Malayalam commercials or the art of raping a language

Malayalees play a big role in the advertisement industry in the country, it is said. And, no doubt, Kerala is the most powerful market of the consumer products. But when it comes to the voice given in the commercials why we are so artificial? Of course, one can understand the artificially ugly voice given to dub the voice of Hindi actors to give it an ‘original’ feel but why our girls make ‘zzzzzz’ out of ‘s’ thus vulgarly making ‘Malyalm’ out of Malayalam? Can the post-modern ‘mothers’ of the language provide a convincing answer?

And why all the children who dub for Malayalam advertisements either speak in English accent or the accent of some other alien languages? Is it that such distortion of the voice and the language give a commercial mileage? It is for the advertisement agencies to answer.

Earlier I thought that the agencies want an ‘elitist’ flair to the commercials and maybe they thought the original accent will not give it. If so the same should be the case of all other languages too, which is not the case. While the kids and ladies in Tamil commercials, speak chaste Tamil, the chastity has been long lost in Malayalam commercials. Why? I have no answer. But one thing is for sure – there is some element of perversion somewhere.

If artificiality is the problem with the private commercials, when it comes to the government advertisements released by the DAVP and others in Malayalam, the problem is not limited to the atrocious voice they even invent even more atrocious words breaking all our notions about language and syntax with their ‘SOCHANALAYA’ Malayalam. Unfortunately, the authorities keep mum or feign ignorance when our dear friends repeatedly rape our mother tongue with their voice and syntax, after ‘toileitfying’ it!!

K V Haridasan: The neo-tantric identity of Indian art

Kannur: An artist who searched for the Indian identity not only in art but his life too. That was K V Haridasan, pioneer of the neo-tantric art movement in India, who died in Bangalore on Sunday.

Haridasan gave identity to modern art in south India, remembers R B Bhaskaran, veteran artist and former chairman, Lalita Kala Akademi. “He was one of the major contributors to the evolution of modern art movement in Chennai. He believed that Indian art should look Indian and that was why he was attracted towards tantric art, which came to be known as neo-tantric art.”
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Long live the MCPs!

What Yesudas has said is the reflection of a typical male chauvinistic society, which has no ‘sense of sin’ is ‘devouring’ the beauty of the women in the so-called 'aristocratic' settu mundu, or the sari for that matter, which incidentally expose the ‘feminine contours’ more than the jeans or the churidar!

It is up to a woman to wear what she likes, because one’s dressing is more about personality than sexuality.

In my opinion, jeans attributes kind of a masculine element to the appearance of a woman and it does not act as an ‘added catalyst’ to turn on a normal man, as it is just like any other dress. And for the abnormal, the attire doesn’t matter either!

The poor women dwelling in the streets are raped not because they wear tight jeans. The vultures and wolves in the society have enough reason to outrage the modesty of a woman, which has nothing to do with the dress, personality or even the sexuality of a woman.

And I don’t think the purdah can save a woman from such people, because concealment can also arouse dangerous curiosity.

We are a society that long lost the beauty of healthy sex life. And the same is with drinking too. Nowhere in the world you can see men drinking liquor with the ‘ritualistic fervor’ of black magic, and I think all these secret affairs are interlinked and it points to the some serious psychological ailment of the society, which the Ganagndharvan failed to understand.

We have heard enough about the young girls and toddlers getting raped, and the jeans are not the culprit there too.

Recently, a senior police officer told about a personal experience during the sitting of a Commission. He had to question a tribal woman in connection with some human rights issue. When the woman came near the Commission, her body was literally stinking and her dresses were all tattered. When he asked her about it, she said she decided not to take bath because she was afraid if her body was neat and clean, the wolves in the garb of the human beings will tear her off to satisfy their carnal interests. And this too happens in this society, because life is not like music here.

But sadly enough we need a reason for every criminality and when it comes to outraging the modesty of a woman, it is easy to blame the jeans. Long live the MCPs! 

N S Madhavan astounds football fans with his golden predictions

When Germany's Mario Goetze scored an amazing goal against Argentina he just looked at the clock and smiled under his breath. Seven more minutes left for the long whistle to blow - to declare the winner of the 2014 Fifa World Cup, thus proving the last in a series of his predictions become correct once again. And exactly that did happen. 

"I don't really call it prediction, it is rather observation on the teams and players that made me reach such a conclusion that the final will be between Germany and Argentina and the former will lift the cup," renowned writer N S Madhavan, who even wrote a short story on Rene Higuita, the goalkeeper for Colombia in 1990, told TOI. 

In this World Cup this was not his first prediction. 
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A manager who digs wells for upkeep of his aided school

He is a school manager with a difference

He owns an aided school that could be worth crores of rupees in terms of its real estate value but Sunilkumar Kovvummal (49) makes a living by digging wells and toiling hard at construction sites. 

He also spends part of this "hard-earned" money for the welfare of Morazha South ALP School here at a time when his counterparts with commercial interests demolish schools, citing financial burden and lack of profits. 

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Macondo: the neighbouring village of Khasak

P Sudhakaran

Much before we discovered the ‘global village’, there was one writer who built a bridge between the God’s Own country and Latin America. And he became a household name among us like Vaikom Muhammed Basheer, M T Vasudevan Nair or O V Vijayan. And he is the most popular Malayalam writer in the words of N S Madhavan! Gabriel García Márquez, the writer who needs no introduction!

Though Marquez literally happened to the Malayalis in the 80s after his winning Nobel Prize for 'One Hundred years of Solitude', a wide array of his works got published here within years, mostly without copyright, thanks to the small-time publishers. Though his celebrated works got published through the brand of DC Books, it was the small-timers who played a major role in making Marquez a household name in Kerala.  

And that opened Kerala’s doors directly to the skies of Latin America’ magic realism, thus creating an equation with the legends like Jorge Luis Borges, Yuan Rulfo among others.  However, Marquez was unbeaten in the popularity though one can agree or disagree whether he is the best of Latin American writers. During the good old days of the library movement, people waited for weeks to get a chance to read ‘Ekanthathayude Nooru Varshangal’, the Malayalam translation of One Hundred Years of Solitude, a phenomenon we experienced very rarely for titles like MT’s ‘Randamoozham’ 

When One Hundred years of Solitude was published in 1984, Malayali readers felt no alienation from the fictitious town of Macondo and Melquiades the Gypsy became one among them, swinging between memories and forgetfulness and cracking the family tree with great pain.

However, even before that a small-time publisher from Guruvayur, Sikha, had introduced the great writer by publishing the excerpt of his celebrated autobiographic interview ‘The Fragrance of Guava, which was later published in complete format by Shalvy of Mulberry Publications, Kozhikode. Later, the titles like The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor, No One Writes to the Colonel got published, which also gave a new identity to the little publishing in Kerala, that was so far dominated by one or two big timers. Even the short story, ‘Tuesday Siesta’, was debated at length because it was departure from his magic realism.

However, it was the Malayalam translation of One Hundred Years of Solitude that popularized Marquez in Kerala. The destination of the global tourist got addicted to the world of magic realism in no time. A few years back, when mysterious red rains were reported from some part of Kerala, someone commented that it is nothing strange because such miracles can happen in a state that celebrates Marquez and magic realism.

No doubt, for Malayalis Macondo was a neighbouring village bordering Vijayan’s Khasak in their world sans border, while R K Narayanan’s Malgudi still remained an alien land in a faraway planet. That was Marquez effect for Malayalis who started thinking globally much before globalization was invented!