The return of Galeejnus

Sig. Tried to be all formal about this post. Make it look like the return of Singapore Machan to Singapore or Kamal’s release from prison in Mahanadhi, or in Kaidhiyin Diary. Incidentally, this was how I was starting before better counsels prevailed.

The internship is coming to an end, and I will be back in the City of Lions all too soon, and will be back to staring at a white wall, thinking of which porn site to stream from. No more demanding entry of hospital wardens, no more hobnobbing with corrupt policemen, no more finding smelly cyber cafes to send my copy. The Hindustan Times stint is nearly over. Galeej restarts.

I sound like an Amit.

Amitism has been kept carefully at bey during the almost nine months in Mumbai. I have been a sincere Galeejbai in Mumbai. Whenever figure has shown interest, which has been seldom, I have said kthxbai.

But it seems quite a lot of boys from Solid Galeej Stock have been quite active putting groundnuts. There is Ajay, (formerly Oosa, but nobody would dare call him that now) who has corrected a figure so pretty even a TV camera fell in love with her.

Then there is Pasu who has been ‘working on it’ for so many months now that it seems only fair that his extreme networking skillz have landed him in a few highly suspicious photos with one 1st year figure.

Rushi has been aah… ‘updating’ a certain batchmate so often that my attempts at giving her new information has always been followed by ‘yeah lol rushisig told me’

Ram, a retired Galeej, has been extreme dating, so much so that Pasu is attempting to make sure that he does not get license.

Anoj, one of the most enduring helmets in NUS, has finally decided to throw in the towel after the uberwtfpwnge of Ajay, aka USA correcting figure through gtalk alone.

Bledd. Sam Bledd? Sam Bledd, as Kishore Durairaj said.

Galeej boys are becoming endangered. Save the helmet. Save the Belt. Save the Bullet.

That is why I have decided it is time to bring back Galeejnus. This time its going to be serious. Its going to be about a forgotten generation of losers. Its going to be about staring at that NOC booth wondering how to reduce your IQ so as to get in to NOC. Its going to be about the direct proportionality of belly size to figure correction.

A note about the last. Pasu and I have made an academic study of belly size vis a vis figure interest. It seems that figures still see a soggy belly on a man as a sign of future prosperity. I allude to my past successes, and Pasu is ‘working on it’ following the test results.

Also, a last clarification. Gaykkism is spreading dangerously fast. We all know about the Great Gaykk.

Gaykk is the absolute helmet. In first year, when he was…lets say… 0.25*Gaykk, or a quarter his current size, a figure came up to him and pranced, and said ‘hey gigglez will u teach me basketball, gigglez?’ and Gaykk said ‘Give me 1000 sing dorra per hour and I will consider it’

Pwned.

But. Gaykk. Is. Not. Cool. It is amazing that the kalaai in uplifting words like sig, pakak and recent gaykkisms have actually made the words cool. They. Are. Not. Cool. Read my lips. Not. Cool.

Sig, and pakak are the last refuge of the verbally incompetent. We galeej boys purposely take a word and use it to create the maximum irritation. Hence, we use kthxbai, something guaranteed to make you burst a few brain cells. Or the latest act of violence on the English language, pl0X, apparently an abbreviation of please.

These words and the people who use them need to be castrated, or sent to a Singaporean JC. Either punishment is worse than the other. We use them to underscore the stupidity of some ‘conversing’ humans.

Hence, the next time you use Sig, remember it is because the conversation is sig. Which means this post is sig. Which means this blog is sig. Which is, of course, only too true. Sig.

When you use pakak, if you do use pakak, remember that it sounds like a hen with piles, or at least it is supposed to. When you use pakak, it is an act of charity towards the abey in front of you who has just been himself, that is, he has said something so painfully stupid that you wish we had never evolved past the bonobo stage, because monkeys can be stupid only with their bodies, but we humans can be stupid even if completely paralysed from the neck down.

So, Pl0X use these words with full awareness of how you are sounding: you are sounding like the guy who will not get a figure. If you are a figure and using it, you are no longer a figure.

Kthxbai. for now.

 

 

 

Subramaniyapuram: a greek tragedy in a mofussil town.

Since it is easier to convince as a reviewer than as a town-crier, and since Subramaniyapuram is a rare gem, I hope you shed any hopes of humour and read this straight, straight as I am writing it.

When I first saw the movie I expected a well seasoned, methodically constructed thriller about small-time mobsters who see their folly and clean up their act. I didn’t expect an inexorable progression to betrayal and defeat, an end with a dead pan “die you dog” from the movie’s most pathetic character, and a movie that doesn’t take a single step wrong.

This is better than Paruthiveeran, it makes me chuckle when I think of Ramu Kaka’s dhandha movies, and it sure as hell makes Mean Streets look like a clumsy ancestor. Here’s why.

Mean Streets is obviously the main source of this movie’s themes. But to accuse Sasikumar of lifting the idea, or ‘remaking’ Scorsece’s first personal project is doing him an injustice.

Subramanianapuram tackles very large, and important themes with a story set in a mofussil town, I think. I wouldn’t know just what the town stands for, I don’t quite know why its set in 1980 (except maybe the artistic freedom one gets from going back to a technologically and forensically simpler past).

But what I do know is that the characters don’t start as gangsters. They don’t start with knifes, they start with little fights over silly issues. A man keeps sending them to jail using anonymous calls. Their good friend, the brother of an ex-Councillor, Kanagu, keeps getting them out. They have a childish passion towards this good friend and would do anything for him. The ex-Councillor winces every time he hears somebody else getting positions of responsibility and power. He would do anything to get back in power. So our heroes would do anything for the ex-Councillor to get him back into power. Which is all very good, except the good friend, the brother, is the one calling the police and getting them into jail in the first place, so that their loyalty remains solid. Young Azhagar is in love with the ex-councillor’s daughter, which in 1980 means that he smiles like an idiot and she smiles back at him like a bigger one. They talk for the first time when he makes a particularly big fool of himself fighting for her sake. All the fight scenes have the air of a circus performance at this point. Azhagar’s best friend, Parama, played by Sasikumar himself, is a fierce man with a smouldering mien, capable of searing rages that are kept in check with savage restraint.

When they kill the Secretary of the town at the request of Kanagu, (I have no clue just why this post is worth killing for), they expect to be bailed out by him, and they are not. Here Sasikumar is brilliant. He doesn’t make them hide undercover. He doesn’t show them running feverishly from panting cops brandishing lathis. They go, they kill, they come back and surrender. Chumps. The ex-councillor ascends, they get tossed down.

And they find themselves, not in jail wearing white shorts and kurtas, but in judicial custody, a half-way house between sentencing and jail. A small-time rogue praises their valour, gets them out, and asks them for help. Parama, always reluctant to shed blood, agrees, much to Azhagar’s surprise. He explains. This guy got them out and then asked for help. So they kill the guy that needs killing. The rogue pays them and leaves them to their devices. Parama is right.

Now in a normal Tamil movie about gangsters there will be gratuitous scenes of bloodshed, this time with these guys giving chase rather than being chased. Again Sasikumar shoots with a tongue firmly in cheek. They get photographed in shiny, bright coloured shirts. Too bad they had only black and white photography in the 1980s. He doesn’t show them killing anyone. They are freelancers. They only want revenge, and they go about it methodically, following Kanagu with a single-minded vigour.

How this movie ends, I shouldn’t reveal, except maybe so that my brother gets pissed. But this review is to shut him up once and for all about Tamil gangster movies.

The point is that no movie is completely without accountability. You can make such a movie, and well, you can watch it yourself. When a movie like Subramaniypuram is made, it must be applauded for cleansing a genre so easily misused, exploited and exaggerated. A love story can be made with poignancy and beauty, but even if its made in the trashy Bollywood style, who cares? All you are glorifying is sex, the idiots who go in for it will come out older and wiser. But glorify gangster movies and you are in for a whole slew of wannabes waiting to get their own rush.Thats one reason why a good gangster movie is probably more important than a good comedy.

Second: no work of art is solely an expression of the artist’s character or his fears or his wet dreams. Its also a reflection of the times, the best or the worst. Dante need not even have believed in God, Satan and the Roman Catholic Church and it is unlikely he followed its tenets. He was a womaniser, he knew where he was headed, and still he wrote Inferno, where the lustful have particularly horrible punishments.

Shakespeare is an even greater case in point. Almost all his stories are in fact what were popular at that time. The histories of Holinshed were being widely read, so Shakespeare wrote about the biggest thugs like Richard the Third, and the best like Henry the 5th. Roman culture was being imitated, so he cheerfully wrote Julius Caesar and followed it up with Antony and Cleopatra. Playing to the gallery? sure.

Gangster movies are an obsession in India. Subramaniypuram is a penance in that genre.

I, Helmet

This post is not going to attempt being funny. It is not about being figure-less, devoid of beauty, blessed with a sense of humour/kalaai, or any of those things.

It is about M.D.R. Here is a picture.

Obviously you are laughing now, because his face looks funny. His eyes have a squint, and he is smiling unpleasantly.