3 movie review (Tamil Film)

To start off 3 is not your run of the mill young romantic movie that you would expect. Go with an open mind and you will like the movie. 3 starts off on a grim note but then the breezy school day romance with Chennai and its tuition center culture and school background setting tugs your heart. Ram (Dhanush) is  infatuated with Janani (Shruti Hasan) and follows her everywhere with his friend Kumaran (Siva Karthikeyan). There are some comic moments that really set the tempo for a nice romantic comedy you would think. Little bit of frantic chasing of the girl, Ram gets the love of his life. This whole phase is heart warming and both Dhanush and Shruthi look the part as higher secondary students. Ram has a loving family and Janani's family is trying to move to the US. This is the first phase of the movie and is nicely set up.

Phase 2- Is about a phase 5 years after they fell in love and Janani's family is moving to the US, Ram is not happy but lets her go. Janani cannot bear the thought of getting seperated and burns her travel documents and asks Ram to marry her immediately. What follows is a bit of really good interplay of parental love and anger and how Ram works for all of this to come together. Prabhu is really good as Ram's dad, a father who dotes on his son but is never very expressive. This part of the comes together nicely and all the characters play the part neatly.

Part 3- This is the phase of the movie where there are lot of twist and turns and the movie embarks on a serious path. Kudos to the director for exploring the psychological condition of bipolar disorder. Ram has bipolar disorder and is seriously affected by it, this is the part where Dhanush excels and makes the movie his own. Senthil (Sunder Ramu) as his close friend plays a very good supporting part. This is the part where the romance between Ram and Janani is tested with Ram withdrawing away from his love because of his fear that he might hurt her. The way the movie develops from here to a climax would be letting out too much about the movie at this stage.

First time director Aishwarya Dhanush must deserve marks for touching a subject that is not tackled frequently in mainstream Indian movies and needs to be commended for telling that even romantic stories have a darker side. The narration could have been tighter and more attention to script in terms of how actually Ram gets the bipolar disorder would have made given an authentic feel. Dhanush excels and proves why he won the national award last year, Shruthi Hasan gives a commendable performance and looks radiant throughout the movie. Siva Karthikeyan and Sunder Ramu have neatly supported the script as friends with Sunder Ramu deserving a special mention, he has really portrayed his confusion as a friend who is torn by what is happening to Ram. Prabhu and the girl who has played Shruthi's sister in the movie are good support too. The music of the movie is fresh and the song Kolaveri is really a deserving blockbuster. The movie is a tribute to childhood romance and it is a very nice attempt at showing how life challenges changes romance forever. Both lead characters do feel like 2 youngsters who are crazily in love with each other. What one would have liked is a tighter narration and a stronger script, nevertheless 3 is a brave attempt.

Rating:*** (out of 5)

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Cool to have baby gears @ home

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India's treasures - One more unraveled

I have never been to Sri Anantha Padmanaphasamy temple in Trivandrum, Kerala but I have always been enamoured by the temples of Kerela. I have visited some of the other famous temples and really been mesmerized by the ambiance and the way the temple custodians go out of the way to maintain the decorum and enforce temple rules. That said the reason I'm blogging is because of the interesting breaking news about the treasure trove found at Sri Anantha Padmanaphasamy temple ($ 22 bn by one estimate).

While the whole country and media is going berserk and debating on who must be responsible and what must be done with the treasure and how must it be utilized in the future, I for one is excited with the find.The treasure represents our country's history and a provides a rare insight and  reflection into our country's heritage.

The treasure must remain under the custody of the temple authority as the treasure rightfully belongs to the temple. The royal family must be commended for the way they have managed the temple and the treasure for hundreds of years. I think the issue is that we have very little appreciation of the history and part of this is because of the effective damage to our psyche by the British rule and I think policy makers even after independence have made no elaborate attempt to repair that damage. A good example is the history that is taught in schools. Each state has its own history text book with a lot of focus on independence struggle. Agreed that the independence struggle is an important aspect of our history to learn but what about the history for over 3,000 years before that!

We must revamp the history our kids learn in school and provide them with insights into the vast treasure trove of history that we have as a nation. If that is not done  then we would never realize the real value of the treasure like the one found at Sri Anantha Padmanabhasamy temple.

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Anti-corruption (Lokpal Bill) - How to go about drafting one?

Corruption without doubt is the greatest threat to our moral and social fabric in India. No other threat is as grave and as real as corruption. Corruption occurs on a daily basis and is so much a part and parcel of our lives that we consider it 'Normal'. Now that is a scary thought.
There has been some awareness and some political movement recently against corruption (like Anna Hazare's protest and Baba Ramdev's fast) though all this helped in highlighting corruption in the media and our dinner table conversations but it is very disheartening to see the members of the civil society and the government fighting and squabbling like kids.
The larger question is:
Is this the right way to go about address this pivotal issue without really including every democratic constituent into the whole process. No single committee of the civil society or a political party can preside over the process of finalizing the draft of the Lokpal bill. We will need every constituent representation and ideas to be involved in the process.
I think we have the political, judiciary and the executive representation but how do you really get in the common man especially the Indian middle class represented. And, I say that the participation of the Indian middle class is necessary because there is no one real representation for this important section of the population. We will need a platform so that people can voice their anti corruption ideas and suggestions. With regards to this one story caught my attention, in Iceland the government is using social networking to ensure participation by its citizens in drafting a new Constitution (more than 2/3rd of Icelanders are in Facebook). But, skeptics may say that this will not work because of the low level of computer and Internet penetration in India. I totally agree with that but the point is, not that one solution fits all, the point is explore and add in new ways of including people's participation along with other democratic means to important pieces of legislation like anti-corruption bill  draft and make sure the best ideas and the most practical are not lost in the jungle of politics.What do you think?

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