Ramblings of a madman

   Travelling is something I really like to do. There are two kinds of travel, travel just for the sake of travelling and then travelling for official purpose. I hate the latter so much. I used to watch Dora the explorer while I was taking care of my, then 8 year old cousin. I badly wanted to induce some fun into to my boring life. What I did was follow a pattern that is followed in Dora the explorer while travelling back from my office to home. I call it "Venkatadora - The explorer"   After making sure that no one had a clue what i was doing, I was wondering what to play as the Venkatadora song. Dora would sing "VAnga nanbargaLe! Ellorum onna povom! Muyarachi thiruvinai aakum! MuyandrAl sAdhikka mudiyum! Enga nAmA porom? *clap clap clap* Poli Venkateshawara Boli stall ku "   But the Venkatadora is badass, keeping that poker face "hey come on!" kinda guy. So I played "Brock Lesnar's entrance theme on my phone and walked all the way ...

         During one of those Share Auto rides back home from the exam centre near Panagal park, I was wondering, we always look the world through our eyes. How would it look from someone else's perspective?" Like always I drifted from the deep 'We should put ourselves in others shoes' to "I am so bored let me hate this guy" mode. I was trying to catch the mind voices of people and guess what would they be thinking. Pardon the language, there is absolutely no censorship to the mind.   Hmm! Lets start with the Auto driver who was honking continously when the Share Auto driver was picking people up at the signal. There is some legit heat between the Auto and Share Auto drivers because the share autos were putting auto drivers out of business. The Auto driver must be thinking  "Dei Baadu! I let you in my house and you corrected my wife and you're running with her! thoo"  One should understand the metaphors from that by lifting the Kasam...

   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...

After 22 years of my existence in this planet I finally got to watch a night show. Surprisingly my mom didn’t have an issue with it. One of my friends called and asked me if I would accompany him to Udhayam theatre for watching Mankatha-night show. Normally I would immediately refuse the offer if it read the word “night” But I just had a hunch and said a yes. I heard a lot of good things about the movie from a friend of mine who watched it earlier that morning and yet wasn’t that excited.   The guy who accompanied me was a Vijay fan, needless to say the kind of things he said when we were about to enter the cinema hall. “Dei padam sumaar dhan da, IPL final la panam kolla adippan” The ticket we had for the movie were complimentary and we didn’t spend a single penny. Obviously I had nothing to loose not even sleep. It’s been so long since I slept before 2am.   My idea of a night show all these years was that it would be deserted, people wont come with their families, posse ...

Now many of you non-tams must have been dumbfound how to pronounce Azhagiri or KaniMozhi or Thamizh Nadu for that matter. I have heard some amit news anchors pronouncing them as Kanimoyi or even a Kanimozi with a literal “z” sound worth cringing my whole life. I feel like I want to put “dharbai” in their tongue and posikkify their mouth. Before going into the step by step method to pronounce the letter “zha”. Zha represents the Thamizh letter  “ழ”. The sound of the letter and its variants are quite unique that only Thamizh and Malayalam have it. Variants of Zha by vencurd Those of non-tams who cant pronounce it, don’t worry! Even many Tams cant pronounce it. Many people substitute it with a “La” sound. A friend of mine from south of Tamil Nadu even claims that it is the right sound hahaha! Don’t worry you are in safe hands! I will teach you how to pronounce a “Zha”. It’s closest equivalent is the American ‘r’ If you don’t find that good enough here’s a simple way. S...

    I keep telling this to all my friends. Let me without further ado say it here. I have seen more Chennai in the past four months than I ever did in my entire life before that. I’ve been travelling, travelling and travelling. It has been a welcome change to my “lock yourself up and meddle with your computer” lifestyle.    We Friends decided to meet up and go somewhere, now that our results have been announced. We decided to meet up at ICAI and then head off to “Semmozhi Poonga” which is at a walk able distance from the institute and nearer to the Gemini Flyover. I went into the ICAI and was checking vacancies for Articleship Clerks, now that I have got through the 1st group of my IPCC . It’s funny I was eligible 2 times for doing my articleship. Once after my CPT in 07, which I opted out and now, which I have no option but to take.    I was looking out for firms within my locality, that is West Mambalam, Ashok Nagar, T-Nagar and that belt. There ...