June next year will see All India Radio (AIR) Madras/Chennai celebrate its 80th birthday. The station had evolved from the first broadcasting service in India, V Krishnaswamy Chetty’s Madras Presidency Radio Club established in 1924. It made its first broadcast from Holloway’s Garden in Egmore on July 31. The Club was rescued from financial difficulties in 1927 by the Madras Municipal Corporation which ran it till AIR put down roots in Madras.
AIR itself celebrated the 80th birthday of its naming last year. Lionel Fielden, an Oxonian from the BBC, arrived in India in 1935 to head what had been set up in 1930 as the Indian State Broadcasting Service (ISBS). He thought the name not catchy enough. But to change a Viceroy-approved name was not the done thing. He relates how he got it done:
“I cornered Lord Linlithgow after a Viceregal banquet and said plaintively that I was in great difficulty. … I said I was sure he agreed with me that ISBS was a clumsy title. … But I could not, I said, think of another title; could you help me? … It should be something general. He rose beautifully to the bait. ‘All India?’ I expressed my astonishment … [It was] the very thing. But surely not ‘Broadcasting?’ After some thought he suggested ‘Radio’. Splendid, I said, and what beautiful initials.” (Fielden in The Broadcasting in India, Awasthy G. C., 1965).
Much of that may have been related tongue-in-cheek, but he was more serious — and possibly prophetic — when, as Controller of Broadcasting, he wrote an article for The Hindu’s supplement to mark the inauguration of AIR (Madras). In the article on the future of Carnatic music, written as a letter to the Station Director, Madras, in 2,500 AD, he said:
“I fear that in your day (2,500 A.D.) Indian music as we know it will be forgotten. I can only say we are doing our best to save it. The impact of the West in our time is strong enough to make it clear that the younger generation is drifting into an easy acceptance of Western harmonies and moving away from the static and intricate melodies — often too prolonged — of their own tradition. It seems that if Indian music is not to be drowned by the clangours of jazz, the addition of harmony — or at any rate some growth and progress in that direction — is essential. I do not mean by this that there is any failure to recognise the inherent beauty and individualism of Indian Classical music and the inestimable value of its freedom in improvisation. The trouble is that the Sangit Vidwans refuse to accept the necessity for any measure of adaptation and persist in their contention that Indian music has already reached perfection. Acrobatic feats of the larynx, no matter what quality of voice, are accepted as sufficient indications of a perfected art. In these days of mechanical reproduction and rapid communication, the musical language of four continents cannot but exert pressure on the fifth and while Indian classicists still insist on long performances — stretching to even three hours for a single musician — and ignore the necessity of proper voice production, the youth of India is in danger of forgetting its own musical language altogether.”
A sahib from on high speaking down to the natives, or prophetic? I’m no music fan, so I don’t know. Perhaps Sriram V would like to respond.
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The uncivil civil servant
My reference to Sir Chettur Sankaran Nair (Miscellany, April 30) had MN Nair wondering whether I had heard of Sir Sankaran Nair’s distant cousin, SK Chettur, ICS, who on one occasion had been not only uncivil but vindictive. I had indeed heard the story, but it is worth repeating.
In January 1939, when Chettur was a Sub-Collector, he and his wife and a friend went to an event in Palghat being held as part of the Sri Thyagaraja Festival. When an usher noticed Chettur and his friend smoking, he namaskaramed to them and politely requested them to stop smoking as it was not appropriate to do so on what was a semi-religious occasion. The friend put out his cigarette, but Chettur continued smoking. When several in the audience started shouting at him to stop smoking, the Chetturs and their friend walked out. Outside the temporary pandal, Chettur shouted for the usher and asked him to apologise. In his stead, the organisers apologised, but Chettur walked away in a huff followed by his wife and friend.
The next day, January 11, The Hindu reported, “Sensation prevails in Palghat following the demolition of the entertainment pandal put up at the Ram Dhyan Matom in Kalapathy Agraharam on the order of the Sub-Divisional Magistrate of Palghat (Chettur). The pandal had been put up in connection with the Sri Thyagaraja festival which commenced yesterday.” The report followed the Police informing the organisers that, despite having Municipal permission for it, they had to dismantle it by 4 pm. The organisers rushed to Chettur and apologised all over again. All he would say was that his order stood. And the organisers carried them out in front of a large posse of policemen who were there to keep protesters out.
A few days later, “A memorial on behalf of the citizens of Palghat” was submitted to the Prime Minister (as Chief Ministers were then titled) stating the facts. What Prime Minister Rajagoplachari had to reply is not known, but the next we hear is of a two-column long letter in The Hindu from nine citizens of Palghat reiterating the facts.
Then came the sting in the tail. The Police registered a case against the organisers for “Putting up a pandal in the public street and obstructing traffic.” I am sure the Sub-Divisional Magistrate would have found in favour of the Police.
The chronicler of Madras that is Chennai tells stories of people, places, and events from the years gone by, and sometimes, from today.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Society> Madras Miscellany – History & Culture / by S. Muthiah / May 21st, 2018
Work to establish a museum at Keezhadi, near Madurai, will start soon, Minister for Tamil Official Language and Tamil Culture K. Pandiarajan has said.
Addressing reporters at the Coimbatore airport on Friday, he added the government had allotted ₹1 crore for the purpose. The museum will house the 2,200-odd artefacts that the recent excavations had helped unearth over 109 acres, and more that could be discovered in the next six months. The 2,200-odd artefacts were unearthed over an 18-day period.
The fourth round of excavations were going on, and thus far, 7,700 artefacts had been unearthed, the Minister said and added that of those, a good number was in Mysuru and the rest was with the State government.
The Minister also said that the government would also establish museums to house artefacts in Arachalur, Erode, Korkai and Thoothukudi.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Coimbatore / by Staff Reporter / Coimbatore – May 19th, 2018
The State Archaeology Department is in the process of classifying more than 12,000 artefacts found at Azhangakulam in Ramanathapuram district and will send them for carbon dating, an official of the department said.
The department has been undertaking excavations at Azhagankulam and the artefacts found at the site include ivory objects, copper coins, quartz, crystals, iron smelters, furnace, potsherds and terracotta plates, among others.
“These artefacts are now being classified, and will be documented, catalogued, photographed and videographed,” the official said.
“Following this, they will be sent for carbon dating,” the official added.
Last year, the department began its eighth season of excavations.
The Tamil Nadu government had sanctioned ₹55 lakh for the purpose.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Tamil Nadu / by T.K. Rohit / Chennai – May 14th, 2018
The death of Lester James Peiris, the father of the ‘New Sinhala Cinema’, brings back to mind his winning in 1965, with his Gamperaliya (The changing village; 1963), the first Golden Peacock awarded and for taking Sinhala film-making not only out of Madras State studios but away from the clichétic Tamil film formula.
Lester was the London Correspondent of The Times of Ceylon when I was its Foreign News Editor in the 1950s. We were in regular touch during that period, when he was experimenting with film-making. When he returned to Ceylon he opted out of journalism and focused on cinema — first with government documentaries and then the making of a new kind of Sinhala film, one drawing inspiration from the realism of Italian and French films. We kept in touch, however, because Iranganie Serasinghe and Sita Jayawardana were two of his leading supporting actresses, both girls who worked with me in features and who were forever asking for time off for ‘shooting’ or who kept dozing after ‘night shoots’. But when I moved to Madras I lost touch with Lester whom many consider one of the greatest South Asian film-makers.
Lester made 20 full-length feature films and about a dozen documentaries and short films. He started with a winner, Rekawa (Line of Destiny, 1956), which focused on village life. It was the first Sinhala film to be shot entirely in the country and the first to be shot mainly outdoors. It was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival. Gamperaliya, for its part, was shot entirely outside the studio. Besides the Golden Peacock, it also won Mexico’s top international film festival award.
The first Sinhala film to be made, Kadavanu Porundhuva (Broken Promise), was shot entirely in Madras and released in Colombo on January 21, 1947. It was produced by S M Nayagam, who was what they called in Ceylon an Indian Tamil (being from the Tamil districts of Madras Presidency) and who not only pioneered the making of Sinhala films but also the starting of local industries. The film was directed by a Bengali, Joti Sinha. This was followed by 42 other Sinhala films being made in Madras, Coimbatore and Salem. It was only in the 1950s that Sinhala films began to be made in Colombo, where Nayagam had established the first studio. But even then, till legislation in the late 1950s, technicians from Madras continued to work in Ceylon — and the generation of Sinhala technicians who followed them benefited considerably from their mentoring.
One of the earliest from Madras to direct Sinhala films was Anthony Bhaskar Raj. Lenin Moraes was another director from Madras where he had learnt cinematography and make-up. J A Vincent was Art Director for over 100 Sinhala films after starting out with Asokamala being made in Central Studios, Coimbatore. Another connected with Asokamala was experienced cameraman Mohamed Masthan who also shot Sujatha in Salem. When he moved to Ceylon, he was guru to a generation of Ceylonese cameraman. He later went into direction. Other directors from Madras to work in Ceylon included A S A Samy, P Neelakantan, L S Ramachandran who pioneered Sinhala films on village life, and A S Nagarajan. After having been a scriptwriter in Madras, Nagarajan moved to Ceylon and into direction. Among his films was Mathalan, based on the Tamil hit Mangamma Sabatham.
Starting from where the Madras technicians left off, Lester James Peiris gave a completely new face to the Sinhala film industry. R.I.P., Lester.
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They mined for diamonds too
My scrip-collecting correspondent, Sayeed Cassim, has sent me some fascinating material, responding to my gold rush story (Miscellany, April 23). The best of it is a share certificate issued by the Devalah (Devala) Central Gold Mines Company Limited in 1881. This was one of the first companies to be established— even before the gold rush began — and, as I had recorded, it was promoted by Parry & Co, though the certificate (my enlarged picture today) gives no indication of that.
Accompanying it are the headings of three other certificates, those issued by the Western Pathoom Gold Prospecting Company Limited, the Sonepat Proprietary Gold Mining Company Limited, and the Dumra Gold Prospecting Syndicate Limited. Having made a study of these three certificates, Sayeed Cassim feels that “these were companies set up only to rake in the money and hoodwink the public.” He bases his presumption on the fact that there are several identical features in these certificates which “make their intentions suspicious”. He lists the following:
Similar authorised capital of each of these companies:
Date of all issues very close together in 1890
Printer the same: Calcutta Catholic Orphan Press;
Per value of each share only one rupee (to induce greater subscription?), and
Certificates of Western Pathoom and Dumra signed by the same person.
But that is not all. Apparently there were optimists who thought that there were diamonds in the hills too and companies were formed to prospect for them. He names The Madras Diamond Mining Company Limited and The Madras Presidency Diamond Fields Limited. Were they genuine speculators or in it for the quick buck?
If you want to take a better look at these certificates, Sayeed Cassim suggests you have a look at the website of David Barry of London (www.indianscripophily.com), who has “the largest and finest collection of Indian share certificate in the world.”
The chronicler of Madras that is Chennai tells stories of people, places, and events from the years gone by, and sometimes from today.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Society> History & Culture> Madras Miscellany / by S. Muthiah / May 14th, 2018
Paddler says stint would help fine-tune the technical aspects of his game
Indian paddler G. Sathiyan has signed a one-year contract with German super division club, ASV Grunwettersbach Tischtennis.
Sathiyan said he will play for the club from August, after the Asian Games. The contract runs through May 2019.
Sathiyan, who is plying his trade in the Polish league, said playing in Germany can do a world of good for him. “The league in Germany is more strict, in terms of commitment for a number of matches to be played, the team combination etc, when compared to the league in Poland.
“It would be a great experience playing against the likes of Timo Ball, Simon Gauzy, Stefan Fegerl and Paul Drinkhall etc. It would help me in my aim of breaking into the top-20 in the world,” he told Sportstar, from Germany.
The Chennai paddler hopes the stint also goes a long way in fine-tuning the technical aspects of his game.
Showcase skills
“There are a lot of improvements to be made in terms of my service and receiving. My forehand attack looks aggressive and has improved.
Also, the German league involves playing a lot of matches. It is also a platform to showcase my skills and the mental aspect also improves, especially when you are playing close games. I hope I can make significant changes in these by playing in the league,” he added.
Sathiyan said the focus would also be on his fitness. “The physical fitness system is excellent in Germany. We have trainers who have sound knowledge on the demands of the game and also on fitness. Training in these circumstances would go a long way in improving my fitness,” he explained.
Sathiyan, while playing in the Polish league, has used the ASV Grunwettersbach Tischtennis club for training purposes.
“Since I train here, it was also easy for them to understand my game and select me,” he said.
He credited A. Sharath Kamal for his inputs on playing in the foreign leagues. “He is the first player to have played in these leagues. He is a great senior and his guidance is invaluable. He knows better and has guided me in taking the right steps in my career,” Sathiyan added.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Sport> Other Sports / by M Hari Kishore / Chennai – May 11th, 2018
The last of the great British commercial names of the South still in business, Parry & Co, now Indian owned, has a curious historical sidelight that had its beginnings 150 years ago. It’s a story pointing to the firm’s obsession with gold in South India, an item few who know the Parry story would associate with its hard-headed business approach from its founding in 1788.
It was a few years before the lure of gold drew Parry’s to it in the 19th Century. The story of that gold began with the coffee blight ruining the planters in the Nilgiris and those who did not give up and go ‘Home’ frantically searching for alternative means of sustenance. Two of them were Australians who had been miners and were planting in the Wynaad near Gudalur. There’s gold in them ther’ hills, they announced in 1868, and the trickle that followed them turned into a gold rush.
The rush began in 1879 following a positive report of gold in the Nilgiris-Wynaad that Bough Smyth, an Australian mining engineer, had submitted to the Government of Madras. But Parry’s were ahead of him. In 1874, the South India Alpha Gold Company was promoted with a capital of £100,000 and Parry’s became its Managing Agents. This was followed by Parry’s seeding the Devala Central Gold Mining Company.
Estates that were being sold for virtually nothing now found their prices sky-rocketing, going for anything between £70 and £ 2600 an acre, as not only planters began to dig for gold but a rash of new companies followed them. It was reported that 41 companies were floated in England with a total capital of £5 million and 44 companies sprang up in Mysore and the Wynaad with a total capital of ₹5,50,000! And the ‘engineers’ they employed, one report has it, were “a quondam baker and a retired circus clown”. Prospectors like these made Devala and Pandalur, near Gudalur, boom towns. Hostelries sprang up, Devala even got a magistrate and Pandalur a racecourse!
Crushing began in 1881 and when one of the biggest companies reported to London that it had found four ounces of gold per ton, investments went through the roof. A few months later it reported that 19 tons had yielded two pennyweights of gold. And the crash began. In 1883, Government reported that the gold mining enterprise in the Wynaad had “almost collapsed”. By the next year, it had collapsed altogether. An 1875 newspaper from as far away as New Zealand had to eat its words: It had predicted “Ooctacamund, the delightful recherché sanatorium on the Neilgherries is to be the new bustling Ballarat (once Australia’s gold mining heart)… There is sure to be an exodus from Melbourne to Madras.” If the Australians had continued coming, they would have found Devala and Pandalur ghost towns. But it must also be stated that were enough traces of gold found to keep prospectors optimistic; one company in 1884 extracted 363 ounces of gold, another over a couple of years found 1174 ounces – the former valued at ₹16,500, the latter at £4500 – a pittance considering the investment.
You would think that with all this experience a company like Parry’s would think twice about gold. But when a prospector called TB Cass came to Parry’s in 1902 with a mining licence in the Nizam’s Hyderabad, Parry’s began sighting gold again. A few years later it floated the Indian Minerals Exploration Company which began operations in 1907. The losses were ₹5 lakh when the company was wound up in 1910 after winding down from 1908, all Parry getting out of it being an almirah that for years remained in Parry’s headquarters!
But Parry’s had not done with gold. A couple of years later, two South African miners turned up at Parry’s Calicut office with gold they said came from the Malabar rivers into which it would have been washed from the Wynaad. And in 1913 Parry’s formed the Pactolus Dredging Syndicate. That was washed away in 1913. Next, in 1916, a Parry’s sugar factory near Vizagapatam reported that it had found gold traces when boring for water. Could they secure the mining rights? A Director replied, “Quite interesting, but I sincerely hope we will not put money into it or even have an interest again in a mining venture.” Before and after, the firm has stuck to green gold (sugarcane and tea) and black gold (manure).
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A search for a doctor
They still keep finding this column from abroad, this time my correspondent being a Dr David Dance from the UK. He is trying to trace the descendants of a Dr CS Krishnaswami who worked in Rangoon, c. 1911. Working with the Pathological Laboratory there, Assistant Surgeon CSK had with his Chief, Dr Alfred Whitmore, presented a paper on a then new disease called Melioidosis (later Whitmore’s Disease) that D. Dance has been working on for the past 30 years. Dr Dance writes, “I have a fair bit on Whitmore but not Krishnaswami, who I would think returned to Madras on retirement.” Krishnaswami did, for I find in a book written by Burma-born Lakshmi Sundaram that a Dr CSK, who’d been in Burma, used to regularly visit her father who had returned to Madras on retirement. Dr. Dance (David.d@tropmedres.ac) wonders whether any of Dr CSK’s descendants will see this appeal and get in touch. The Doctors Whitmore and CSK had published their findings in the Indian Medical Gazette in July 1912.
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The chronicler of Madras that is Chennai tells stories of people, places, and events from the years gone by, and sometimes from today
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source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> History & Culture / by S, Muthiah / April 23rd, 2018
Ready-to-eat appalams in packets — that’s what the newly-launched Popodax is all about
M Lankalingam, Chairman MD and Innovation Head, Lanson Group, remembers the time he tried to fry appalam at the Anuga (food fair) in Germany.“This was in 1988. I had just joined my father and was in charge of frying the appalams,” he says. It proved to be a rather complicated task: there were restrictions on stoves, he says, and the one provided wouldn’t heat beyond 180 degree Celsius. “An appalam is an obstinate customer, it will not fry unless the temperature is exactly 200 degree Celsius.” But when he finally obtained a stove that did go up to that temperature, “it went crazy,” spattering him with hot oil. “My suit got completely blotched,” he grins.
Despite the stains on his suit, the incident turned out to be a fortunate one. A photograph of him making appalam became his marriage alliance photo, “to impress the girl and show her I could cook,” he smiles. She was indeed suitably impressed. “She didn’t know that the only thing I could cook was appalam,” says Lankalingam, whose exclusive appalams (they are called poppadums in England) have finally come home after spending the last 40 years traipsing around the world.
Journey into the past
Swag jostled with legacy at the launch of Popodax, a range of flavoured-ready-to-eat appalams, on Saturday. “We started exactly 40 years ago,” says Lankalingam at the launch, recounting the story that has now almost become an urban legend:
The year was 1978. On one of his trips to the UK, Lankalingam’s father S Murugesu, discovered that the poppadums served at the local bars were of poor quality. So he decided to do something about it. Enter the wafer-thin, perfectly proportioned urad dal pancakes made in pristine factories in South India, then exported abroad in a cook-to-eat format. “People laughed at him, but I believe that if you make a world class product it will work,” says Lankalingam, adding that what started as a quick bar snack soon crept into the pantries, kitchens and dining tables of the UK.
Realising that the average British home-maker neither had the time nor the vessels to fry these appalams, they decided to take it up a notch. “We launched the ready-to-eat version in 1987,” he says, adding that the factories in the UK that take care of this step are highly mechanised. Currently, they hold an 80 percent share of the market there, supplying numerous brands including Sharwood — that supplies to the Buckingham Palace — with these golden circles of crunch and joy. “People in England have a curry night regularly,” he says, where they recreate the Indian restaurant experience with curried meats, naan, flavoured rice and more, bought off supermarket shelves. And poppadums are an ubiquitous part of this meal, of course.
The long way home
A fiery orange cycle is parked in the corner of the ballroom at the Taj Coromandel Hotel in Nungambakkam. On its carrier is a basket from which long trails of air-filled, sealed packets peek out. We tear them open — like a packet of potato chips, they deflate — and delve into it. The bite-sized portions that come in three flavours are all that an appalam should be — crunchy, crackly, delicious. “I have always regretted that we never had our own brand,” he says, adding that this is the first time in forty years that they have had the guts to come into the local market.
So what has changed? “The new generation doesn’t know much about the appalam, “ he says. “We are losing our roots, our Indianness. This whole idea of Poppodax is a journey backwards into the future.” He draws a parallel between appalam and yoga. “Unless it is reinvented, repackaged, and delivered back, no one seems to want it.”
Our sense of culture and traditional knowledge is currently vested largely in the hands of the older generation, he points out. “If all our grandmothers died, we would be wiping out a lot of our culture.” Mechanisation, on the other hand, could help sustain tradition and help the current generation discover their roots. “We want to be a catalyst to this process,” he says.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Life & Style> Food / by Preeti Zachariah / April 23rd, 2018
Just a week ago, Chennai’s Velavan Senthilkumar was feeling low. The 20-year-old had exited in the very first round of the Rochester Open qualifiers in what was his first tournament in nearly a year.
Much to his credit, he has turned things around dramatically in a week’s time and can now reflect with unbridled joy on capturing his first ever Professional Squash Association (PSA) title.
Velavan, who is pursuing a course in statistics at Columbia University in New York, defeated fourth seed Tristan Eyesele of South Africa 7-11, 13-11, 12-10, 11-4 in the final of the Madison Open on Sunday after coming through the qualifying rounds.
Asked about the contrasting results in the two tournaments, the former British Junior Open champion put it down to a case of nerves getting the better of him. In turn, it fuelled a strong desire in Velavan to put things right in Madison.
“I was playing my first tournament in a year last week in Rochester. After playing a couple of PSA events in South Africa last April, I was just training and focusing on my academics. I was extremely nervous playing after so long in Rochester and was very upset with the result. But it motivated me to do well in Madison and things have turned out according to plan,” he said on Monday.
While Velavan might not have had a lot of playing time of late, he hasn’t stopped putting in the hard yards in training. He is currently being coached by England’s Alister Walker, a former world No. 12, aside from his coaches in Columbia.
“He is coaching me full time now,” Velavan continued, “I can see a lot of improvement in my game since the time I have started working with him. He is pushing me towards my goals and keeps in touch constantly to find out how I’m doing.”
Walker’s endeavour to play the role of a big brother is timely for Velavan, who was not just finding his feet on the court but off it as well. “It is not easy living alone. I do get homesick sometimes, but my schedule is so hectic that time flies. That really helps,” said the world No. 255.
What also helps the youngster is the fact that he makes a visit back to Chennai at every possible opportunity. He has also not lost touch with senior Indian stars like Joshna Chinappa and Dipika Pallikal.
“I stay in touch with the likes of Dipika and Joshna as well as Cyrus (Poncha) sir. I was really pleased for them after their rich haul of medals in the Commonwealth Games. I know that they have worked extremely hard for it, and their achievements are only going to help the sport grow.”
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> News> Sports News> Others / by Vivek Krishnan / TNN / April 23rd, 2018
Schoolchildren greet bikers from Finland embarking on a tour, at Sriperumbudur Panchayat Union Primary School, Mettupalayam, on Thursday. | Photo Credit: B. Velankanni Raj
65-day charity tour for girls’ education flagged off
The charity tour for girls’ education in rural India, on motorcycles from Chennai to Finland, commenced from the Sriperumpudur Panchayat Union Primary School, Mettupalayam near Oragadam on Thursday.
The 15,000-km tour aimed at mobilising funds for girls’ education in rural India will pass through 17 countries before reaching Finland, the home of 17 bikers who have embarked on this venture.
The 17-member team will pass through Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh to enter Nepal.
To cross many countries
From there they would pass through China, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia and Estonia to reach Finland.
The 65-day tour, organised jointly by the PeterPan Bike, Finland and SFA Motorcycle Rental, Chennai, was flagged off by Tourism Minister Vellamandi Natarajan and Transport Minister M.R. Vijayabaskar.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Chennai / by Staff Reporter / Kancheepuram – April 20th, 2018
They are the biggest South Indian cinematic voice abroad. With at least six movies releasing in the next few months, the Tamil diaspora tells us how they are taking control of their own narrative
When Kabali opened globally in 2016, it outperformed all other South Indian films released till then, raking in $4.05 million in four days in the US alone. Rajinikanth’s larger-than-life role and director Ranjith’s depiction of Malaysia’s Tamil labourers also garnered much attention. But that is not to say everyone was happy. “It was a narrative of South Indian caste-based politics framed within an inaccurate Malaysian context,” explains Kuala Lumpur-based filmmaker Shanjhey Kumar Perumal, sharing that films like Kabali “don’t really represent our experiences”. Tamil-French actor and writer Anthonythasan Jesuthasan (who goes by the nom-de-plume Shoba Sakthi), concurs. “[These films] might have diaspora characters, but they are not diaspora movies,” he says.
Seven months earlier, Perumal had released his Tamil début, Jagat, which also portrayed the lives of Tamil Malaysians — many of whom are descendents of indentured labourers the British had working on rubber plantations. “After independence, we were forced to relocate to urban areas, but we had no understanding of life outside the plantation. As a child, I lived in a squatter’s community for three years, and what I saw there provided the inspiration for Jagat, a coming-of-age story about a boy living in a similar community,” he says. However, securing distribution was a trial, thanks to the competition from Tamil cinema, which is widely distributed in the country.
The new voices
From the shores of Fiji to the frigid suburbs of Toronto, the Tamil diaspora has, for many years, provided a loyal audience base for Kodambakkam’s Tamil cinema. But after generations of life away from India, they are keen to author their own stories. In fact, today, they are the biggest South Indian cinematic voice abroad. A few projects — like Singaporean director K Rajagopal’s 2016 début, A Yellow Bird, and Sri Lankan documentary filmmaker Jude Ratnam’s Demon in Paradise— have even made it to international film festivals like Cannes.
“Many have been living away from their native land for long enough that they have formed entirely new relationships with Tamil culture,” says Vaseeharan Sivalingam, founder of the Norway Tamil Film Festival (NTTF), a nine-year-old outfit. “Since the early 1980s, we have been experiencing a slow emergence of Tamil diaspora cinema, which has quickened in the past four to five years. This year, for the first time at NTFF (which is holding its annual awards ceremony later this month), we have six feature length films from the diaspora, most of them from Malaysia,” he adds. While some filmmakers have superimposed their local flair on the formulaic song, dance and comedy routine, others have eschewed them in favour of their own styles.
A first in 40
Born in Colombo and raised in Batticaloa and Kandy, Sri Lankan filmmaker King Ratnam was keen to showcase the diversity of the island’s Tamil population in his recently-released debut feature, Komaali Kings . “I was also motivated by anger,” he says, “because this is the first fully Tamil feature length film to be released here in more than 40 years. Why has it taken so long for us to represent ourselves as we are — the way we speak, our landscapes, our problems, our civil unrest?”
The film follows Pat, a middle-aged Londoner who returns to Sri Lanka for a wedding, but finds himself at the mercy of his relatives after he maxes out his credit cards. “I chose comedy because producers like it better,” laughs Ratnam, who sourced LKR 30 million for the film. “It’s also an attempt to hold a mirror to our own absurdity and originality. That is why, except for the 5.1 sound mixing that I did in India, everything about the film, technically and otherwise, is Sri Lankan. I did it to prove a point,” he says. He admits, however, there were challenges with distribution. “Because [local Tamil films] are such a new phenomenon in Sri Lanka, we received a lot of step-motherly treatment, but we finally managed to release it in over 50 cinemas here, and also in Toronto.”
Cross-border collabs
Meanwhile in Malaysia, recent films have been featuring collaborations with the Tamil film industry. Music composer Shameshan Mani Maran’s soundtrack for Sughamaai Subbulakshmi (SSL), a Tamil Malaysian film releasing on May 17, includes ‘Aasai Keertanai’, a single sung by Indian playback singer Chinmayi. “The entire process gives me useful insight into how Kollywood functions; we can learn a lot through their technology,” he explains.
Interestingly, SSL — described by director Karthik Shamalan as a “feel good family movie about a protagonist who has to choose between his passion (football) and an obligation” — almost started out as a Malay [language] film. But childhood memories of spending six to seven hours a day at the cinema hall where his father ran a canteen, watching Tamil moviegoers’ reactions, made Shamalan feel confident about entertaining them with his own work. “So I decided to début with Tamil, the language I am most comfortable with,” he says. On the ground, though, he had to overcome a few bumps. Production was stalled for two years due to financial problems, until an ex-boss helped him out.
SSL is premièring internationally at NTFF, where it has already picked up awards (announced last week) for best director and best actor (female). “The film is an accurate portrayal of local life in Malaysia, and comes with the formula of a mainstream Tamil movie and Malaysian flair,” says NTFF’s Sivalingam, pointing to Malay colloquialisms and songs filmed on sandy beaches a la Kollywood’s commercial releases.
Shamalan is also exploring a new market across the ocean in Singapore, where Tamil television has always been more popular than cinema, thanks to state-backed funding. In an effort to encourage film production in the island country, Singaporean TV director SS Vikneshwaran Subramaniam has collaborated with Shamalan on Atcham Thavir. Produced by Malaysian radio station Raaga, the thriller-comedy, set to release on May 31 (in Singapore, Malaysia and Chennai), is being marketed as a cross-border collaboration. “The film — about a group of friends attending a wedding and ending up in hot soup — is our way of telling the world that we are also doing Tamil movies,” shares Shamalan.
Staying true to self
The Atcham Thavir team wants their next project to transcend more borders. “We want to collaborate with the Indian film industry and make more global Tamil films,” says Subramaniam. This is a sentiment that is finding a few echoes among the diaspora. Like Singapore-based director Abbas Akbar, whose childhood friendship with Tamil music director Ghibran paved the way for his recently-released Kollywood debut, Chennai2Singapore. For Akbar, the decision to come to India was a no-brainer. “We’ll have to end up here at some point,” he chuckles. “There’s only one Tamil cinema. Where else would I go?”
That said, the majority of the diaspora film fraternity want to nurture their own industries. Perumal, whose film Jagat was the first Tamil feature to win the Best Malaysian Film award at the 28th Malaysia Film Festival in 2016, has turned down several offers to work in India. “I believe it’s important to establish the voice of the Malaysian Tamil film industry, so we can move away from Kollywood imitations,” he says.
Tamil-Canadian filmmaker Lenin M Sivam, who fled the Sri Lankan civil conflict as a 17-year-old, is of the same bent of mind. In 2009, he used the $10,000 credit limit on his credit card to fund his début feature 1999, a gritty narrative about the gang violence that swept through Toronto’s Tamil communities when he was a teenager. “I wanted to tell my own story — one that I had personal connections to,” Sivam, now 43, says. “I lost a lot of friends because of this violence, and I knew Kollywood would never tell a story like that. To quote the poet R Cheran, ‘Indian Tamil filmmakers making movies about Sri Lankan Tamil problems is like a fish riding a bicycle’,” he adds, smiling. The film, which found success and recovered its costs, premiered at the 2010 Vancouver International Film Festival, where it was named one of the Top 10 Canadian films of the year.
Craft and controversy
In his upcoming feature, Roobha, starring Shoba Sakthi, and releasing in September, Sivam is turning to a more controversial topic — a middle-aged, married Sri Lankan Tamil man who falls in love with a much younger transgender woman. “Even though we see many transgenders in mainstream Tamil movies, it’s almost a taboo topic within the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora,” he says. The story is penned by Shoba Sakthi, who played the lead role in Jacques Audiard’s Cannes 2015 sweep away, Dheepan .
The search for the titular character was tough. “No male actor from within the Tamil community wanted to kiss a man,” he says. “But when we expanded our search to outside the community, we found Amrit Sandhu, who plays the role [of Roobha] with a lot of depth and precision.” The film is funded in large part by a fellow Sri Lankan Canadian, Warren Sinnathamby, a successful businessman who has little film experience but a keen desire to tell hard-hitting diaspora tales. “The movie took four years of my life, but it was important that I saw it through. It’s a big [Tamil] community out here in North America, and we have a lot of stories to tell, and for as long as we can, we will keep telling those stories,” Sivam concludes.
* The other voices
Kerala-born, New Jersey-raised filmmaker Abi Varghese has played a pivotal role in the rise of Malayalam voices in diaspora cinema. After directing the Fahadh Faasil-starrer Monsoon Mangoes , and the Netflix-distributed sitcom, Brown Nation, he is working with fellow Malayali, actress Melanie Chandran (of Code Black), on a pilot for a female-led television series. “With platforms like YouTube and Netflix, people are creating content at a younger age,” says Varghese, who is gearing up for the release of his sitcom Metropark, starring Ranvir Shorey and Purbi Joshi. “Working in New York, you meet so many talented people that it’s easier than ever to tell your own stories in a truthful manner.” In his future work, he wants to explore stories rooted in Indian culture, and not necessarily diaspora lives.
Acting on a similar impulse, Telugu-American cardiologist Praveena Paruchuri, started working on a script about a Telugu-American medical professional. “I tried to learn more about Telugu art through my family, but it wasn’t vibrant in America, and I found more work in Tamil and Malayalam. Today, it’s encouraging to see Telugu media professionals here, like comedian Hari Kondabolu. When I travelled to Hyderabad, I met [filmmaker Venkatesh Maha], and we collaborated on my maiden production Telugu feature, C/O Kancharapalem. It explores untold local Indian stories, but in my next film, I am keen to portray diaspora lives,” says Paruchuri.
Meanwhile, back home, filmmaker Rajiv Menon, who founded Chennai-based Mindscreen Film Institute, says an increasing number of diaspora Indians are coming down to hone their skills. “We have many from Singapore, France and the US coming to learn filmmaking and acting, and a few have begun working on their projects back home,” he confirms.
* The right note
Malaysian rapper Yogi B believes “there are fewer walls between the diaspora and the mainland” in the world of Tamil film and music. Founder of the now defunct Poetic Ammo, he paved the way for other diaspora rappers like Sri Lankan Dinesh Kanagaratnam (ADK) and fellow Malaysian, Sri Pagenthiran (Sri Rascol), who have lent their lyrics and voices to Tamil cinema, most notably in AR Rahman’s ‘Showkali’ song in the 2016 hit, Achcham Yenbadhu Madamaiyada.
Keen to hone talent, they are now mentoring new musicians. Yogi B’s latest discovery, Indian rap group Madurai Souljours, will release their album next year, while Sri Rascol and ADK, under their label Rap Machines, have signed on the Sri Lankan group Tea Kada Pasanga.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Entertainment> Movies / by Sindhuri Nandakumar / April 20th,2018
