This movie kept me hypnotised with awe...........

 I'Ezham arivu' (7^th sense) is a tamil movie which released this diwali. This movie  is a pot- pourri of  historical reality, fantasy, thrills, romance, comedy, good music,  sci-fi, special fx all  put together. This movie had an extensive and expensive promotion and so easily  such movies leave public with great expectations.  

 A.R. Murugadoss (ghajini fame) has directed Surya sivakumar,  Shruti haasan( kamal hassan’s daughter)  and Vietnamese American actor  Johnny tri nguyen and the movie, despite mixed reviews did impress me a lot.

The movie begins with the 6^th century tamil  prince of pallava lineage, who is a master in the art of ' nokku varmam' ( like hypnotism, it is a peculiar martial art through which a particular part in the opponent’s body could be attacked by mere sight itself.),master in the use of  herbal medicine and martial art (kalari). He travels to china to cure the  people  suffering there from a dreadful disease. The Chinese  don’t accept the intruder initially until he has cured one of their fellow men.  He cures the  contagious disease and saves the people from an epidemic.  Finally people accept him as their master when he also fights their territorial enemies single handedly with the help of kalari and nokku varmam.  They compile all his wisdom into a book. After fulfilling his  mission of curing and saving  the Chinese, He decides to leave china but  they poison him to death with the belief that when he is buried in their village they will remain disease free. 

Cut to the present 2011 chennai, where   doctoral student in genetics,  Shruti does research  on the genes of the pallava heirs and finds the pallava king's genetical traits dormant in the hero Surya.

 Meanwhile China over the centuries  has utilized the prince’s healing powers of  medicine, martial arts ( according to historians Kung Fu is  Kalari , originated in India) and hypnotism and trained many youngsters. One of them Dong lee( Johnny Tri Nguyen) who is a hypnotic expert and martial art expert travels to India to wage a bio-war by injecting the deadly 6^th century disease into the general public.( So that china can release the antidote and make money)

How the heroine activates the dormant genes in the hero and together how they thwart the plans  of Dong Lee and the Chinese government is what the movie is all about.

The movie’ s screenplay is woven around  a  historical fact  with lots of thrilling fights and car crashes( hypnotism has been overtly used).

But all the above was not the reason I was hooked to the movie.

The movie had me awestruck because   Bodhidharman is a fact and his healing powers, hypnotic powers and martial art powers are practiced  by Chinese. On death this prince is worshipped even today in china as Tao and as Zen’ in Japan. His martial art is renamed as ‘Kung Fu’ and his philosophy as Zen philosophy. This  Pallava prince  is  revered all around china, Vietnam, japan and is considered as the 28^th partriarch of Lord Buddha. The public of all these Asian countries are aware of him, while we in India, atleast me are not aware of him.

 In his closing shots, the hero Surya says  " We indians  are rich in knowledge and wisdom, some of us dismiss traditions and customs as regressive or irrelevant and attribute it to religion, while all our customs, rituals and practices are science based. For eg, the use of turmeric  in rituals and cooking  is mostly because it is an antiseptic or the use of tulsi, cowdung and so on..... Unfortunately what has been advised by our elders is copied by the westerners and today they have patented turmeric. Teach your children the  rich history of India  and reason the rituals and religious beliefs scientifically.  Like export quality products  Intelligent Indians export themselves and work on foreign shores and contribute their knowledge and intelligence  there". and he said much more which i am unable to recollect. 

That dialogue touched  me  and yes those words are truly said.....

Time to unearth more such facts about india. We seem to be the pioneers in many fields , many  of them are buried under the earth. Bodhi dharman was one such revelation. Check him here.

P.S: I had written about the  Indian exercise of thorpukarnam which has been renamed as Brain yoga and is now practised in Yale university of medicine. If interested read about it here.

Fall in line, Please

or  Queue please....... that's what I was yelling  when I went  around the labyrinth to see the world's most visited and second richest god in the world......... but........ who's to listen?......... It fell on deaf ears.

With a free ticket, i thought i had direct darshan to see the god and so after refreshing ourselves we went in search of the Vaikuntam -2 gate through which we 'Divya darshan' ticket holders had to get into the labyrinth.
We went around the temple in search of the gate and easily passed a few metres after depositing our cell phones and chappals and finally reached the queue  only to be seated in an enclosure. We were allowed to rest in this place till the previous entrants  had their darshan.

 Suddenly when the enclosure was opened, like a broken dam  the fitter and impatient devotees started rushing out of the door like  water gushing out of a broken dam using all the heptathlon events. From then on it was a nightmare, they  were crushing or elbowing elders/children  whoever came in their path, while some were jostling for space. It was a tough time for senior citizens and devotees with children. Some had placed their kids  over their shoulders and some on their waist, while some children were sandwiched between elders and gasping for breath.

All cries for help and some patience only fell on deaf ears. The irony was when the security guards and policemen stood like statues or 'Golu bommais'.  When I told one of the security guards to control the crowd, he was totally expressionless and standing  motionless. It was disastrous. Thankfully there was no stampede since there was no space for anybody to fall.

This continued inside the temple until the sanctum and finally we had a peek of the god, again a huge rush to come out of the temple.

After the darshan it was another ordeal to find your cellphone counter and  your chappal counter and  the laddu counter. All these places, you are to stand in a queue where some smart people think it is their privilege to jump the queue and those who are standing in the q are jobless.

It is painful to recollect these things when you go to have a peaceful darshan of god.

On the flipside the same fortnight I had a chance to stand in the US consulate queue,where the queue was streaming out like a well oiled machine.

The elders and those with children had a separate  queue and great care was taken by the security guards to screen the people.  With a smile on their face, they were so helpful and courteous. After the whole exercise, when we were on our way back home , we suddenly received a call from the consulate telling that my daughter had not given her thumb expression( she was 14  going to be 15, hence the confusion). When she and my husband went back her name was called from one entry point  to the other entry point  till she reached inside without any difficulty.

Both the places were manned by Indians and the crowd in both the places were Indians, then where was the difference?

I wish they used the riches to educate( with flyers on behaviour and conduct code) and organise the crowd, then it would be a pleasure for all senior citizens, kids and their parents to visit Tirumala.