Well, for want of a better title I chose this !
Gajabhuja in Sanskrit means the trunk of an elephant !
So, in short, the title means big/huge fundas !! :-)
30 June 2008
Dasavatharam Explained
And so here is another of those e-mail forwards that I got, which interprets Kamal's Dasavatharam. As an interesting aside, I think one must ask Kamal whether he really had this in mind when he visualized these characters !
Shyam
1. Krishna avatar - Vincent Poovaraghavan Lord krishna is actually a dalit, he is dark-skinned [shyamalam]. He saved draupadi when she was being violated and he was the actual diplomat in mahabharatham. Lord krishna dies of an arrow striking his lower leg. Now look at how vincent was introduced.. he appears when asin is about to be molested and he saves her like draupadi. Vincent is the dalit diplomat, fights for land issue [soil issue to be exact] and dies from the metal rod striking his leg. Oh even five of vincent's men are drugged at P. Vasu's.. sounds familiar???
2. Balarama avatar - Balarama naidu This is an easy given. as the name suggests and the role personifies you can easily get it.
3. Mathsya avatar - Ranagaraja nambi nambi is thrown into water in an act of trying to save lord from being thrown into sea, though vainly. what more clue do you want?
4. Varaha avatar - Krishnaveni paatti During the mukunda song, krishnaveni paatti does varaha avatar in the shadow puppetry. The frame freezes on it for a second. there is the clue. Moreover, in varaha avatar lord actually hides earth so as to protect life forms. Here too krishnaveni hides the germs - life form inside the statue so as to protect.
5. Vamana avatar - Kalifulla khan remember in vamana avatar, lord vishnu takes the vishvaroopa, that is the giant form! Hence the giant kalifulla here symbolises vamana avatar.
6. Parasurama avatar - Christian Fletcher Parasurama is actually on an angry killing spree and killed 21 generations of the particular kshatriya vamsa. Hence the real KILLER... Guess what thats what our Fletcher is! He comes around with the gun [modern upgrade for axe] and kills everyone around. I have to check if he kills 21 people though. :-D
7. Narasimha avatar - Shingen Narahashi first of all the name itself is a play on the words singam [means lion in tamil] and narasimha [the avatar being symbolised]. Lord Narasimha manifests himelf to kill the bad guy and he also teaches prahaladha. In the movie, he shows up to kill the killer fletcher! and is also a teacher.. Lord Narasimha had to kill the asura with bare hands and hence the martial arts exponent here.. get it?
8. Rama avatar - Avatar Singh Lord Rama stands for the one man one woman maxim, kind of symbolising true love.. Here Avatar portrays that spirit by saying that he loves his woman more than anything and wants to live for her.
9. Kalki avatar - Govindaraj Ramasamy As you know, the hero in kaliyug can be none other than the Kalki avatar!!!
10. Koorma avatar - Bush This is the most loose adaptation I couldn't clearly comprehend. But if you look at the real koorma avatar, the lord is the turtle/tortoise that helps in stirring the ksheera sagara and bringing out the amruth. This essentially creates war among the devas and asuras. Similarly today Bush facilitates war between you know whom... May be Kamal also indicates that this avatar is a bit dumb like the tortoise...
With three high quality mid fielders lost to yellow cards, a goal keeper lost to a silly fowl, and star player Nihat out due to injury, Turkey seems to have reached the end of their campaign. Lady luck seems to have deserted them at this critical juncture. A resurgent German side should easily be able to outplay them. I think a scoreline of 3-0 in favor of Germany is quite possible. However, I am not ruling out Turkey as they have everything to gain and nothing to loose.
As for other semi finals, I think on current form, Russia should be able to move to the finals.
So, I now change sides to support Russia to win the Euro.
Now that Portugal have been truly beaten, I think it is time to see some quality football devoid of the utterly predictable leg twists and body feints. Yes, that huge and totally undeserved hype is also out of the window along with that Christian Ronaldo.
Shyam
PS: One hopes, or rather, I hope that Croatia go on to win the euro. Yes, I had initially pegged Turkey to win this, but with Turkey playing Croatia, well, I would give Croatia the edge. Any other team and Turkey would have rolled past them with considerable ease.
The beauty of any cat and mouse game can be judged by the number of unexpected twists and turns that arise in it. However, what KamalHasan has tried in Dasavatharam is to introduce many characters, each with a twist and turn. It is a different issue that as the story moves towards the climax, you can almost predict the way each character is going to turn.
The story starts off in the 12th century when a Vishnu idol is ordered to be immersed into the sea. The priest, who objects to its immersion, is chained to the idol and immersed along with it. The story takes a dramatic Mach-1 injection from there on, moving at a breakneck speed, and not allowing the viewer to relax even a second. Kamalhasan has handled the story screenplay and dialogues and it suffices to say that he is probably the best screenplay writer in this part of the world.
Kamalhasan is a biological scientist in the United States in charge of developing biological weapons to safeguard it from any more terrorist attacks. A deadly vial of virus has been developed and due to usual cinematic compulsions, it escapes from the lab and is on its way to India.
What happens and how the vial is tracked down forms the remaining 150 minutes of the movie, told at an amazing speed and amazingly cohesive narration.
Perhaps the only place where I could observe a slip on the part of Kamalhasan's screenplay is when Asin changes her dress in the hospital. How did that happen ?
Asin shows a nice flair for comedy. Obviously enough, nothing needs to be said about Kamalhasan's talent for comedy.
One could imagine the producer Oscar Ravichandran, begging with Kamalhasan to make sure all the crores he pumps in the movie would be got back with minimum damage to him !
At no point can one pause to observe or appreciate the Actor in Kamalhasan. In fact, one can easily go on to say that there is no scope for the Actor in Kamalhasan to come out and display his wares.
Quite a lot of scenes make it too obvious that a lot of CGI has gone into the movie. That does make it a bit jarring. The makeup in most scenes, looks too wooden too.
All in all, this movie is easily worth a watch. Continuing the trend with earlier K.S.Ravikumar movies, this would definitely be counted as another hit for Kamalhasan.
Shyam
PS: One should not forget to take the whole movie with a pinch, nay, bucketloads, or rather, oceans full of salt ! (Yes, pun intended. Watch the movie to understand the pun) ;-)
So you would think that when the silly software engineers write code, they would think about usability too right ? Wrong. Absolutely wrong. Case in point : The SMS composing window of Motorola E6.
When you compose a SMS, you would want to go to your phone address book to choose your recipients by name right ? In E6, you do the reverse. You go to the phone address book, choose your recipient, and then compose the message. The obvious bug of this method is that you cannot send a single message to multiple recipients. The second obvious bug is that you cannot forward messages !!
I think frustration is slowly creeping into me. If only the Android comes out a bit early.
Shyam
PS: No more ordinary phones for me. I am not buying phones that do not run Linux.
I am pretty sure Dasavatharam will be a colossal hit. However, ardent fans of the "Actor" Kamalhasan will be disappointed, because the director, K.S.Ravikumar, is known to be a value for money director; he sticks to a time tested commercial format. Almost all his earlier movies exploited the star value of his hero's. In fact, it is he who gave Kamal and Rajini their biggest hits -- Thenali and Padayappa.
So, shed that hype, go to the theater expecting to be entertained and you would be entertained for sure. Go to the theater expecting a bagful of acting histrionics from Kamalhasan and come back disappointed.
My money is on Turkey. Before you raise that snigger, I would like to remind you that I tipped Greece to win it the last time around. I am not writing Greece away yet, but that fire in the team is missing this year.
Bill Gates