Vidiyum Munn, a clear winner

With opportunities aplenty, it is respectably easy for a talented musician to make an entry into the cine industry but it is quite a task for these new comers to sustain and survive. Vidiyum munn, the second in the list for music director Girishh Gopalakrishnan, has made quite a mark among the audience. The depth of lyrics, the poignancy of the tunes, the emotional rendition of the singers and the uniqueness of the music director has added the right masala required to make the music work among the audience.

For a new comer, Girishh has done a fabulous job in portraying the beauty of music. The dedication and hard work is seen with clarity in the music. The song Theeradha Mounam’s uniqueness lies in the voice of the singer, Tanvi Rao. On the downside, she was quite chewy with the words which makes the rendition a little less perfect. Girishh’s venture into playback music with Vidiyadha Iravu is a solid hit. The music is catchy, with the deep meaning and voice adding the much needed spice to the album. Overall the music of Vidiyum Munn is a huge hit in my books. Kudos to Girishh for pulling off such a professional piece of work. 

Aishwarya Kumar.

Change is in the mind

Yesterday, after a long time, I visited the swimming academy where I learnt how to swim just to see and irritate a hydrophobic friend of mine who was learning swimming for the first time. I looked around at the various people who were all geared up for their one hour of swimming and all of a sudden, I notice the two swimming instructors. Both of them were agile, strong and very professional. But that was not why I kept staring at them. They were the same instructors I had when I learnt swimming at the academy all those years ago. It stuck me then that the very famous proverb in the history of earth, "change is the only constant" means nothing, at least right at that moment when everything I saw was the exact opposite of change. 

 I realized then that maybe change is something that we ring about, because we are too bored or find it too monotonous to carry on with the perfect or the near perfect life that we already have. Maybe change is purely in the mind and not based on circumstances. Though everything was different about the place other than the swimming instructors, the two familiar faces made the place the most comfortable one ever.

We all look for change, we all yearn for something new but we forget that the comfort of familiarity is what finally wins over everything, the comfort that we know somebody and can depend on them no matter what.

Aishwarya Kumar

Amma, I salute you

A rift in a relationship, be in any kind of relationship, happens when one person takes the other for granted. And this "taking for granted" phenomenon happens most of the time with the one most important person in our lives without whom we wouldn't even be walking the face of the earth, our mothers.

She wakes up at 5.30 in the morning to make sure that she gets us ready on time, be it sending her kids to school or her husband to office. She runs up and down the house, cleaning up the mess and taking such good care of us. After sending us off, she washes clothes, does the dishes, tidies the house and cooks lunch.

She then decides to take a quick nap, for she is human after all and exertion got the better of her.

Then when evening comes, one after the other, her babies (husband included) come back home. She makes them something special to eat everyday.

"There is no salt in the pasta."

"The chutney tastes awful," we say, not quite noticing her face falling. She has been working for us all day long and the best we give her is a sarcastic reprimand.

She takes it all in and still smiles. Sometimes she loses her cool and screams, at us and at the walls, because we hardly take time to listen to her and pay heed to what she is saying.

She then decides to go out of town for two days.

Oh, all hell breaks loose in the house.

We somehow manage to survive without the salt-less pasta, the awful tasting chutney. We wear the same school uniform to school the next day  because there is no one to wash out dirty clothes. We somehow get ready and leave for school/college/office in the morning, eating left overs. We get back home and the gate is shut and there is no smiling mother standing there, welcoming us back home.

We open the doors ourselves and go inside the house. We  have one look at it and we think "oh my God, how does amma do this everyday? How does she not get tired? How does she manage to keep the house perfectly in check?"

Then she comes back and taking one look at her smiling face, we know, everything is going to be okay. That the angel is back to guide us through our busy schedules, always smiling, always having her arms open to take us in, no matter how badly we treat her or have treated her in the past.

That is amma for you. unconditional, irrevocable love.

Aishwarya Kumar. 

The touch therapy

Love is a very relative term. It can mean a lot of things and it can be shown in a lot of ways. There is a general theory among elders (particularly people belonging to the 20th century) that touching, hugging, kissing is not the way of showing love. Rather, they want children to act upon it. They want us to clean the house, study hard, massage my mother's legs and so on. What they don't seem to understand is there is a lot of power in a hug and a kiss. And me hugging my mother and telling her that I love her does not mean that I don't respect her or I don't draw inspiration from her. For that matter, talking to her freely, sharing my inner most feelings, calling her my best friend are a few things that generation has never heard of and I pity them. There is nothing like the insight of your mother on dangerous subjects like the future. She has been there and done that. So that closeness will not only help you understand life from a different perspective, but it will also relieve you from the burden of holding something only to yourself.

My mother could never tell hers that she had a crush on a boy or that a guy on the road looked hot. Because they were taught that that was disrespect to the parent. What I don't understand is how has being close to your mother that you tell her everything anything to do with respecting her? I respect my mother and she knows that but there is also a level of comfort due to which I can talk about anything and everything to her. I think that is something very special that most of the kids in the past generation have missed out.

Just like  how you don't like me hugging her and letting her know that I love her, I don't like falling on her feet to tell her that I respect her, but I still make sure that I do that because you ask me to or because it makes you happy. Just the same way, respect my decision of giving my mom the 'touch therapy' once in a while because I know that even though she pushes me away every single time, it makes her feel special and it makes her feel happy.

Aishwarya Kumar

Five reasons why IPL should be scrapped.

Since the Indian Premier League was inaugurated, it has resulted in more head ache than is worth. True, there has been some absolutely stunning performances and amazing finds through IPL, but there will always be a question of integrity and purity of the matches played and this is not how cricket is played, not in India at least.

Here are the five reasons why I think the Indian Premier League should be scrapped.

1. Cricket is not about money. Cricket is about the unification of souls (Might seem sappy, but it is true). It is about a person revelling in the beauty and the innocence of the game. It is about discovering oneself. It is about patience and hardwork. Once you bring in big guns like India Cements, Raj Kundra, Shah Rukh Khan and Sun TV, it is hardly about cricket than it is about money and trading. So there is no way in hell, that I would want the game and the players to be sidelined for a bunch of crores!
2. They are human beings, you know? Two months of rigorous cricket is not good even at the international level. Consider playing club cricket every alternative day. By the end of the tournament, you will be so worn out that thinking about cricket would make you want to puke. But does the BCCI care? No! Take two days off, fly all the way to England, regroup, find your one day playing methodology and kick off the tournament in style. And the most important part is- do NOT return home without the cup!
3. Football is a great game, no doubt. But the one reason why I hate it is because there is absolutely no “my” factor to it. There is no “my country made it”, there is no “He is from my land and he made it big.” No matter what you say, club cricket is nothing close to International cricket. I find it weird when people in India say “my team made it to the top four of IPL” because I associate ‘my’ with “Country” and nothing else. I do not want to see club cricket overriding international cricket because there is no bigger shame than that.
4. The amount of electricity, water and other resources being used for prepping the stadiums is beyond negligible. The power cuts increase, people don’t get proper water supply, why? Because all of this is being directed to the stadiums. Money, energy and time spent on watching a live match is on a totally different plane altogether. My mother strictly told me that she wouldn’t let me watch IPL live simply because she did not want to  be a middle class person chugging out thousands of rupees for the corporate giants and  though it took time for me to understand her concept, I now understand it clearly. It was her way of defying the money mongrels.
5. Finally, do I even need to start about the spot-fixing scandal?

Long live cricket, long live the purity of the game.

Aishwarya Kumar.

Lack of Integrity, a shame!

From writing a college exam to passing a license test, integrity is the one word that hits us right across our faces. Take a simple class test for example. Your friend has not prepared for the test and she looks at you for help. It is up to you to tell her that you will not show her your answer sheet but you will help her study and clear the next test. On the other hand if you think to yourself, “what the hell! It’s just a class test” and help her out, not only are you compromising your integrity, but you’re planting the concept of ‘an easy way out’ for your friend and though you might not realize it now, it will pinch you in your butt later, I swear.

So considering that I have made my point clear, I am moving to the actual topic in question: The spot fixing controversy. Sreesanth’s mother claims that it was Jiju, his close friend who framed him after being allowed access to all his accessories. I strongly believe that this might have happened. But even if Jiju had in fact done all the phone calls and made all the negotiations, it was Sreesanth who delivered the six balls and made sure that he gave the required number of runs.

My mom always tells me that “a horse can only be taken to the pond, it can’t be made to drink the water. That can be done only by the horse.” Likewise, even if 90 per cent of the job was done by his friend Jiju (Or Biju, whatever it is!), it was Sreesanth who delivered the final punch. And it was he who subsequently got (I just can’t use the word earned.) the 2 crore rupees.

The players spent 100 hours talking to the bookies and planning each delivery in the over. If the same amount of hours had been spent trying to improve their game, neither would they have ruined their names and a good future in cricket, nor would the team have had to take the brunt of their shameful deed.

It takes a huge deal of hardwork, timing and luck for the players to get to the IPL. I personally know district and state players who slog their asses off to get to where Sreesanth, Chandila and Chavan are. And to even think of ruining everything they have worked so far just for the sake of a few crores is saddening.

For once, Preity Zinta made sense when she said that the players earn a lot of money through IPL, what was the need for them to indulge in corruption for the same.

The worst part about all this is the fact that Rahul Dravid, the epitome of honesty and innocence has had to go through all the crap that people gave him because of his team mates. If Sreesanth had pictured Dravid’s face at least once in this whole situation, he would not have gone through with the spot fixing.

By,

An ardent fan who still has hope in a corruption free cricketing future.

Aishwarya Kumar.

Cricket is Not Just a Game

I cheered at the top of my voice for the past five days, I called out Sachin's name for more than a thousand times, I lost my voice screeching for India, my face looks unrecognizable because of the sun, I can hardly move my legs because of the strain of jumping and screaming, but my heart is as happy as any heart could be, as joyous as any human being could possibly feel, as wondrous as any girl of nineteen can imagine.

This was today morning. Right now there is this emptiness, there is this hollow feeling inside of me. I have nothing to go back to tomorrow, no more Sachin to cheer for, no more cursing the players when they don't do well, no more spending hundreds of rupees to get to the stadium, no more guys to tease us and make fun of our voices, no more jumping up and down the chair, no more getting scorched in the sun, no more any of these things.

It is over and we have nothing to look forward to. In the last five days, Chepauk became  home, the players became family, the canteen became our kitchen and it I can not believe the fact that I won't be going back there tomorrow. It is over and we are back to reality. And to be honest, reality sucks. The feeling of totally letting ourselves go, dance and jump in joy, scream at the top of our voices, was all for a short while and now it feels like everything is back to how it was before: Monotonous and boring.

I have never told my mom why I took up Journalism in the first place, but I think she deserves to know. It was only because I could be associated more with cricket. I knew I couldn't play, I knew I couldn't become an umpire, so I decided that becoming a journalist is the perfect way to get through to my idols, my God.

I can't believe that I met Shane Watson, spoke to him, asked him for a picture. I can't believe that I actually stood next to the batting maestro Sunil Gavaskar and asked for a picture. It was my first time and I was lucky enough to meet few of Cricket's top players. The mission is still incomplete. And it will always be till I meet the two people because of whom I am actually where I am: Sachin Tendulkar and Harsha Bhogle.

I will one day meet them, talk to them, sit next to them, for that is my ultimate goal. And the last five days have made me realize that that goal is not impossible, difficult, but not impractical.

Five wonderfully unbelievable days, five days which I would never ever forget in  my life, no matter how many test matches I watch, no matter where life takes me, no matter what I become in the end, these five days have made me grow as a person, have made me feel like I have never felt before, have made me radiate with energy, have given me hope, have made me realize that we are all headed somewhere, we just have to wait for the right time to understand that.

Who in the world said test cricket was boring? It is the most amazing, most blissful thing in the whole wide world and if I could, I would be there for every test match India ever plays.

P.S: I never thought I would be saying this but I have totally fallen for the Australian team, for their sportsman spirit, their humility, their sweetness and particularly their dance moves. I salute you for the wonderful team play.

Aishwarya Kumar.

Sexy Beggar and a Cigarette Incident!

So, as usual, I go to the parking lot, start my bike, dump my bag in the baggage area and drive it away from college. I go all the way around Gemini circle to get to the other side of the road, to my grandma's place. As I drive past Landmark, I see this miraculous looking shirtless (actually he was barely wearing any clothes), super sexy ( to all the lady beggars) guy on the pavement. I slow down my bike, which was making this really annoying whirring noise for some weird reason. I was welcomed by a puff of smoke as I drove closer to him.

Where from?

Cigarette of course.

This is not what I found interesting. This sexy looking guy did not have fingers. He had stubs for fingers.

Wondering how he managed to hold a freaking death-roll in those?

He held the cigarette in between the stubs and he was smoking away to glory. In fact he was so engrossed in the very act that he had forgotten to notice the 100 rupee note that a passer-by had placed on his plate.

My mind somehow went on a thinking spree and I realized something.

The cigarette he was holding in his hands were bigger than that of his fingers.
The cigarette has a larger role in his life than his hands.
The cigarette has more control over his life than his own self.

Somehow, this symbolism made sense to me.

"You do not have hands to work, you do not have fingers to eat, you do not have a freaking job, you do not have three meals a day, and neither do you have the brains to realize that that roll of tobacco will do the job of taking the life out of you, squeezing the breath out of your lungs, turning your lungs to tar."

Actually a lot of people with fingers also don't realize this.

I pity them.

Aishwarya Kumar.

I Will Remember the Hold, I Always Will

Prostrate cancer.

Yes, it is a pain in the ass.

Like, literally.

My family has a history of cancer. My grandmom even calls it "Our Family Property." 

This time it decided to seep into the most gentle, most caring and most selfless person I have ever known.

He is ninety-seven, and till last year, why, even before a few months, he roamed around the city, vising his relatives, his family. He was active beyond words, his enthusiasm contagious. I remember falling on his feet a year and a half ago, just as he left Grandma's house, asking for his blessings.

I don't talk about him much but today, I just have to.

I entered his house, imagining him as he was when I last met him. I wanted to see him smile that big, broad smile of his, wanted to hear his loud barking laugh, wanted to feel his soft hands on mine, wanted to hear his soothing voice as he recalled his past experiences, but all I got to see was a limp looking man, lying on his bed, his eyes closed, breaths coming out in slow, short gasps.

His wife, a very chirpy woman herself, held his hands, trying to wake him. He woke up gently, his eyes still half closed, teeth clenched. He slowly moved to a sitting position, holding his lower back and winced, as pain  shot through his whole body. I could hardly hear him as he mumbled his welcome. After a couple of minutes, he made himself comfortable on a chair, still flinching in pain. 

My stomach coiled and recoiled involuntarily. I looked away as a silent tear dropped down my eyes into my cheek. To hear about his pain is one thing, to experience it first hand is something else totally. I did not want him to see me cry, so I wiped my face clean with the back of my hand and looked back at him, smiling.

He queried a lot about my studies, and about Pooja, which I answered diligently, but my mind was elsewhere. I was agitated, I was angry. At who? I don't really know. 

My mother said," Pray to God, pray for him."

Amma, if there was God, he wouldn't have given him the disease. And if he had, why would I go pray to him when he had the heartlessness to give the gentlest of man, such a terrible disease?

My grandma made conversation with him and his wife, trying to cheer him up.

"The pain is unbearable. I would rather die," he said, looking from me to grandma.

I cried then, I am not ashamed to admit. Cried because I could not understand how such a caring and selfless person could end up suffering so much. Every breath that he took caused him pain, every movement was unbearable.

"Study well. Give your best, become independent," he said, "And don't get married if you don't want to. I am there for you. I will support you."

I did not know how long he would survive before the deadly disease devoured him, but at that moment, I loved him the most, for saying those words, for understanding some part of me that even the closest of people did not. 

As I was telling him about my course, he fell asleep, fatigue taking the better of him. I waited till he woke up, watching him as he slept. His wife had to prod him awake. He woke with a start, looking surprised at having fallen asleep. 

He is withering away in front of my eyes and it is a painful as anything I have ever felt. I did not expect him to live forever, I do not still. But all I wanted was for him to not have to go through so much pain in the last stages of his life. He deserved that much. Actually, he deserved much more.

"Thank you," he whispered, when I stood up to leave.

I shook my head and made him promise not to thank me ever again for anything.

"Hang in there thatha, you will make it. You will devour the disease." I said and without turning back, left the house, not wanting him to see the huge drops of tear that was falling down my face.

I had wanted to take a picture with him. After seeing him sitting that way, clicking a picture seemed like the most trivial thing in the world.

Before I left, he held my hands strong, his grip strong, despite the pain he was going through.

I will remember you touch Thatha, I will remember your words. Always.

Aishwary Kumar. 

Look me straight in the eyes if you dare..

Okay, this is a rant. I have to pour it out because otherwise I will lose it.

One of the worst things to happen is for your bike to stop on the middle of the road, what with the bunch of bikes and cars honking all around you and the drivers giving you death glares for stopping, like I just wanted to turn off my engine and sit on the road and enjoy the traffic and pollution all around me. Hell no. I very much wanted to reach my destination as much as you wanted to, there was no damn petrol in the freaking bike! Why would anybody stop their bike mid-road for any other reason?

So I make the long walk of one kilometer to the nearby petrol station. I am huffing and puffing as I make my way down the road, pushing the hundred kilo monster along with me. With sweat dripping down my face, I look around, wanting to take my mind off the whole "outside-the-gym" gymming that I was indulging myself in. My leg muscles were already screaming in pain from the little stint in the gym the last few days and this was just fuel being added to the blazing fire.

So as I was looking around, I see a guy, looking me up and down, creeping me out instantly. Only guys have the immense talent of making a girl feel uncomfortable. Here I was pushing the damn bike in search of a gas station and there he was, looking at me like I was a toy or an item girl dancing for chikni chameli.

I walk past him, swearing under my breath and make my way further down the road. And for those innocent guys who do not indulge in such lame acts, here is a piece of information. Guys, at least most of them, make this disgusting kissy noise when they check a girl out. It pisses me off to such an extent that one day I am sure I am going to stop my bike and ask him if he wants me to kiss him. I mean, I seriously don't understand the point behind that noise. What do they want? Are they asking us for a kiss or do they think we will get all impressed and go and hook up with them?

At this point, I remember a statement made by Ms.Lakshmi Ramakrishnan, vetaran actor and director in Today's outlook seminar in college. She said,"the only problem with men, at least most of them in India is the fact that they don't look women in the eye." I was just awe struck when she said that because it was ridiculously true.

If you have the gall to make kissie noises next to me or say crap about how I look or what I am wearing, look me in the eye and do it. I bet my ass you wouldn't be able to look past my nose because you know the wrath and fire that will be burning in those pair of eyes.

Anyway coming back to the point, I was not dancing for chikni chameli, nor was I gymming in front of you. I was dragging a freaking bike which I am pretty sure got heavier by the minute past you. You need not come and carry it for me. But the least you could do is not look me up like I am some kind of a stripper.

This is for all those guys out there. Next time you look at a girl, I dare you to look her in the eye and not anywhere else. I dare you..

Aishwarya Kumar.