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"Real" Dream

Everybody has a dream. Only a few go on to reach their dream, but they have to undergo various difficulties to attain them. Don't think your dreams are over. Its not, if you can put in that extra effort you can achieve your dreams.

I wanted to be an electronics engineer. I was amazed at the Electronics chapter which we had to study during our Twelfth standard. I was deluged in all the fascination about how I am going to study in electronic scale about working of a radio, TV, etc... As a matter of fact, I didn't study those stuff nor I am working in my field of interest.

I would say four factors that would affect you destiny,

1. Good Education / Institution:

We have a post in our blog stating the education system in India. The educational system should be upgraded as it is outdated. I found that people where teaching vaccum tubes when there is already a revolution in Transistors and MoSFETs. It also depends on the socio-economic class of the student. If he can afford money then he can get admission in good institution.

The education system has become more of a business nowadays. People who have the money power (and muscle power) have started to build institutions and are gaining profit from them. I dont want them to provide education for free (after all they need money to survive), but they could atleast stop the huge amount of donation they claim from those poor parents. I have seen colleges collecting hefty fines and defaulters were made to stand outside the directors office (Like a Watchman!!!) or sometimes suspended. They dont care about the welfare of students anymore . All they care about is money. I am not blaming all of them. We can find some people who have that conscience (or pity) to help the students in their studies and not hinder them.

In the early 20th century, people donated their wealth in order to build educational institutions and help the people in need. In modern days, its the other way round, you take the money from the people to build more educational institutions in order to acquire wealth.

The sad part is even the government are not interfering in these matters. They dont want any trouble from those hotshots (as some of the educational institutions are run by people who are prominent in either the ruling party or the opposition party). They dont care a damn about education to poor, all they care is free TV for the poor when there in energy shortage.

2. Parents:

The role of parents is very important in making you dream come true (or rather their dream come true). Now honestly how many parents would love their child to be an artist, lyricist,etc.. They (some of them) want to impress (or exceed other children) their relatives and friends, so they try to push in their ambitions into our mind. They dont allow you to settle in your minds. They constantly come up and say to you what they want us to become, they dont listen what we want to become. If the kid wants to become something other than what their parents want to be, they are brain washed.

Parents should be supportive of their kids, they have understand what the child wants and not what they want from the child. These days , the interaction time between the parents and the kids are dwindling at an alarming rate. In most of the middle class families, both the parents are working and they come home only by 7.30 pm and the kid is under the supervision of a servant or he will be in some tution class. The kid arrives at 8.00 pm or he is already tired of these classes , so he takes his dinner and goes to sleep. People should listen to what the kid has done in the school, they should follow their activity, spend time with them and thats how the bond between the parents and kid will become stronger. Richard Feynman admired his father, you can find references of his father teaching him in some of his books. Maybe thats why he decided to become a world renown scientist. The interaction between a child and his parent may shape his ambition/career.

Again, if you see from the parents' point of view, they are quite helpless, they want their kids to be in repectable job rather than risking his career for some other profession. Most of them struggle to raise their kids and they expect some payback from child. They think if somehow he/she becomes engineer or doctor, he/she can continue to serve the family. So they are apprehensive of sending their son/daughter to their area of interest which may put the entire family at risk. They are really constricted to some ideas (their ideal world), they dont want to think outside that world.

3. Teacher:

The teacher plays an important role in making one career. Most of the teachers are sub standard,Why? The reason is something to do with the topic of the post. Most of them dont pursue their dream, but forced to come into teaching profession becuase of their family circumstances or due to lack of jobs of their interest. There have been some really good teachers, who have dedicated their lives to teaching, but we need some real gems to force the talet out of the child when a parent fails to do so.

4. The Students:

I would say that the students also play an important role in ruining their ambition/career. Let's for example take engineering, we have been provided facilities (atleast some) when some children could only dream about. Most of the people are forced into engioneering, but there are some people whose ambition is to study engineering. Does all the guys/girls who do engineering study properly? No, I dont think so. We can go about complaining that the facilities weren't there, the teachers weren't good, did we improvise? No. All we did was having fun all the time (maybe sometimes we studied), enjoying life and lost our opportunity to learn more when we had the facility (little facility). We were enjoying with our friends when we should have deluged ourselves in the library books, but we rarely did that, when we did that it was mostly to skip classes and to pass time without much ado.

People dont want to explore the subject, they want to be spoon fed by the teachers. All they want is to score good grades (which is actually important) without actually knowing anything. People have to explore beyond what they have been taught. Its time the students change their attitude, they have internet. Even if they are not taught well, they can go browse the net and actually learn the stuff rather than complaining.

It also takes immense courage to pursue your ambition. It may include going against tradition, parents wishes etc. There are some people who have done it. I knew personally some of the people. I salute them for their courage and reflect upon my cowardice and try to find a solution for my problem.

I agree there are exceptions in all the four points I have mentioned above. Finally, I leave you with these two examples to ponder about. One from the past and one from the present.

i) Leonardo Da Vinci - Illegitimate son of a wealthy man. He didnt have education like us or the facility that we have now. Look at him, he did everything - he was a painter, sculptor, engineer, mechanic, designer, scientist,etc... He did everything he wanted to do and succeeded in it.

ii) http://xlalumni.blogspot.com/2007/11/xlri-homecoming-07-idli-boy-steals-show.html

No excuses for any of us. If he can do it, we can do it. We still have time to pursue our dreams. Who's Game?

Beyond old Kollywood

This is another posting about movies.I couldnt resist posting this from The Hindu,

“Kalloori” is the finest Tamil film of the year. After “Kadhal”, Balaji Sakthivel could have easily made an ambitious film with big stars, but he chose instead to do something smaller, on a more intimate scale. You have to admire him for it. There are few false notes in “Kalloori”, a film about three years in the life of nine college friends. Character, plot and dialogue are flawlessly rendered, staying faithful to its small town roots, never once betraying its authentic rural sensibility. The actors look uncompromisingly South Indian: every face here reminds us of real people and there’s no attempt to airbrush the actors and make them movie-handsome. Sakthivel maintains a fine, calibrated balance between the formulaic and the artistic.

“Kalloori” is only one example among several recent Tamil films that point to a very quiet but exciting revolution taking place in contemporary Tamil cinema: an unexpected, astonishing move towards realistic, intelligent, strongly scripted storytelling. Ram’s “Kattradhu Tamil” and Ameer’s “Paruthiveeran” are also remarkable instances of a new kind of movie in Tamil. What is just as remarkable is their modest success at the box office. In some ways, a film like “Kalloori”, deftly weaving Kollywood and realism, is more ambitious and more entertaining than a big budget film with stars. Is this the new Kollywood?

New wave

What these new wave of Tamil films seem to be doing is to fuse the energy and entertainment of a mainstream film (without its formulaic excesses) with the complexity and sensitivity of an art film (minus the excessive artiness). Mani Ratnam invented it in “Nayagan” and perfected it in “Aayitha Ezhuthu”, but it took all these decades for a newer generation of filmmakers to follow his genius. Other recent examples in this new wave are: Thankar Bachchan’s “Pallikoodam” and “Onbadhu Roobai Nottu”, Vetrimaran’s “Polladhavan”, Nishikant Kamat’s “Evano Oruvan”, Padma Magan’s “Ammuvaagiya Naan”, Gnana Rajasekharan’s “Periyar”, Vasanta Balan’s “Veyil”, Selvaraghavan’s “Pudupettai” and Cheran’s “Thavamai Thavamirunthu”.

Suddenly, it seems there is a new Tamil audience, a young audience, willing to see new things. The big Deepavali releases, “Azhagiya Tamil Magan”, “Vel” and “Machakarran” for instance, seem un-entertaining and even tame to a new Tamil audience now used to a cinema that is more inventive.

The Tamil New Wave is also characterised by style, personal filmmaking, a minimum song soundtrack (with songs in the background rather than lip synched and danced to) a shorter running time, no parallel comedy track (the comedy arises instead from within the plot) and themes that are sharply observed, tough-minded explorations of rural life and life on the mean streets. The characters here are rooted in family, culture and tradition but are forced to break with everything because of their personal choices — usually love or ambition.

The significance of these films is not for Tamil cinema alone. Their influence is already being felt through the rest of Indian cinema, signalling to filmmakers that our formulaic movies can be reinvented.

Already paralleling the Tamil revolution is a new kind of Hindi movie, evidenced by “Hazaaron Khwashien Aisi”, “Black Friday”, “Omkara”, “Iqbal”, “Page 3”, “Mixed Doubles”, “Rang de Basanti”, “Dus Kahaniya”, “Khoya Khoya Chand” etc. Except their themes are urban, looking at sex, adultery, relationships, work pressure, crime and everything else that contemporary living throws up. If Tamil movies depend too much on a rustic milieu, Hindi movies lean too much on the urban. Both cinemas need to crossover.

How exactly did this new cinema come about? Had its young audience, now exposed to better cinema from around the world, begun to tire of the more formulaic, fantasy-driven films? Or was it the young directors themselves who now desired to tell new stories in new ways?

The frontrunners

It is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when this film revolution in contemporary Tamil cinema started, but I’d like to mark two films as possibly having inspired and kick started this new wave:” Autograph” and “Kaadhal”. Both films were artistically made, entertaining, and — most crucially — huge box office hits. It must have startled the Kodambakkam industry to see two intimate love stories with no stars winning such a huge audience.

Balaji Sakthivel’s “Kaadhal” and Cheran’s “Autograph” signalled two things to Kollywood’s aspiring younger directors — that there was an audience for character-driven, strongly scripted, low budget movies, and that there were bold producers and passionate filmmakers willing to risk telling more realistic, intelligent, personal stories.

Sakthivel brings a documentary naturalness to the acting in “Kalloori”, especially with Hemlatha as Kayal, who can actually make you forget she’s acting. He coaxes an achingly beautiful performance from Tamanna; a complex, intense performance I have not been able get out of my head, one that heralds a major star. “Kalloori” is admirably restrained, subtly humorous and scene-by-scene enjoyable.

Ameer’s “Paruthiveeran” stunned an audience with a brutally detailed depiction of clan wars in rural Tamil Nadu. The first Tamil film to evoke small town life precisely: the festivals, rituals, locale, characters, and dialect. Its strongest character, fascinatingly, is a woman, Muthazhagu (an audacious performance by Priyamani), the heroine who fiercely knows her mind and heart. The scene where she eats with a ravishing appetite just after being sickeningly beaten by her father reverses everything we’ve seen in our movies about women and patriarchy.

Unpredictable

If “Kalloori” is the best Tamil movie of the year, “Kattradhu Tamil” is the most underrated. Ram’s film is original, unpredictable, disturbing and provocative. Prabhakar (Jeeva scorching as a bearded Dostoyevskian hero) has an M.A. in Tamil but it gets him nowhere. He runs into classmates half as bright as him doing fabulously well working for BPOs, while those with a degree in the arts and humanities are marginalised into obscurity. Working as a young Tamil teacher in Chennai for a poor school, Prabhkar narrates his terrifying journey (to Karunas, usually a comic sidekick, who does a superb about turn as a character actor) from idealism and rage to madness and oblivion.

What this postgraduate in Tamil has to say about how irrelevant those who have given themselves to Tamil culture and literature have become in an increasingly Anglicised society feels alarmingly true and painfully ironic. “Kattradhu Tamil” is uneven, dark, and violent but also full of conviction with an uncompromising vision.

The only aspect that slightly mars many of these offbeat Tamil films is their tendency for dark, morbid, violent endings. They seem to interpret any realistic portrayal as necessarily ending in tragedy, almost to say: realism equals tragedy. “Paruthiveeran”, “Kattradhu Tamil” and “Kalloori” also make this error. What they don’t realise is that after soaking in the despair and struggles of these characters, what we in the audience want to see is the triumph of these characters (however small that might be) over their fate. We want to see is Veeran and Muthazhagu, Muthuchelvan and Shobana, Prabhakar and Anandi take flight, escape the past and find a new life. Surely they’ve earned it.

Through the last decade and a half there have been other one-off films that were also intelligent and artful, but because they popped up sporadically and were not, unlike the new Tamil movie phenomenon, part of a gathering movement, they never achieved sufficient momentum to make a strong impact and change the idiom of contemporary Tamil cinema. But they nudged the revolution closer: Films such as Durai’s “Mugavari”, Susi Ganesan’s” Five Star” (his “Thiruttu Payale” is also noteworthy for the way its dark hero stays faithfully in character right up to the end) Suhasini Maniratnam’s “Indira”, and Ameer’s “Raam”. And then, more recently, there have been these other little, deft entertainers — romantic dramas and comedies where the emphasis is not on being realistic or authentic but in being charming and believable: Priya’s “Kanda Naal Mudhal”, Azhagham Permual’s “Dum, Dum, Dum”, Radha Mohan’s “Azhagiya Theeyae” and “Mozhi”, Vasanth’s “Yei Nee Romba Azhaga Irrukkai” and “Poovellam Kettupaar”, and Cheran’s “Mayakannadi”.

Smart and stylish

Even the new wave of Tamil gangster films — “Pudupettai”, Mishkin’s “Chithiram Pesuthadi”, Linguswamy’s “Sandakozi”, Vishnuvardhan’s “Pattiyal” and Vetrimaran’s “Polladhavan” — and thrillers — Gautham Menon’s “Kaaka Kaaka” and “Pachaikilli Muthucharam”, Igor’s underrated “Kalaba Kadhalan”, Vasanth’s “Satham Podaathey” — have a new grittiness and edge to them, and are smartly written and stylishly crafted.

There is plenty that is still disturbing about even new Tamil cinema: endless violence, obnoxious attitude to women, and ingratiating tropes. What is cause for celebration, though, is that this vibrant new cinema in Tamil is not at its culmination but is just beginning. Already in “Kalloori” there is no violence, no caste politics, and no item numbers. It certainly feels like Tamil cinema has finally grownup, turned a corner, and gone beyond old Kollywood.

You can also check the story at , http://www.hindu.com/mag/2008/01/13/stories/2008011350150500.htm

Kalloori and other contemporary World cinema

I recently went for the Tamil movie "Kalloori" directed by Balaji Shakthivel. I entered the theater thinking that it will be yet another movie about college. It had all the elements like friendship and love which you can expect in a Tamil movie which is based on college life. The climax was a shocker, we didn't expect the movie to end this way. The director has portrayed the bus burning incident that happened 4 years back in Dharmapuri when three of the student lost their precious life.

I have seen movies that portray real life incidents (sufferings) or the internal problem of people in a particular society (for e.g., No Man's Land , Paradise Now, Kannathil Muthamittal, etc..). Most of the people in the world are not aware of these kind of sufferings that's happening every moment in some part of the world.

Directors from all over the world have started to show the "real" situation in which people around the world has suffered ( Schindler's list, Hotel Rwanda, Blood Diamond) or suffering (Paradise Now, No Man's Land). Cinema is a powerful media where you can send powerful message to people but unfortunately Indian directors are far behind in this kind of sensitive subject. All the producers and directors want to portray a hero as a larger than life hero and pocket millions. The actors also expect the same from the directors, they don't want to portray sensitive things, they want to enhance their image in front of their fans.

Its high time our actors and directors turn to the social issues plaguing our society. India is the second largest movie producer in the world and most of the movies that are started are not finished and some of the movies are finished with heavy financial backing (and with no story) and only the actors and directors are benefited by this and not the society.

The day after watching kalloori, the 3 accused in the Dharmapuri were sentenced to death (The sentence was nothing to do with the movie) and I thought it was perfect to end this way. Alas, today the court have stayed the sentence. Like the ending of the movie, we will never know if the accused will be brought to justice.

Directors like Vittoria De Sica, Kieslowski, Fellini, Satyajith Ray were daring enough to show the "real" human conditions and emotions. Will we ever see a period like that in Tamil Nadu if not in India? Thats a question for which we will never know when we will find answers.

"The politicians want to see it as black and white, good and evil, and art wants to see it as a human thing." -- Hany Abu-Assad