Message in a Bottle

Vaazhkaingardhu soda bottle maadhiri,
Pagaloda mudivu dhaan raathiri.
Pondaatti pera modhalla sollardhudhaan purushalakshanam,
Indo-US nuclear agreement dhaan Manmohan Singhukku sigaram.

Life is like a soda container,
Night is the day's terminator.
Mentioning the wife's name first is the quality in a husband best.
The Indo-US nuclear deal is Manmohan Singh's Everest.

Deep stuff!

Such is the modern conundrum we live in that we search for meaning in all things under the sun. One wonders why the price of onions has gone up by another ten rupees, and whether there is an ulterior motive to this played out unbeknown to him by supernumerary powers that be. Another frets over the birth of a child unforeseen, often left bemused by what must surely have been a plot of diabolical dimensions by the Catholic Church to sabotage the condom industry... or worse yet, the wrath of God ushering in the Kali Yuga by unsustainable population explosion. Here she stares at the spinning fan, searching for clues that might explain why the swirling winds do not cool that side of her face resting on the pillow... surely, had Coriolis switched poles... Katrina would not have happened, and the proverbial cool side of the pillow would have been but a whimsical sales pitch. Yes. There must be meaning to all the madness. "Order and method, Miss Lemon, order and method. That is the key, n'ai pas?"

Oui, certainement. So we have movies like The Dark Knight and Indian and Dhrokhal and Varumayin Niram Sivappu made from time to time. To restore faith in that most desperate of human conditions... the search for the inner truth. But what of those amongst us who do not believe in the human condition? Or have gone past it? Or have simply deemed it the proverbial cold side of the pillow and put it away, like a nice thick nine-hundred and seventy four page book on the philosophical musings of Pliny the Younger? For these people, the pudhu kavidhai (new-age poem) need not be logical. Or, it might be an algorithm for life, the universe and everything so profound that the true import of forty two escapes all but these elite few. For this clique, there are majordomos in Tamil Cinema today. CS Amudhan, Venkat Prabhu, Pushkar and Gayathri, and to a lesser extent, TP Gajendran. Why him? He made Maganey En Marumagane, that shameless throwback to the 80s familial problems diatribe formula. But remember, he also made Budget Padhmanabhan, and Middle Class Madhavan, two gems which for their time, and their cast, were truly as forward looking as the Chennai 28s, Oram Pos and Tamil Padams of this millennium.

The Western film industry has always lapped the Indian film industry several times over until now. Stoner comedies, such as the unforgettable 1974's Dark Star, cult favorites, the doyen of the genre being 2004's Napoleon Dynamite, and just plain weirdos like 2007's Hot Fuzz have always cropped up amidst the more serious stuff. Tamil Cinema has now reached this plane of superior existence, what with Vaanchinaathan, Narashimha, Veerasamy, 6'2" and Englishkaaran having exhausted the gamut of metaphysical possibilities. With Picasso's cubes and Dali's clocks having embellished the thinking man's brain to its fullest capacity, it is now left to MF Hussain's stick men and nude women to give new meaning to the question of existence. But no, it would be heretical to go so far. All Mother India taught us was that he has a deep seated Freudian obsession with the female form, and all Gajagamini showed us was that brightly colored water probably has Azo dyes and Benzene. Don't drink from that river!

No, the new lineup of movies, Oram Po, Chennai 28, Saroja, Goa, Tamil Padam, Boss Engira Baskaran and Va Quarter Cutting teach us something more. They portray a world that is unique to the ones we are left reeling to have had the misfortune to have been born in as we leave the theater having watched the serious attempts at philosophical exposition or action explosion. These new movies, and indeed the examples of the English ones I listed before tell us something that even proper "comedy" flicks fail to do. They tell us that life need not always have meaning. They tell us that not every moment has to be mired in gravitas. They tell us that every though need not be analyzed, every expression studied, and every action scrutinized. More than telling us to laugh, they tell us that you can take yourself less seriously from time to time. You can enjoy yourself a little bit more by losing yourself in the moment, not by getting lost in its inner workings. And that sometimes, the four lines in a new-age poem's stanza may rhyme, but without reason. After all, what has the Honorable Dr. Manmohan Singh got to do with the Luni-Solar cycle, or soda bottles with spousal relationships, eh?