Avatar

The following is purely my own personal view only.

Biting the bait thrown by the media and well made trailer, I went and watched Avatar. Well, to say frankly, if you have seen the Thamizh movie Vietnam Colony (I think it was also a remake of a Malayalam movie), you will see Avatar’s similarity to it. This one is a very expensive version though. Surprising it is, considering the economic slowdown all over.

Like Prabhu, in Vietnam colony, the hero of this movie is also sent into a community as a mole. Only here, the community lives in a different planet (actually, a moon called Pandora) as opposed to a colony in the Thamizh version.

He has to give inside information to a set of greedy people, and eventually help them in throwing the natives (called Na’vi) out of their home. The home in this case, is a huge tree and underneath the tree is the richest deposit of Utonium, a mineral, can be mined and sold back on earth for a million dollar a Kilo. This guy does his work initially by passing the info. As time pass by, he ends up liking the people, the nature. He doesn’t stop there. He goes on and falls in love with the chief’s daughter. And Of course, she reciprocates.

This makes him to turn against the people who sent him there and fight against them to protect the natives. Obviously, he wins in the end.

On the positive side, I can see how fertile Cameroon’s imagination is, on seeing how he has conceived the world of Navi. The small Jelly like creatures, the 7 foot tall Navi and the tree on which they live on. I particularly liked the scene which shows how they sleep. Cool stuff. The computer graphics is so good that the animated characters look very real. Amazing, how these guys stretch technology to the extreme to provide such an experience. All this in 3D. This kept me fascinated for first half an hour. Then I am done with it.

The next two hours was so boring and to make it interesting I started looking at the similarities of the scenes in Thamizh movies. This guy has to go through the process of choosing a dragon. It is not easy though. The way he does it reminds me of the old MGR movies where our Thalaivar has to prove his masculinity by taming a bull (‘Kaalai’) in one of the scenes. In this movie it is the Dragon that has to be tamed though. Then in another scene, they try Vittal Aachariya. The actual body of a scientist is kept near the Navi version of her and they try to transfer the life (“Koodu vittu Koodu Paayardhu”).

This made me think why our Captain can’t have this much fund and do a Computer Graphics rich movie in 3D and watched by people in I-Max. We will see people in the front rows dodging Captain’s back kick. At times they will also dodge captain’s “flat” tummy. And, those red, angry eyes of Captain in Close Up will terrorise everybody and make Spielberg rue about the money he wasted in making a close up shot of a T-Rec in Jurassic Park.

Anyway, if you ask me to give a one line comment about the movie,

‘It is a sci-fi movie with equal amount of action, technology, love, emotion and with a message’.

Damn, sounds like a director’s comment on his Vijay starrer (except for the Sci-fi part)

Happy new year to you all.

Societal Metrics

Disclaimer: Again, Heavy Stuff.



Part of growing up is the ability to ask questions with the intention of feeding your reasoning. A lot of things we do are out of practice, than necessity. At a point in life I have realised that the practice itself has become a necessity, to continue to remain in the society. This is a common thought, at least among the current generation.

We do get carried away with this thought and at times start branding people who belong to the “other” as barbaric, narrow minded and so on.

We have seen this happening throughout history. Whenever the British entered a country, they called the natives barbaric or uneducated. WHY? because for them to be literate, is to be educated. To worship what they worshipped, is civilised. This is not uniquely British, but may be an acquired human nature because of our other nature – We humans are social animals.

Just because some one is not ok wearing what most others are wearing, that person is branded as narrow minded. So to avoid becoming an outcast, most of us do what most of us do. This spills over to even what we think about. So much so that we start feeling guilty if we think or look at things differently. I don’t know how anybody can be called selfish if they do 90% of things for others. (Anyway I would like to discuss the term ‘selfishness’ in one of my articles in future)

Sure there will come a day when every person does what he/she wants to do and feels good doing it, and the person next door has no problem with it as long as it is within the country’s constitutional boundaries.

Anyway, this is just a random thought out of my mind. I just felt like writing.

-- Satish

Mystery? Or is it.....??

Disclaimer: Heavy stuff. If you are looking for fun, just stop here.

Before carrying on (or get carried away) with my line of thought on this subject, I am using Internet to just share my thoughts and what I say may offend some but it is nothing personal and just read it as if you are reading what’s in my mind. Please do comment and sure I will not take it personally either. May be it will give me a chance to mature.

We humans constantly suffer from one thing or the other. When the suffering is enjoyable we call it happiness, when it is not we call it sadness and when it is not understandable, we brush it aside by calling it a mystery. The first two are subjective. The third one though, can be common to all in many cases. Few try to understand it by putting effort in whatever way they think is effective.

Ok. Let me be explicit. I am talking about what we call as God (Damn, It felt like I was going to say some swear word).

From a very early age I’ve had this philosophy in my mind. It is something very similar to what has been written in the Gita. My version is a bit stiffer. We are just on one end of a string whose other end is being held by this entity. Most of them call it God but I would like to call it a master script. Shakespeare called us ‘actors’ but actors can improvise and play different roles. But what I would say is, everyone -be it me, you or anybody else - is a mere character in a single mega script written by this entity (and read by???)

This way of thinking helped me a lot as I had a very limited ego in my life and my actions were spontaneous and never had I had any problem to apologise to anybody. The best part (or the mean part, most would call) comes here. I seldom felt guilty of any of my actions and this made me very strong mentally (at least by my standards). I apologised to people for some of my actions more to make them feel better (or happy) than out of guilt.

Now, all these were brilliant and worked wonders, till I was single. When I got married, things changed (for better though).

So, out goes my philosophy and then happens a change of course. Still, I love my philosophy and one day I want to get it back (and also influence my better half with it).

Ok. Enough of this long story. Let me come to the point (!!!!). My current thinking is slightly different. What if this whole world is a laboratory of some super being in some other planet? What we call as alien. Yes. To this way of thinking, god becomes alien. Or is it like, Alien is god. All civilisations, all religions have at least one thing in common. They all look in to the sky when it comes to god. Can this be an alien space ship they are trying to look for? Is that what we have been believing as heaven? So who made aliens? A Similar question that still lingers on many people’s mind. Who made god?

Too confused, I am. This is why I called the thoughts as river. It changes course so often. Like Kannadasan said, “ Manam oru kurangu”.

Another question. May be for future discussion. Like the egg and the chicken. Who came first? Man or God? Did God make man or Man make God?

Damn this brain. It in fact must be devil’s work shop. Makes me question god.

But what made me make this connection in the first place – about aliens and God? Now, maybe that is food for my next blog!!

--Satish