Vinnaithandi Varuvaya - Facts, fiction and awesome music!

Guy meets gal – Omana Penne

Guy. Gal. All he knows is that she is a beautiful Mallu lass. Imagine, chimes + bright yellow light combination. He loses his heart, and she becomes his ‘Oh Manap PeNNe.’ (Oh! Woman in/of my heart) Or is it, Oh MaNap peN? (Oh bride) Either way, is there a better raga to express beauty other than Mohanam? (meaning beauty again) Falling to the cliché trap (set by the Tamils?) of naming any Malayaali girl at sight as Omana, he starts off a soothing number, lucky lady, she has the overtly talented Benny Dayal giving back up voice to her man and an equally talented Nadaswara Vidhwaan continuing. The song ends in a carol-esque mood. Divine love?

Guy woos gal - Hosanna

The girl probably has no idea that she broke a guy’s heart by her mere presence, and he gears up to present his ‘other heart’ for her to break. True love, folks. Guy rants, goes insane, gets her mobile no. and couldn’t go beyond hello OO helloooOO and helloOOOoo. Turns out the girl has some ENT problem, she says ‘Hosanna’ and ‘Ooooo’ in response, in Suzanne’s style. The guy, Vijayprakash singing for him, is relentless in his approach, he changes scale and proposes his everlasting love to Miss. Mallu.

Gals are gals – Kannukkul kannai

As the custom demands, our gal doesn’t say ‘I love you’ back. But still lets him get close to her and kiss! I mean, what is the boy’s problem, he has his share of fun, could he not be satisfied with that? He demands love and sings ‘kannukkul kannai.’ No, Harris Jeyraj did not tune this song, it is ARR, check out the violin piece in the beginning, Thank you.

‘Yes’, atlast – Anbil Avan

She finally says the magical three words. They, along with Chinmayi and Deva, talk about their marital life, discuss retirement plans, encourage people to fall in love, et al. All with the amazing Mridangam background. Anbil avan. He thinks the song has a ‘boom boom’ (boys) feel to it, she thinks she has listened to the song in some discotheque, but couldn’t recollect the exact tune, thaam thakka? (Thirumala), Oru nanban irundal? (E20U18). Guy is irritated at such an insult, and unleashes a truth ‘love is lost in marriages’ and leaves the scene, abruptly.

Pleads pardon - Mannippaya

She goes weak in love, wants him to take her back, and literally melts like ice on fire, begging him to forgive her. Though she starts off like 'Woh Albeli' (Zubeida), she lets him ignore it with her honey-tone. She thinks he has left her forever and curses herself for hurting him. Hello fella, are you even listening? One female out here, by the name Shreya Ghoshal is synchronizing a classical tune with Raja’s earthy touch for you, and you would not listen? Manippaya?? Nah. He has no idea of listening, he will have A.R.Rahman with his healing voice sing, in an accent of his own (kalaignanay haa-aneen), and end it all with the best ‘kural’ out of the 1330. Pardon granted to the both the sides, of course.

D-day - Aaromale

It is the day of their marriage. Imagine a lush green mountain spreading its wings with a private waterfall to its left. Add a restless sea for the ‘hush’ effect. Spine chilling southern breeze passes by. Wafts of floral fragrance entice. Sunrays behave like moonbeams. It’s cloudy, it’s ‘twilighty.’ Earth has a heavenly atmosphere. Blues? That is only the tune. Like a saxophone blessed with sweet sounding words, someone calls out, Aaromaaleeeee! They hold hands and smile in unison; they forget that the song is entirely in Malayalam. Alphonse, take a bow.

Lived happily, ever after – Vinnaiththandi varuvaya

We see the guy and the gal becoming, a man and woman, finally. Montage shots of their life together. Happiness, fun, pleasure, love. Synonyms? As they run around in the town with their kids, a man in the streets croons a number in Broadway musical style. Karthik lends his vocals.

Oh yes, the couple thanks Thamarai for her lyrical input, but are not 100% satisfied, though. They think they discovered their love through music, and have a plan to build a temple for A.R.Rahman, any supporters?

Writing for deadlines

ToS (shortly, Thoughts On Sale) is my matrimonial hut, but Bhavna will remain my maternal homestead (I remember calling her "my daughter")

The reason why I call my blog that is stark enough, I have no rules here. Nobody has ever dictated terms here. I publish a post as and when it pleases me.

The reason why I mentioned my e-mag (oh yeah there is a wonderful teamwork behind it, but I feel a surge of possessiveness gag my throat when I say "my ToS") here is because, I like the terms and conditions it brings along.

If Bhavna is all poise and grace, true to her maternal reputation, ToS is like a new husband who is very demanding in his love. And if you are wondering why ToS is a “he”, I have a simple answer, ' too techie and indecisive.'

Unlike her, he can be a headache. Forcing to bond with "his clan", making me choose between his mother and mine, posing multivariate rational and irrational restrictions, getting jealous insanely, and what not.

But hey, I chose him….Over I have no clue how many suitors (Ok, I am just making that up). All of what he is doing is a part of the invisible nuptial agreement between us. In fact, he pushes me to be at my feminine best, and I love it.

I know…you are still wondering about the relevance of the title.

I am a firm believer of the fact that one can’t have an appointment with creativity. However, if you cannot be creative at your sweet will, does it not become just another labored act which has no connection whatsoever with art or creativity? I mean, when you have a painfully twisted reason not to write, than to write simply, just for the love of words, I think it is funny.

What is the sudden strike amongst writers that “writing for deadlines is no writing” all about? Beyond a point, it is plain farce. As farcical as “love culminating in marriage is no love” (Na, no reference to live-in relationships – recollect “September maadham from Alaipayuthe)

We knew when we married that we are going to meet each other daily and share our routines, amidst regular sessions of fresh love. Suddenly, just the thought of looking at the same face daily gets boring? And you blame your love/marriage for that??

My God. We live with the knowledge of our death-lines, (only place where I can’t say deadline and mean the future, I guess) What does it do, kill our present?

I think the problem is not with the deadlines, it is with the passion to write. When you have the passion ebbing out, you can’t phrase a sentence to save your momma. On a different note, writing to save your momma is as much a deadline as any other. Let’s face it, nobody in the entire history of humanity has ever been “too busy” to do something they have committed to, including turning their brain-stove on to let a creative spark fly, and cook up. This is what it comes down to, love and commitment, nothing more or less.

At times, when people say they have lost their love, I cannot but help my mind by asking – Did you find it at all? In your self?

With regards,

Bhargavi,

The dumb one, who earnestly and proudly thinks she has emptied all her sense of creativity every single time she publishes any sentence anywhere possible.

UPDATE : Thanks Dipak , for the impetus.

Raining sea

I was wondering if you are the Sun in my day or the Moon in my night. Only then did I realize that you are my sky, the endless and endearing. You think I am all excited to bid good-bye to you and reach the shore with an excitement, boundless. I am all agitated to leave your side and die a noiseless death when I reach the other end.

Tumbling and grumbling I make my way back unto you to know that you were never there. I have never owned you to let go of you, though you own every molecule of mine. You complete yourself and have no needs. I have known no other need but to be completed by you. I beg, borrow, dance and dig, but you keep moving on. Sailing merrily, flowing from one end to another, flashing a lightning smile or a thunderous laughter occasionally.

I assume that the remnant clouds have a message for me, one with an ink of my ilk, transparent and cold. Not this time though, you leave me bellowing and brawling, and then I smile in silence. You reply in silence, you know no other language. I wait, impatiently.

Patience has its rewards, they say. My time comes, finally. You take me in an aerial route. I vaporize into nothingness in the pleasure of thy love and perspire at your soft caress. You grin. You find me too transparent, too cold and too saline. I say that I need your opaque sweetness of warmth. You think that would make me vanish. If not being is the only way to be with you, I say that I am only too glad to.

You are convinced that, that is not me. You think you don’t deserve me anymore. ‘Life has to move on’ you quip, for that is all you know. You plan the day; you plan the journey, which would be our last journey together, my funeral. ‘Your rebirth’, you correct me. You carry me all the way to my place, not once complaining about my weight. I muster courage to smile at you, for you give me no choice. I see that you were waiting for this moment to come, where I realize your love for me. You let me down. You let me drip. You let me drop. I suddenly realize my lightness in motion, gravity, is it? You shout back, ‘I exchanged my purity for your salinity.’ I shudder and blush, in all seven colors. As I land into the sea again, I can’t help but say that, I am still saline, and I do need you, every moment in my life. We are seeing each other, once again.I wished you would take me unto you, once again, for a lifetime. You say love has a reason and a season. Views differ.

Inamorato

‘I think I should tell him this’ Mathruka said suddenly, without opening her eyes.

‘No.’ replied Tanya, understanding the head and tail of it instantaneously.

‘No, Tanya, you do not understand this, I know he is in love, I’m too sure of it!’

‘Oh, I didn’t know there were confirmatory tests, what are they anyway?’

‘I saw his eyes shining…they were too brilliant that I was blinded that very instant.’

‘Cut the crap. You know that I love him. Do you happen to see that supernatural light in my eyes too?’

‘You should be asking him that.’

‘Sure you can say that. Admit it, you want to square it off, act great, don’t you?’

Mathruka laughed a careless laughter. ‘Seriously, you overrate me.’

‘No. You are making his life a living hell already. But the madman that he is, he thinks it is a blessing. What you say now will shatter him into pieces, and mind you, a person in love is made of glass, no mending possible, ever.’

‘Like I care. I repeat it, I know for sure that he is crazily in love with me, and would love irrespective of whatever I have said before, or will say. But, I am not phony enough, what do you say?’

‘Explain.’

‘The incident that lead to the moment? Sure. Just that it is nothing much for a person who did not see what it really was. I had asked him for some water. I wasn’t exactly dying, but needed it anyway. I didn’t even ask him that, he looked at me checking out the shops and was off in a moment. He was back in a flash, and that is no exaggeration. Now, you know that I’m not touchy about love. I never believed in stuff which ranted that love gives you power. They are wrong. Love gives enormous power. It makes one extraordinary from a nobody. You cannot go higher up without paying for it, doesn’t make any sense to me. ‘

‘Shut up, you are gasping.’ Tanya said amidst tears.

‘Now, take me to his room.’

‘What? You mean he is in this hospital? What?

‘Don’t worry, he is alive, fractures in legs.'

‘How did you manage to kill yourself Mathruka? What is this insanity all about?’

‘I did say, I saw the light and was blinded.’ (Gentle smile) ‘Now, Tanya, take these moronic stuff off my body, I want to say this once to him – ‘I don’t love you, Vishwas!’

She knows me...

It has been three years since I fell in love with her. I remember the moment I met her, wearing a salwar of milk white and olive green, gleaming happily. She instantly stuck to my life, became a part of my thought process, echoed in every living memory. I gathered courage to meet her eyes and started talking to her. It was hard in the beginning. I had so much to communicate, but would not know where to start nor where to end. She kept her patience.

She waited until my thoughts took the form of words and pegged me on to talk further. I presented her a black cum blue salwar as a token of my love, she took it with an embarrassed smile. She introduced me to her friends. Ah, her people…were they all different! She has an amazing world full of strangers that you typically find in core literature...solid individuals. They shared their lives to me, in bits and chunks. We became joyful people who bartered only thoughts and nothing else. She was not complaining.

She welcomed my newfound freedom of thoughts. I got into a job, the infamous practice where you slog for money and at rare times, justice. I could not attend to her as I earlier did. I kept missing dates, cancelled the short meet ups, at times even stopped thinking about her. Nevertheless, whenever I came to her, I was hers, all hers. She knows that I do not come to please her nor do I talk to her because I have to. I do, because I want and need to, no other reason. It has been a bond beyond words and descriptions. She still has not slipped in a word that I am neglecting her. She knows that I love her with all my might and time. Thanks, Bhavna, for your unconditional love.

Lilly's wails

Oh my lovely moon,
Doused as you are now,
Deserting me of my light,
Far away in a land of dunes,
Accompanied by a lone flute,
With its holed up body,
Silence closing in calculatedly
Like an anticipated death,
A gentle choke of wreath-like fragrance,
Time walking against the moon’s gravity,
Egging itself to still slower down.

Oh my lovely moon,
Your beam reeks of indifference,
Playing with my likes and dislikes,
Compromising with life,
Living the compromises,
Pruning my wings,
To reach your heights,
Heart it shatters
And resumes its knelling
With no pace nor space
Cowering in the corner of a circle.


Oh my lovely moon,
Mean as you always were,
Floating winds to bring a wave of
Sharp malice and her shrewd allies,
Leaving me tearless,
In an arid land of acidic rain,
Where flowers bloom in black,
Where the insanity of winds,
Topple the banyan and peepal,
But fail to lift the deep rooted
Despair from the mind of people.

Oh my lovely moon,
Dare not neglect me any longer,
My dryness will find its drop
Of nectar in His empyrean touch,
Gushing forth like a freed bubble,
Spreading forth its worn out wings,
Exhibiting the mirth of life long slavery,
Masking and revealing my self randomly,
I shall not share you His wet sight,
To anyone and sprout inside
Little flowers dripping with honey.

Rain Memory

There is something pretty about rainy days. Like the romantic incense of the wet jasmine, like the earthy fragrance giving a sense of completion , like the virginity of the water-soaked streets, like the galloping sound of the rain dollops, like the shirt sticking to the back, like anything hot going well with the tongue…it does fill all the senses. On a hard day everything mentioned above can be quite life-taxingly annoying. I am not sure what this rain is doing to me, though.

I remember my first outing in the rains; Dad had lifted me up to his shoulders. He does it quite often, but it was something special on that rainy day. I thought I caught him in two minds. One on hand, he wanted me to enjoy this strange sprinkling from the sky that got me out of his control, on the other, he was afraid I would catch flu. ‘Is it an angel taking bath?’ I had asked my dad in euphoric amazement, he had smiled back. He had tried to convince me to drink the ‘masala tea’ in the corner shop. I had refused it, calling it jaundiced milk, and embarrassed the ‘tea master’ to such extent that he stopped making those yellowed, spiced and watered milk. My dad had chuckled with an unexplained pride. I had blinked in surprise.

The next striking memory is that of the ‘adventure night’. It was a time when 7.00 p.m was considered night and 10.00 o’clock was midnight. My friends and I, 5 girls and 3 boys to be exact, were coming back from the Stadium after a hectic ‘sports day’ celebration. Soot stained faces, unkempt hair, eyes shining, rejoicing the victory over some old rival, we decided to walk down to our homes. The scorching Sun who looked straight down at us when we were being fried during the relay races and long ques for high-jump and long-jump had suddenly absconded into oblivion. We certainly did not mind it. Then it started drizzling. We were hooting to start with, singing all the rain songs we have ever heard in our life, including ‘Rain rain, go away’ which was of course, silly. Nevertheless, the rain-god was not listening to it. The showers intensified, and coupled with loud thunders and sword-like lightnings. This alarmed us. We realized we had spent all the money in the gol-gappas and kulfi-ice creams, and had no money for the bus charge. The guys took the charge almost heroically. ‘We can walk, no problem’, declared the eldest. Two girls to one boy was the hand-clasping, safety measure ratio we could afford. That means the third guy would be left with the 5^th girl. You knew it before, it was me. Neither of us knew who was shier. Somehow, the 2:1 ratio of the rest went unnoticed and I was teased all through my high school for holding hands with the older boy. I wonder where he is now...

School whizzed past in front of my eyes, the college days were glorious. It used to rain everyday then. We used to jokingly call our college as London just for that reason. The shyness and gawkiness from the school days has vanished. Holding hands with men did not symbolize ‘crush’, ‘love’ or anything remotely close to that. It was just holding hands, simply. A sign of togetherness… friendship, at the most. On an educational tour to the nearby hill station, we purposely left our raincoats back at our hostels, so that we could get to our rooms drenched. Our plan worked, it rained heavily. We lost our way in the woods, though. Anti-climax? Not yet, we were badly ragged by a group of drunken locals. And I, familiar with the local language, couldn’t hold my tongue and had started retorting to it, and got an earful back. Luckily, for us, the patrol car had been roaming around and we were dropped back without further incidents to cope with. What a night it was!

Then, the day of my marriage. Nobody foresaw a heavy rainfall on such a clear May morning. It was not even the monsoon time. It had rained cats and dogs on the fateful day. All the flower arrangements at the hall entrance had gone waste. The crowd that we had expected did not turn up. It looked like a birthday party at home. His parents, mine, and the people who had stayed in the hall overnight were the only witnesses. The black clouds, the dullness it spread in the faces around, the piling waste of food cooked for the people, the well-picked clothes going unnoticed because of the lack of audience did irritate me. Add to that, the thought of adopting his home as mine, the climate seemed cruel. I had to be torn apart from my Mother, literally. I had hugged her and cried for almost 15 minutes that even my Mom was shocked to know that I loved her so much. Who but me knew that all I had wanted was a shoulder to cry on...and it did not really matter whose it was.

I hated him at the first sight. I had married the man I can never love, I had assumed. Am I glad that it was a wrong assumption! It was the rain again. For all the innumerable times I had been out in the rain, I have never even sneezed once. There I was, bedridden, eyes sunken, looking every bit like a soggy Pomeranian pup, cuddling in his arm more for the warmth of his affection than anything else, because of the rain-special outing the previous evening. What a pleasure it is, to be loved! Rain is a catalyst for romance, I must admit. Though I learned soon that he did not share my love for rain, I came to know that he tried his best to love. The long bus rides on rainy days were the highlights. Then it became bike rides, and eventually car drives. They were good too. He was a fan of instrumental music and played it during those magical journeys much to my utter delight. At times, we would stop by the beach and gaze at the hues of blues and the pinks of the twilight, letting the time fly by and the tide roll by in their own course. I even remember catching a dewy rainbow on a pleasant evening.

And, another new member was ready to join our voyage. The day my daughter was born, is still etched in my memory. It is not unusual, you may think, but it is. That is right, it rained like hell. There are some problems in life, which you cannot get over with easily. Labor pain comes under that category, I think. The roads were flooded; we needed to sail through, literally. Our car engine was gone, and the only option left was going by an auto-rickshaw. I had called out every other God’s name I had come across in my life, none seem to hear me out. It was terrible, I tell you, extremely terrible. He had called up everybody he could think of, but, who would respond to a challenge from the mother nature? Finally, a kind auto-wala had turned up, possibly taking pity of my screams and all. We were just in time to the nursing home, and yes, all was well, as I had hoped for.

The cycle of life repeated for good. My daughter is happily married now. Him and I, were back as couple. It was a repeat of the honeymoon days. Dripping of raindrops, profusions of liquid love through the battered veins…heavenly. But life does not stay the same for long, it is said. It is cent percent true. He had to leave me permanently. There was a cloud burst on his final day on earth. The deluge was symbolic, like a eulogy to everything he has been to me.

These days, when I walk alone in the rain, I think of everything that rain has given and taken away from me. Raindrops go misty and turn into water vapor at times, and at other, they weep with a composed smile, like me. The rain memories, stay in my mind, un-evaporated and uncondensed.