Kanimozhi’s arrest..

In Subramanya Bharati’s verion of Panchali Sabatham, Duryodhana is made to say the following lines:

‘’A separate justice for rulers
And another for the common folk
So legislated the great master Brihaspathi…’’

(Mannarkku Needhi Oru Murai – Mattra
Maandharkku Needhi Oru Murai…Endru
Sonna Vizhaazha Munivaani….)..

It is uttered by Duryodhana when he lambasts his father for suggesting that he should return the kingdom that he has usurped from the Pandavas.

Despite the great Consitution given by India’s leading lights, it was
Duryodhana Raj all through till now.

Politicians were a separate lot.

Whatever be the enormity of their sin, of looting millions and millions of public money even as ordinary people continued to live substandard lives…they were the special lot..the ones who could always get away with murder.

But with the preliminaryl arrest of Kanimozhi, former chief minister M. Karunanidhi’s daughter…in the 2G scam the bell has finally begun to toll for the special gang.

The astonishing thing is that ‘honorable’ advocates of the supremest court of India, like Harish Salve and ‘Aryaman’ Sundaram (to Arnab on Times Now) have been saying or suggesting that bail should not have been denied to Kanimozhi…and even for Raja. (Just a few days back their brother advocate Jethmalani made a killing of perhaps a few crores arguing for Kanimozhi’s bail…He was in Germany when he reacted with amusement to the news of Kanimozhi’s arrest…)

”They are not dangereous criminals who are going to run away. Convict them..” these chaps are saying.

These are the guys…I have lost all respect for them…who have been witness to a libertarian India where it takes generations for a criminal to be convicted…

The arrest of Raja and Kanimozhi in the 2G case, and that purely because of the supervision of the Supreme Court has immense symbolic value for resurgent India.

It should send shivers down the spine of politicians and set a new paradigm for India.

Forget characters like Salve who make millions by chopping logic and the law…. A new India needs to rise…Salaam Supreme Court…Your sense of justice is giving birth to a new India.

The age-old adage is – Like King, like subject. When the rulers are punished for their crimes…the ordinary man will think a thousand times before breaking the law. Salve and co want the rule of the law (which has till now meant rule of the outlaw and men like Salve). I want the rulers to follow the law…and when they don’t, to be made to follow the law. Thus will the new India be made. This is a new beginning…however shaky its foundations may be.

Thank you Two-ji

During the freedom struggle we had Gandhiji.

We then had, as the steward of the nation, Nehruji.

To give Pakistan a drubbing in 1965 we had Shastriji.

As the midwife of Bangladesh and the single man in her cabinet, we had Indraji.

And welcoming India into the new millennium we have the great 2-G.

And it is the DMK, the great Dravidian party led by Karunanidhi for the past forty years, whose watchwords are supposed to be Duty (Kadamai), Honesty (Kanniyam) and Discipline (Kattupaadu), that has given this shining milestone to the nation : an astronomical sum running to one lakh seventy six thousand crores diverted away from the exchequer.

Unable to bear the weight of this extraordinary contribution, the Indian National Congress is at last splitting from its southern darling of many years. (or so it seems, as in the evening of March 5,2011).

The sheer weight of illbegotten wealth is about to crush a Machiavellian political alliance.

What a great relief for Tamil Nadu! A party that once claimed to see God in the smile of the poor (Ezhaiyin Sirippil Iraivanai Kaanboam) saw god only in tonnes of money distributed with Kanniyam among family members.

A party that called itself a self-respect movement, had begun to set a price for that self-respect seeking to buy votes with largesse if not hard cash.

One looks forward to such crass selfserving opportunism being consigned to the the dustbin.

MGR on his birth anniversary

Who was MGR?

Many things to many people, but in my view the most important aspect of his life was his foresight as well as his image building power.

He was a Congressman and devotee of Muruga during the freedom struggle, but in the early fifties began to think of the idealogical line he needed to follow in independent India. The highs of freedom were over and high expectations were getting battered on the rocks of reality.

In this scenario, MGR had a liking for the communist ideology and toyed with the idea of joining the communist party.

But the scale tilted in favour of the DMK, and the rhetoric that he mounted through dialogue and song dovetailed beautifully with the the Kazhagam propaganda in the culturally charged ambience of the fifties and sixties.

Annadurai was the umbrella, a whole array of evening speakers who would tilt irreverently at orthodoxies, religious, cultural, social and political, through podium, paper, proscenium and film constituted flanks of the charge. But it was MGR’s image as the Robin Hood of Ramavaram, the new Ramachandran of the Kali Yuga, that would stick. MGR was very much aware of the image-building potential of films, and worked really hard at sculpting a positive image of himself. Ultimately, the celluloid persona buttressed by real-life stances proved to be invincible. He had mastered a modern alchemy that would turn tinsel into gold. (Of course that is not to discount any sympathy he might have really had for the poor and ‘downtrodden’. Who cares about reality? What is reality, anyway?).

That explains why his arch rival in the party, M. Karunanidhi could not even dream of coming to power once MGR was in Fort St George in 1977 after a party schism in 1972. All the political wiles and guiles of the foxy Karunindhi, a veritable treasurhouse of Machiavellian shifts and stances, came to nought before the smile of MGR and his willingness to please everybody except Karunanidhi, of course. (Political watchers would however say that he even saw to it that Karunanidhi got the share of goodies due to an opposition leader!).

About 25 years after his passing, a star struck Tamil Nadu looks back to his benign personality, and may well hearken to his reel and real-life heroine and only political legatee, Jayalalitha, in the elections to the state assembly round the corner.

Of course a whole lot of imponderables are involved, from last minute alliances to public memory of monumental scams, from the wiles of money-power and media management to what comes last, the will of the people. But the MGR factor too will be at work. Will he manage to vanquish his arch rival this time is the question. His leading lady is drawing the battle lines for another assault on the fort, she better have his fullest backing!
(Thoughts on his birth anniversary).

Yoga is indeed demonic, it frees you of the demons of anger and greed

Yoga is demonic, a pastor (Seattle Mars Hill Church’s Mark Driscoll) in the US has declared.

He has drawn a lot of flak for this statement, but in my view this could be the first true statement he is making.

Yoga can surely be construed as demonic, because it helps a person, whatever his creed or country, to gain mastery over the demons that bedevil humanity.

Yoga does not ask anyone to believe in any outside force…Yoga does not make a flock or sheep of people…it makes them masters of themselves. Can there be anything more demoniacal than that? What would happen to churches and other spiritual authorities if a man became a light to himself? Dangerous demonology isn’t it?

Another church head (R Albert Mohler Jr, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky) has declared that yoga is against Christianity.

I however don’t see it as such….in fact in my neighbourhood in Chennai I know of a Christian near a Catholic church who runs yoga classes!

So which Christianity is the church head talking about?

I suggest that both the pastor and church head meet the Tamil Nadu chief minister Karunanidhi to conquer their own demons.

A known and self-declared enemy of Hinduism (the only religion he has attacked all his long life), he is a self-confessed practitioner of yoga asanas and pranayama.

Once the demoniacal churchmen (that is the churchmen who allege that yoga is demonic) meet the most honourable chief minister they will be freed of the demons tormenting them.

It may also help the chief minister garner some ‘Christian’ votes in the coming elections.

The chief minister is at present beset by the demons of family strife. Some people are suggesting yoga for this problem too. So yoga is demonic on this score also.

Three cheers to yoga…the greatest demoniacal challenge to dogmatic religions!

The actor and his lines – issue as film world greets CM

Should politicians script for actors

It was a memorable scene from Dasavathaaram, Kamalhasan’s tour de force of ten roles.
Telugu speaking intelligence officer Balram Naidu asks the scientist from the united states (both roles played by Kamalhasan), ‘I am a Telugu but I speak in Tamil after learning it. Your mother tongue is Tamil but you speak in English. If you ignore your mother tongue like this how will the Tamil language grow’.

And the scientist shrugs off this remark saying, ‘‘Perhaps somebody like you whose mother tongue is not Tamil will learn Tamil and enrich it…. Vidunga Saar…’’

Perhaps it was the character speaking, but you could also hear the apolitical actors voice behind the remark. Kamalhasan has kept off politics like from the plague, and sometimes paid for it too. Not that he is not interested in Tamil…how could a Tamil actor not be…he is just not interested in making language a political issue.

When Kamalhasan was making his film Virumandi – such films do have overtones of the caste glory of the Thevars – he fell foul of a Dalit party which sought to make political capital by making him the butt of its protests.

As the actor did not have the support or even the active protection of the political dispensation of the day, he found himself in a majority of one while fighting the cause of his film.

It was perhaps as the expression of such helplessness in the face of the political tamasha that goes on in Tamil Nadu in the name of this caste or that, or this party or that, that actor Ajith made his rather fervent and outspoken appeal to Chief Minister Karunanidhi against dragging actors into political issues and just let them be.

He got a thumbs up from the senior star Rajinikanth, who once jumped into the political bandwagon to support Karunanidhi and the Congress, thus upsetting Jayalalitha’s applecart. Rajinikanth has however kept the will he won’t he (jump into active politics) factor alive, just to add some pep to his own filmi career without having any intention of risking his neck in active politics.

But it was rather ironic that Ajith was making the plea to chief minister Karunanidhi. For despite himself being a film writer and producer, Karunanidhi is nothing if he is not a politician. Not only every film of his, every word and perhaps every gesture of his is rife with politics and serves nothing but his political interests. He is known to go to literary meetings and use them for his own political ends. It is one of the curses of Tamil Nadu that both politics and caste factors can pervade into every sphere of life.

The politician-actor link runs back to the roots of the DMK. Actor K. R. Ramasami was a close friend of the DMK’s mother spirit C.N.Annadurai. Anna wrote plays for Ramasami, who pumped money into the fledgling party from his earnings. Karunanidhi was of course Annadurai’s organization man and a script writer. He was also a film producer. MGR made a tactical shift from being a Congress sympathizer during the freedom struggle to the DMK in the early fifties, and you know the rest of his career as Tamil Nadu’s invincible chief minister. Actor SSR was the first hero to become a legislator in the Tamil Nadu assembly. Sivaji Ganesan who owned his launch pad ‘Parasakthi’ to Dravidian forces (the producer Perumal was a diehard DK man) and of course the script was by Karunanidhi), switched over to Kamaraj and the Congress.

Some stars and creative people in the film world have however wanted to keep clear of political affiliations. But with language and caste identities whipped up by interested parties, it is not easy. Piquant situations can arise when an actor has got a film about to be released and there is a crowd out there not to see his film but waiting to sabotage it!. There are any number of unforeseen factors that can ruin a film’s prospects and some inimical political group could be the last straw. See SRK…despite having the first family of Delhi behind him (doesn’t he?) and both state and central support, he has to soften his line against the Sena (while keeping up the heroics).

Actually, power centres, whether in politics or government are like mafias that promote artistes and actors who bow to them or wear their flags on their sleeves. Or they can be a destructive influence on those whom they choose to target for whatever reason. Both politicians and showmen are wooing the support of the public. When showman-politician interests begin to clash the showmen must prepare for the showdown, or make behind the scene compromises that will pacify the political gods.

Meanwhile, it was a show that the aged Karunanidhi thoroughly enjoyed. He was the cynosure of all eyes…and along with the stars and starlets of Tamil Nadu this time there was Amitabh Bachan too standing tall as the chief guest. The entire celluloid world at the politician’s feet, with actor after actor and actor after actor of tinseltown genuflecting to ‘the lord and liege leader of all Tamils’. It’s sort of darbari khaas (special court) that the badshah of present-day re-enacts to indulge his taste for the bygone days of monarchy. It serves as a sort of pep act that an aged leader, sentimental about a career that has reached a plateau at the peak, direly needs. A throwback perhaps to the good old Sangam days when penurious poets praised their kingly patrons for some presents. Only this time, in place of poets clad in rags you have tinsel heroes draped in the spools of celluloid!

Of course government has to do with every aspect of life, and the film business (the artistes especially like to call it an ‘industry’, especially the girls who are but pawns in this slushy game) is dependent on government machinery whether it is about curbing piracy, rates of taxation and exhibition and quite a few things to do with the conduct of any business.

The function which started at 4 in the afternoon extended till midnight on Feb. 6 at the jampacked Nehru indoor stadium. The chief minister too agreed that artistes should not be forced to take part in political agitations. ‘’Let them come on their own. We will welcome them’’, he said. You know what that means. As long as they come voluntarily there will not be any force! Ultimately, he is the script writer in real life too. Ajith has spoken his mind. But when there is the political need, others will try to write his lines.

Grammys for every gram of song

‘One for the Slumdog, one for the Millionaire….adding to two for the road’ says the West in feting a film that shows India’s financial capital as a beautifully festering sore. What happened at the Oscars has happened again, and will be repeated at the Granny’s award.

A song showing a group dance at the Victoria Terminal, the very spot where Kasab and his killer cohort let loose automatic gunfire at unsuspecting Indian passengers, symbolizes India… Forget 26/11…even if it was bad it only cleaned up a rotten city!

What was till now a land of snake charmers, loitering jumbos and sprawling slums, is repackaged in the persona of an unlikely Michael Jackson of India cinema. It’s insane, as twin Grammy recipient A.R.Rahman said, but there is a method in the madness of those kissing him all over. They never met such a cuddly Khan till now!

And so, not only the nimble-fingered Zakir and phenomenal Amjad Ali Khan get pipped at the post of western approval, but also with retrospective effect melody kings like Madan Mohan, Naushad, Sachin Dev Burman, Sri Ramachandra and Shanker Jaikishen in the north and C. R. Subburaman, G. Ramanathan, K. V. Mahadeven, Viswanathan-Ramamurthy and Ilayaraja in the south. They are with retro effect neighbourhood boyz of the nondescript past.

But an award is an award is an award, especially when it is given repeatedly by our erstwhile colonial masters, and especially when we are still under the complete sway of everything Western. Given this state of affairs, I humbly make the following proposals.

Jai Ho as India’s anthem

As ‘Jai Ho’ has won the approval and applause from the west like no Indian song in all Indian history, and as we always look up to the West – we did not mind having an Italian as PM, only the Italian was good enough to pull back – we should make Jai Ho the anthem of India. The dance movements for the song were extraordinarily pleasing, and could be declared as one of the national dances of India, taking precedence over old forms like Kathak, Bharatanatyam, Odissi and the like.

Slumdog, most momentous

One must not forget that Slumdog Millionaire has been instrumental in bringing Oscars for the first time to an Indian artiste, and so one must acknowledge it as the most momentous film ever made in India, and throw out into the recycle bin the old represented by films like Pather Panchali and Pyaasa, Do Bigha Zamin and Devatha, Mughale Azam and Meghe Dhaka Thara. This is the symbolism we get from the life-time Oscar given to a dying Satyajit Ray. Kick out the past, and kick in the future…Make Michael Jackson and A.R. Rahman the musical and cinematic icon of the new superpower India. Pepsi, Coke and ARR ki Jai Ho.

Festival a la Tansen and Thyagaraja

In this context, we must also take care to institutionalize these glorious moments for posterity. Just as the present-day classical musicians in India celebrate the day of Thyagaraja in the south, and Tansen and Haridas in the North, we must also celebrate this new Grammy. It signifies the emergence of Indian (!) music in the world scenario (please discount the groping efforts of Ali Akbar Khan, Ravishanker and others in this regard). We must organize a yearly festival at a great location to record Rahman’s phenomenal service to Indian music.

David Boil should inaugurate the first fest, and it should be attended by Oscar and Grammy committee members, agents, promoters, and worthies of our English channels. The English language press can also be given free delegate passes to the function, which should have Rekha Sawant dancing to Jai Ho along with reality show king Rahul Mahajan and US returned beautician Nooria Haveliwala (who gave a new dimension to drunken driving by allegedly drinking during driving). The latter two will be doing their own jigs. This festival should be held annually with religious zeal with junkies dancing to more ARR anthems even greater than Jai Ho.

Song to Tamil Mother like Jai Ho

The progressive Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Mr. Karunanidhi has shown the way by roping in Oscar and Grammy Rahman to compose the music for his own Tamil song commemorating the ‘Classical Tamil’ conference. He should also think about getting a newer version of music for the Tamizh Thaai Vaazhthu. That would fire the imagination of the youth. We can also think of officially adopting his spunky tunes for Jana Gana Mana and Vande Mataram. All this will take India nearer to the West…which is best. Let us all pray in silence that all this should happen. We can even invoke the example of Beyonce, who has grabbed six awards in one night. Think of a woman Rahman three times more powerful than him. Wow…Phenomenal. Jai Ho to all the Millionaires…Jai Who to all the Slumdogs of the world!

The uses of love in a season of hate

The Uses of Love

Being Tamil Nadu chief minister, M. Karunanidhi recently (Jan. 17, 2010) could not resist the temptation to play high priest of love, surrounded as he was by his family members, ministers and party leaders. They had of course no alternative to hearing him out.

Presiding over the marriage of the son of a close relative of deputy chief minister Stalin, he commanded his partymen to love, ”so that caste is banished for all time to come”.

Love, obviously is not the first priority of the man known more for his political stratagems than for being a Majnu. Ridding society of caste is.

This obviously means that same caste lovers don’t have his nod of approval, even if the boy is a crorepati many times over and the girl a Neelmetal Fanalca conservancy worker! Even if they were in love. In the face of caste, such HImalayan social differences don’t mean a thing to him.

One wonders why, if the CM is so hell-bent on showing caste the door, he does not practice it during elections….giving constituencies with one dominant caste a clean and honest candidate from some other caste! Obviously that would be a nice method to show how the member of a particular caste is a fine person. But most of the time he plays along with the caste card.

One knows that party rivalries badly deface public life in Tamil Nadu. Will Karunanidhi encourage love between scions of top party functionaries of his DMK with those of the AIADMK or MDMK? Or will that affect power structures too badly? Caste discrimination is practised only in villages deeper south, but party politics is practised right here in the heart of Chennai. Wouldn’t it be a great idea to foster love marriages among squabbling parties so that Cupid gambols all over around Fort St George and the new complex being built near Anna statue?

More questions raise their heads. Because in his reckoning caste is such a bad word, will the chief minister encourage those who marry inter-caste more than once? In that case, will the law against bigamy be amended? Only to quell the villain of caste, you know.

What about trans religious marriages? Sometimes communal considerations do come in the way of love marriages. Will his government encourage those forsaking their religions to marry in secular bliss. (Of course he will do this in case both lovers are Hindus…but what about the other religions?)

From the party he runs, from the government he presides over, and from the films he writes, one can see that Mr. Karunanidhi is first and last a politician.

If there is any love in our politicians, it is love of power and position, and all the good things they bring. Love of family of course runs along with this first love.

Love is indeed a rare commodity in this world. This is a world of calculations and mis-calculations. This is a world of power and pelf. This is a world of selfishness and self-seeking.

Love is what took Damayanti with Nala when he lost his kingdom….love is what made Nala run away from her so that she was saved from the suffering that was his lot. Love is what took Moses from Egyptian royalty to the slaves. Love is what made the wealthy father wait for his prodigal son. Love is what made Buddha seek the door of deliverance, not for himself, but for all creatures.

As Jesus said, it is as easy for a wealthy and powerful man to enter the heaven of love, as it is for a camel to enter the eye of a needle.

Not only age-old caste, but all the grand structures of wealth and power will be reduced to dust in the face of real love….By that I don’t mean the infatuation and passion that grip young adults. I mean the magnificent obsession that takes man and woman beyond self into a nameless transcendence.

Meanwhile, the pair whose marriage occasioned the CM’s homilies, are perhaps laughing it all out.
Karthikeyan and Revathi know that an SMS sent as part of a prank brought them together.
Ultimately it is perhaps ‘Spectrum’ Raja who has to be thanked after all.

Breaking news

As a continent hopping musician, Amjad Ali Khan has perhaps flown most aircraft carriers in the world.

Yet, his 34-year-old sarod has travelled with him unscathed all these years.

Till he boarded an Air India flight from Ahmedabad to Bombay for a performance in the city.

In Bombay, when he opened his instrument box he had the shock of his life. He found the front of the wooden belly of the instrument that is covered with goatskin riven in two.

Only a few days back, Amjad Ali Khan’s sarod maker in Calcutta, the eighty-year-old Hemendra Chandra Sen of Hemen and sons had passed away. Even that had rattled Amjad.

When he saw his shattered instrument in Bombay, the effect was therefore more poignant.

Though Amjad did not want to sue the national carrier of India, he did greater damage. He went to the channels with the story of his shattered sarod! Feeling needs to be channelised, you see!

Civil Aviation minister Praful Patel sang a sad raga of apology in lieu of the eroded sarod.

Amjad Ali meanwhile had his wife Subhalakshmi fly in with another sarod from Delhi…..and performed for the C.R. Vyas memorial concert a day later.

The auditorium was full…but the maestro’s heart overflowed with nostalgia for his broken instrument. He is said to have stopped four times in the midst of his raga essay to tune the instrument or because of unhappiness at its tone.

How much anguish the inept AI porters had caused a great artiste!

Imagine the plight of lesser musicians and artistes in the wide wide world.

I know of a talented musician who was almost run over by a rash auto.

A trucker, many decades ago, did not give the phenomenal Jon Higgins occasion to complain. The first non-Indian to perform Carnatic music like a born-to-it Bhagavathar was run over before anybody could say Higgins.

So much for unfeeling fellow humans.

Softly, please tread softly, there may be angels amidst us!