Dream Come True

There were countless hours when I used to argue about Tendulkar versus Richards with my dad, Tendulkar versus Lara with classmates in school, Tendulkar versus Ponting in college. Just talking for Tendulkar gave me goosebumps, leave alone glorify him. If I had the opportunity to watch him play - which was sadly curtailed ever since the idiotic Set Top Box made its presence (rather, absence) known - there was untold joy. Straight Drives were imaged in the memory to be spoken about with friends the next day. Statistics were religiously studied, analyzed and thesis were presented on why he was God and others were not. Cover Drives and flick of the pads brought more smiles than deepavali crackers and badaam halwa. But as fate would have it, if there was Tendulkar batting at one end, the batsman at the other end would be Manoj Prabhakar (or Sanjay Manjarekar or Praveen Amre or Vikram Rathore..) casting a dark shadow on the unbridled joy of watching SRT bat. If at all irony had a visual definition, a random Indian batting score card in a game played in England/South Africa/Australia/West Indies between 1990 - 1996 will suffice.

Since 1996, SRT had two other sidekicks - Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly. While one of them was a flat track bully and the other a technician of the highest order. Apparently, God had smiled on another God - or so it seemed. But combine some inept captaincy (1999), some Theevetti Dhadiyan attitude (2003, courtesy Sodha) and horrible planning (2007, Courtesy Greg. C), SRT could still not get the one thing that would foolproof his resume - the World Cup winner's medal.

2010 - An Indian Team where SRT is referred to as Paaji. And then, the captain, MS Dhoni. In my opinion, M.S. Dhoni is the best thing that happened to Indian Cricket since Sachin Tendulkar. Both of them have completely different batting styles - while one is the surgeon, working with finesse and precision, the other was a brute-force butcher. But it needed both of them combined to bring home the silverware that every person in my generation coveted and desired beyond a lot of other things. MS Dhoni has brought a quality that is often not found in a lot of Indian leaders - a straightforward approach and a never say die attitude. And best of all, consistent with the adage that "when the going gets tough, the tough get going", Dhoni just slapped all his critics with one masterful, mother-of-all-captain's-innings and father-of-all-under-pressure-innings in the WC Final.

SRT and Dhoni, both of you deserve to be venerated. You have made my 20 years of cricket fanticism culminate in a memory that will live with me forever.

My two favorite pictures from the final (courtesy: Cricinfo)

P.S: For morons who say MSD is lucky, you can be called lucky only when things go your way once in a while. When you get things done consistently, then the appropriate word will be "good" and not lucky.

Mathematics from the Mahabharatha

Hats off!! Click

To Whomsoever It May Concern

This is just a vent for my frustration - I know this really makes zilch difference to the issue at hand.

Dear Prime Minister's Office,

First off, congratulations for heading one of the most openly recognized corrupt Governments in recent history. An achievement that requires dedication, hard work, perseverance and of course, the X-factor which only the Congress Party can provide. After Kalmadi and Raja have had a field day with what used to be called as public money and after our beloved 'son of the soil' Rahul Gandhi has clearly and conclusively demonstrated why he should never be given the keys to his own apartment, you've managed to surpass all my expectations in one masterstroke.

Sachin Tendulkar is one of God's gifts to India. On this particular aspect, I want to make it clear that it is not an opinion or an argument being put forward, but an established and inarguable fact. Of course, with the entire (pseudo) secularism that is being spewed by Digvijaya Singh and the like, I should perhaps qualify that statement as Tendulkar is the Holy Father's / Allah's gift to India. I do not care if the news that was leaked was a rumor or not. Once there is this talk about presenting him with the highest civilian honor amongst the public and/or the media, the graceful (and respectful to Sachin) thing that you can do is to just go ahead and confer the honor on him. Sachin who has brought joy and pride to countless Indians deserves at least this much. Whether a player who plays for a club team (BCCI is not a Government organization - On a parallel track, thank God for that or else Sachin would have had to pay a bribe to the Sports Minister to have gotten into the team in the first place) deserves the highest civilian honor is a moot point as you have on multiple occasions conveniently recognized the BCCI Cricket team's achievements as possible and probable cause for National pride.

Bowing to this public pressure would surely not rank as one of your worst decisions in the last so many years. I understand that your blatant pandering to vote bank politics means that Kalmadi is removed from his post 3 months after the Common Wealth Games and our esteemed ex-minister A. Raja has the gumption to state that he is being targeted because of his socio-economic status (a new euphemism for caste), when even his own kid will tell him that he is being targeted because he was at the epicenter of one of the biggest scams in Indian politics/administration. And of course, your party sees it fit to have an alliance with one of the parties that was originally alleged to be behind the plot to assassinate an Indian Prime Minister (it is very convenient that the commission that investigated the entire matter gave a clean chit to everyone who mattered and their grandmother). After so many brilliant moves and decisions, actually, conferring Bharat Ratna on Sachin might be your best achievement in the current term at office.

Apparently, the reason being propagated for denying Sachin the honor is that he is too young. I do not know about the places where you come from, but as far as my (limited) knowledge goes, in almost all major sports realms, you achieve immortality before you are forty. And to a level of certainty we can safely state that what Sachin achieves after he is 40 and before he is 60-70 (or dead) will be definitely lesser than /equal to in magnitude to what he has already managed to achieve between 16 years and 40 years. If you are still going to maintain that he is too young, I would kindly entreat you to apply the same paradigm of constraints on Mr. Rahul Gandhi who has systematically and conclusively proved that he neither has a sense of history (RSS slight - I doubt whether he would know who Veer Savarkar is) and current affairs (saying Hindu Fundamentalists are the major threat to the country's security when fundamentalists from a particular religion periodically engage in long term ethnic cleansing in the Kashmir valley). Based on his (lack of) knowledge in history and current affairs, involving him in any capacity in the Government is a bigger threat than corruption, religious fundamentalism and other perceived threats, as it is precisely such ill informed folks who engage in the afore mentioned threats to the country.

Again, based on the 50 plus years of Congress rule, expecting you to do anything that would seem sensible and logical to most of the people in the country will imply I'm smoking a banned substance. The only silver lining is I can get away with it as long as I agree to pay the bribe.

2010 - The Year of SRT

To the man who has had a wonderful year - breaking ground on the 50 test centuries terrain and beating all the young, T20 bashers to scoring ODI's first 200 and of course, taking the Mumbai Indians to the IPL final - Sachin has done it all.

Truly, blessed are we to have been able to watch this genius in live action. If at all there exists anyone/thing that can be called God's Gift to India, SRT is the one.

Thanks to Cricinfo/Getty Images for the picture.

Endhiran!

**Posted in Claps and Boos**

Sci-Fi movies have been rare in Tamizh movies. The genre is a difficult one - especially given the fact that the exposure of people, to enable them to think akin to the Matrix or the Bicentennial Man, is going to be difficult outside of the major cities in TN. Shankar, thanks to Sujatha's collaboration (my suspicion), has been able to deal with the concept/question of 'what if machines could feel emotions?' in a way that is very layman friendly.

Instead of trying to do a structured review, I think let me collate things that made me clap my hands (nod to where I'm writing this!)

• Rajni Kanth - he is there in every scene of the movie and has stood up and delivered in a way that only he can. Thankfully, the movie had zilch heroism/image boosting scenes. Having said that, Rajni shows us a sneak peek into his power-packed performance days of 70s and 80s by playing the character of the Robot quite well. His robot character pretty much dominates the second half of the movie and if done badly would have caused a nasty stink. His comic timing, dialog delivery timing are almost impeccable and make us wish that he can turn the clock backwards and start growing younger. Of course, there were scenes where you were able to see through the make up of the scientist Rajni Kanth; But it is only a sad attestation to the fact even when he is 60 years old, there is no other lead actor who can take over the mantle from him. In terms of style and charisma, Rajni beats Vijay, Ajith, Surya, Vikram and all later actors put together black and blue. If any other actors claims to aspire to be the replacement to the Superstar title, they should be made to watch Endhiran and that will cure them of their conceit and vanity.
• Graphics/Props - for Tamizh Cinema standards, the special effects, props and graphics were fantastic. Special mention has to go the sequences with multiple robots and the scenes where the skeletal robot makes its appearances. Lots of times money is spent in tamizh cinema on song sets and costumes (Shankar himself being the guilty one lots of times) - but here Shankar (and of course Sun Pictures) have put the gargantuan budget to good use. The detailing in some scenes and real life dynamics that have been incorporated into some scenes were quite good, again, considering we are talking about a tamizh movie.
• Story/Screenplay - After some patchy work like Boys and Sivaji in terms of story and screenplay, Shankar makes a refreshing switch back to his halycon days of Mudhalvan, Indian with a solid story with a screenplay that kept me from looking at my watch for the entire running duration - a feat that only few tamizh movies have lived upto recently. Though not entirely flawless, I would say that Shankar's admission that this script was thought of a decade ago is true, given that is very well thought out and laid out like a crisp dosai!
• Background Music/Songs - ARR - enough said!

Try as I might, it is difficult to pick a negative (fanatics of arthouse cinema, indie film junkies and perfection pattabhiramans, will not be seeing this movie and would not be reading this review as well!); But if I had to, the only thing would have been that though Rajni Kanth pulled off the role of the robot, it would have been amazing to see him in his youth doing the same role.

After a really really long time, I have seen a tamizh movie in the theaters which has made me feel that it was worth every cent!! Not often do you see a costly and hyped movie living up to its expectations, but Endhiran does; and I think Shankar owed me a big one after ditching me and robbing me of my money in Sivaji!!

If you liked Endhiran as well, go ahead and review it at www.clapsandboos.com