Dasavatharam

Dasavatharam was my third choice after finding out 'Indiana Jones' and 'Sex and the City' were sold out. I wonder if that somehow disqualifies me from writing a review. But whatever my lofty opinions about Kamal and Dasavatharam may be, I decided to watch the movie with an open mind.

Why would any actor want to play ten characters in a movie? It does not seem like a great testament of one's acting ability. After all whether you play ten or a hundred, each one has to be studied and expressed with sensitivity and intelligence. Once you look at it from that angle the ten characters seem to be an unnecessary distracting circus that Kamal doesn't need. It is a bit of a surprise he still feels he needs such gimmicks to show off his acting caliber. Or perhaps he felt he needed it to win in the box office.

The much acclaimed Nambi was a disappointment for me. I felt the character was contrived and over-acted. So was Govind and the other forgettable avatars. If not for the Telugu police officer , Poovaragan, and the grandma, the movie would have been a disaster. Forgetting for a minute the mis-placed accent, Kamal shows what a great actor he is when he plays the character Poovaragan. The sensitivity, the moral anger , the love for the language, the greatness of the character shines through memorably in Kamal's voice and expressions. The grandma and the police officer are equally hilarious.

But at the end of the day these characters are only there for one purpose. To show what a great actor Kamal is. And that is where it all starts tumbling down. There is no depth to most of the characters Kamal plays and the characters played by others are completely cardboardish, for want of a better word. It clearly shows a failure on the part of the screenplay writer to care about even his heroine.

That brings me to the puzzle of the story and screenplay. Let us set aside for a moment the story and the movie exist only to showcase "World-hero" Kamal. After all there is also the intellectual screenplay and story writer Kamal.

Kamal seems undecided on what he wanted to say. Why bring this whole story to imply even the tsunami must have had a purpose and then backtrack by having the lead character express skepticism to that idea? That too somewhat carelessly and callously. I could see his intellectual side would be horrified to take a stand where that question is even given some serious thought. But that is what the story stands for. At the end of the day, according to this story, if the tsunami had not happened more lives would have been lost.

This movie is not serious enough to ponder a profound question like that and it seems pretentious at best. Or was the purpose of the movie as Kamal pompously states at the beginning of the movie about chaos theory? If we were to look at movies like Babel the connections are seamless and believable. Perhaps they are unlikely but still they could happen and that is what makes such movies interesting. Here again in Dasavatharam, everything seems contrived lik the bullet that 'operates' avatar singh.

Kamal tries to be too intelligent. Tries to prove a point. He tries too hard, period. And that I think is the movie's biggest handicap.

As for the make-up I would prefer the blond, white Shivaji any day to Fletcher.

American food

Did a short US trip. After a really bad flight full of turbulence that I spent throwing up, I landed in Paris somewhat in a haze. Paris airport folks do a good job of hiding the rest rooms. After spending a lot of time trying to figure out where they were and struggling with the non working water fountains I embarked on the next leg, the haze still quite in place. Every time the air hostess brought the standard airplane fare I was ready to dig my head into the sick bag.

I landed finally in Atlanta after what seemed an eternity and I walked to this food court. Bought this huge sandwich loaded with veggies and a nice thick soup. It was the best lunch (or was it dinner) I had in a long time.

I miss some of those nice sandwiches and soups I used to eat a lot. Getting reminded of the 'is soup a meal' Seinfeld episode.

Donate blood

I had to struggle to get A negative blood recently for someone undergoing a surgery. Apparently it is rarer than I thought. After multiple phone calls I found a few friends who came by and donated the precious liquid. That in itself was heartening.

And then there was this guy - he caught a bus to travel for about an hour to the hospital, gave the blood and off to catch another bus for another hour long journey. He was not one of those 'I have made all the money - and have all the time in the world' kind of person. From what he told me initially on the phone it looked like he had a regular job and most likely struggled to make ends meet. He must have got 'permission' from work.

He left without any expectation of anything - not even a thanks which he could proudly accept - he didn't bother to wait to see me. In that one stroke my cynicism faded and my faith in humanity was restored. They still make people like this?

Do we need weddings?

It was quite thrilling to get up in the morning in anticipation of hearing tamil in all it's glory. Having roped in my uncle to give us [VS, TSL and me] some tamil lessons, I was already making a wish list on all the things I wanted to cover.

The first morning my uncle [Mr. V Srinivasan] treated us to a lovely poem from kurunthogai. But that is a separate blog. To give us the background he talked about the main characters of the love poems - the hero, the heroine, the friend, the mother, the nurse - etc. It boggles my mind these poems from hundreds of years ago don't talk about great kings or great religious figures or even gods. But they talk about nameless, average people with their everyday emotions.

We digressed to the institution of marriage and my uncle commented on how the really ancient poems don't seem to give much importance to weddings. And then he proceeded to recite this -

"Poyyum Vazhuvum Thondriya Pinnar Aiyyar Yaathanar Karanam Enba"

பொய்யும் வழுவும் தோன்றிய் பின்னர் அய்யர் யாத்தனர் கரணம் என்ப

Here is an answer to a very twentieth century question why do we need an institution called matrimony - 'after lies and mistakes and deceit there were ministers and ceremonies'.

Happy Bithday

I was in the middle of an irritating meeting when the phone rang. I did not recognize the overseas number and I picked it up with an abrupt 'hello'.

'Are you busy?', asked the familiar voice. RR calls me whenever the mood strikes him, sometimes once in six months or so. And we pick up the conversation where we left off seamlessly. But it was an odd time for him to call.

'Are you busy?', he asked again. Some wheels cranked in my brain and I asked somewhat frantically - 'What day is it today?'

His voice laced with laughter he said, 'March 6'.

For more than a decade plus now, RR has never once forgotten my birthday. He would call me from wherever he was and wish me. And in the decade plus years I have known him I think I have always managed to miss wishing him on his B'day.

I don't know what I did to deserve a friend who called me on his birthday so that I could wish him and not feel bad later for missing it.

Happy Birthday, Best friend.