I have not seen the movie and I am pretty sure I will not view it in the near future. You may ask why? Please do. Well, I will not because I am not a Rajni fan. But thisi post is not a review of the movie, rather its a spin off of the humor Sivaji brought into my online existence. How so, you may ask once more. Please do. I like question and answer sessions- makes me feel political, which I am not otherwise.
This is the bit where I introduce the snippets-
A Marathi friend asked me, "Have you seen Sivaji?"
I said, "Why should I?"
He said earnestly, "It is Sivaji!"
I said, "Not your Sivaji...but a software Sivaji."
He said, a bit disgruntled, "Oh...not my Sivaji...I thought well..."
I found this regionalism humorous. Now there are people who tell me to take matters such as capitalism, communism, regionalism, socialism and all other isms seriously, including jisms that is, but for the life of me, isms tickle my funny bone.
If my friend was a Southie and had come across a Northie's Sivaji, he would have probably delivered similar sentences..."Oh...not my Sivaji..." I am not supposed to use slang. Well, I was never supposed to call myself a Bengali, but I do, and you call me a bong.
Now, the second story line- this is more serious. I am a tentative blogger. People do not often read my blog. And if they do, I do not come to know that they do, because nobody seems to be leaving any message, but what if I was a serious blogger with a blogfull of followers who blogged in and out of my blog and I had my firm nose grinding through the blogosphere in an attempt to outsmart others in my blogathon? Would I have the permission to make fun of Sivaji- the movie? The many bloggers who commented on this article did not find the blogger's blog humorous- they found it insulting (reference a thesaurus for better words please). Here's my beef- I am not supporting the blogger or her blog, neither am I discrediting it- now to my beef (yum yum?): Why do we as a people get hurt so darn easily. Somebody calls Gandhi a stick figure and we go all ballistic. Somebody claims the Taj Mahal isn't anything better than its Jamuna backdrop, and we start a petition in its support. A few others beat our cinematic sense and we begin calling them "immature" and comment, "Hey in our films we sell dreams. But you wouldn't understand." WHY THE HELL ARE WE SO DAMN NAZUK? So what if a Calvin Clein wearing idiot calls Gandhi a stick figure (just making it up)... its more important to let him do so. In the long run, after the sticker on his garment has faded he'll come follow our line of people who honor a stick figure and have come to call him the Mahatma. And so what if the Taj isn't pretty anymore- its memory is, and that memory is for us, those who love it. Finally coming to our films- enjoy what you enjoy and let the critiques, or in this case, the blogger say anything they want to...one shouldn't give a hoot.
To end this let me say, long live Sivaji and Rajni.
Snapshot
In Print
1 comment:
A tentative blogger? :)
Why do people get hurt so easily? Because we're people - weak, frail, alive; living with the shock of our first breath and the fear of our last. And in response to this we attempt to claim the outside world and its experiences not just as belonging to us, but as an extension of us. And when that extension is attacked - we defend it.
The Taj Mahal isn't just a building, an experience or a memory - its another part of millions of people. And when someone puts it down, each one of those people is brought down with it. Not all of those people respond as strongly - there is always a spectrum - but all of them react.
I have my own 'its' that I find myself defending. Maybe someday I'll figure out exactly how I want to deal with them. For the moment my 'patch' is trying to remember, often after-the-fact, that I am not the experiences I have had. It seems like a frail fix, with lots of holes. But it works. :)
Glad to see you're out and writing. Keep going!
- Noel
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