ENDHIRAN - ROBOT - ROBO

I probably might be the millionth person on Internet to write something about the hottest, most talked about movie at present... yes. Its Sun pictures kalanidhi maran presents Endhiran starring Superstar Rajnikanth, Aishwarya rai bachan and danny denzongpa, Music by A.R.Rahman and Directed by Shankar.

the movie is basically one of the few sci-fi movies in tamil or indian cinema industry as a whole. Its about a scientist who builds a robot to serve humanity, then improves the robot to feel emotions,which turns out to be bad, rest of the movie is usual hollywood type good vs evil fights in mega budget spectacularity shankar's movies usually have.

So we have all seen many Hollywood movies that showcase the entire world of robots, their goodness and evil malfunctions. what's special about this Endhiran. well, Romance of a robot with human. thats what Indian movies can do differently.. have a duet song for the robot and make it run around trees and fight for the heroine, Indian Masala as you may call it. Not only that, Its the superstar who's done the lead role, A actor of 60 yrs age, still he's got it in him to perform a younger role that too of a robot and scientist, double action if you call it. I guess no one of his age, performs such roles now. (maybe except for stallone and willis in expendables )

The Movie has created a lot of hype in India, mainly due to the marketing strategies of Sun Pictures, who happen to sell even worst movies like Sura to be a big hit. so if endhiran manages to be a decent entertainer, its good enough for it to make Hell lot of money. Imagine, what could happen if the movie was really good. they have already started making money buy selling tickets even for the screening of the movie's theatrical trailer. Rajni's last movie with shankar, Sivaji grossed about Rs.600 crores worldwide, this could very well get them twice or thrice the amount of money than the previous outing.

This week, the Movie has seemed to be creating a lot of hype here in USA too. HBO films have distributed the movie in USA and tickets in all major cities have sold out for the first day inspite of a ticket being priced at $30. which is something really big. I guess Rajni films are meant to be seen everywhere on first day first show, no matter how much the tickets cost.

Even I plan to watch the movie by first day if possible, if not at least by first weekend, Can't Miss a Rajni movie. I've been a big fan of the superstar, since the time in my mom's womb.

Waiting for Endhiran.. Lets see..! definitely will write a review about it soon.

Being Left Handed !

“Wow, are you a left hander..?" It was an Unique attention, I received from my classmates and fellow students in school, not only there but also at marriages, social gatherings, and any place I used my hand, I got this attention of being unique and popular, I liked it a lot because in India, being a left handed person is very rare. It’s not very often that you see someone using the other hand.

I have enjoyed the attention for the sake of being left hander, even though it was genetics which decided this thing and it’s not even a kind of talent that you could be proud about, but in India, being left handed is a cool thing, since people hardly see anyone in day to day life, most people get to see left handed people only on TV esp. only in cricket and other sports. In fact, in my 21 years of my life in Chennai, I came across just 5 left handed people other than me, 3 guys and 2 girls. I noticed that left handed girls are a rare species.

The attention is sometimes not so good; many used to feel my use of the hand to be awkward, because they couldn't understand the concept of being left handed. many of my friends had lot of questions and doubts regarding use of the left hand, some were logical, many were stupid... some of the usual questions were " if you use this left hand for eating, which hand do you use for toilet purpose?" (Because in India, left hand is used by right hander’s to wash after toilet), it was a very awkward question to answer, but my answer to all the questions was the same “your right hand is my left and vice versa”.

when it comes to elders, esp. the old ones, whenever they see me eating using my left hand, they give me a nasty expression as if I was eating shit and advised me to use my right hand, after hearing a lot of comments like this, I literally avoided going to marriages till I was 15, if it was an important function and I had to go, my mom used to carry a spoon for me, so that I can eat with a spoon, and south Indian marriages had to have banana leaf instead of plates and eating with a spoon on a banana leaf, imagine it.

My kindergarten teachers took the left handedness to the next step and like it was an evil thing, they tried to do a kind of exorcism by trying to make me change my writing hand to right hand and as a result of forced training, my brain got little jammed in the neurons and I couldn't talk for a few weeks, then my parents took me to the doctors, did some speech therapy and made me alright back again, but I had a little bit of a stuttering problem for quite some time as a aftermath.

It’s also a hard thing with day to day life, because it’s a right handed world out there. My Teachers at school used to assign a desk especially for me, as I could only sit on the extreme left corner, so that I wouldn’t bump into right handers while writing. I had to eat with spoon, because people thought it was gross to eat with left hand. It was an easy task for people to copy from my exam paper as I used to write in an odd position which is easily visible. The use of basic everyday stuffs like scissors, ruler and computer mouse was a tough task and now in USA, driving a car seems to be a little rough task for me since I have to change gears with my right hand.

Sometimes I have found it difficult and thought left handedness was a curse, since my right brain is pretty dominant because of left handedness, I am not pretty good at logical or rational subjects, so my math was very bad. History, geography, chemistry and biology were my best subjects in high school, since they are the ones you can actually think and understand in pictures, which the right brain does best. I did top my classes in those subjects but interestingly, I got fond of physics too during my 12th board and managed to top it, physics was the only rational exception, I’ve had but it was All in vain as Math got me down every time. Somehow me n math don’t get along very well... Neither is it good with its teachers.

Intuition is a very important function of the right brain, and I am strong in it. My intuitions are 99% correct and I believe in them completely, although occasionally I do get let down by my intuitions, also It is easy to say that I am also a big risk taker because of my dominant right brain.

In recent years, I noticed that the dominance of my right brain has increased too much and it’s getting to a stage where it’s more like a master-slave situation. My left side of the body is much more strong and dominant and my right side is totally uncoordinated. I realized that my right side is unbalanced and does not cooperate with the body. My right hand’s reflexes are slower than the left and right leg doesn’t coordinate well. For example, when catching a cricket ball, my right hand delays in reflex, hence I miss the catch and while playing badminton, my right leg doesn’t move as fast as my left leg, so I trip over sometimes while moving sideways. It is a simple defect I noticed, later I found more instances where my right hand wasn’t in my total control.

Now, I am trying to see if I can balance out my two sides of the body. It’s a small experiment I am trying to see, if I can possibly make myself get full control of my right side of the body, which in turn might help tune my left brain to make me more rational and intelligent. I’d give details about the progress of my experiment in coming posts. Let’s see if it works..!



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Sun and the blue sea.

During my 40 day vacation in Chennai. There were a lot of beautiful and interesting sights and places visited, the most beautiful place were the beaches... Marina and Bessy, the usual and Tiruvanmyur occasionally. the beaches are always close to my heart, its the only place in the whole world, where peace hits you as soon as your feet touch the sands, the cool breeze and the melodious waves just make you feel so comfortable.

So what's even cooler than that... well, its to see the sunrise in the beach, the Majestic hot Sun rising out of the Cold Blue sea, makes me want to compare it to a hot girl rising out of the sea ( like in most movies!), it was like a celestial wonder, even though it occurs everyday that's the only time i got to see this beauty. I got to see this sight and then came along, some added sound and light effects provided by the lightening and thunder with dark black clouds filling up the sky like someone had tipped over a bottle of ink, it was like an end credits to a movie. the lightening bolts were like flashes of a camera which the gods used to take pictures of the earth, the Flash of bright red light against the dark black clouds was a breathtaking richness in color. Thunders are a separate class of sounds, they bring out the fear in you. the loud sound makes your body shiver for a moment, even if you do not fear the thunders, admiring the sunrise and lightening did i realize, there was a storm coming to Chennai... 'laila' was her beautiful name.

I never knew that a storm was approaching, when i had set out early morning to the beach for sunrise sight but it was also a blessing, because i got to get drenched in the mad rain that followed the thunders, it was heavenly with the smell of sand with the first drops of rain gets you into a bliss with nature that you want more of it, so drenching in the rains gets you the most of it. Before the rains, there was a period of heavy gust of winds storming through the beach, carrying as much sand as it could into the air. It was not as much as a sand storm in a desert, but a good prelude to the heavy rain. I got a complete sand bath before i had the rain shower that cleansed me thoroughly, that's when i felt, no matter if you drink it or get drenched in it, water is the elixir of life.


Image 1 - the blue skyline and the beach road just a few seconds after sunrise.


I felt every bit of nature in that single moment, a beautiful sunrise, Cool blue sea, gentle breeze followed by gusts of wind, lightening, thunder and the romantic rains. It's one big moment with mother nature that i would relish my whole life.


Video 1 - a few seconds capture of the beautiful lightening ripping through the black curtain.

Even though I enjoyed every bit of the sight and sounds, there were 3 things i missed during that time - A bike, my camera( i did have a cell camera, but a good one is needed) and a cup of coffee. Maybe next time, I'll have all the 3 things plus my love to make the moment complete.

Unless of course a Tsunami strikes with it !

New York – London – Kuwait – Chennai

I travelled about 18 hours in flight from New York to Chennai and back to New York in this past one month. Here are the few interesting things I experienced and observed in the flights and airports.

1. The JFK international airport is huge and is an architectural masterpiece by the Americans. The terminals are built with less materials and efficient energy saving methods are used. Lots of sunlight and air circulation but the whole complex is a mere skeleton of metal, with glass and fiber.

2. The restrooms in JFK airport - a cool innovation with the men’s room. The men’s room urinals have a black spot on them; the spot is a picture of a fly which seems like a real fly is sitting on the urinal. So men try to target the fly to shoo it away from the place. It’s a natural instinct for men. It’s a very innovative idea as it prevents spillage of urine outside the urinal and also saves water.

3. Yes, this is a power driven world, I saw people searching for power in the terminals of the airport. Yes, by power I mean electricity. There were no plug points to be seen anywhere on the seating areas and people did everything to find one and charge their phones or laptops. A girl decided to sit on the floor right next to a janitor’s closet to charge her laptop as it had a power point next to it. A man had his laptop charging from a cell phone charging point from a distance away and had many people almost trip over by his charger wire. I am no exception as I stood with my phone in the cell phone charging point.

4. American vs. British English. Of course, there’s an ocean of difference between the two accents, but I observed the airport staff’s speaking their respective accents and found Americans to be super laidback and cool while the British were majestic and strict. Just by their accented English, the British officials looked commanding and little bit scary.

5. Arab sheikh! My flight from London to Kuwait had this interesting incident. An Arab sheikh and his wife had boarded the plane in London; they were in their traditional costumes and did not speak English. They sat in the seat in front of us, but funny thing was it was another couple’s seats. No matter what the airhostess would explain, the sheikh never budged to get up from that seat and move to his own. It even lead to the Command officer from airport to come and confront him and threatened him to be debarked, but all in vain. Sheikh did not shake for anything.

6. Tamil flight! The flight from Kuwait to Chennai had this awesomeness to it. Almost every passenger on the flight was a tamilian. Even the air stewards spoke Tamil, never did I imagine I would see such a sight, it bought me into Chennai even before my flight took off from Kuwait.

7. My return flight was at 5.50 am morning. Pretty odd time since I had to reach airport at 3am. The wait at the gate was very boring, so I started messaging all my friends. Luckily one was awake at 4 am and helped me out of boredom by talking to me for a long time. Thanks to that Friend.

8. there was a very interesting coincidence in the flight, in the 3 seats of my row, the person sitting on my right was named shiba, and the person on my left was named shibu, with me being Chibi. Our names differed just by a letter pronunciation. Oddly interesting.

9. American kids and Indian kids. There were lots of kids in my flight from Kuwait to New York via London, for some reason, kids don’t sleep at all in flights. I had a couple of American kids before me and an Indian kid behind my seat. Interesting thing I observed was the American kid was like a tamed and trained dog, did his parents said and was really obedient and mostly silent; the Indian kid was notoriously loud and kept talking like there was a competition going on. During the flight taxi in London, the American parent kept educating their kid about the aircrafts, different airlines, their tail pics, how plane takes off n stuff... while the kid listened. On the other hand, the Indian kid had tons of questions to her dad, she kept asking him, how does plane fly, why can’t cars fly, why is the tire of plane so small, why does it have a tail, why is the driver of plane called a pilot instead of plane driver. Etc… the dad didn’t have the patience or the time to answer his little one as she fired a lot of questions. So which of the kids is Smarter? Indian or American?

10. The Football world cup fever is in the air too. I heard pilot announcements made updating the ongoing USA- Ghana game during the flight. Sadly, USA lost the game during extra time.

Shark Snack !

Cinema is the epitome of entertainment for past century, ever since Edison invented the movie projector, it has fascinated people. Actors and Actresses being hailed as equals to gods and a powerful source of information and entertainment, sometimes can bring out social changes too. Indian Cinema has been ridiculously big in the world for a long time now. to be specific, Tamil Cinema has been close to my heart for years but recently it has been moving farther away.

I watched two extremely contrasting movies in recent times. Dasavathram for third time and Sura for first time. I was happy to watch the earlier but why did i see the latter. the essence of movie making is the extremities in both these movies, One at the highest end and other at the lowest possible end. Dasavatharam was basically one man's work, the genius Kamal Haasan. The amount of research put into creating a story which is very complicated and making an apt screenplay which is simple and understandable for a layman is marvellous. He has also performed and dubbed in the movie for 10 different characters which have totally different looks and characteristics.

the concept of chaos theory was neatly explained in the movie along with so many social messages and beautiful dialogues with plenty of wit and inner meanings which make it a good topic for a great discussion. The first scene of the movie of the 12Th century takes your breath away. the movie was a indeed a good watch.

On the other hand, Sura was Horrible, crappy, and plain boring. It was supposed to be vijay's 50Th movie, aren't milestone movies supposed to be a very good one ? i thought so but this one looked like one which is not going to get vijay any more milestones rather some big grindstones on his head. The movie had Nothing in it, century old story, very boring screenplay, plain action and dubbed music, even vadivelu's comedy was stale. I am not talking more about the movie, makes me feel upset for watching such a disaster.

I have a lot of questions in my mind though... Didn't this director see any movie or Tamil movie before ? didn't anyone see the movie before it got released ? not even a single soul cried out loud that it was a screw up ? what about the producers are they printing money to spend on filth called movies?

then the hero... Vijay. NO way is he going to become the next superstar with these kind of movies, if he's going at this rate churning out things down his back. thinking about being a hero, does he even listen to the story before taking up a movie? does he resent for having given pathetic flops? and my god save 3 idiots remake from Vijay. I don't want to see him disgrace that masterpiece.

I don't want every movie to be a perfect masterpiece like dasavatharam, but a movie is to provide entertainment, it should be decent enough to deliver it. If the Director had ripped off a good action movie from hollywood and had it remade scene by scene like photocopying that would have been least justice instead of the Sura he's given.

Luckily, there are stalwarts like kamal,manirathnam and good directors like bala, murugadoss, shankar and few others who give good movies once in a while. else, Tamil cinema is doomed to become like a Sura puttu (shark snack).

My experiment with sleep !

Sleep is a very important activity you do every other night. many do it during the day too. Its one thing which you can actually enjoy doing while you are bored. bored of your mind, have a good sleep, its a good remedy for boredom. Lately, i had experienced this weakness in me. I couldn't sleep well. I was having sleep, but very short ones and it took me ages to get some sleep. the reasons were quite obvious. I was definitely not bored and to make things worse, a lot of thoughts and worries, some unnecessary ones too.

This lack of sleep continued for about a week, i had been getting sleep only for about 2-3 hrs every night and it continued the same way for a week. This was when i decided to take actions. I am a person who sleeps for 8-9 hrs straight normally. Missing a lot of time in sleep made me worry. so i started some experiments to make me sleep better.

First, I thought Tiredness may cause sleep. so I decided to get as Tired as possible. I walked a lot, worked a lot and even went to gym and played till i dropped ( literally !!). I got myself so tired that i was lazy to cook stuff for dinner but hunger could cause sleep problems, so i ate my quota of food. then, my experiment failed for 3 days continuously. even though i was very tired and having bit of cramps in my body, i wasn't sleeping well. Interestingly, my sleeplessness had increased in time rather than a decrease i expected.

My Roomie suggested that i sleep early, considering that i go to sleep at 12 and do not get sleep till 4 am, if i had slept at 9 or 10 pm, i may get sleep sooner by 1 am at least. So i decided to try it out. I went to sleep at 10.30 pm. It didn't work out well, since it just extended my wake time on bed by an extra 2 hours. so my second experiment also failed.

I was getting little bit frustrated about this sleeplessness, and it was starting to show up on my day to day works. so I had another experiment underway, I found that my friend who had severe cold was taking a cold tablet, which had severe Sedative effect that he slept for hours together uncontrollably. So this struck me an idea to try taking that same tablet and see if i can sleep well ( preferably uncontrolled) and also it was a very good alternative to sleeping pills and have no side effects ( since sleep was the side effect ). so during the night, before sleep i took one tablet and went to sleep ( that's what i thought) but didn't sleep, i was lying on bed, turning and twisting in all directions, changing positions, waiting for the drug to take effect, but all it gave me was a dizzy feeling that was close to sleep but not the actual one. so i got up in the middle of night to take another pill, still no effect till morning 5 am then i did sleep for a shocking 2 hours, then woke up at 7 am. This got into my nerves too much that i let out my frustration on a unusual spot - Facebook (that was a very bad idea, looking at the responses i got from people).

By now it was about 10 days into sleeplessness. I was turning into a Insomniac as days progressed. I was really worried, because even with a really bad time in my life, i never had a problem with this sleep. So it made me think more about why this was happening to me now. When i had not many problems and when i happened to have found a way to tackle some of my problems at least.

An Idea then Flashed in my mind, I don't know if it was a brilliant one, but it changed things. It was an epiphany while looking at a Facebook status. which said " if u can't beat them, better join them." So i realised, when i was trying to get sleep, i was actually trying to beat insomnia. I was forcing myself to do something my mind was not intending to do. so I did my fourth experiment, I spent my whole Friday night without sleep. I planned not to sleep the entire night and the whole next day. I set my mind that i would not try to sleep. keep doing some work or pass time but not sleep. so best way to avoid sleep is to keep yourself busy. Best way to do it was work. hence i spent the entire night in my lab working on an experiment. It takes about 3 hrs for a single person to perform the experiment on their own, so it ate up most of my night time, then i watched a movie a really funny one " The Hangover". By the end of the movie, it was about 5.00 am, I was starting to feel little sleepy.

So another way to avoid sleep is to pump up your adrenaline. best way to do it, with just your laptop in front of you was to watch something exciting. It was a tough choice between Action and Horror. I went with Horror, I watched "Hostel" again for a second time, That was one movie i had decided not to watch ever again ever in my life time. so it kept me grossed and engrossed in it till 6.00 am, then i decided to screw it and go outside, as it was sunrise. I had my camera with me, so walked around the campus took some pictures (check out my Facebook page) which came out really well. It was my second time in 2 yrs that i saw the Sunrise.

Coming back to the experiment, I successfully avoided sleep on Friday night, and continued this the following Saturday. I had plenty on hand to make myself comfortably busy. Cricket match, Cooking, eating, A evening drive in a friends car and some phone conversations. the Saturday night was ridiculously awesome. I just remember me, lying down on my bed to relax myself as my roomie was asking something to me, after that it was all sleep. I sleep for 11 hrs continuously, It was a very deep sleep that there weren't any dreams. Finally my experiment turned out to be a success. I finally achieved a proper sleep for a night against my insomnia and i hope it continues for good.

For All the Confused Women Out There...!

Warning: The Following post is a ‘FUN’damental view about girls from a guy’s point of view. Some facts may or may not be wrong or offensive and it’s not intended to target any particular person or group.

I recently had conversations with many girls as usual, but interestingly, I found a knot in all these conversations, it was during the topic about the new Tamil movie Vinnai thandi varuvaaya. So before I go into the topic, let me give a brief summary about the movie’s plot. It’s a simple love story, guy meets girl, falls in love. Girl’s dad opposes, girl gives up then breaks up and marries someone else, and guy makes a movie about it. It’s purely about Love. A simple, pretty realistic thing in any normal person’s life.

So what’s the knot? Its Trisha’s character. She’s shown to be quite confused about the relationship; she’s not able to decide if the relationship is important or parents. In fact, she stops her wedding at last moment for her love, but then breaks up with him for a more simpler reason that ‘dad won’t accept’. She moves on with her life, getting married to a guy her parents chose for her... Indian style Arranged marriage.

All the girls I spoke (about 8 girls) about the movie, had this to say. They all had felt connection with Trisha’s character regarding the confusion with relationship. Yes. All of them are in a relationship but still confused if it’s the right decision. They all said the same; they saw themselves in Trisha’s position. Even though the situations differ, coz it was not dad’s opposition to their love for all of them. One or two might have that fear, but other’s had really cool situations. Still they had this confusion all the time. It was only about the relationship. Even though they love the guy, purely mutual and have a lot of feelings for each other and it was not some time pass relationship or a lustful one either.

So why is this confusion? I say it’s a normal behavior. It’s a general characteristic of the female species. According to Darwinian and dawkin’s theories of evolution, it is the key to the road of evolution otherwise called the ‘mate selection’. We, humans and animals are the same when it comes to mate selection. Animals mate only for reproduction. So they look only for the best mate for a better offspring, it is the female’s choice of mate selection; females own the right to decide whom she mates with in order to reproduce. Hence males have to woo the females in different ways to get the female’s attention and attraction. In fact, it’s of the one reason why all the male species have beautiful features than females, ex. Lion, peacock, etc… simply just to attract females.

Since females have the power to choose their mate, it is very essential to use it responsibly. Hence, they find the “Right one”. Same with humans too, but we expect more than just reproduction and sexual pleasure, we need emotional attachment and care for a long period of our life. Hence, female species in humans need to find the “right one” very carefully and so they become very picky or pick everyone.

When a girl likes a guy, then gets into relationship with him, and gets to know him better, she might have a second thought about him and the direction of relationship, if she doesn’t feel that he’s the right one, and then the confusion starts. If the girl has tendency to give up expectations and settle down with the available one, it ends well. Otherwise, the relationship ends and the girl eventually find another one or search for possibly the right one. A good illustration of this character in women is shown in the movie “500 days of summer”. (watch the movie, you’d definitely know what am talking here)

Ok… if women get to choose their mate. What about men? What can they do ? This is where it hurts the male ego. Males have a sense of dominance and a bigger ego that lives within. In Humans, Men knew about this evolutionary characteristic of female species at a very early stage, and then established a dominant society, where the women were degraded to a mere sex machine. In ancient Greek and Indian civilizations especially, women were not given the respect they deserve. Greeks treated women just as a source of reproduction only, so that they wouldn’t have a choice of finding their mate but rather submit to any male’s sexual favors. Indian society especially in certain caste and communities; women were treated even worse, like not being let out of the house kitchen, no education, being married to a man as a child and also burnt to death when dead husband is being cremated and a marriage system where men chose the women as a mate, an inverse effect. although there’s exceptions as seen in epics like Mahabharata and Ramayana, where the bride was allowed to choose the groom for her marriage, in form of a game or sport.

Not only in old times, still in India, many don’t get to make marriage choices for the most part. They settle down with the man their parents choose for them, and live a life, even though the guy may or may not be the right one. Of course, things are changing with the changing times, like in western countries, it is turning out to be a love marriage with parent’s acceptance these days, then also, and most of it is in cities.

So women out there… if you are confused about the relationship, it does not entirely mean that you are with the wrong person, You might be with the right guy, but yet to find that out in him but if you know, you are with the right one. No matter what may come, don’t lose him and Girls know how to get what they want.