Useless Information - III

Considering the flop of my recent posts that were based on ME and MY VIEWS, I am resorting to masala post. Like many producers and heros in kollywood, I have realised that I need to have commercial posts every now and then while I test my audience’s patience with my thought process.

So here is bunch of useless information that you all love to read. This particular post has more useless information than the ones before.

1) The hindi remake of ‘Ayan’ will feature Salman in the lead role and Jackey Sheroff playing role of ‘doss anna’

2) Sasi Kumar – director/actor in Subramaniyapuram has a bachelors degree in business. He worked as assistant to Bala in Sethu and Amir in Mounam Pesiyadhey and Raam

3) Samuthirakani – the villain in the movie Subramaniyarupam and the director of ‘Nadodigal’ is the director of serials ‘ Anni’, ‘Selvi’ and ‘Arasi’. He also worked as Co-director in the movie ‘Poi’ and ‘Paruthiveeran’

4) James Vasanthan graduated in English literature, Carnatic Music from Madras University and Western Music from UK.

5) Singer Madhu Balakrishnan’s brother in law is Shreeshanth !

6) Sunaina Gulia – the lead actress in Masilamani and kaadhalil Vizhunden acted in a Hindi serial Dill Mill Gaye. She was born in May, 1985 in Haryana

7) Lakshmi Rai was born in 1981 in Karanataka, She is a model turned actress. She has featured in Bru coffee and Fair and Lovely Ad

8) Arya’s actual name is Jamshad Cethirakath born in December 1980 and graduated from Crescent Engineering College, Chennai

9) Venkat Prabhu, born in November 7, 1975 has a music degree from UK and wanted to be a music director, then actor and finally has become a successful director

10) Radha’s daughter Karthiga and Nagarjuna’s son are acting in a new telugu movie as the lead pair

11) Katrina Kaif was born in Hong Kong to Kashmere Muslim father and UK based Cristian mother. She is now being called the “Bollywood Barbie” ( hubi totally agrees)

12) Actor Rahman was born in 1967 as Rashid Rahman and he happens to be the co brother of A.R.Rahman- small world ( KV -asked me how old was rahman) – hence this useless info for him

13) Aishwarya Rajinikath is going to be the voice for Aishwarya Rai in Endhiran (Rajini/Shankar new movie) and Raavan (mani rathnam’ new movie)

14) Singer Krish’s real name is Vijay Balakrishnan and he has sung in Walt Disney’s ‘Enchanted’

15) Varalakshmi Sarathkumar, daughter of sarathkumar is making her debut alongside Simbu. She has degree in Microbiology from Hindustan College and Masters in Management University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

Ottaigraph

Impressed with Cheran’s autograph and its lollu sabha version, here is my ottai graph Needless to say flash back is an end to end comedy story that misses ‘vaigai puyal’.
I am so glad hubi doesn’t read my blog.




1) I was in the 8th grade I think, we had PT ( Physical Training) for 2 hours twice a week. End of the session I was in charge of taking the props we have used back into the PT room. When I walked towards the room I saw this super senior standing outside and giggling for no reason and when I walked in, I saw 3 of my super seniors standing there pants down. Obviously they were changing in the PT room and the giggling senior outside was to make sure no one walked in.( yenna vachu comedy keemady pannalaiye)

2) The heart throb of the early 90s was obviously Aamir Khan. The three musketeers ( self along with L and S) were convinced this senior guy looked just like AK. So we decided to make friends with him We spent good part of our pocket money to buy this dairy milk chocolate bar, wrote a note saying “we think you look like AK”, all three walked together towards him, when I was standing in front this guy, I was alone, buddies had disappeared. What is worse, mr.smarty pants refused to take the chocolate from me. God knows what he thought, I was soo embarrassed and spent rest of the year hiding from him– loser ( naan avana sonnen!)

3) I was in the 11th grade, having serious arguments with daddy convincing him to buy me a cycle, as I thought it was ridiculous walking like 2 kms to take a bus for 1 stop. Dad could not see my point, so I decided to take my brother’s ‘street cat’ – boys cycle to school. But i did not want anyone in school to see me riding a boys cycle, so I took cycle from home to a friend’s house next to the bus stop and would walk the good 1 -2 km to school ( image kettupedumla), one fine day while I was in my triathlon of walking from school to friend’s house, then riding the cycle home. I had 2 other friends who would ride the cycle with me and there were these 3 boys from another school following us on a regular basis. When I saw these boys passing comments about us in the road, I lost control and fell down in the middle of the road. I hurt my knee so badly that I still have the scar. Idhu thevaiya ( appa ippova kanna katudhey !!)

4) 1st year of college, new found freedom was amazing. Formed a gang from day 2 based on one common factor – Big B, the handsome bloke in class (then !). One fine Saturday ( it was half day working then), we were all coming back in the same bus as big B and were deciding on lunch. Somehow we all ended up going together for lunch and needless to say spent the entire afternoon discussing Big B, only to find big B offered to come only because he thought V was coming along. Then we wondered how B would have spent his entire afternoon cursing the time he wasted with us ! ( vada pochey !)

5) We were in college – late 90s. Now we were called the ‘spice girls’ (duh !). Staff ( cant remember his name) who doesn’t favour girls is like the hero among the boys. This man walks into the class and talks about the performance and behaviour of the students, turned to our side ( 5 of us) and said this whole row is useless. No we weren’t humiliated, we were honoured that we were accused as part of the ‘ galeej’ gang boys. ( yenna thitinaalum thaangudhuga – rombah nallavanu sonnanga)

6) We were in 2nd year college, told all the parents that we were doing combine studies at N’s place (while her parents were away at work). Our studies started with 30 minutes of college gossip, next 15 minutes about movies, then decided to watch the movie “kuan’. Next few minutes we were in the theatre – the whole study group. After getting the ticket our only worry was what if we bump into someone from our college, because we had oil on our hair and were wearing the casual chudidhars. So we took the last row and spent the next couple of hours worrying about how to protect our image ( vaaliba vayasu !)


7) I was one of the 6 girls who were going to perform in the college day for a western fusion – cant remember the songs now, one of them was ‘final countdown’. So we are in the backstage ‘ most happening’ place in the college. We were waiting along with all the performers and the boys group who were there providing moral support to the performing girls ( no need to guess who would have been there for sure). We walk to the stage , standing there with our pose and the tape wouldn’t play. It was messed up, , we just stood there for few minutes and was asked to go back. The staff promised they were going to fix the tape and would call us back and we waited and waited and they never called. So I just walked out frustrated and cursing the guy who recorded the tapes – no need to guess again – none other than hubi dear and he just smiled at me continuing his moral support while I was cursing him ! ( room pottu yosipaangalo ! )

Anyway revealing more stories from past would result in tremendous damage to the anni/akka ‘image’ I have now. So comedy story stops here !

The Desi power – a post with a message

Living in clayton ( mini india), shopping in clayton and working in the city for 1 week - taking the train from clayton to city has changed my whole view of many things, most importantly – DESIs

Day 1 – Grocery shopping in Sharawan

Have you ever seen a horizontal queue. I see it everytime when I do grocery shopping in an Indian store. Somehow people realise everybody else in the shop are Indians as well and resort to our cultural horizontal queue. Everyone takes on a place closer to the counter and waits for the next opportunity.I was waiting in one of these lines next to the desi bhaiya who was making a payment. Our desi bhiaya was accompanied by desi beevi and desi friend. The guy behind the counter quickly scans everything and says the final figure. Bhaiya asks his friend if he got yoghurt – friend then goes to the fridge and comes back with 1 litre yoghurt, bhaiya is disappointed and sends friend back to get the 2 litre can. My toddler had a biscuit packet in hand and had already crossed her 2 minute waiting time and started to open the pack and so she can start eating. I am trying to show my disappointment by letting out different ways breathing signs hoping bhaiya would hurry up. Getting the message bhaiya tries to be the nice man around and screams at friend in hindi – make it fast, people are waiting ( avaru rombha nallavaru pa), then comes the beevi, utters something in Hindi/Punjabi something about some vegetable being 3 cents cheaper here. Offcourse what else is of prime importance to us if we can find an item few cents cheaper than in the normal shop. Desi ji asks her to get this as well. By now the counter boy is upset as well. He offers to swipe the card first. Now bhaiya ji starts thinking – offers to pay half by cash and rest with card. After some convincing from the shop guy that he does not get charged extra for the card, he agrees to swipe the card. 10 minutes later the transaction is complete – Why cant Desis finish shopping before arriving at the counter ?

Day 2 – Butchers ( no doubt run by desi)

With so much disappointment with desis I walked into the butchers. I walk in and see the guys are actually wearing the disposable gloves and are ready to serve. I was a bit relived and asked for chicken. The guy just before getting the chicken..just a second before touching the meat, scratched his head with the gloves on !!!!! Ok don’t ask what I did after this !- whether I bought the chicken home or not is not to be disclosed.


Day 3 – about 8ish in the train

After years I had to take the train to the city for some ‘training’. I got into the train with a book I have wanted to read for months. As I started to read – surrounded by desi uncle reading big bound book, desi thambi with headphones, desi annan reading something from a print out. After 15 minutes of peace, I suddenly hear desi beats. All I could hear was the ‘ dunda nakka’ bollywood beat and some high pitch voice. No it wasn’t a mobile ring tone, it was what I could hear from this desi bhaiya’s headphones. I could not believe someone could keep the volume so high. If what I heard from across the seat in the train was so loud, how loud would it be on his ears? I could not concentrate on my book anymore. I tried my usual turning back and staring, stage 2 - hmm and ahems did not work. I managed to get the attention of few other annoyed people in the train but our bhaiya did not care. So just cursed my luck and put down my head pretending to be reading while trying to figure out what he was listening to.

Day 4 – Train again

After spending a nice warm day in the city I was coming back in the train(again) to clayton. When I was getting off the train, I struggled soo hard to get the stroller with a sleeping toddler from the train on the platform while the desi thambi standing next to the train door was watching me. He did not offer any help at all

Ok this is just a sample, there are so many desis who run past you and push you to get a seat, get into the train, hit you while walking past and moves on without saying a ‘sorry’. Desi mama who called in regards to a job he applied for and asked me to ‘push’ his CV through for an interview because we are from same country.

Having said this, there some nice desis as well. Desi thambi who offered me and papa the window seat and stood through the journey in the train. Hubi goes to fill petrol and comes back after 45 minutes after having career counselling for desi paiyan who works at the service station and even shares mobile number because of the desi bond.

There are some really nice people out there but there are so many who spread the wrong message as well. I did read about an article which suggested some of these attributes were contributing to the so called ‘racial’ attacks on desis. I am not sure if this is true and there is no way this can be justified but I feel this creates an impression with people. I don’t deny the fact that people who are loud in the train are just desis but end of the day we get associated to a ‘culture’ we have created around us. Like how sarees and bindis are associated to desi women, how spicy food is associated to desi cooking, I don’t want some of these bad manners to be associated to us as a community. Its like a brand name I think and we are like brand ambassadors


Message time –
We need to respect other people in the same way we like to be respected. We need to treat people in the same way we like to be treated. Offer a helping hand when you can. Our smallest actions are interpreted as a culture of ‘our’ people. We don’t want our kids or our friends to be associated to a premonition we have created and I think it is upto us to reset this image. Brand repositioning is what we require I think. It is nice to be nice J
Smile, use ‘sorry’, ‘pardon’ when required. Spread the joy and reposition our brand image.

Quiz – Count the number of times the word ‘ desi’ was used in this post and leave the answers in the comments section. The winner gets a 4c fuel discount voucher from leading service station. he he
You cannot use CTRL F

Note – Love you all for reading my blog, missing the updates in my blog and leaving messages and comments and even sending follow up messages through hubi regarding this. You guys rock !