FOUR FILMS, A COMPARISION

• Two English films reminded me of two Manirathnam films.
• One was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid which made me think of Thiruda Thiruda.
  Everything sounded similar, both films etching out the life of two robbers, their friendship and exploits. In the English version, Etta Place gets the attention of Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Though she is with Redford she goes bike-riding with Paul Newman. In Tamil, both Prashant and Anand love Heera.
• The other films are Kannathil Mutthamittaal and Made in America.
• In the Tamil film, a girl wants to find out who her real mother is and this search leads her to Sri Lanka where she finds out that her mother is a suicide bomber.
• In Made in America, a young woman discovers that her mother, Whoopi Goldberg, conceived her with donor sperm and wants to find out who her father is. Whoppi Goldberg wanted the sperm of a black where as the donor happens to be white. Eventually, the donor comes for the convocation of the girl, that's it.
• The films have much in common though they are not remakes. If the Tamil versions were inspired by their foreign cousins, I won't be surprised.
• But maybe I am making uncalled for comparisons, the thematic resemblences are too striking to miss. Anyway, all four films are great to watch.

WHERE IS RHYME?

• It is true that I don't rhyme when I write poems. Life itself is like that. A long period of pain and a brief moment of joy. And the reverse also is true. Broken lines and meaningless disorder. Incidents occur in a jumble and we sit and piece them together; order scattered, disorder rearranged. Five joyous occasions joined in twos (pentametric lines) do not occur in life.
• I am too lazy to rhyme but prefer to break the lines where-ever I like. I only hope there is reason though rhyme goes for a song

OOPS!!!

A prodigal master (Genius wandering)
Searing-in ceremony (For a hot seat probably)
Legal hair (Leads to tangles)
Bulk male (Has to delete to reduce weight)
Animated suspension (Hanging in action)

I SAID IT

• If there is heaven on Earth, you and I must stay away from it
• How many parents want their children to be Mahatma Gandhi or Mother Teresa?

WORDS UNSEEN

• I go about weaving
  A web of words
  To ensnare beauty.
  I hear the footprints
  Of sound on wind
  The pattern of the wings of birds,
  The footfall of moonlight
  On coconut trees .
  Beauty lost to common eyes,
  Beauty imagined and missed
  Are words Nature wrote for some to see.
  I see music and poetry everywhere;
  In the silent sky and in the lost looks of many
  And the madman's wailing in the still night.

CELLOPAIN

• Sometime back, I left my cellphone in my office. I remembered about it midday the next day. I desperately tried to get it back but in vain.
• Once my cellphone fell down in the seat in front of me when I sat down. I hadn't noticed this. But an old woman selling peanuts saw it and alerted me. I thanked her and pocketed it.
• When I compare these two incidents, I conclude that for every dishonest person there is an honest person.

SODABOTTLE SENTIMENT PART 1

• Recently there was a suggestion by NGOs and other right-thinking organisations that soda bottle should be banned as it was dangerous in many ways.
• Following this there was an all-party meeting where this topic was to be discussed. Our journalist friend was present at the meet. Here are some excerpts:
• Member 1: It is our birth right to protest against each other as is the precedent set by ....... (Here he names a few eminent names) Soda bottles and politicians are like twins, inseparable, conjoined at birth, connected by blood and thought as evinced by our great....
  There were claps all round at the mention of a great name.
• Member 2: I very much accept what our brother said.
  (Here a journalist was heard saying that only recently Member 1 and 2 were at each other's throat and they abused each other's family)
• M2: We may have differences but never should we forget that we are of the same blood which we have spilled mutually. We have every right to throw soda bottles at each other. They plan to replace soda bottles with plastic ones. I ask them, can plastic bottles split the head of our opponents? It's our right to protest which is ensured in our Constitution.
• M1: Who can forget our 'Soda bottle Simon', 'Vattulodu vasu' , Cyanide Subbu
• M2: I would like to remind my brother that Cyanide Subbu does not use soda bottle.
• M1: Very sorry brother. I got carried away at the sweet rhyming names of the stars that dot our endless, blue sky which we look up at. Nevertheless Cyanide Subbu is a great tireless worker, a martyr.
• M2: No doubt, please continue brother
• M1: Our tireless workers do great deeds for us. If there are no sodabottles, they will be jobless. Their families will be on streets. What will they do. Women will cry, children will also cry.
  (A few members were seen wiping their tears)
  Here they take a break to drink soda

End of part 1

SODA BOTTLE SENTIMENT: PART 2

• M1: (Continues with renewed vigour) I ask them. Will they feed the families of our great workers? What other material can we use? Bricks?
• M2: Bricks are costly brother (and quotes the latest price).
• M1: And are bricks as effective as bottles?
• M2: According to my personal experience, bottles are matchless, like gold.
• M1: I remember once you threw a bottle at my head.
• M2: But you caught it expertly and threw it back at me and broke my head.
• M1: See. you can always catch it and throw it back. Reuse value. Which is not there in bricks.
• M2: Correct.
• M1. Past is past brother. Now I ask them. Have they fought with us in the streets, have they torn each others 'waistis', threw punches, abused each other in unprintable vocabulary in our very ancient language? Then what right do they have to ban bottles.
• M2. Bottles are freely available. We can always borrow them from our shopkeepers who won't mind losing them for the sake of our esteemed party, yours or mine.
• M3. I suspect this sudden friendship between you two.
• M1. We are like brothers, fighting is our birth right. Right from birth we fight.
• M2. M3 always suspects everything. if everybody is happy, M3 is not.
• M3. I see it as friendship between wolves and foxes.
• M1. Why not flowers and strings?
• M4. M3 is always jealous. M1 and M2 please go on.
• M1. Also children make 'maanjha' for strings to fly kites. For this they need glass pieces. Will not children be deprived of their pleasure if they ban bottles.
• M2. Well said. Even I would have forgotten this point.
• M1. Now it is bottle, next it will be cycle chain, what do they think of themselves?
• M1. There are film songs about soda bottle:
• (Starts singing)
  "Vethala potta shokkula
  naan gapunnu kuthunna mookula
  ada vandhudhu paaru ratham
  indha amaran manasu sutham
  vaaravadhi erakkam amaran
  vandhu ninna sarakkum
  amaran pera sonna thaane
  SODA BOTTLE parakkum"

(Widespread whistles and catcalls)

• M2: "SODA BOTTLE kaiyila cycle chainu paiyila
  dhoda varan paaruda aarumugam
  vaada vaada maapuLLa podaindhiruvaen gappula
  meiyaalumae enakku noorumogam"
  
• At this juncture, all of them start dancing and hugging each other. Finding it unbearable our journalist source leaked out like soda out of a broken bottle, plugging our narrative.
  

THE END