This weekend was normal, regular, unexciting or however you want to call it. Also, whether it was exciting or not is entirely subjective. All I am trying to say is that it lacked the busy atmosphere I was in the previous weekend with two shows and all that. Friday night started out lazy - we were actually wondering what to do, after quite some time. After debating about watching Zathura, which I myself was not that enthusiastic about, we had some Maggi and went over to our friends' place for watching the India Vs Sri Lanka Cricket Match. I think I already wrote about that. On saturday, I was trying to read a book, when I happened to see Swades running on some Asian Channel. That was it, I was hooked to that and couldn't read, even though I tried. So, I ended up watching that movie in the afternoon. I was supposed to pick up my bike, but it wasn't ready.
We then decided to go to Balboa park to watch the Imax movie called "Mystic India". We went there in time and got the tickets. We couldn't get the greatest of seats, but it was decent enough. Regarding the IMAX movie itself, they might have as well called it "Mystic North India" or something to that extent. Such things don't sell that well with me - they say India India and all that, but most often than not, it refers to only North India and its culture. What people typically overlook or what people from other countries have come to know and believe of India, almost always pertains only to North India. The southern four states are somehow excluded from wide discussion.
I guess, we could take some blame for that since, if somebody from the south came forward to make such movies, people outside would be well informed about what's happening in the South as well.
For instance, they were discussing about all the festivals in north india and their costumes, their way of marriage blah blah. There was no talk about festivals like Pongal and what not, which represents a major festival for all the farmers in the south. They could have at least hinted at it instead of concentrating too much on Holi and the 'chariot pulling' festival and all that. No offense here, but I just wanted a rounded and wholesome view of India, especially when it is being presented to the outside audience. There were so many Americans and others at the theatre - they all seemed like they were quite curious as to what India is all about. Shouldn't we give them the true picture? What's all the B.S about unity in diversity - they ultimately talk only about the North. Hello, there is something called the southern peninsula! There could have been some mention of Mahabalipuram, Mysore Palace, Sabari Mala, Tirupati and all that.
I once attended Rahman's concert and the compere was stupid enough to mention that music has no language barrier, particularly when the show was filled with only Hindi songs of Rahman (lot of them even dubbed from original Tamil songs), barring just a few. I guess Rahman was under some kind of pressure may be because the sponsors of the show were all Northies and they wanted only chayya chayya stuff.
Enough of that. I might already be offending people here. So, an exclusive disclaimer from me: PLEASE DON'T TAKE OFFENSE. I take pride in being an Indian as well as a Tamilian. Just like anybody else, I am attached to the place where I grew up and I am attached to the language that was spoken at home in all my childhood and the stay with my parents. It'll be like that for anybody, wherever they are from. I fully acknowledge that. For the same reason we all fought with the British to gain independence, I feel the need to go through another struggle for freedom - the freedom to actually express and tell the outside world what a wonderful culture we have in the South. I'll keep an active eye on this one and will grab the slightest opportunity to contribute.
So, we went around Balboa park after that. We returned home with a DVD - No Entry (hindi movie). I read for sometime and then crashed. The next morning, I was expecting my friends - one of them had returned from Bay area just for the weekend. She didn't turn up finally and the other one came along anyway. I had some interesting discussion with him about Ilayaraja and gave him some songs to listen to. After that, we watched No Entry. It was a decent comedy. We then proceeded to watch "Majaa", in the theatre, a tamil movie starring Vikram. The movie was so so only. I won't recommend it. There were only fight scenes and nothing else.
Next thing we did was to return the DVD back, come home, have dinner and sat down to watch Ilayaraja's concert in Chennai, that was stored in Jaya TV archives. They had this scheme where you could pay just $2 and then watch the channel for 8 hours straight. We choose that. It was an amazing concert. Amazing would be an understatement. You need a new superlative word to describe the concert. It was Ilayaraja left loose. He openly made friendly attacks on others, including his own children :) I guess the drummer was Sivamani, going by what I have seen of his drum arrangements before. Oh boy, does he know how to play drums! He is quite impressive, again, needless to say. The whole orchestra did a great job. Hariharan screwed up in a couple of places. Shreya Goshal also screwed up a little bit, by singing, "...kaanada ondrai thoduthe", instead of "...kanada ondrai theduthe". But she could correct the problem by the end of the song and there was some criticism and appreciation by Ilayaraja. He unnecessarily pulled in Saroja Devi's name into this :) Anyways, everyone seems to have had a great time that night. It was a very long concert. We started watching at 8:45 PM or so and of course my wife dozed off after a few songs. I continued watching and finally crashed only at 1:30 AM. I think all the interviews in the middle made it a little longer. SPB, Chitra, Shreya, kartik - they were all awesome. Anyways, I am somewhat saturated to write more about the concert at this point. But you get the idea :)
We then decided to go to Balboa park to watch the Imax movie called "Mystic India". We went there in time and got the tickets. We couldn't get the greatest of seats, but it was decent enough. Regarding the IMAX movie itself, they might have as well called it "Mystic North India" or something to that extent. Such things don't sell that well with me - they say India India and all that, but most often than not, it refers to only North India and its culture. What people typically overlook or what people from other countries have come to know and believe of India, almost always pertains only to North India. The southern four states are somehow excluded from wide discussion.
I guess, we could take some blame for that since, if somebody from the south came forward to make such movies, people outside would be well informed about what's happening in the South as well.
For instance, they were discussing about all the festivals in north india and their costumes, their way of marriage blah blah. There was no talk about festivals like Pongal and what not, which represents a major festival for all the farmers in the south. They could have at least hinted at it instead of concentrating too much on Holi and the 'chariot pulling' festival and all that. No offense here, but I just wanted a rounded and wholesome view of India, especially when it is being presented to the outside audience. There were so many Americans and others at the theatre - they all seemed like they were quite curious as to what India is all about. Shouldn't we give them the true picture? What's all the B.S about unity in diversity - they ultimately talk only about the North. Hello, there is something called the southern peninsula! There could have been some mention of Mahabalipuram, Mysore Palace, Sabari Mala, Tirupati and all that.
I once attended Rahman's concert and the compere was stupid enough to mention that music has no language barrier, particularly when the show was filled with only Hindi songs of Rahman (lot of them even dubbed from original Tamil songs), barring just a few. I guess Rahman was under some kind of pressure may be because the sponsors of the show were all Northies and they wanted only chayya chayya stuff.
Enough of that. I might already be offending people here. So, an exclusive disclaimer from me: PLEASE DON'T TAKE OFFENSE. I take pride in being an Indian as well as a Tamilian. Just like anybody else, I am attached to the place where I grew up and I am attached to the language that was spoken at home in all my childhood and the stay with my parents. It'll be like that for anybody, wherever they are from. I fully acknowledge that. For the same reason we all fought with the British to gain independence, I feel the need to go through another struggle for freedom - the freedom to actually express and tell the outside world what a wonderful culture we have in the South. I'll keep an active eye on this one and will grab the slightest opportunity to contribute.
So, we went around Balboa park after that. We returned home with a DVD - No Entry (hindi movie). I read for sometime and then crashed. The next morning, I was expecting my friends - one of them had returned from Bay area just for the weekend. She didn't turn up finally and the other one came along anyway. I had some interesting discussion with him about Ilayaraja and gave him some songs to listen to. After that, we watched No Entry. It was a decent comedy. We then proceeded to watch "Majaa", in the theatre, a tamil movie starring Vikram. The movie was so so only. I won't recommend it. There were only fight scenes and nothing else.
Next thing we did was to return the DVD back, come home, have dinner and sat down to watch Ilayaraja's concert in Chennai, that was stored in Jaya TV archives. They had this scheme where you could pay just $2 and then watch the channel for 8 hours straight. We choose that. It was an amazing concert. Amazing would be an understatement. You need a new superlative word to describe the concert. It was Ilayaraja left loose. He openly made friendly attacks on others, including his own children :) I guess the drummer was Sivamani, going by what I have seen of his drum arrangements before. Oh boy, does he know how to play drums! He is quite impressive, again, needless to say. The whole orchestra did a great job. Hariharan screwed up in a couple of places. Shreya Goshal also screwed up a little bit, by singing, "...kaanada ondrai thoduthe", instead of "...kanada ondrai theduthe". But she could correct the problem by the end of the song and there was some criticism and appreciation by Ilayaraja. He unnecessarily pulled in Saroja Devi's name into this :) Anyways, everyone seems to have had a great time that night. It was a very long concert. We started watching at 8:45 PM or so and of course my wife dozed off after a few songs. I continued watching and finally crashed only at 1:30 AM. I think all the interviews in the middle made it a little longer. SPB, Chitra, Shreya, kartik - they were all awesome. Anyways, I am somewhat saturated to write more about the concert at this point. But you get the idea :)
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