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Dharmatthin Vaazhvu Dhannai Soodhu Kavvum - Dharmam Marupadi Vellum

Knowledge gained from enduring this in business settings for the past so many years in various levels of slavery aka experience.

A: ‘I think we are moving in the right direction’

Actual meaning: ‘Innum velai mudiyalai…eppo dhaan mudiyumo!!!’

A:‘You probably might want to check this… ’

Actual meaning: ‘ Olunga idhai modhalla paaru…’

A: ‘Yeah…’ , ‘Great…’

Actual meaning: When used alone, these words have no meaning.

A:‘Hello…How are you?’

Actual meaning: ‘Hello..Sollu’

A:‘I am sure you all agree with me that Mr X has done an amazing job’

Actual meaning: ‘Mr. X rembo nallavan nu othukko..’

You say something and the response is

A:‘Yeah.. however’

Actual meaning: ‘I don’t agree with you’

A: ‘I really appreciate your inputs’

Actual meaning: ‘I don’t give a damn….’

Perfect, Cool, Awesome, Fantastic, Groovy are positives.. It’s the same as saying ‘Good, Very good, Super’ etc. Another thing to note is the voice tone.

—
A reputed multinational company based in chennai is looking for an experienced lawyer to handle all the ‘legal’ affairs of the company.

Job Description:
At least 5 years experience in negotiating katta panchayat is required. A minimum of 3 years experience in field level operation - organizing gang war within courts, handling couter-attack operations against police, burning police stations is an absolute must. Feel free to add work done during college days as well.

The person will report directly to political bigwigs in our area and will be responsible for handling all matters relating to land grabbing, extortion, liaison with police officers on day to day basis.

Interested candidates may please send their bio-data (including complete video/photo footage of previous ‘field level operations’, if any) to:

Pokkiri India Pvt Ltd,
#420 Masakataan Avenue
Kaatumirandi Colony
Chennai - 420

—
My imagination is running wild!!
How many eligible candidates will apply if only we had a job posting like this today??? Any guesses?

“I always had a choice between love and hate in my life. And I chose love and I am here,”

- very poetic line with multiple layers to it, just like his music.

The true Oscar Nayagan lives in Samiyar madam and not in Alwarpet as we thought earlier.

Lyricist Prasoon Joshi said, “I think it is not his best work. He has done much better work in the past but this will lead people in the West to look up to the other works that Rahman and India have done.”

I cannot agree more to this statement. Need to check if Prasoon Joshi is yet another Virgo who has this urge to balance, critic, and be objective in times of euphoria.

A person by name Happy Wang, coming from abroad, goes and introduces herself to an absent minded developer.

She:’Hi, I’m Happy!’

He: ‘Hi, I am happy too!’

It sounds kinda tame to read but it had the folks @ work in splits for long!

The Kongu velala community, which constitute a good percentage of Tamil Nadu population have started their own political party. I was in Coimbatore the day this ‘ezhuchi maanadu’ happened. I could sense an unmistakeable sense of pride among some gounder youth that day.

S.Ve Shekar has started his own sangham supposedly for the welfare of Brahmins. Sharath Kumar has a party based largely backed by his Nadar community. Ramdoss already has a party for Vanniars. Thiruma for the scheduled communities. Forward block means Mukulathors.

It is also interesting to note that each of these communities are concentrated in a particular belt.

There are quite a few educated folks who support these caste affiliations in the label that ‘jaadhi pattru’ is okay; only ‘jaadhi discrimination’ is bad. The way it actually works is like this. If all things equal between two candidates, the one belonging to the caste of the interviewer can be selected for a job because that is ‘jadhi patru’. Jadhi patru is okay apparently.

Honestly, I think its better we split the entire Tamil nadu across caste lines. Let’s give Coimbatore, Erode, Karur regions to Gounders – Gounder Naadu. Kongu Naadu sounds too euphemistic.

Mylapore, Triplicane, West mambalam, parts of Kumbakonam to be called Brahmana Naadu, Virudhunagar, Sivakasi, Thirunelveli, Tiruchendur will henceforth be known as Nadar naadu, the town portions of Madurai will be Sourashtra Nadu, Vilupuram, Thindivanam, are Vannia Nadu even now; Karaikudi, Sivagangai, Devakottai, Pudukottai can form Naatukottai chetti nadu.

I may have missed out some jaadhis. This is not to be construed as I am discriminating against those. It’s just that I don’t know. Please enlighten me.

Such an arrangement is a true win-win for all. The community leaders who all have their eyes on political power - this arrangement ensures they get the positions of power. Splitting a bigger state to smaller states aids administrative convenience (is that not what we hear all the time? So I am repeating it here as well). Since all subjects will be of a particular jaadhi, the government folks will move the files for a smaller bribe since its all their ‘community fund’ and what they are doing is kinda giving it back to their ‘community’.

Such an arrangement also ensures ‘their man’ is the head of some government all the time. They need not worry about if the next chief minister will be from their community or not.

All want ‘their men’ to be judges, all want reservation for their community. I say lets go further and make it exclusive. I suppose that’s the only way you can stop reservation.

I’d say its better we do this partition right away in a peaceful manner. Why wait for tomorrow when it can be done today?

That is what it is, if my recent travel experience from CBE to Chennai is any indication. For one, Conti travels takes a route previously unheard of: Annur, Anthiyur, Thoppur, Vellore, Chennai. I’ve always been fascinated with bus and train routes - always look for another way to go from A to B. The entire journey from the Conti depot in Avinashi Road flyover to my home took me about 9 hours max. I couldn’t have asked for anything better This gives CBE-Chennai regulars an alternative to trains.

That leaves only the South Tamil Nadu folks with no option but to endure the jam near Ulundurpettai level crossing. With a single railway track, bad roads, a good percentage of chennai population from the south, the only folks laughing all the way to the banks are Omnibus operators and Southern Railway folks who find their tatkal tickets open at 8 AM and get sold at 8.10 AM, not including a ‘Service Unavailable’ page for about 5 minutes. All these contribute to a journey from Chennai to Madurai and Southwards an experience in hell with no respite in the near future.

A tamil youth by name Muthukumaran has committed suicide, ostensibly as a protest to stop the war in Sri Lanka. We have politicians going on fast for protecting the ‘tamil inam’, writing ‘final request’ letters to the central government. There has been widespread protests even in places like Canada to stop the alleged ethnic cleansing. Some Tamil film directors who do not have movie projects are busy staging protests. Tamil magazines have changed tones considerably since the days of May 21, 1991. I saw a poster which demanded a place for muthukumaran’s samadhi near marina, the poster duly indicating the community that was behind this request.

In these charged times, I have a few things to record more for myself than for anything else. I had to record my thoughts since I came across a few IT pros who were ‘proud of LTTE’ and Prabhakaran. People who get agitated when someone kills somebody in Mumbai, are now suddenly proud of their tamil brethren in Jaffna. There is widespread sympathy for LTTE now in Tamil Nadu. It’s been 26 years since the war in 1983. Nobody has any clues on the number of lives lost in a small piece of island south of India - all in the name of war for tamil inam and freedom. I do not want to get into the gory details of the war, about which side was right and which was wrong, about the human rights violations etc. Any armed struggle is bound to result in human rights violations and civilian massacres. That’s precisely why armies and war mongering nations are despised universally. Armed struggle is very little about upholding human rights, and more about crushing resistance somehow anyhow.

But its time the tamil diaspora wherever they are to do some introspection. What has been achieved in concrete terms in all these years? And what has been the actual and opportunity cost incurred to achieve whatever has been achieved? How do we come to the conclusion that Eelam is the only viable solution and nothing else and it’s worth losing whatever number of lives already lost and likely to lose in future to attain that? Even assuming the Sri lankan government has been below par on its treatment of tamils, has the so called tamil leadership taken a pragmatic approach rather than simply rant about veeram, inam, maanam, kalchaaram etc? Why was the LTTE banned from even the European Union? Why even the Norwegians who tried desperately for peace in the region are turning silent spectators today.

To all those part-time politicans and other folks who sympathize with the war and the Eelam cause in Tamil Nadu, what do they know about the fate of tamil refugees once they land in India? How many of them have lived a life of dignity here? I would like to know the contribution of people like Sathyaraj in providing for the betterment of the refugees. Let’s not even talk about those who are caught in the war in jaffna. It’s easy to go to some podhu kootam and rant about how the tamils are victimized across the world and return to their own home, while all this puratchi talk only increases aggression and renders a few more thousands homeless, family less and being thrown into a foreign country.

I think the LTTE and the political leadership of Sri lanka should’ve settled for an amicable settlement where the north east parts had some degree of autonomy but within the state of Sri Lanka. If only the LTTE had agreed to a peaceful settlement, that would’ve given time to educate their kith and kin, and move to countries where the population is sparse and where life is more peaceful than where they are. Leadership is not just about running an army. Leaderhsip is also about being realistic. I do not have much respect for leaders who wage war knowing well the odds are against them. If the tamils can move from Tamil nadu to sri lanka, they might as well move to other countries in much favorable terms. All the fighting all theses years have ensured that the LTTE has been banned by most of the developed countries. When a foreign govt. sees a prospective tamil migrant from Sri lankaa, they will be concerned if the migrants are of the out-lawed LTTE.

On the other hand, the LTTE had done great direpute to its name by systematically eliminating all the other tamil leaders in that region who had views different from them. How many of those who commit suicides today in Tamil Nadu know about the Padmanabha assasination in Chennai in 1989 by the LTTE?

Coming to the alleged threat faced by Tamil Inam, to be sure, there are issues not only in Sri lanka, but also in Malaysia. Problems, issues and perceived discrimination are bound to happen in any place – be it Sri lanka, Malaysia, Tamil Nadu or Bengalooru. The answer to all is not AK-47 or suicide bombings or bus burnings. If suicide bombing can be justified in Sri lanka, it does not take much long to justify it in Chennai. If armed struggle is the only way we can safeguard tamil inam and kalachaaram, then I’d say we are damned stupid and deserve to vanish precisely because of this stupidity. I seriously do not understand in what way is this jingoism different from the activities of some Muslim fundamentalist groups across the world.

I am no ethnographer. But from whatever I’ve seen a group which adapts itself to changing times and opportunities, which prepares its next generation to progress in life, gradually manage to retain its identities and traditions and gets more powerful in the long run. Whereas any group which attaches too much pride to its way of life (it can be linguistic, religious, ethnic, caste - essentially any pride by association), is slow to adapt to changing times and opportunities, faces extinction not because of others but by its own stupidity. Empty rhetorics about veeram, theeram, maanamm etc does not go very far.

I do not think upholding a language can help a group survive as the likes of Ramdoss or Bharathiraja claim to be. On the other hand, any step to equip the folks to make a peaceful living eventually ensures the survival of their language and customs and if they are shrewd enough, form a powerful, separate independent state. All this culture, tradition and all those fundas are subordinate to survival and socio-economic progression.

Tamil inam is under threat, and faces extinction primarily because of this empty jingoism, and parochialism of its politicians, part time film directors, jobless actors and the semi-literate populace, and not from outside forces. Lets focus on what needs to be done for the future. And forming human chains in Mount road is not to help the cause of Tamil Inam.

தமிழன் உருப்படுகிற வழியைப் பார்க்கவில்லை என்றால் தமிழை ஆண்டவனால் கூட காப்பாற்ற முடியாது.

தமிழனுக்காக உயிரையே விடுவேன் என்று அலறும் அரசியல்வாதிகள் உண்மையில் மயிரைக்கூட விட மாட்டார்கள்.

When you hear the news that someone who can never die is no more, your mind does not accept it.
The mind is right. Legends like Nagesh transcend past-present-future paradigms. My grand father loved his comedies, so did my dad, so did I. The story will continue.