Ramblings of a madman

   I have recently developed this routine of roaming around the city after the stroke of midnight or just before it. We would take our scooters and coast through places, where at day time would be hellish traffic infested roads. The joy you will get from doing that is quite unbelievable. I’ve marked down a ride at Ranganathan street as a “thing I should do before I die”. You can hardly walk there at day time. But then there would be too many cops at night.   On contrary to many people's belief, Chennai does have a nightlife, a nightlife of a different kind. Chennai’s night is made up of those tea vendors, ice cream vendors, cops and more cops.    This was first time we did the whole “roam at night” thing. We were filling petrol at kodambakkam. That was where we met our first characters of the night, “Danger guys”. Four guys with a funk and two Yamaha bikes. They were seemingly hiding the booze to save it from the policemen and were having an argument over...

     Most of the times we compliment films saying “It is damn realistic”. We compliment a film maker with the tag “realistic”. We compliment actors saying he gave a “realistic” performance. People often fail to distinguish between “real” and “realistic” and get worked up. The former is “what it is” and the latter is “trying to be real”.       Recently I read a review of the film “Mayakkam Enna” which discussed how Selvaraghavan twists the world of reality and ideality. I was thinking about this, waiting for the train. One thing I felt is that people fail to understand that films are never real, they are just warped reality and it is not a mistake to be so.     People get worked up and judge films if they are not depicted as what they are in the world we live in. In that review, the reviewer was pointing out a thing that “kumudam prints sleazy photos on cover photos and not wildlife photographs”. This is a classic example of...