Hello, hello, mike testing...

It's fascinating the things a microphone can do, once held in front of a potential speaker.
Voices rage, chests thrust out, and fists pump the air. Worries usually coughed into a coal-stove spill forth in a rush as soon as the husband leaves the room. "No, he won't know when the programme airs on TV. Listen, I'll tell before he comes back for lunch."
Babies, of course, without exception, land their toothless mouths on the mike, and claw at it with their little fingers.

White khadi shirts comb their sparse hair all to one side in an attempt to hide the bald patch, straighten their collars and backs, and clear their throat. They know what they are going to say, and have said it many times before. People have yawned in their faces, and their run-of-the-mill lines have never been used in TV stories, but they're on auto-motor-mouth. But try to ignore the guy, and he'll fetch the whole community to scream in sync about how the media is biased. "You upper class convent educated media only want to show the flooded houses of the rich guys. You don’t even care if a poor man's corpse floats by you. Let's see you trying to come back to this area! I'll break your legs!"
That it is dramatic and baseless is beside the point. But how to get out the situation? Stick the mike in his face. Scream, if you will, into the mike, I say. He won't say much, but will be happy, and his party cadres will commend his intonation as he says, "Chief Minister must resign!" And we can continue to wade towards those marooned in their huts.

We're always asked if we're from Sun TV. Or Jaya TV. Some ask if we are Karunandhi. Or Jayalalitha. When we tell them it's an English news channel, the crowd disperses. Some inform the disinterested that "nowadays you can talk in Tamil for English channels also."
Some women, usually the first ones to speak, shuffle towards me. Many that talk to the mike know what the media likes. They've seen too many cameras, answered the same questions a trillion times, and seen nothing happen despite all that. They've also seen people's heart going out to the woman beating her chest in Nagapattinam. They saw the channel proudly showing off the impact of that footage. They know she received Rs. 6 lakh.
These women start from the beginning, tell me where the government machinery failed, where they themselves were at fault, what they need, and how sure they are not much help will come their way. The greater the pain, the more difficult it is to speak. Especially to someone holding a mike. Sometimes a tear or two wets the cheek. As if only someone's tears can tell us how unpredictably cruel life can be. I never know what to say, so just look on.

But, that day, when she cried that her daughter was washed away in the flood, the others behind her were smiling. They wanted her to talk to me, and cry, if she wanted, but they knew, just as well as I did, that she was lying. She had no daughter. I knew I wasn’t going to show this on TV, but none of us were angry about her lie. She'd been through agony, even if it wasn't because her baby died. Her only house broke, all her belongings were too soggy to be of any use ever and she was stuck with the loans she took to buy them, her husband couldn't go fishing, and she had no fish to sell. They had no water to drink, or food to eat for a month. Only cameras to talk to once in a while. Her daughter didn't have to die for her to cry. She thinks maybe more people are listening because she's crying.
Of course, everyone can see the drama in it all. Dripping with a stage-set sort of feeling. I will not carry her tears on TV just so people can ignore her other real agonies.

My only hope was the children. I remember being told they can never lie. When I ask a 7-year-old what happened to his sister who was born a few months ago, he looks me straight in the eye and says his father boiled her in the cauldron. But to the mike, he says she's growing up in grandma's house in the city.

I look for someone else who'll talk to the mike. Maybe they too will embellish the truth, or paint it in peaceful colours.

The eyes. We've just got to look at the eyes to know.

typed and scratched

One of my favourite writers, C.K. Meena in Bangalore wrote that in the paperless society of the future, every single word would have been gobbled up by cyberspace. She asks us to imagine not leaving behind a physical trace of our ability to write.
This is what she writes in The Hindu.

I HAD to respond.

An adorable oldish woman I know has never understood how to move the mouse. The little arrow seems to dart around where it pleases, and she's always wide off the mark. And when unfamiliar windows pop up, she jumps right out of her chair in panic. All she wanted to do was check email, for god's sake!! But what did all those squiggly blinking things mean?

Well, at least she asks.

This oldish woman needs her letter writer. Just like all those letter writers who used to sit outside post offices ready to help the unlettered. Only, this generation's letter writer is digital, using TEN fingers and a mouse (actually it's way cooler to be a keyboard person). It's a story similar to the one about how the postman took over the carrier pigeons. I'm glad about that, because there is no more opportunity for bird crap to dot my balcony, even if it's digested Italian worms on the day I get overseas mail.

Another oldish man I know thinks he's too grown-up to ask for a letter writer. He's like the villager who could never read his son's letters from abroad because he was too proud to approach the letter writer. His son would never say he loved his old man, but he'd write pages and pages about how much he missed him. Now we zip many years and mediums ahead from then to today. This oldish man I know never reads the thrilled SMSes I send about how I made the perfect rasam today, or "That's MY hand holding the mike on TV at 9!!" He could ask someone how to check SMSes. Instead, he simply complains that I never write on inland letters as often as I used to.

SMSes never bring you the sob in someone's voice as they cry about a job interview they didn't get through; they never have the dots of i's turned into little hearts, and the tails of y's crashing into the heads of p's in the next line. But by virtue of being typed furiously and received almost instantly, every letter of the SMS is dripping in the emotion of the moment. The oldish man didn't know this, and waited for the inland letter. When the blue paper arrived, it, well, made a great essay.

It is disturbing to think about all of us dying off without leaving a physical trace of being able to write. But everyone hasn't stopped writing. More people have started. When you know the receiver won't die of cardiac arrest when she sees your spelling, you'll write more freely, more often. Yes, we write less on paper to our closest friends, but write on email/talk on phone to many more we love but didn't know how to communicate effectively with.

Earlier, my dear oldish woman used to wait for after 10 o'clock to call me on half-rate STD. And even as she was yelling (trunk call hangover) to me about how pleased she was at knowing I'd handed a bouquet in school to her favourite Malayalam actor, she'd suddenly hear a warning beep and hang up before she could tell me goodnight-and-pray-to-god-everyday. And everyone knows how shattering that can be. That conversation would end there because she was embarrassed about writing to me. Because she couldn't write in straight lines, or use stylish sounding English words like my oldish man did in his inland letters. But now she dictates in Tamil to a software, and it gives me an English display when I receive the email. We talk much more. She gets to crib about my tan and dark circles on the webcam once in a while, and I know she made theeyal today.

We still might be very far from including the unlettered completely in all this communication, but at least the 'semi-literate' have more of a chance to sock the smug educated in the eye. While playing their own game.

So really, let's keep writing while we still have the oldish man and woman around.

rajni? yum...

Yenna 'muthu' pol potato chips... (Won't translate because I don't know how)






AVM Films makes another with Superstar: 'Sivaji, directed by S. Shankar. There have been reports that the film is about Rajni scouring the world for seven look-alikes. Incidentally, superstar used to be called Sivaji Rao before he turned into Rajnikanth.

The movie's all hush-hush even after it's puja on Nov. 28. Of course, the following are guaranteed:

- A philosophy song, where you are asked not to fall for material things, because see how love and affection is opening the world out to you. That if you have just enough money to fill your palm, you're its master; but if you have money up to your neck, then it only is your master (money, not neck).
Also, that he's the autofellow who never says no to delivery case. That he's not from any political party, just makkal (public's) party. Aaha, thatthuvam. (Really, they have all been sung, and meant from the bottom of his heart).

- Many slow motion walks of pure style; swirls; smiles of divinity; kicks in the butt and gut of every bad guy who puts kann or kai on thaaikulam (eye or hand on womankind).

- A snake joke (p..p.. paamba?!)

- An actress (Shriya) quarter the age of our superstar, and there'll be a dream sequence (HER dream, not our decent hero's). Not in snow, but rain, especially since Shriya's already proved she won't maranjify (hide) when there's mazhai (rain).

- Some scene that'll draw attention to the beauty of sunglasses on our hero's face.

- A tragic, poverty-stricken past full of travails orphaned Rajni has triumphed over, as he raises his cute as a button brother by selling tea in construction sites. A dialogue that'll explain why young Rajni will NOT steal or beg. If it's a younger sister, she'll go to English medium school, wear half-sari and know how to milk a cow with one hand while she slaps an eve teaser with the other.

- An intro scene that will not not shift from Rajni even to move on with the script. It's whistling-and-going-mad-screaming-for-joy time for fans. (and for 3/4-fans like me to gape in wonder. Yes. 1/8 space is for Kamal Hassan in pre-Avvai Shanmugi films; 1/16 space for Suriya with murukku meesai; 1/16 space for the hero of current blockbuster)


There are also some rumours of Mohanlal being in the movie, with equal screen space and time as namma chandramukhilan. Would be a tough task, considering Tamil fans start yawning and going out for pups (puffs) the second Rajni's face goes off screen.


(Now I have to go and see Padayappa, and Bharatham)

airwaves crackle

CNN-IBN on air all over the country from December 16! On the web, so much fun too.
Still lots of glitches and nervousness, tickers that leave you to fill in the blanks, anchors who call me Mohini (yuckyuckyuck). No other woman in an office of 20, no respite even on crampy PMS days until I just list out (in shocking decibel levels) the perils of venturing within 10 feet of me and leave the room in all drama.
But there are anchors I don't know who wish me on air to "stay warm and dry" as I report on the endless cyclones, bosses that are thrilled to bits when we ignore some idiot DMK politician for telling the story of a whole street that's quietly flying black flags after 42 of their neighbours who died in a stampede at a flood relief camp. Then they ask someone in Orissa if they knew Tamil Nadu is not as parched, and still dying the same inhuman death.
I notice that it's taken over my dinner/breakfast for the past 3 months. That it makes me prioritise Office-Delhi calls over Mummy-Bangalore calls. I miss the complete control that newspaper articles gave me, and realise everyday how much I have to depend helplessly on every cog in the wheel (cameraperson, editor, driver, automan, watchman, landlord, carpenter). When the wheel falters, I'd like to jump into the sea, but when it zips smoothly right over all bumps and potholes, I absolutely love the ride.
I whine at being woken up from sleep at 3 in the morning by an assignment coordinator in Delhi, but then shut up after I know he wants me to get early responses from Chennai on what people think about Meerut police beating up couples in a park. They recognise blogs as strong valid voices and put them up on their own news website. They're so earnest, most of them. And so young.
I'm most excited, but am trying to be straight-faced reporter whose stomach and liver don't merge into one at the thought of suddenly being on TV 24 hours, and having to say sensible truths all the time. Brr.

spies came out of the water

I wonder if we've become a police state. And the police isn't always just the guys in khakhi… it's the nosy lady on the ground floor apartment; the maybe too-powerful theatrical media; hungry Uriah Heep lawyers; political parties making up 'ideology' over biryani; patchily scripted film personalities; the man speeding the screaming dirty Qualis he thinks is his dick/manhood.
Everyone wants to gun everyone else down. Actually, I understand that: the tendency to push people around. Especially when it's easy.
What I don't understand is how we let them. And live like fugitives, full of fear. And tell ourselves we're quiet because we want to be amused.

(Although The Hindu has written a first page Magazine article about the Kushboo issue in as stern a voice as the grand old paper can muster, it's forgotten to mention the real slap on the chastity protectors' face. The Madras High Court's observation last week: "The court is pained at the way these two women have been treated. They have the freedom to speak their mind. These protests... is this your culture?" And then asked the big-mustached police to work a little bit and please prevent such illegal protests if they happened again.)