Month: December 2006

>When Tamil Nadu Government announced tax exemption for Tamil movies with Tamil titles, I did not feel bad. This act was different from the usual Tamil-fanatic acts that the ruling party is known for.

I was never amused by titles like ‘Jeans’, ‘New’, ‘Run’ etc. in the past. An occasional English name that is relevant to the movie’s theme was ok, but a sudden surge of English names for Tamil movies was a plain marketing gimmick. After the announcement, this trend has almost disappeared ! I like innovative Tamil names like ‘vETTayADu viLayADu’, ‘Ayutha ezhuththu’, ‘kAkka kAkka’ etc.

These small acts will go a long way in saving the language from getting wiped out by socio-political environment of the country. I might sound backward, but I really marvel at Chennai that has been in the forefront of development while laughing at ‘Hindi-only’ speakers of the country.

Go to Mumbai – you cannot hear Marathi. Go to Bangalooru – you can survive without knowing Kannada. Go to Chennai – In one year, you WILL learn Tamil ! I don’t find this to be rude. I equate it to Japan where you cannot live without knowing Japanese.

I agree that patriotism takes priority over one’s language, but neglecting a 2000+ year old language for the sake of a 50 year old nation is stupidity, mildly put. A language cannot live on its own. It needs great poets and poetry lovers. It needs great personalities who speak it proudly. It needs native speakers who are proud of it. It needs the socio-political conditions to be favorable too.

Christianity would never have survived more than a couple of centuries without the political support of Rome. English is all over the world not because of just Shakespeare, but mainly because of the gun power of Britain in the last few centuries and the power of the US today.

Tamil lives on, thanks to its passionate native speakers.

>Most of us try hard to remain ordinary throughout our lives.

Every facet of our lives is plagued by ordinariness. We often fear that we might become different during the course of life. We try everything to prevent it from happening.

We make sure that we wear the leading brand of Jeans (If we can afford it).

We listen to the top 20 songs in the music channel. And believe that they are the best songs and try hard to ‘like’ them.

We eat Rasam Rice with a spoon in the office cafeteria so that others do n’t think that we are not modern enough. Others too eat it with spoon and they too are thinking the same !

We yearn to buy that cool car the moment we know we might be able to afford it. What if somebody asks us : “Hey, you are a software professional for so many years. No car yet ?” So we buy the car partly to kill that question.

We read business magazines to make sure we don’t lag behind our colleagues and friends.

We go to Adyar Anand Bhavan because everybody else goes there. How can we miss something that everyone else thinks to be good ? Long waiting time at the counter, no place to sit. So what ?

We go to Shabari Mala because everybody else thinks it is a good way to earn Positive Karma in 41 days. We too think so because we are afraid to think differently.

A certain amount of uniformity in our thoughts is required to keep the society from collapsing, but sometimes we go overboard – like a set of computer game characters with programmed lives.