Chetan Bhagat's latest offering confirms his status as a mass story teller

Chetan Bhagat's writing represents a curious combination of unique things. He is definitley someboy with a high IQ (IIT-IIM, Goldman Sachs background), has a rather simple style of writing (no complex plots, characters that represents the comman man, takes a light & humorous stab at some of our indian idiosyncrasies and while the end is quite predictable, there are sufficient twists and turns in getting there), there is always reference to some sexual escapades of the protagonists and the books are priced quite attractively His intellectual reputation further promises a nice opening at the book stores for his books. His latest book "2-States:- the story of my marriage" (costs Rs 95) is almost an autobiography of his unique marriage (his wife Anusha (or Ananya as portrayed in the book) is a classmate from the prestigious IIM and is a Tam-Bram while Bhagat is a punjabi. For those of you who dont understand what these terms mean, read the book :)) The challenges faced by this intellectual duo as they decide to get married with the blessings of their parents is bought out in a rather uniquely humourous way through this fast paced novel (I bought the book and finished reading the entire story in 2 hours flat). The clumsy Hari of 5 point someone becomes the dorky Krish Malhotra here (including the references to strained relations with his father, a tough college professor, disciplinary issues at IIT and of course, a college sweetheart). At some level, Bhagat must be ruing the fact that he did not cast Hari as a punjabi. If he had, this would have been a logical sequel. Bhagat uses the opportunity to throw some potshots at some of the ridiculous customs, both sides of the Vindhyas without either getting preachy or banal.

The concept is hardly novel and there have been some interesting movies in the recent past (Abhiyum Naanum is one that comes to mind first) around a similar concept and this book also presents an ample opportunity for a nice and humorous family movie. (1 of Bhagat's books has already been made into a movie and one more is in the offing). The book is particularly pleasing sheerly because it does not aspire to be a masterpiece. It is completley unpretentious, humorous and would resonate with the the common man who has a simple view of life, does not take it too seriously and would not mind reading a light book to trigger his imagination. So for those of you who like such books, Bhagat's latest offering is a nice and simple story for you to enjoy a peaceful evening of book reading. And to those parents who frown down on cross-community marriages, here is some intelligent and humorous food for thought.

Tamil Cinema's coming of Age - hope the spark continues

This year's Gandhi Jayanthi (october 2nd) found my wife and i watching 2 brand new movies at the Theatre, one after the other (yes, we decided to do some crazy stuff) and to our luck found ourselves thoroughly satisfied with both of them. Considering that tamil cinema in recent times has been littered with depressingly crass, mediocre and senseless movies (Kanthasamy, Ninaithale Innikum to name a couple) which ended up getting much fanfare sheerly through a combination of aggressive marketing and some star power, we found ourselves thoroughly surprised. The two movies that we saw were Eeram and Unnai Pol Oruvan (the remake of the much critcally acclaimed " A Wednesday"). The fact that i enjoyed most about either of them was the fact that neither of them had any stupid gravity-defying fights, crass item numbers or irrelevant comedy sequences, which over time, despite their "insult to intelligence" characteristics have become to dominate tamil cinema over the last couple of decades.

Eeram is a brilliantly shot and innovatively told murder mystery. The director, a Film institue gold medallist clearly had the audience engrossed through this unusual movie through a combination of brilliant camerawork, logical & clear story-telling as well as employing little-known actors (though i am sure that all the key characters should have a bright future if they chose their projects wisely). Every scene in the story depicts the wetness (Eeram means wetness in Tamil) with water being vividly shown in some form or the other. Another novelty pertains to showing a red-colored wet object to highlight the onset of the next murder is very clever. The color of the frames depicts the dark nature of the story very well. The climax could have been thought through a little more but is nevertheless smart in its own way. Director shankar has once again revealed his keen eye in identifying different stories and sponsoring them to unravel fresh talent into the industry.

Unnai Pol Oruvan is an outstanding story of how a common man holds the entire Chennai police administration to ransom for an entire day to administer a very different form of social justice. The ensemble of brilliant senior actors including Kamal Hassan and Mohanlal as well a bunch of fresh-faced new comers combined with a fast moving story line (the entire hardly lasts for an hour and a half) keeps the audience spell bound. The police officers shown here are not the stereotyped caricatures that we have been used to. The challenges and difficulties that they face in a typical day are depicted very realistically. The sharp and witty discussions between the police commissionar and the Chief Secretaty as well as the hard-hitting chats between the common man and the commissionar (not to mention the hillarious Telemarketing call that frustrates the commissionar while lightening the grim mood) are very realistic and entertaining.

I sincerely hope that 2009 heralds the onset of a new and sensible year in Tamil Cinema and that we do get to see more of these masterpieces in the days to come.