friendly people who spoke English (This might have been a reaction to my French, but nevertheless...) But I don't think that is what Chennai is. I haven't seen people insisting that others speak in Tamil; if they don't speak in English or Hindi, it is because of a lack in education rather than any insularity.

So we come back to the point that if only Hindi was taught in schools in Tamil Nadu, this situation wouldn't arise. Well, in reality all private schools across the state offer Hindi, Sanskrit,French or Tamil as a second language . Most students prefer Sanskrit or French where it is easy to score marks, in fact Tamil is the least preferred language. When it comes to Government schools, however, Tamil is the only second language. But is that very different from say Gujarat or Karnataka? It is only the city schools which teach Hindi in Karnataka. I do know that Gujarat Government schools have Gujarati as the primary language with Hindi as the second language, whereas TN and Karnataka opt for English as the second language. If TN were to opt for Tamil and Hindi as the two languages of learning, there would be a huge hue and cry about its global insularity in excluding English!!!

Similarly as far as communication goes, one needs to learn the native tongue of a place be it Chennai or Ahmedabad, if one were to live there for a significant length of time. Besides being useful to communicate with people such as vendors, maids, milkmen etc, the local language is also a part of the culture of the place. If a UP-ite were to live in the US, would he/she baulk against learning English or would they not learn German living in Germany. So why is it so objectionable to learn Tamil living in Tamil Nadu? And vice-versa, Tamilians living in the North or West do not insist on speaking in English or Tamil, they do learn Hindi.

In practical terms, I have seen more Hindi being spoken in offices in Chennai (non-government ones) than in Mumbai. In fact, it is cool to know Hindi in Chennai, but not so in Ahmedabad or Bangalore or Mumbai. The government offices on the other hand, still have this age-old practice of learning one Hindi word a day and one can see this right from banks to registrar offices to railway stations. So where is Hindi being excluded?

Just because auto drivers and maids do not respond to Hindi, to brand Chennai as insular is rather unfair. Chennai is as insular as London or Frankfurt or Colombo and less insular than Paris. The crib about Dravidians being against Devanagri is outdated. So people, please realise that when you crib that Chennai-ites do not speak Hindi, it is you who are being insular and not the other way around.

Transience of Greatness

I've always wondered how it is that greatness doesn't spawn greatness? This is true of all great leaders or visionaries, irrespective of their fields - Buddha, Confucius, Alexander, Harsha, Gandhi, Mandela, Churchill, Da Vinci, Michaelangelo,Einstein, Newton, Spielberg, Hitchcock,Jack Welch, Rockefeller......Is it because brilliance is a gift, vision is personal? Or is it because vision and brilliance are transient, changing with the times?

Movie REview : Guru

As usual Mani Ratnam has taken up a controversial and interesting theme and as usual, he stops short on the depth. The sad thing though is that as Mani Ratnam's presentation gets slicker, his miniscule content tends to get rather lost.

The movie is about Gurukant Desai, failed student turned petrol worker for Shell in Istanbul turned mega industrialist. Combine this with the cotton trading on floor, spat with a Parsi blue-blood industrialist, friendship with a socialist newspaperman which later turns into a long running feud, the questionable ethics versus shareholder friendliness - the connection to Dhirubhai Ambani is rather pronounced but vehemently denied. Again signature Mani Ratnam - Iruvar, Nayagan style.

The story can be summed up in one line - it is a rags to riches story of a petrol attendant who becomes India's largest industrialist. Obviously Mani Ratnam went into the story attracted by the shades of grey of the character of the protagonist - a visionary, a person who fights all odds, who allows nothing to stall him - not relationships (like his brother-in-law Jignesh) nor setbacks nor criticism,who corrupts on the same mega scale as he creates. But as usual, Mani Ratnam does not delve the depths of this character. Abhishek ends up looking like a hero, despite all the greys and he is not the one to portray the different shades of the personality he plays.

The shades are brought out by several points in the movie -

1)Guru marries Sujatha for the dowry but is not bothered by the fact that she is older by a year, has tried to elope with someone else. They have a great relationship -Is it the dowry alone ? Then how does he manage a good relationship with her?

2) Jignesh, his brother-in-law, is an equal partner in his business but Guru is unquestionably the able one, the one who makes the decisions. When Jignesh questions it, Guru as well as his cronies are taken aback.

3) As Madhavan remarks - Guru has grown by 400% but the corruption he spreads has grown at twice the rate.

4) As Vidya Balan puts it - Whatever the route he is chosen he is successful and he has made a lot of ordinary people successful through the stockmarket.

But sadly the shades are only hinted at, the filmaker does not explore them at all. And hence while Guru becomes a watchable movie due to its lucid storytelling, good perfomances, good music and great locales, it can never be called a brilliant movie.

Abhishek has put in a good performance, but his is a one dimensional character - more the hero than a man, that sadly was the lack of vision on the part of the director.

Aishwarya is as usual the glamour element, but thankfully is less coy, cloying and irritating in this movie.

Madhavan and Mithun Chakraborty, the two newspapermen, idealistic but intensely human walk away with the best characters, followed by Vidya Balan who represents the balance in this all. These three characters prove to be so much more interesting than the main characters.In real life, Dhirubhai always maintained centre-stage but somehow, in the movie version that is not what Gurubhai does.

New Year Debut

Ah, A grand title! Basically this just means this is my first post in the New Year and indeed after a long time. So with New Year here, I did what the whole world (of advertising) tells you to do - took a good look at myself. It is perhaps not the best thing to do if you are looking for a cheerful beginning, but then looking at yourself at anytime other than those times when you are smug and complacent or happy and at peace with the world, is not too good. If that very long sentence has confused you, never mind. Anyways, to go back to the beginning, I was taking stock and did not want to dwell too long on myself, but since that is the point of the exercise, one can't very well ruminate on George Clooney.

So anyways, I was trying to figure out something,and was struck by the fact that I had stopped resenting living in Madras or Chennai, for some time. That was rather surprising and also inconvenient - one thing less for me to crib about. But I can't shirk facts, I am comfortable living in Chennai; I even like it here.

Much of this sense of well-being is because of the past few months - there has been a lot happening in Chennai. For some reason, Hindu Friday Review has taken it upon itself to create events such as the Theatre Festival and the November Music Fest(which is more about Hindustani and fusion music as opposed to the December `Season'). I don't know that the quality of reviews on the Friday Review has seen any improvement but the fests have certainly done a lot for the social scene. While theatre is still not comparable to the variety of Mumbai, there is something happening and music-wise, the last year was really good - Indian Ocean, Shakthi, instrumental fusion and of course the regular sabha kutcheri's - a lovely variety.

Also,I think Madras is a great place to make good friends and the pace of life allows enough time for friends and friendships.

Of course, this year may turn out to be different and maybe at the end of it I will go back to cribbing about living here. There are all these problems of moral policing, collapsing infrastructure and of course, the bad weather. But at the moment, it does feel nice to feel at home, here in Chennai.