Keeping up with the Joneses?

In verbatim (not translation)
Super Hit Matinee Show

I remember an uncle, a close family relative and a retired civil servant, who spent a lot of his retirement time watching old Tamil movies. I found that quite amusing as none of his kids have an iota of outward appearance of embracing Indian culture. They did not speak any of Indian dialects, watched only English language TV/movies and even sneered at the comical sing song way of how movie stars delivered their dialogues. The uncle's reason for indulging in his pastime is for the meaning life lessons and heart rendering song lyrics that it had to offer.
I found this ironic as my parents were looking up at the way they brought up their children and we were asked to emulate them as much as possible. They were envious at their children's command of the English language and their skill in playing instruments. Not wanting for us kids to lose our mother tongue, ironically my mother would insists that we spoke Tamil at home. Outside the house, however, we were to speak our mother tongue as Tamil was not considered as a language that would 'draw intellectual discourse'! In the neighbourhood that we were living, only people from the underprivileged background would converse in Tamil. Hence, ability to converse in English would make one step above the rest, so she professed! We were from the city and it was the 70s. People were all trying to improve themselves economically. Tamil, as we saw it, was not going to lead us anywhere.

All the way to adulthood, I encountered many who hailed praises of the Tamil language, of how it is one of the oldest surviving language and how has a separate word for every situation. Even in modern scientific scenario, there is a readily available word for use. If in the English, the word 'love' is used to denote various types of affection between man, God, woman, animal, food and so on, in Tamil every particular act of love has a specific word.

Having said all that, if one were to listen to any Tamil language interview on cable TV from Tamil Nadu, 50% of the sentences are laced with English. As if, spiking English word makes the conversation more intellectual. Of late, even advertisements are using foreign word instead of readily available Tamil alternatives!

The caption above shows the title of an afternoon matinee slot on Raj TV. It reads in verbatim, not translation - சூப்பர் (super) ஹிட் (hit) மேட்னி (matinee) ஷோ (show). I am sure there must be a suitable translation for that in Tamil (தமிழ்)!