Chez Moi

***SPOILER WARNING*** This post contains details of the plot so please be warned ***

Long before the movie was released and the hype and the hoopla started, I was quite keen to watch it. Any movie that had a sublime song like ‘New York Nagaram’ must not be missed, I told myself. Well, you live and learn, don’t ya?

What put me off about ‘Sillunu Oru Kaadal’, let me count the ways.

1. The title - if there ever was a misnomer, this was it. There was nothing ’sill’ about this movie. It was not at all the jolly, happy-go-lucky you would expect, at least from its title. ‘Damp squib’ would have been a better fit.

2. Characterisation of Bhoomika - What did that poor girl do to you, Director Krishna? She was practically non-existent in the movie. Why did you make her into that wallpaper? The only time she came alive was in the vamp attire and attitude and then, boy, she smoked! Jo paled in comparison.

3. Dialogue - the way Aishu declares her love for Gautham will remain forever, on the top of the ‘how not to declare your love to your sweetheart’ list. I mean, ick! ‘Nee mattum pakka vendiya odambe ellaraiyum pakka vechittiye?’ Give me a break! I am too pissed to even translate that!

4. Aishu’s dad - this man is portrayed as the villain in the life of Aishu and Gautham, the high powerful man, splitting his daughter and her newly married husband seconds after they tie the knot. He not only beats his son-in-law senseless, he manages to transplant his daughter to another corner of the world. When did that man become the snivelling, bumbling fool he was shown as in the second half? Did his daughter’s anger melt him into such a puddle? Why didn’t she turn this anger on him so he didn’t split her and Gautham up, in the first place?

5. Picturisation of songs - if this is the best we can do with ARR’s songs, then it is no wonder the man is not too keen on making music for Tamil movies any more. What is the big idea in shooting a song entitled ‘New York Nagaram’, in Lucerne, pray tell me?

6. Narrative - at no point did the story settle into a smooth narrative. It sort of lurched along in fits and starts.

7. The title song - Tanvi singing the song in that dreadful affected tone put me off big-time. Unless you do not know Tamil, it is bound to get on your nerves - it grated mine.

8. The diaryWhy is Gautham’s diary written like a third-person narrative? Wouldn’t you write the diary for yourself and not for some audience?

9. The validity of Gautham’s marriage to Kundavi, in light of his outing with Aishu.

The story, such as it is, is this: Kundavi (Jo’s character) is a typical village belle, who’s got this big dream of falling in love with a tall, dark, handsome man and marrying him. Of course, things do not go that way and she ends up marrying Gautham (Surya),as ordained by her family. She thinks this is the end of her life. But when we meet them five years later, life is not over for Kundavi but has just taken a lovely turn. She has blossomed into this bindaas Mumbai girl, with a cool job in advertising, a lovely 5 year old daughter Aishu (how trite can you get?) and mechanic hubby Gautham who loves her to bits. ‘I am the happiest man in the Vorld’ shouts he from the rooftops. That seems to be the cue for the twist in the tale.

One day, whilst rooting in the loft for something for her child’s school project, Kundavi comes across Gautham’s diary and she learns about his rowdy past and his girlfriend, Aishu (there was no reaction to that - disappointing!) and his *gasp* marriage to her, which is rudely interrupted moments after the knot is tied by the arrival of her political big-wig dad who hauls her home while his goons beat Gautham to a bloody pulp. When he vows to go after Aishu, his guardian-uncle takes a toss from the stairs (ho hum) and makes Gautham swear that he would marry Kundavi, moments before giving up his own ghost. But what sticks in Kundavi’s mind is Gautham’s statement that he never even got to live a day with his beloved Aishu.

Of course, the bottom falls out of Kundavi’s world and because she loves her husband to bits, she decides to make things alright by hunting down Aishu and giving her and Gautham a day so they can get it out of their system.

Ye Gods!

Whilst the concept might have started off as something original, the treatment of it leaves much to be desired. The movie fails on many levels. While cashing in on the Jo-Surya romance and timing the release so it was just before their wedding is good marketing, not delivering the package is a big let-down. The only reason the movie is limping along is due to the fascination of their fans with their real-life romance and they just want to catch a bit of it.

Big, fat, disappointment. Best avoid this if you are not die-hard Surya-Jo fans.

I hate to admit it but I was a teensy-weensy bit scared. The scrawny guy in the corner looked mildly menacing. The blonde at the table looked in control while the Oriental lady a few feet away looked positively territorial.

I was petrified.

I have never seen the inside of a Laundromat before. I have walked past it a million times as it was a few doors down from my workplace but never ventured inside. I was, after all, the smug owner of a working washing machine, with a dryer, I might add. I could do my laundry from the comfort of my own home, at my own sweet time. And I did so for five long years till the day my pipes got blocked with some mysterious substance and the water from my washing machine came flooding into the kitchen.

To say it caused panic in my heart is like saying the tsunami was a wee wave. What if the water seeped through my floorboards and into my neighbour’s ceiling? What if it got soaked right through and fell on their heads? I would never be able to sell this place and make a whopping profit!

S put on his ‘man of the house’ hat and peered down the pipes as if he could unblock it with his laser vision. When that didn’t work, he emptied the steaming contents of the kettle down it. Well, that didn’t help one jot as the water stayed put - only now I had a sink full of water to deal with, as well!

As he went to root out the plunger and Mr Muscle’s magic concoction, I loaded an Ikea blue bag with the dirty clothes and made my way to the laundromat. The minute I opened the door and stepped in, it was like I had gone behind the laundry world’s version of the Iron Curtain. There seemed to be some sort of code to this place and I didn’t have a clue what it was. Wrenching the door open, loading the machine, putting some coins in and getting it started, I found later, were the easy bits.

Not wanting to waste the hour it would take for the machine to chomp the dirt out of our clothes, I headed home to check on the progress being made. (And what a mistake that turned out to be!) By then, hubby dear had discovered that Mr Muscle was no match for our pipes and gone onto another stronger product, which promised to burst through the clog and make the pipe’s insides look like brand-spanking-new.

Leaving him to his cartload of pipe-clearing products, I went back to the Laundromat, only to learn that these machines took a lot less time to do the washing than my one at home. While I was listening to the relative merits of Cillit Bang vs Mr Muscle, my wash cycle had ended and some one had emptied my sodden clothes into a basket and collared my machine.

Worse, two of the four tumble dryers sported ‘Out of Order’ signs. So I had to queue behind either a blonde with four bin bags full of dirty clothes and a dangerous looking individual with a bulging tote bag or a tough looking Chinese lady, who looked like she had a never-ending supply of clothes. I decided to go for the Chinese (fellow continent-woman and all that!) and thereby, made my second error of the day.

What I had assumed to be four bin bags full of dirty clothes, turned out to be four bin bags full of clean clothes. Even as I stood slack jawed, the blonde tipped out bag afte bag onto a table and neatly folded the clothes into her humungous hamper. She varied this routine by opening the dryer every once in a while, taking her family’s smalls out and folding them into a different basket. By this time, the Chinese lady was joined by her husband and son, who went to a machine each, emptied their loads onto baskets and joined Mum. Mum then proceeded to open the door of her dryer, tipped the contents of the two baskets inside and put about half a million quid worth of coins in. As I stood there gaping like a fish, the timer went up and up, finally stopping at 85 minutes.

Eighty-five bloody minutes, on top of the twenty I have already put in! Someone’s having a laugh and it certainly wasn’t me!

I decided to put my years of Chennai living to good use (if you have stood outside your house, waiting for the water tank to come and dispense water, you would know what I am talking about!) and join the party. Tugging and shoving in turns, I moved my bag of clothes so it stood directly in front of the dryer. Kin or not, I was not budging for anyone anymore! I casually flipped my book open, lounged against the wall and maintained my position.

While I was deeply engrossed in the antics of Malachi, Gideon and Rebecca, the blonde finished her job and the bachelor with the tote bag dumped his load in, waited around for 20 minutes and cleared the way for the quick-footed brunette who had stood behind him! All the while, I waited like a lemon for my machine to finish drying all the wet clothes in China.

There was mild panic when the machine was still half-way through and Mum pushed my bag rudely out of the way. Even as I was wondering what I would do if she chucked in more clothes, she calmly took some of the dried ones and wandered away, while I breathed out a sigh of relief.

After a mind-numbing, mammoth hour and a half, the machine finally did its job and Mum slowly started emptying its contents into her bags. I stood behind her, hiding the machine and trying to look as menacing as I could armed with a paperback and a sack full of wet clothes. Mum took off, thankfully and I heaved my stuff in, praying the machine won’t give up its ghost now that it was my turn. That would have been really the limit!

I nabbed the chair vacated by Mum, plonked it in front of my dryer and continued with my book. Soon enough, the deed was done and a call to the landline ensured the plumber downed tools and doffed the chauffeur’s hat, carting me and my clean, fresh-smelling clothes home.

I arrived to see the kitchen in chaos – there were bottles of bleach, assorted chemical products and even a bottle of vinegar, some salt and soda bicard on the floor (well, we do watch How Clean Is Your House?) and assorted bits of pipes. S had finally thrown in the towel and started thumbing through the Yellow Pages for a plumber. Of course, no self-respecting plumber would come immediately and the only one whose diary wasn’t booked till the next century offered to come in during the following weekend.

Even as S spluttered down the phone, I went back to my book without a care in the world. After all, I could do my washing at the laundromat down the road. I am not scared; I’m not a virgin anymore - I am a pro!

Whoever came up with this cyber tagging, I wanna know? Kishore tells me that he has tagged me and what’s more, is gonna put some wacko questions to me that I have to answer. *sigh*

The ‘theme’ is ‘me me meme’ and here I go!

I am thinking about… how best to avoid the day of chores that awaits me and lounge with my new Nora Roberts instead!

I said… let me be, but no one’s listening!

I want to… break free! I want to breeaaak frrreee!

I wish… I could get the hooks and shooks sorted and my novel starts flowing freely.

I hear… thunder, I hear thunder, hark don’t you?

I wonder… at the miracle of Nature.

I regret… the lost opportunities.

I am… what I am and what I am needs no excuses!

I dance… the merry dance of life!

I sing… in my mind, in the loo, in privacy - for the good of all mankind!

I cry… when I am hurt, when I am moved by a good book or like Kishore, while chopping onions!

I am not always… a nice person!

I make with my hands… some of the world’s greatest artworks. Pity they are visible only to folks blessed with X-ray vision!

I write… cos it makes me happy.

I confuse… acquaintances with friends.

I need… the space to be just me.

And finally… Apu, Saks, Sowmya, Qalander and everyone else who has read this - you’re tagged!

Remaking movies - in other words, lifting the success formula from one language and neatly transferring to another - guarantees instant moolah. Or so the belief goes. This, in my opinion, is the reasoning behind remaking a movie. This concept has been employed time and again to varying degrees of success. One of the most successful remake franchises was that of Munnabhai - its Tamil alter ego Vasoolraja and Telugu counterpart Shankar Dada went on to duplicate Sanju’s antics and laughed all the way to the banks.

In the South, Vijay is one of the popular leading actors who employs this tactic regularly, to varying degrees of success. He buys the Tamil rights to a hit Telugu movie, makes it with self as the leading man and hey presto! another super, duper hit ready!! Gilli was one such hit that proved to be a great buy for him, while Vaseegara was a squid. Now, with the rights to Mahesh Babu’s blockbuster Pokiri in his bag, Vijay can almost smell the success once again.

‘Jeyam’ Ravi is another who follows in the same footsteps. He, too, had good runs with his previous movies M Kumaran S/O Mahalakshmi and Mazhai, the remake of MS Raju’s megahit Varsham. When news of Bommarillu hit Chennai, there was widespread frenzy amongst Vijay and ‘Jeyam’ Ravi, amongst others, to net the Tamil rights and sit back and watch the money come rolling in. But things didn’t go their way, with Prakash Raju coming up trumps. But ‘Jeyam’ Ravi needn’t go home with nothing - after all, he’s starring in last year’s Telugu hit Nuvvostanante Nennoddantana (NVNV), which cleared the table at this year’s Filmfare Awards.

In Something, Something, NVNV’s Tamil version, Ravi plays the role of rich NRI lad Santhosh, the same role that made Siddharth the poster boy of Hyderabad last year. Siddharth owned this role, revelled in it and made it completely his. He was hyperactive, bouncing off the walls, super-cool and full of pizazz. This so contrasted with his mature look in the second half, that it worked really well for him. He, in short, talked the talk and walked the walk and was Santhosh, the super-rich, London-born and bred chap. Ravi, well, didn’t just cut the mustard. Everything about him was a let down.

For starters, he spoke with a marked Tamil accent - strike one against a London-born guy. In the scene where he counted the stars in the sky for Trisha, going ‘1… 2… 3…… 10′, I split my sides, laughing. This Santhosh most certainly did not grow up in London! Every single act of his was an imitation of what Siddharth did in the Telugu version - there was nothing originally Ravi in the whole movie. His antics pained me so much that I had to walk out well before the climax.

Maybe it wasn’t Ravi’s fault - that is the cross all remake heroes have to bear. No matter what a brilliant performance he had managed to come up with, he still would have been compared to the original. Well, I’m loosely calling it original but there’s nothing original about the storyline. It is Maine Pyar Kiya and a whole lot of other romantic stories mashed up and served with some fizz. But what it also is a frame by frame copy of NVNV.

One of the biggest drawbacks that Ravi’s got is his voice - he just doesn’t sound macho enough. There’s this scene in Mazhai where he’s supposed to stand up to the bad guys and make them quake in their boots. But in that mousey voice of his, all he managed to do was make me almost wet myself.

Another huge letdown was Bhagyaraj. While I have never been a fan of his, I wept for Prakash Raj as I saw Bhagyaraj take the role so brilliantly essayed by that great actor and bring it down to such a level. In the Telugu version, Prakash Raj is this silent, stoic businessman, who adores his son whilst suffering his wife’s caustic tongue with some admirably repressed passion. In Something, Something Bhagyaraj, in his trademark verbose style manages to make you wonder how such a character managed to amass millions and earn such a major name for himself in England’s capital town. When he tells his brother-in-law and the BIL’s partner that whilst his wife may appear to be the boss during the day, come night he will take charge, how crass can you get? While Prakash Raj was this suave, sophisticated millionaire, Bhagyaraj comes across as this bumbling, uncouth man in ill-suited finery. The scene where he pontificates about the greatness of komiyam (cow’s wee!) in his quest for water to quench his thirst has to rank in the top three as the most idiotic scenes in the whole film.

Though it was just an old story rehashed, NVNV managed to sustain the audience’s interest due to its treatment and the casting. This is where the Tamil version fails. While Something, Something has successfully managed to remake the Telugu movie frame by frame, remaking the Best Actor award will not prove to be such an easy task!

‘Good morning ma’am, my name is Vandana Narayanan, could I please speak to Ms. so&so please…..’ If I had a penny for every time a Vandana or an Anil or a Kumar called me from a call centre, I would be a very rich woman. There is no escaping these call centres, they have got us covered. Morning, noon, night - they are there to rouse you out of bed, interrupt your tea, crash in on your family dinners, time after time. That was all they were to me, a nuisance.

Sue Turton has changed all that. On Thursday night’s episode of ‘Dispatches: The Data Theft Scandal’, she brought to the fore what we all fear deep down - some faceless person getting their grubby hands on our personal and financial data and using it to their own means. To find out more about this, Sue visits various places and people across the UK and in India. And what she finds out is fascinating - and more than a little scary.

Turton goes to India to try and find out how easy it is to get the confidential data we innocent people give over the phone on a regular basis, to these nameless strangers. To her own surprise, it turns out to be a not-too difficult task. Posing as a businesswoman who is interested in getting the financial details of UK customers, she soon makes contact with a Mr Arora. He turned out to be a fount of information, this Arora, as he shows her page after page of data ‘leads’, detailing a caller’s name, bank account number, bank sort code, credit card number, the CVV security number etc. Turton tries to disguise her shock by enquiring if this isn’t illegal but Arora flatly states ‘not at all’!

Then onto Calcutta, where enterprising Mr Chandak goes one step further and proves the authenticity of his ‘leads’ by playing the voice files of actual telephone conversation between his call centre agent and the unsuspecting caller. All this info for just £8!

In the UK, she talks to a convicted felon who tells how difficult it is to get the data from the call centres. Furthermore, he tells of the number of people who join these call centres with the aim of getting their hands on such data and making money out of them. While in the UK, one has to go via the underworld to get such info, in India, it seems much more easier to lay one’s hands on extremely confidential data.

There are brokers whose ‘job’ is to play the role of middlemen, between the call centres and the buyers, who pay tens of thousands to get hold of these ‘hot leads’. What’s even more shocking is the role played by the technicians, who come into such places to maintain the hardware and walk away with millions of data stored in the pen drives. ‘You wink and it is done’, boasts one such middle man.

Then there are these high-class brokers in Hyderabad, who charge upwards of $50 per lead - why? ‘Cos theirs is fresh and unused!

Sue Turton, over the course of a year, has managed to open a massive can of worms. The repercussions of this investigation will be manifold. Here in the UK, there’s going to be a great deal of panic amongst the public and this would undoubedly be fanned by the media and others disgruntled by the shifting of operations to countries like India and China. Indian government is also going to be under some pressure to put the foreign investors’ minds at rest and assure them of data protection. The great boom in the Indian economy owes a great deal to the call centres, BPOs and other associated industries - which could come down like a house of cards if these companies decide to up sticks and move out, en masse.

Will our government step-up? Will we see a marked decrease in call centre-related crimes? We’ll know soon! Until then, keep safe!