My Visit To A South Indian Culture & Arts Museum

Hi readers! Hope you are doing good. It has been a while since I had written anything on this blog. A lot of things have happened since the last time I published an article here, maybe I will write them one by one and publish them here someday. But keeping them aside for some day else, today I want to share with you my experience of going to a South Indian culture museum in Chennai. 

So, it has been about 9 months since I had moved to Chennai, and to be frank, it has been a roller-coaster ride so far with exploring new places, trying out new things, eating/drinking new dishes/drinks and so on. And one such experience is my day outing to Dakshinachitra, a museum located in the outskirts of the city on the ECR. This place had been in my bucket list for a long time now and today is the day I decided to give the place a try. And I am not disappointed at all. 

Fig: My motorbike a.k.a. the dark horse ‘Onyx’ somewhere on the way

Right from the very entrance, the place is being maintained very well by Indian standards and hygiene is up kept throughout the campus. Maybe that explains the ₹175 entry fee for a person? :P

I don’t know, but let us get moving. Just after the entrance was a crafts shop that sold artifacts like decoratives, sarees, T-shirts (yep, the odd one out, though they had some cool writings on them in Tamil), Cds, comics and other items as such. Though I did not find anything that attracted me so much that I wanted to spend dough on the expensive price tags that were put up, it is definitely a part of the experience and should be given a look when visiting. 

Though the museum pamphlet said that it was an Indian cultural museum with emphasis on the southern states, I felt that it was solely dedicated to the four states of Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradhesh, Karnataka and Kerala. Now, I am not sure why Telangana wasn’t a part of the state list, but I am more or less sure that the place would have been up long before the Great Telugu State Bifurcation. That would explain a lot of you politicos. Coming to the trip, the museum is laid in out in such a fashion that each state gets two or more houses, built in their state’s traditional ways, and in them, pictures and articles and displayed explaining different aspects of the corresponding culture. 

 Fig: A moderately sized bed placed in one of the Karnataka houses

In one of the Karnataka houses, I was able to spot the ‘Kantara’ fame deity and their history written and show cased with objects like brass masks, photographs and statues. Got through some houses of Andhra Pradesh region, and there were places to go in, sit down and read books; yes I am talking about a full scale library. I am not very sure as to why there is a library inside a place like this which makes you ₹175 poorer every time you try to enter, but to my surprise, there were a few people sitting down in the library, reading books and taking notes religiously. I was fairly confused, needless to say.

The Tamilnadu part of the museum was the largest and also had the most number of houses, starting from Chettiyar style houses to Brahmin style houses to those of potters and weavers. A good amount of history and culture of these communities have been recorded and placed in their houses, giving us an insight into them. I found them really intersting to read given my inclination to pastime ideas. I am 23 and I went to cultural museum all alone on a Saturday, I mean, what can you even say? :)

Fig: Chettinadu style house

There were photographs of some people of those communities hung on the walls, probably donated by volunteers. There were also different objects or art, mostly sarees of different types, displayed with their history and cultural place written in brief. By the time I had completed my tour of the place, it had only taken me 2 hours, and I was exhausted a good amount as it was a peak summer day in Tamilnadu. I am attaching a few more photos I had took of some infographics below. If you ask me if it was worth visiting the place, I would say yes, but only if you are into learning culture/arts. Even ones that aren’t, this could be a good way to spend a day on your weekend, picking up an information or two on the way. ;)

So, until next time, sayanora!

RRR – The supposed glory of Indian cinema that is as problematic as it is a visual treat

SS Rajamouli directed multi starer RRR has been the talk of the cinema town since its release; not just in India, but the movie has attracted international audience too. A growing number of Americans are watching and following Indian cinema vigorously more than ever before, and to them this movie is ‘life-changing’ – as tweeted by one of the Americans who watched the movie. 

Not to undermine the entire movie and the efforts put in the back of it, the movie was a visual treat totally, and anybody who would want to spend their 3 hours on a weekend afternoon or evening with friends or family would enjoy with with their whole hearts. Both the actors have given their best performances, and it is very evident on the screen. The bromance that brews on screen between the two actors, Ram Charan garu and NTR Jr. garu is phenomenal and can very well be stated as one of the best lead chemistry in recent times.

But, the movie is flawed; on many fronts. The first thing the movie lacks is a solid writing that has the potential to back up the visual treat on screen, that has reportedly gobbed up 500+ crores INR to make. Only if a tenth of that effort and money had been put into story and screenplay development, this could have been deemed fit to be called ‘Magnum Opus’ of the director. Labelling this as the ‘magnum opus’ of Rajamouli not only undermines the grand victory of the Bahubali series, but also gives people a chance to look at forced promotions whose only aim is to bring the audience into the cinema halls as much as possible at any cost.

The movie, hailing from Telugu cinema, carries with it a lot of that ‘Telugu cinema DNA’, with its masala scenes, complete disregard for physics and cry baby stagings for the hero worship sequences. Average audience may not be bothered much by these factors, but people who expected something soulful from the director, would be very disappointed to say the least. The movie has also faced its fair share of criticism with regards to its portrayal of caste-ism. Many of the scenes, dialogues and sequences leave us baffled and surprised at the director’s audacity to portray caste-ism so openly on main stream cinema, particulary in a time where movie makers tend to carry atmost care while handling the topic. There is a scene at the end of the movie, where Ram, who plays the role of a Brahmin cop in the movie, says to NTR, whose role is that of a hill tribe man, “You have given me tremendous support in my quest with your strength and brute force, tell me what can I give you.” To which the tribal man replies, “Give us education, bhaiya”. The irony being that both the characters have depended on each other through out the course of the story, and as if the Brahmin character is the right person to ‘enlighten other castes with education’. Wonder what caste the British would be classified as, since they were the ones that introduced formal education system in India at a time when education was primarily driven by caste dependent gurukuls(remember the story of Ekalaivan and Shambukan).

The bottom line is if at all any movie has to represent Indian cinema on the world stage, it should not be RRR, or in that case, any of SS Rajamouli movies, as most of them have similar problems with them, or even worse. We have had great film makers across languages and time frames who have made creations that have stood the test of time, who can represent Indian cinema much better on the world stage in a much more dignified manner. 

 

#Rants_Of_An_Indian_Cinema_Fan 

A BRIEF DISQUISITION ON HEALING THROUGH BROKEN RELATIONSHIPS

Most of us, coming out of a broken relationship(hold your horses, can be anything) falter only during the sanctification phase. In the effort of sanctifying the relationship, we sanctify the persons who were in it too, forgetting the fact that they too are, in-fact, poor beings stuck in this human form, susceptible to making grave mistakes, just like us. For love, largely an individual feeling/emotion, another person is not a point of requirement the majority of the times. Memories would suffice. Arriving at the point where we understand this, the loss of none will gulp up either us, or the emotional connect at play within us.

 

This post has been copied from my Facebook wall, thinking that this article, though small, belongs here more.

A TOAST FOR MOHAMED SALAH

Never in my right mind, I would have thought that he would make such an impressive remark in me when I spotted him for the first time in the 2017 PL, followed by the 2018 edition of WC. A sub-par performance from his team overshadowed all the buzz that was created around him weeks before the start of the WC. If my memory serves right, he ended his 2018 campaign with 2 goals to his tally, which were unfortunately his team's only goals then. 

 

Despite his international failures, he continued to be his club's head honcho in the goal scoring department. It wasn't easy for any LFC follower to ignore him, or see past him. He became the sacred cow in the team, making no excuses, being consistent in any match he appeared. It was not just his first-class goal scoring ability that made him one of the club's stalwarts; it was also the way he played the team-game, displayed the team spirit.

 

The energy he brings to the table with his appearance is immense and is beyond anything any player has brought to the club in recent times. With him, it has always been like,'If Salah is there, we'll still hold a chance'. In a way, he bolstered the already famous 'Liverpool grit' - the grit that makes you believe that you can turn the match even in the last few seconds; he soldered it stronger.

He is an asset not just to Liverpool, but also to the extended football fraternity. He is MOHAMED SALAH - A KING IN DISGUISE.

WHAT BEING SINGLE AGAIN MEANS TO ME NOW?

Yes, I am single now. I have been single for about 3 months now(A sober, haha!). While there are a lot of things that led the relationship to be broken, I am not gonna discuss them here now. I wanted to share what being single AGAIN is really like, especially after a 'serious' (LOL) relationship of about 2 years. Here are my reflections about my second phase of living single and how it differs from my first one.

• I have more time on my hands now.
• Since I have more time, I make use of it in various activities that I haven't tried out at all or in some time.
• I garden.
• I spend my time without my mobile phone now without the ever nagging compulsion to carry it around all the time. This is one thing I appreciate a lot now. Previously, I had to carry my cellphone with me even when I had to step out the home for a while for a small walk. Now, I don't have to wait for the message from that 'one' and reply to it immediately(Believe me, I had to reply as soon as I got the message, because slow replies were frowned upon and fought on too).
• I look at things differently now. Well, this may not be the case for everybody being single and  it is more of a personal observation.
• In a sense, I feel more free now. I guess this would be the case for people who have come out of a toxic relationship. Not that I mean my relationship was completely toxic, but to a certain degree it was locking me down from my desires. 
• I sing. Yes, can you even believe it? I have started practicing again because, you know, I got a lot of free time(ta-da!).
• I feel more focussed on building my career now. I want to do something worthy, something to achieve for myself. I work for it now everyday, or at-least I get the motivation to work for it, to go for it. I have the never ending urge to establish something for myself now. And building my career comes first before me to accomplish that. 
• I socialize better, without the fear of being 'caught'(LOL, what an idiot I have been!). This may not be everybody's case, but I feel that now, I feel more free to socialize with new people without having to provide a log of whom I met and whom I talked to, to some other person. This is liberating(Yee-haw!).
• I have the urge to look better now. This has led to me looking to improve myself in various aspects. Better grooming, better dressing, better gentleman manners, and what not? 

In a lot of ways, I can go on explaining how me, breaking away from an almost toxic relationship was the best thing I did in years. Nevertheless, there is a pain of missing somebody, and it is real. I know that I will overcome this one day. I did that earlier too. But, it takes time. And, how does this phase of being single differ from my previous one? Because, this time, I am not the 'Romeo' from some movie, waiting romantically all my time for some 'Juliet'. I know what being in a serious relationship is like, and will be more cautious of my next steps and decisions related to love and relationships now. This too shall pass, but until it does, I am going to enjoy every bit of this phase, learn more about and focus more on myself rather than trying to please somebody else.

TECHNOLOGY AND YOUR PRIVACY

    Smartphone market is on the rise like never before and new brands are coming out at a frequency higher than ever. While the market in the US is dominated hugely by Apple's iPhone models, the rest of the world looks to be more than just infatuated with smartphones running Google's very own Android operating system. While the comfort of Google's Android is irreplaceable by today's terms, aren't we actually compromising on our privacy to a multi-million dollar corporation? Let us take a look at the privacy challenges that the technology oriented lifestyle poses us.

    Google is one of the firms known very well for recording the search terms of its users. Every search term entered via Google is stored to a separate storage space, each for an individual user. These terms are used practically in predicting the users' tastes and during further searches, the results are optimized for the user, based on their previous search history, location, etc.. On the positive side of things, this looks as a very comfortable option of internet usage, for everything is personalized to suit our taste and internet habits. And personally, I, myself has loved this feature as it greatly enhances the usability of the internet for me. But, the thought that we might actually be feeding them information, that too, about us, sometimes very personal, for they will be recording them at someplace certainly, sent me shivers down my spine.

    Just think about this. You wake up. You grab the newspaper(or, do you really? Nah, I am old-school anyway). You find something interesting and start reading that article. Suddenly, you find an acronym for which there is given no explanation. What do you do? You take up the phone. And obviously as the next step, you would google it. Also note that this search might be either by text, or voice(who strains to type now-a-days, eh? Anyway, we are busy sending rockets to Mars via Instagram). Now, this search of yours is recorded. Let us say that the article was something about cars. Therefore, your interest in cars is noted down. Your search regarding the acronym is also noted down. Now, any term related to the acronym you search is gathered from various sources, ie., websites, and added to your interests. Just imagine the above scenario for about half a dozen of times a day. And that's just you for one day. The estimates for the number of Android users in 2018 is estimated at a whopping 2.7 billion people. To be put straight, it is more than eight times the population in the US.

    The magnitude of the information we feed to a private concern should be clear by now. The company has tracks of where you went, what you ate, what you listened, whom you called, what you know and more. Let us try seeing the things under direct bright light. The firm doesn't use this information against you. And yes, why should it? It makes a profit uncountable everyday. The annual revenue of Alphabet Inc.(Google's parent company) in 2018 is about 110 million dollars. But, before you make any judgements, there is no assurance that your information won't be used else-how.

    Take this scenario for instance. Google fails. Just plainly, it fails. Goes bankrupt, loses its market share to some new company. Just like how other tech companies that played monopoly a decade ago fell sometime back. It loses all its legitimate sources of revenue(though it is a very hypothetical concept, just imagine. None can assure against the fall anyways.). Its security factor becomes weak obviously and all its data suddenly becomes vulnerable, waiting for somebody to attack. All the information you shared with Google during its peak time in the market would still be with the firm unfortunately. A simple attack on its data grounds would lead to a massive plunder. It would be the case of information mismanagement of the century. Now, some other individual or a group or a corporate firm(yes, it is possible) will now have more information about you than your government has. Get the point now? Though a private firm is playing monopoly now, there is no guarantee that it always will.

    Your communication with Google is of two layers now(nothing technical here, just a concept).  You, as the user, and Google, as your utility. You ask, it gives. On the side-way, it stores. Hence the company knows who exactly is asking what, when it is asked, from where it gets asked, etc.. What can be done to protect and defend against the up-told disaster? What we propose is a third layer in the total communication with any private firm or service. And this layer should be a layer of the governments of the respective countries from where the request is sent and this layer goes directly into the middle of the existing two layers.

    The major function this middle layer is to get the information from the user layer and send it to the service layer anonymously, so that the identity of the user is not revealed to a particular private firm. By this way, the governments of the countries have more command over the information that is fed to these private companies and has accurate information about its citizens. What really sets me laugh is the fact that, today, people are more concerned and worried about giving their information up to the government than they are about giving up information to a private firm, run by some individuals they don't know at all. And until this mindset of the people change, until government intervenes and helps mask and protect the identity of each citizen of it, issues like the one with Cambridge Analytica and Facebook won't stop occurring.

RELIGIONS AND TERRORISM

    Terrorism and Islam go hand in hand. Does it really? We are always confronted by this question on our faces everytime we see a news pop up on terrorism. And I can't tell you that you are completely wrong by any means. After all, even I, at times had to encounter that question in my head. Here, in this article I try to decipher some common myths(can I say so?) relating terrorism to Islam.

    Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and you name it. Almost any organisation that makes headlines for all the wrong reasons is muslim(I am terribly sorry). And I am feel really sorry to put this down in words and it is one of the deepest pities in my heart to accuse an entire social group for a particular number of individuals or organisations that relate to that social group in some way or another.

    But, inspite of people who don't belong to Islam feeling that the religion as a whole should not be blamed for the activities of a certain number of people, and people that are Muslim that oppose terrorism under their name, we are in need of examination of some kind to just make things somewhat more clear than it is. Islam's holy script, the Holy Quran, at places, emphasises on the concept of making  wars inorder to defend the pride of the religion.

    After all, the story of the holy wars, namely,'The Crusades' is something we have all read about in our history lessons. Unfortunately, islam was involved in the holy wars too. Today, the concept of offering oneselves to protect the pride of the religion has turned and taken some more lethal forms,say for instance, 'jihad'. Apparently, 'jihad' means ' a fight against the enemies of Islam'. Thus, it sometimes makes way for a particular question to be raised,"Does Islam promote violence just inorder to save an abstract attribute of an abstract entity whose only objective of inception was only to promote peace and integrity?".

    Indeed, I am one of those whose heads raised the question within itself. But going by the recent occurences of the unforgivable and unaccpetable acts of terrorism and the people involved in those acts using the term 'jihad', it makes us question that if that was the true meaning behind the word 'jihad'.

    I am indeed writing this article with a heavy heart for my fellow humans that were massacred cowardly by the suicide bombers, that too, at a few churches in Srilanka. Also, it makes me lose hope that a few weeks ago, in Newzealand, several people were killed in the shooting that took place in a mosque of NZ. This time, it was an attack against the muslims, not in the name of them. A person, allegedly a christian, went into the mosque with a gun and shot evreyone that he saw. Acts like these are some of the rare occurrences of violence against muslims by non muslim individuals or groups.

    I fall in line with the muslim brothers and sisters of Srilanka, who are indeed sorry for whatever gory act of violence that used their name. They aren't denying the fact that their religion was involved in the attacks. They feel sorry for the people that were killed and strongly condemn acts like these under their name. Apparently, 'jihad' isn't for everyone that is muslim and people who are not muslim should also acknowledge that fact. If most people had come to that conclusion, attacks like the one on Kiwi soil, wouldn't have happened and we wouldn't have had so much of blood spilled on our hands.

    After all, it is the same human blood and the pain that people undergo are the same, irrespective of their religion. People like us, collectively as the human tribe, undivided by religions should join hands against any act  of violence or mass destruction. Religions and tribes are just a shield used by the people that create and carry on with their created turbulence. When Hitler was a destructing all day, he used a separate ideology and grouped people with similar interests, brainwashed some, all just to focus his destructive works on a particular religion or a group of people. Nevertheless, it led somewhere else, which is not something we will be discussing now.

    Terrorism is for fools; for the brainwashed; for the weak who can't put their problems to a solution by rational and non-violent means. Religion, any, after all, shouldn't be the motive behind any terror act, and it is a shame that people use religions or any group for their ghastly and sinful purposes.
 
  STAND AGAINST TERROR! STAY UNDIVIDED BY RELIGIONS!