Memories of RRF – Tamil movies tell that much!

2.6.2010

Tamil equivalent of 'Aradhanaa'

This is the scene I was referring to in the last blog. Personally, I have not watched this movie but somehow I came to know that this scene existed. I know that all the songs in this 1974 Tamil movie, composed by the legendary MSV were hits. Beside 'Ullam Rendum' (both hearts), there was 'Iniyavaley (the sweet one), both with equally catchy lyrics and music.

In real life, no sane girl in the right mind will melt away listening to a guy singing on a jeep. On the contrary, it would be a complete turn off leaving such a demeaning impression where the girl will think that the hero will need urgent psychiatric help and not even bat an eye to look at his side, what more to blush at the lyrics of the song! Furthermore it is not humanly possible to hear any singing with the constant loud churning of the steam engine of the train. But that is the feel good aura of Indian movies, promising you to carry you away from the hustle and bustle of real life in to a make believe celluloid world of hero worship, coincidences, human values and self glorification.

My early exposure to Tamil movies came about (as far as I can remember) when things improved in RRF, financial wise. Generally after 1974, there was the mandatory annual whole family to the movies which would form the closing curtains of sorts on Deepavali celebrations (if there was any, blog about it soon!). A prime mover who used to drag Amma to indulge in this leisurely pass-time was Raja Amma. Raja Amma came to know my parents when they were residing in Brown Gardens in the 60s. She was one of the few faithful friends would brave taking two buses all the way from Gelugor to RRF, just to indulge in a little tete-a-tete and a lot gossiping involving a lot of dramatic role playing. She once took us (minus Appa) to watch a Sivaji movie 'Thanga Pathakkam' (gold medal) where I remember we all went in quite late groping in the dark a good 10 minutes into the movie. 'Thanga Pathakkam' was a remake of a Hindi movie (Sakthi) starring Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan as his wayward son.

A Tamil movie that really plucked the strings of my heart was the movie 'Tholabram'. It was initially a Malayalam movie which was remade in many other Dravidian languages including Tamil. It depicts the fall from grace of college girl (Saratha) who is left in the lurch after her rich father dies of heart attack upon hearing of his collapsed business empire. (Do not ask about insurance compensation or business diversifications or about putting all the eggs in the same basket. Don't you know you cannot ask smart questions when you are watching an Indian movie?) From then, it was spiralling of misery after misery - stopping college, marrying a worker in father's factory (AVM Rajan), kids in a row, husband retrenched, dying in a workers' dispute, jobless and hungry, children starving, humiliation reaching climax, ...lone survivor of family mass poisoning, in the dock charged with murder of her own children and finally being defended in the courts by close friend in college. Maybe there are many similarities in our lives but not as pathetic. Every time I hear the song 'Katrunile', sang melodiously by K.J. Jesudass, the hair on the back of my neck and arms stand on end and I shiver! Have a listen here...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-IoJsW3xv0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsBG59Y0k04&feature=related

I remember that there were a couple of times when Amma celebrated ‘Vaikunda Ekathasi’ – a celebration for Lord Vishnu -  by watching movies overnight! This is usually celebrated by the Vaishnavites at the turn of the moon in the month of Marzhali (Dec-Jan). Legend says that at dawn, the Lord will come out of the temple and meet ordinary folks to grant their wishes. And you must be awake to ask for your wish! In Penang, a few theatres (Odeon, Cathay, Royal, Rex and Paramount) used to screen two Tamil movies consecutively overnight commencing at around midnight. It will usually comprise a devotional movie followed by a run of the mill contemporary movie. It would end around dawn, I suppose just in time to receive the Lord’s blessings. Everyone was happy – the patrons for fulfilling their auspicious duty, the theatre owners for the extra earnings and the rowdy boys for being able to stay out so late after dark with a legitimate reason.

They would have similar programmes in some Hindu temples as well. I remember following Amma to Air Itam Maha Kaliamman Temple to watch three movies in a row in one of these nights. It was free (c.f. $1 at the theatres) but the drawbacks were the mosquito attacks, the cat calls by the rowdy teenagers and the frequent disruption in the film reel. This practice was later discontinued after obvious complaints by Hindu religious pressure groups. So, it is now only in memory.

I wonder why Amma took me to all these movies – maybe she wanted me to be her bodyguard or maybe she wanted to inculcate Tamil values in me, as some soothsayer somewhere had told I would be a convert (or something to that effect)! It appears ironic because when we were growing up in RRF, we were strictly reminded again and again to refrain from acquaintances with Indian pupils but instead to mix with Chinese students. Her reasoning for doing so was that when Indian students meet up, they will talking about leisurely activities like movies and sorts whereas their Chinese counterpart would be busy discussing things related to studies and ways to improve one’s life! In fact, we were told not to speak Tamil in school so as not to draw bad company (even though we spoke 100 percent Tamil at home!). Basically to act like what the local colloquial Tamil saying says – A Black As@ed White Man.  Talk about racial stereotyping and sowing the racial seed at a tender age. You cannot blame her. She did what she thought was best to her at that time with her life experiences and look at all the products. I do not think she was off target!

As I entered the secondary school (PFS), the thought of spending 3 solid hours glued to the idiot box watching Tamil movies suddenly became scary. Like everything else in life, as time went on my priorities changed and I went on with other things in life but the memories linger on and on till God knows when!

Memories of RRF – song we used to hear almost daily!

This is one of the songs we use to hear almost daily from the veranda of our flat, no thanks to 'Iyer', the MPPP bus driver who would, without fail, play his 78rpm to relax after a long morning of exhausting driving. As they say, one man's meat is another man's poison (especially if he is a vegetarian and a fussy one at that); his daily routine was much a nuisance to us the book worms! Necessity was the mother of invention and the mother of all inventions was studying in the cemetery to escape the torture of the persistence of noise pollution from the inhabitants of RRF, including one occupant of E15-11! Well, all meant well and everything ended well, just like the tagline in the movie 3 idiots - Allz well!
Did you know the remake of this movie (Aradhana) of the Hindi song featured above in Tamil is called 'Sivagamiyin Selvan' and the scene above of the mule train in the hilly terrains of Kashmir Valley is shamelessly copied? In the Tamil movie, the singing star was Sivaji Ganesan and his sidekick was the born again pastor and ex-movie star of devotional movies AVM Rajan who prefers not to talk and think about his acting years.

‘Wealth is Health’ or ‘Health is Wealth’?

25.5.2010

‘Wealth is Health’ or ‘Health is Wealth’?

That is a good question. From the time I can remember, the age old adage of ‘Health is Wealth’ had been ingrained in our impressionable minds to be the ultimate truth. Is it really the elusive truth that everyone is looking for?
In the pre-industrial era when most people led simple lives toiling on the wonders provided by nature, e.g. farming, hunting or any work which involve indentured labourers or bondage slavery. Here, a healthy fit body will ensure ability to endure the hardship of calamities of nature to bring home the bacon! An unhealthy invalid or an aging senile individual will be a burden to family and society unless a social safety net is in place.
If you were the servant of the palace or a sorcerer in the dawn of human civilization, (as if we are more civilised now), health is of paramount importance for survival. Is this adage still of relevance at this present date and time?
Let me look at how health brings wealth to an individual. For a cynical person like me, I would look at first at how many caregivers in the healthcare services (e.g. doctors and nurses) who generate wealth from other people’s ill-health. They are not ill-gotten gains, mind you. Then there are the giants in the healthcare industries like the HMO’s and the insurance companies who managed to build a conglomerate from people’s sickness. In fact, I have seen so many friends whose family and generations have been elevated the rung of ladder of strata of society via acquiring medical studies (either via pure hard work or via the short cut). In fact, medical studies have gone so cheap. Advertisements are often seen in the local dailies showing SPM as requirement for entry to some of these so called Government-approved medical institutions.
It is no secret that the cost of healthcare all over the world has leapt by bounds over the years. It will literally cost a leg or an arm to afford cutting edge medical care in a private hospital anywhere in the world. So, to acquire good health, one has to have some wealth and be willing to part with it. I remember a relative of mine, who during a routine screening procedure, who was told to have a small benign looking renal cyst. It kept on reappearing on repeated subsequent screening. Being not satisfied with reassurances by his doctors, he flew down to Singapore for more invasive diagnostic procedures. To cut the story short, he underwent a nephrectomy after biopsies showed slow growing renal cell carcinoma. Here, it is apparent that this individual acquired good bill of health after paying a hefty bill of wealth! Of course critics will say that it is a slow growing tumour anyway which would have been picked up by subsequent regular screenings. To the patient, however, his doctors in Malaysia have failed him and he will always be wary of their treatment modalities.
Many diseases that use to plague mankind (e.g. small pox and poliomyelitis to a certain extent) have been literally wiped out from the surface of earth, save some kept in the laboratories (which may be used as a biological weapon when the time is ripe). Beri-beri which used to plague Malayan bonded labourers in the middle of the 20th century is unheard of in modern Malaysia. All these happened with improvement of economic climate and affordability of vaccines and proper balanced nutrition. On the other hand, wealth has brought with it some life style related diseases as well – obesity, diabetes, hypertension, coronary events, etc. It looks like here wealth has brought in some health issues as well.
Fearing for their health, wealth affluent societies no longer believe in curative medicine but rather concentrate on preventive medicine. This has been instrumental in mushrooming of numerous health sanctuaries. Here, absolutely normal individuals of various ages are subjected to various tests just to find a result which would deviate from norm so that more tests can be done, all in the pretext of finding sickness in a health person. Business is generated – healthcare providers are happy- they got a job; insurance companies are happy – they have got low risk individuals tied down with their policies and are laughing all the way to the bank; the ‘patients’ are happy – they have taken care of their health so that they can continue acquiring wealth! And continue their way of life, for good or bad...
Now which side are you on?

Petroleum and Civilisation (or end of?)

27.5.2010

Petroleum and civilisation (or end of?)

I remember visiting Petrosains at KL City Centre a few years ago. I had an uneasy feeling on exiting that visitors to the venue had been hoodwinked into believing (via its exhibits and messages) that petroleum had indeed made Mother Earth a more delightful place to live. Really? Sorry, I cannot buy your story!

Recently one of my friends emailed me an article narrating the potential devastation waiting to happen as a result of BP's misadventure of oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. The damage to the environment is said to be in gargantuan proportions as evidenced by the 22,000 people and 10,000 vessels deployed in rescue plan making it the most massive effort in the history of disaster recovery. That got me thinking.

Actually, petroleum seems to me like a curse or the root of all evil rather than our saviour. Most of the world catastrophes are somehow linked it -e.g. Twin Tower incident, Iraq War etc. etc. 

The Second Industrial Revolution, fuelled by the discovery of Colonel Edwin Drake helped to jump-start the modernisation of the world as we see it today. We can build mammoth structures and architectural marvels at a fraction of time used by our ancestors. Anyway, the Incas and the Egyptians built these too, but at the expense of much human (slave) sufferings and lives. We are not much now after so many years - now we have sweatshops! I digress.

I am not a proponent of anti modernisation, and that we should all be moving from point A to point B on a bullock cart or that we should all don cavemen hide and be stoned in Stone Age - anyway, I am too lazy to hunt for my meals!

Revolutionary ways of extracting petroleum deeper into the ground rather than scooping it off Earth's surface made kerosene replace whale oil in lamp fuels in Northern America at the turn of the 19th century. This, with many other innovations, made petrol the most sort after commodity creating strings of obnoxious billionaires especially in the US who worshipped the God of Capitalism. Over time money seem to justify and compensate all our deficiencies and inadequacies. The ferocious appetite of these billionaires seems insatiable that they have ventured beyond their shores, influencing governments and warlords towards this end. The ugly side of Man is revealed by his fixation of expanding his arsenal of nuclear heads to achieve his goal.

In the early 70's, the oil cartels held the world at its throat by fixing the oil prices. It then showed us how vital petroleum was to mankind. It is also quite evident to us by now how George W. Bush and Tony Blair smoke-screened us into believing on the existence of weapons of mass destruction, hence justifying their march into and colonisation of a sovereign nation, all in the name of the completing the missing link between the Siberian-Caspian pipeline!  As a result of these, air travel had never been more cumbersome and human being, who had been quite accommodating of each other, (are you sure?) have started staring at each other with suspicion, especially at those who believed that they should cover the religion-sanctioned areas of their bodies (aurat).

Do not even bother talking about the environmental damage caused by oil spillage and the carbon footprints left by this fossil fuel.  Marine biologists working in the tropical waters off the coast of US in the 80's actually found extinction of the male gender in a group of marine life some ten years after a massive oil spill. So, petroleum has changed mankind in a big way. Right! Even my toes are not laughing.

@Thanks to Sweeney for the email. Now I am more confused now than ever and have been put on suicide alert! There I see it now, the shadow that had been following me all day....

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson

Coincidence? Again?

23.5.2010
Coincidence? Again?

The day after Indra Shan passed away, the obituary column in the Star announced with a verse from the Bible…
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
Then, I was watching a Denzel Washington movie called ‘Book of Eli’. He was portrayed as a gun wielding futuristic servant of God trying to save the only surviving Bible. He managed to follow the said path but succumbed to his injuries sustained in his journey albeit accomplishing his mission. He was narrating in the background at the end of the movie and his last words were…
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
Is it because I am looking out trivial things like these?

Amnesty and Gotong-Royong

23.5.2010
Amnesty and Gotong-Royong
What amnesty has got to do with gotong royong, you would say. Amnesty usually refers to affairs between countries whilst gotong-royong involves things at the village level. If you have a criminally cynical and critical mind like mine, then you would probably correlate these two phenomenon and skewer them together in the same BBQ pit in a negative light.
Amnesty here refers to the recurrent government amnesty (grace period) to allow illegal immigrants to go back to their countries of origin before the long arm of the law goes on a blitz to nap illegal immigrants. This will predictably start a slowdown in nation’s economic activities as all our nitty gritty work of cleaning our homes to building mansions are manned by immigrants (legal and otherwise). Pressure groups in the form of politicians and businessmen, like a knee jerk reaction, will start pressing the enforcers to go lenient on the wrongdoers who in turn will temporarily slow down the whole wheel of enforcement, yet to start churning again sometime in the future.
Gotong royong is a cultural entity among the Malay community where after one whole year of dirtying their village and not bothering about cleanliness and hygiene, a wake-up call will come in the form morbidity or mortality due to communicable disease. Villagers will then get together to embark on a spring cleaning drive.
The striking similarity between these two scenarios is that, in both instances, after months of malaise and lacksadical attitude (of lax enforcement and not taking care of own backyard), efforts are made to right the wrong. When the load gets too heavy and dangerous, they call for everyone else to do their dirty jobs. If the Immigration Department officials were not sleeping on their jobs, the number of Indonesians in this country would not have skyrocketed to levels that make Malaysian Indians (who had toiled their blood and sweat to prosper early Malaya) a minor minority! If the villagers had taken care of their own backyard, the need for gotong royong would not arise at all.
Giving amnesty to illegal immigrants and performing large scale gotong royong is not something to be proud of. Neighbouring countries from where these illegals originate from is not going to be eternally grateful for not charging their citizens. Instead, they will be sneering at our inefficiencies. Just like the gotong royong which just reveal our malaise and of the people in power.

Ratha Kaneer comical villianous scene