An excuse for my prolonged absence!

There are two kinds of audiences for Tamil movies. The first is the average Tamil audience. It consists of people who see cinema like Shakespeare did, as ‘a willing suspension of disbelief”. They are perfectly satisfied with an average commercial movie. They enjoy the movie of their favorite hero, and their facebook status immediately say “xxxxx, a must watch! Thalaivar Rocks!!”. The second kind of audience would immediately make a sarcastic comment on the status. They would probably list out a couple of Hollywood movies, one Japanese movie and a Korean movie with similar plots, and would further point out that the “Rocking” movie was worth the watch even with a storyline borrowed from so many movies. These are the self-proclaimed critics. Give them the smallest opportunity, and they will clear their throat, take a deep breath, and list out at least 5 logical flaws in an average Tamil movie, and then go on about the quality of Hollywood movies. They would generally labor a frustration against the naiveté of the masses. To which of these two groups do I belong? Well, I lean a little towards the second kind.
It is not that I don’t like commercial movies. As a 9 year old, I was forced to see the movie "Ratchagan". I had never heard about the movie before, and my limited knowledge of the Tamil language didn't help me in deciphering the title. I was sitting in the theater expecting a rural romance, and was greeted with the opening scene, where a burly looking guy pushes a truck-load of cars into a valley. What followed this was a lot of action - cars, containers, bombs, helicopters, Girish Karnaud, Raghuvaran, and yeah, Nagarjun. I totally loved the movie! Even today, 13 years later, I wouldn't mind watching the movie again. I am sure each of us has our own favorites among such logic-defying movies.

One of the recent Tamil movies I loved was Tamizh Padam. For those of you who aren't aware of it, it is a spoof of the typical Tamil 'formula' film. Tamizh Padam scores because it is not a product of anger against the predictability of Tamil movies, but a product of self-depreciating humor. It is a kind of movie that laughs at our “formula” films, while being perfectly aware that nothing will stop us from loving such movies. The flipside of the movie was that it was a bit of a drag. At some point of time, the director must have felt that he will not get an opportunity to make another spoof, and included as many elements as possible. One gets to feel that the film would have been far better if the spoof had been on a single theme, instead of taking on Tamil movies as a whole. This is where we come to the beginning of this post.

All I wanted to do in this post was to try and find out why I don’t write any blog posts. There were a few things that I really wanted to write about, and I did try. I usually start writing about something, get carried away and end up in a totally different place. It can’t be helped, that is the way I talk too. If you ask me about my favorite novel, you will get to know about five novels I like, three I didn’t particularly like, and one I hated. So, whenever I sat to write a post, I had to modify it to accompany a new topic, and then re-model it. Following this, I would delete it and start rewriting the whole thing. By this time, my energy would have gone and I would just save it to my drafts.

So, how did I post this one? I just thought this post reflects my whole thinking process. And as every human being sub-consciously knows, confessing a crime give one a full license to commit it again and again. Now, before I venture into philosophy, I will just announce that I am going to try and stick to as few topics as I possibly can in a single post. I am reminded of a E-Mail writing sessions in TCS training, where the facilitator used to insist that every e-mail should deal with only one subject. Half of me would like to write more about my TCS training, but I think you have got the drift by now.
So, till the next post, if it does come, goodbye!