Chez Moi

‘Get your Easter bonnets in by Friday, as we will be having the Easter Bonnet Parade later on in the day’, stated the missive from the school. Easter bonnet? What the hell! I had visions of P walking up and down his school, looking like Peter Rabbit. Why in God’s name would these boys wear bonnets in the first place anyway? After all, this is the land where the tiniest smudge of pink isn’t allowed anywhere near a boy (lest he become traumatised or gay in the future?) and here we are talking about decking them out in bonnets. That was when I was firmly steered in the direction of caps, hats and other manly accessories. No easy way out, then.

Giving in, I asked around work for ideas. ‘Make a top hat - make it green so it looks like grass and then put Easter eggs and chickens on it’ suggested one colleague. ‘Or, you could dress up a baseball cap to make it look like a nest and place the eggs, chicks and things on it’, quipped another. Whazisthis? Top hats? Nests with chicks and eggs? When did I die and come back as a Blue Peter presenter?

By now, I was panicking big time and decided to take refuge in that temple of modern materialistic society, Tesco’s. And whoop-dee-doo, right at the entrance there was a massive aisle full of Easter-y things. The firang know how to make money, I tell you. Crepe paper, cardboard, balls of cottons, paints, all in a variety of colours, were stockpiled to the ceiling and harried parents were digging into them like they were manna from heaven. I did not have a clue what materials to procure and ended up getting two of everything. Which turned out to be the one smart thing I did.

Once home, the real battle began. I sat with the bag of goodies spread around me, along with other necessities like scissors, sticky tape and baseball cap and realised I did not have any glue. After a long trek for the same, I was now ready to tackle this thing - or so I thought. That was when I realised having ideas is one thing, execution is something else entirely. I sat looking at the pieces of cardboard, felt and the baseball cap alternatively, hoping the spirit of Martha Stewart would come and join me for a while and make the whole thing a doddle. As that did not transpire, I set about trying to tap into hitherto undiscovered, and possibly non-existent, wells of creativity.

As concocting a top hat from pieces of card were beyond my capabilities, especially without a compass to keep me on the curve and narrow, I decided to plump for the baseball cap / nest idea. My thought process ran somewhat as follows: cover the cap with green felt, send some brown felt through the shredder, glue the resultant strips in artistic disarray all over the now-green cap, plonk assorted bits and pieces of junk all over it and hey, bob’s your uncle.

Remember what I said about thought and execution? Well, read it once again ‘cos, as always, reality and my thoughts had nothing in common. For starters, the green felt refused to stick to the cloth cap, even after I slathered half a gallon of glue on it. I now had an extremely sticky ex-cap and some sodden pieces of green felt. Then, I shoved some brown felt through the shredder, hoping for some lengthy pieces of felt which I could twist to look like twigs. But the shredder decided to make a meal of it and I ended up with some brown felt mince. Pulling my hair out at the roots did not help. Not one bit. So I decided to stop fiddling with technology and cut the darned things into strips using old-fashioned scissors.

That complete, next on the menu was the lawn on which I had to lay my nest. Sticking it didn’t work; stitching it proved lot more difficult. I binned the lot and watched ‘House’ for an hour. Contemplated committing blasphemy during one of the breaks by modelling the nest along the lines of Christ’s crown of thorns. Finally, at 11:00 PM, S hit upon the idea of just laying the (spare piece of) green felt on top of the rudimentary circular cardboard crown base I had made, a la a green lawn and just plonking the nest and its assorted bits on top of it. Typically, I wasn’t sure any idea of his would actually work. But as I sat plaiting the brown strips and strategically placing coloured feather and balls of cotton all over it, it seemed like a neat one after all. After grappling with it for a long and sleepy half an hour, I finally finished my creation. And boy was I one chuffed mummy or what?

P adored it when he saw it the next morning, thereby making it every bit worthwhile. I also got lots of ‘ooh’s and ‘aah’s at work so I think I may have pulled this thing off. I realise now that I got off lucky with the Dressing Up as a Fairy Tale character lark the school sprung on me last month. It was by sheer chance that I realised how seriously the other mums took this when I eavesdropped on a coven of them discussing what their children were going to show up as, the next day. Peter Pan! Tinkerbell!! Dick Whittington!!! Jack (not the Ripper, the other one - him with the Beanstalk)!!!! I would never hear the end of it if I sent my little man to school as his own adorable self. I had a major brainwave when I spotted a white sherwani of his hanging in the cupboard, unused and unloved, and made a golden crown to go with it and sent him off as Prince Charming, armed with a red rose, no less!

When I saw the other mums rolling in with huge bonnets, their girlies fighting their way in through swathes of tissue paper or trying to balance a tray of eggs on their heads, I felt rather proud of myself. I had come through this, hopefully without scarring P for life! And now, I am ready for the next challenge. Produce your own mega serial type saga? Come dressed as an eco-warrier? Discover the cure for AIDS for school science project? Easy peasy!

I am now Super Mummy, P says. I can do anything.
Bring it on!

‘Get your Easter bonnets in by Friday, as we will be having the Easter Bonnet Parade later on in the day’, stated the missive from the school. Easter bonnet? What the hell! I had visions of P walking up and down his school, looking like Peter Rabbit. Why in God’s name would these boys wear bonnets in the first place anyway? After all, this is the land where the tiniest smudge of pink isn’t allowed anywhere near a boy (lest he become traumatised or gay in the future?) and here we are talking about decking them out in bonnets. That was when I was firmly steered in the direction of caps, hats and other manly accessories. No easy way out, then.

Giving in, I asked around work for ideas. ‘Make a top hat - make it green so it looks like grass and then put Easter eggs and chickens on it’ suggested one colleague. ‘Or, you could dress up a baseball cap to make it look like a nest and place the eggs, chicks and things on it’, quipped another. Whazisthis? Top hats? Nests with chicks and eggs? When did I die and come back as a Blue Peter presenter?

By now, I was panicking big time and decided to take refuge in that temple of modern materialistic society, Tesco’s. And whoop-dee-doo, right at the entrance there was a massive aisle full of Easter-y things. The firang know how to make money, I tell you. Crepe paper, cardboard, balls of cottons, paints, all in a variety of colours, were stockpiled to the ceiling and harried parents were digging into them like they were manna from heaven. I did not have a clue what materials to procure and ended up getting two of everything. Which turned out to be the one smart thing I did.

Once home, the real battle began. I sat with the bag of goodies spread around me, along with other necessities like scissors, sticky tape and baseball cap and realised I did not have any glue. After a long trek for the same, I was now ready to tackle this thing - or so I thought. That was when I realised having ideas is one thing, execution is something else entirely. I sat looking at the pieces of cardboard, felt and the baseball cap alternatively, hoping the spirit of Martha Stewart would come and join me for a while and make the whole thing a doddle. As that did not transpire, I set about trying to tap into hitherto undiscovered, and possibly non-existent, wells of creativity.

As concocting a top hat from pieces of card were beyond my capabilities, especially without a compass to keep me on the curve and narrow, I decided to plump for the baseball cap / nest idea. My thought process ran somewhat as follows: cover the cap with green felt, send some brown felt through the shredder, glue the resultant strips in artistic disarray all over the now-green cap, plonk assorted bits and pieces of junk all over it and hey, bob’s your uncle.

Remember what I said about thought and execution? Well, read it once again ‘cos, as always, reality and my thoughts had nothing in common. For starters, the green felt refused to stick to the cloth cap, even after I slathered half a gallon of glue on it. I now had an extremely sticky ex-cap and some sodden pieces of green felt. Then, I shoved some brown felt through the shredder, hoping for some lengthy pieces of felt which I could twist to look like twigs. But the shredder decided to make a meal of it and I ended up with some brown felt mince. Pulling my hair out at the roots did not help. Not one bit. So I decided to stop fiddling with technology and cut the darned things into strips using old-fashioned scissors.

That complete, next on the menu was the lawn on which I had to lay my nest. Sticking it didn’t work; stitching it proved lot more difficult. I binned the lot and watched ‘House’ for an hour. Contemplated committing blasphemy during one of the breaks by modelling the nest along the lines of Christ’s crown of thorns. Finally, at 11:00 PM, S hit upon the idea of just laying the (spare piece of) green felt on top of the rudimentary circular cardboard crown base I had made, a la a green lawn and just plonking the nest and its assorted bits on top of it. Typically, I wasn’t sure any idea of his would actually work. But as I sat plaiting the brown strips and strategically placing coloured feather and balls of cotton all over it, it seemed like a neat one after all. After grappling with it for a long and sleepy half an hour, I finally finished my creation. And boy was I one chuffed mummy or what?

P adored it when he saw it the next morning, thereby making it every bit worthwhile. I also got lots of ‘ooh’s and ‘aah’s at work so I think I may have pulled this thing off. I realise now that I got off lucky with the Dressing Up as a Fairy Tale character lark the school sprung on me last month. It was by sheer chance that I realised how seriously the other mums took this when I eavesdropped on a coven of them discussing what their children were going to show up as, the next day. Peter Pan! Tinkerbell!! Dick Whittington!!! Jack (not the Ripper, the other one - him with the Beanstalk)!!!! I would never hear the end of it if I sent my little man to school as his own adorable self. I had a major brainwave when I spotted a white sherwani of his hanging in the cupboard, unused and unloved, and made a golden crown to go with it and sent him off as Prince Charming, armed with a red rose, no less!

When I saw the other mums rolling in with huge bonnets, their girlies fighting their way in through swathes of tissue paper or trying to balance a tray of eggs on their heads, I felt rather proud of myself. I had come through this, hopefully without scarring P for life! And now, I am ready for the next challenge. Produce your own mega serial type saga? Come dressed as an eco-warrier? Discover the cure for AIDS for school science project? Easy peasy!

I am now Super Mummy, P says. I can do anything.
Bring it on!

Gautham Menon, of ‘Minnale’ and ‘Kaakha Kaakha’ fame, has come back with a venture soon after the success of his Kamal Hassan starrer ‘Vettaiyadu Vilaiyadu’. The new flick is called ‘Pachaikili Muthucharam’ and has Sarath Kumar and Jyothika in the lead, with newcomers, playback singer Andrea and model Milind Soman in the cast as well.

Venkatesh (Sarath Kumar) is a regular middle-class bloke, works as a sales man, regular family - one wife (Andrea) and one son. Reasonably happy home life except for the fact that the son has acute juvenile diabetes. This pulls the couple apart physically and there we see the first chink - lack of intimate relations. One day, on his way to work, he sees fellow train traveller Geetha (Jyothika). Soon enough, they become buddies and chat about their lives. As they sit in a cafe, swapping family deets, for some strange reason, Venkatesh tells her he has got Rs 8 lakh in his kitty, for medical emergencies as his son has juvenile diabetes. From the word go, it seems like Geetha is in the driving seat where this relationship is concerned. She is quite keen to take this friendship to more intimate levels and one day, urges him to book them into a room so they can be together.

They go to a resort on the ECR and as Venkatesh continues with his self-doubts as they prepare to cross a no-go zone, they hear a tap at the door. He opens it and thug Lawrence (Milind Soman) comes barrelling into his life. Lawrence quickly puts two and two together and learns that herein lies his golden goose. He beats Venkatesh senseless; ties him up rapes Geetha and takes leave of them, after taking their cell phone details. Venkatesh wants to go to the police but is stopped by Geetha, who’d rather not face up to the day’s happenings. Soon after, she gets a phone call from him, extorting for money. The calls don’t stop till all the cash Venkatesh has kept squirreled away dwindles to nothing, at which point, Venkatesh comes clean to his wife. This breaks up their family and he vows to get his hard-earned money back. He starts an investigation that turns up some startling results. How Venkatesh keeps his vow to get the money and his peace of mind back forms the rest of the story.

The film starts off rather slow and when you travel up and down Chennai with Sarath Kumar and Jyothika on the trains every day, you wish Gautham would get a move on and speed things up. But once the movie picks up though, it becomes quite interesting and once we come across the twist in the tale, it becomes a real promising movie. Though I kept wondering why in hell’s name would the man tell an acquaintance his bank balance, no matter how much he lusts after her or why the hell didn’t they just chuck the cells, thereby ridding themselves of the burden? The latter doubt sort of gets answered as the plot develops and I reckon the former is played out so it links to the plot later on as well. But the execution of it leaves some doubts in some minds.

Despite these niggling flaws, I rather like this movie - mainly for the rather mature and clean approach to extra- marital affairs. After the glorious singing- dancing-overblown saga of KANK, I should take my hat off to Gautham for handling this sticky subject so well, especially in view of the ultra conservative Tamil cinema. Nowhere was it crass, vulgar or shoddy. Of course, he draws the line by making sure the protagonists don’t actually ‘do the deed’, thereby making the bitter pill easier to swallow, I suppose.

Acting-wise, I would say Milind Soman has done a good job. The makeup helps - there is no model peering out of the familiar face. He looks every inch a thug and behaves like one too. Though he does make the usual error of mistaking shouting non-stop for displaying rage, he still turns out a fairly good performance. Jyothika surprises me - there was a time when I thought she was a duffer. But she has been maturing leaps and bounds over the years and in a tragic way, she manages to churn out really mature performances just when she has bid adieu to the career. Oh well! There’s nothing to beat quitting while you are on top, is there?

The music score is by Harris Jayaraj and this is slowly becoming a regular combo, rather like the Mani Ratnam - A R Rahman deadly duo. Though not all of Harris’s songs are instant hits, he is still a good composer, rather along the lines of Rahman. He understands the nuances of background score but at some places, he misses the mark completely, with overly loud shehnai playing mournfully in the background, with no connection to the dialogues and situations. Having said that, some of the songs are really catchy. His staple, Carnatic music singer Bombay Jayshree sings a melodious number, Unakkul Naan. Though her ‘Vaseegara’ from ‘Minnale’ will always be my favourite Jayshree-Harris tune, Unakkul Naan is quite melodious and hummable as well.

All in all, it is an okay sort of a flick - can sit through one time. Unless you are, like me, major anti-fan of Sarath Kumar and need other distractions, you could do worse than sit through this one.

Related link: My interview of one of the Gautham Menon’s assistant directors to this movie, Meghana Karthik.

(This post is in response to Amrita Rajan’s post “I Am A Feminist (Blogger Gets Death Threats)”

Last year, when my dad learnt of my latest love, blogging, the first question he asked me was: are you a feminist? This seemed rather strange, coming from pater and I went ‘I dunno, maybe’ shrug shrug. To which, he replied ‘well, you either are or you’re not.’

I spent a lot of time thinking about it. Rather like Ams, my initial image of a feminist was a bra burning, unshaved armpitted woman and (even though I did not frequent beauty salons frequently!) I did not think I was one. Typically, I Googled ‘feminism’ and felt I agreed with most of what Wikipedia states a feminist ought to be. I was rather surprised to note that I am a feminist. But since that day when the bulb burned brightly inside my head, I have felt rather comfortable and even proud of being one. Like the Mad Momma stated in one of her posts, feminism has made it easy for me to live my life my way. Though I am forever haranguing S about a lot of his and his family’s beliefs, it is the concept of feminism that has made it possible for me to even think so.

Though to a lot of my fellow Desicritics, feminism is an ugly word and a feminist is generally considered on par with the seven plagues of Egypt, to most of us women (and to the rational men out there), feminism is a genuinely fantastic concept.

Which is why, in this day and age, I was shocked to learn of Kathy Sierra. Once again, it was thanks to Am’s post on the topic that brought this to my attention. Like her, I didn’t think of myself as a feminist but once I realised I was, it was a good feeling. I am sure Kathy did not set out to be an X-Woman type of feminist, burning bridges hither and wrecking havoc thither. Nor was she planning on doing a Lady Godiva, to bring the idea home to the masses. She is just a blogger like most of us, blogging away about things she felt strongly about. For her troubles, she has been receiving death threats.

Death threats! The whole phrase sounds absolutely crazy to me. Which regular person gets death threats? They are for the likes of Saddam Hussein, Dubya or other assorted loons. They are not for average Jo Bloggers like us! And who gets off sending bloggers crappy stuff like these anyway?

Lord knows I’ve moaned long and hard about the pain the Von SIFfers of DC are, with their irritating habit of blaming everything from war, famine and pestilence on this scrounge of feminism but even they don’t stoop to such levels. I think it takes a special sort of wacko to launch this sort of attacks on another person. Worse if the criteria behind the choice of victim is that they should have boobs.

I blog about the most inane things in my life - what I made for lunch, what movies I saw, even about the time I took a toss coming fast down the stairs. I also blog about the most important aspect of my life - my son. I am now horrified at what sort of world I have thrust him into. I am sure he is going on blithely, betting on mummy to keep him safe and sound, whilst I am putting his pictures and stories of his antics on the blogosphere. The same joint that now is inhabited by these sick people. What the hell have I done?

Poor Kathy is now reported to be too petrified to even leave her home. How awful! What is her crime here? Her blog is about stuff like mind mapping and crash course in learning theory, for fuck’s sake! What is so threatening about that? Why the hell should that prompt the enterprising netizens to drop in some death threats?

What sort of twisted world are we barrelling into? Whatever next? My mind boggles!

(To answer your question, Ams - yes, I am a feminist and am proud to be one.)

This unforgettable line was uttered by the memorable Quick-Gun Murugan. This was the name of a rather naff TV character, somewhat along the lines of the Wild West turns East-ish flavour and we used to see itty blurbs of his clips at random points during your movie or mega serial. He used to utter some majorly inane dialogues and cracked me up big time.
After many a year, I thought of him suddenly and had a yen to see some clips. In true-blue 21st C style, I You Tubed it and here are my results. Watch and enjoy!