Gifted, she is

I watch the Airtel Super Singer 3 irregularly on Vijay TV. Yesterday and the day before, there was a guest performance by last year's Super Singer Junior winner, Alka Ajith. What a voice! Could blow the current Airtel Super Singer 3 competitors away, by a mile. She is maybe around 15 years of age and already a playback singer in Malayalam and hear her sing 'Chiragengu' from the yet to be released movie 'The Train'. Lovely and gooseflesh inducing rendition! She sang that song day before on the show and 'Thohda Thohda Malarndhadhenna' from the movie 'Indira' and a snippet of 'Udhaya Udhaya Virumbugiraen' from the movie 'Udhaya' yesterday. Mindblowingly silken voice!

God (or Nature) gifts some with extraordinary capability and Alka is one such gifted person. It is so soothing to hear her and the clarity and range in her voice are astounding.

May she be blessed always and this child is one who will definitely scale heights. Thanks Alka for those moments of divinity on hearing you sing.

ASSimilated...

The last of the Tamizh TV shows that I watched with some degree of regularity, at last wound down last Thursday, the Airtel Super Singer Junior 2009 on Star Vijay channel. "At last", because of the impatience with how the talent show progressed and dragged to its end. I think our TV show honchos do not know the concept of a pacy progression without melodrama or the Occam's Razor (avoiding unnecessary things and keeping it simple). The winner, 'Alka Ajith' won for her consistent performance and capping it in the final with a superb rendering of 'Singaara Velanē' from 'Konjum Salangai', and a non-impressive 'Munbē Vaa' from 'Sillendru Oru Kaadhal'.

The finals had the eternal backgrounder, Shravan giving the only challenge to Alka with the others (Nithyashree the dancer-singer, the wonder-boy Srikanth and the silent Roshan) being their normal selves. I felt that Alka was tagged to be a winner early on in the show with constant praising by the judge trio of K S Chithra, Mano and Malgudi Subha, when compared to the others. (BTW, I never knew that Alka was in the Limca book of records for the most number of recorded songs for her age, has already sung in Malayalam movies and has won a few international awards as well)

Probably the hardest challenge to Alka (even could have been an upset) in the finals would have come from either Priyanka or SriNisha, who in spite of stellar performances in the wildcard (recall) stage were dropped from the final 5 over Srikanth and Nithyashree. I wasn't amused by the inclusion of the kid Srikanth into the finals, under the guise of public sentiment humbug. Priyanka or SriNisha who were improving leaps and bounds, round after round and with a pretty wide song range deserved a place in the finals. He is definitely superb for his age, but still raw. It was a small consolation that Priyanka and SriNisha were called and awarded separately on stage. It was sad to see that Srikanth's father not showing even a trace of happiness at Srikanth winning a special prize (3 lakhs!) and sat stone faced. One more proof that parents push their children to unreal levels on reality (actually, pseudo-reality) shows.

As is the norm during the finales of such shows, there was a lot of dance and singing slots by multiple personae to prolong the winner announcement which eventually happened somewhere at 11:45 PM. The Super Singer anthem sung by participants, past and current, sounded good (I love choruses and choirs); I recall Andrea and Ajeesh's rendering of 'Idhu Varai' from 'Goa' (lovely instrumentation and contrasting vocals), dance-song acts by Divya (the Airtel Super Singer compere) and the RJ/singer, Suchi. Amala was watching the finale and she looked jaded from how she was in her hey-day. Mano had become more of a clown as the TV show progressed and his clowning glory was at the finale. :-)

One aspect of all this was the lack of transparency in how the winner was shortlisted during the pre-finals and finals. Different figures flew on the finale stage itself as regards the number of votes received (3.5L, 13L) for the final and it sounded wishy-washy. :( Doesn't augur well for the program, or its host channel or its sponsor, Airtel. Hope they make it transparent in the future.

RIP Airtel Super Singer Junior 2009 and thanks for those moments of brilliance and panache from the children which made it worthwhile !!!

Adsworth-Tata DoCoMo My Song

The new Tata-DoCoMo ad rocks. Hats off to their creative agency (DraftFCB Ulka).

The ad is for their My Song "Hear your tune when you call" service. It is different, simple, humorous, contemporary and non-jingoistic.

A hesitant young girl stands before her mother who is cutting veggies and says "Amma, I want to show you something". The mother looks at her in anticipation and the girl turns around, pulls her shirt up showing a tattoo on her lower back. The mom after two seconds of trepidation, gives a brief smile and says "Very nice". The girl gives a surprised smile and the tag line comes up for My Song (to hear what you want to hear) The two actors have done a wonderful job with their body language and expressions defining the unsaid.

Lovely ad! Made me really smile. Tata-DoCoMo seems to be carving a niche for different services and their different ads too. (The Hutch Zoozoos didn't impress me much this time, though there were a couple of good storyboards, probably because of over-exposure)

And here is the ad

mAd Nauseam

This is a lazy random rant.

Watching ads has become a pastime for me, the past 2.5 weeks. Sometimes I just blank out watching them. The ad passes through my eyes and ears, bypassing the brain and goes right out.

Unlike in India where the ads do not reference their competition by name, it is a cut-throat world here. Competitors are named explicitly and their products (also named) taken to task. In India, ASCI (Advertising Standards Council of India), the watchguard body of Indian advertising, does not seem to allow calling names. You can guess the product in question. E.g. the Complan and Horlicks health drink ads. I think for a very short time, one of them named the other, but withdrew the ad after complaints. You can see a list of decisions taken on questionable ads at http://www.ascionline.org/feedback/cccdecisions.htm. Interesting read.

A recall of a few of the ads that I have been badgered with.

• Mobile telephone service ads-Everybody wants a pie of the game. Verizon and AT&T are on an all-out war naming each others' network as bad either in terms of functionality, coverage etc showing US maps showing how bad the other's coverage is or giving away phones for free for long term contracts with them. Buy one phone-get three free, kind of.
• Car insurance ads-Geico and AllState are always at loggerheads with Progressive throwing in more fuel into the fire. 15% or not, we don't ever worry much about motor insurance and liability. And funny that Geico uses a British accent in their radio ads.
• Car ads-Mostly I see the GM car ads comparing with Toyota or Honda on how better they are with fuel efficiency, crash safety etc. The Toyota recall is having some of these folks active with ads. Make hay while the sun shines.
• Lawyers and attorney agents-Have you heard of Mesothelioma? I learnt that it is a form of cancer caused by asbestos exposure from attorney houses and lawyers ad-ing on the TV. There are tons of ads these days stating, if you took this medicine or that medicine and if you suffer xyz ailment, that you may be eligible for settlement et al. There is one class 'helping' you to get around IRS (Internal Revenue Service, their Income Tax department) threats using legal restraints. Another states they will help you pay off your credit card loan with funds from Obama's stimulus program. For one, I think most of the attorneys here are like leeches, gnawing at you for their pound of flesh, no matter how much John Grisham glorifies them.
• Vanity creams et al-Oh Man, Cindy Crawford comes around showing her serum collection used by the creme de la fashion. There are acne removal creams, blackspot reducers, sunscreens, anti-aging, anti-wrinkle, botox and lots of other chemical treatment on your face and body. And what is it with these folks' constant reference to Europe when they strut their stuff? Does it imply a European hangover with respect to fashion? Maybe!
• Food ads-McDonalds, Burger King, Applebees and whatever. My burger is bigger and better than yours, 150 calorie meals, blah blah. Nation of junk foodies. :-) Not to mention pet food, pet medicine and vitamin supplements for the pets, leave alone the owners.
• Health and Fitness-Drink this, drink that and tons of probably useless gym equipment bandied about on the Home Shopping Network to get you up to shape. Slimming pills, weight loss devices, fitness programs, you name it, they got it. And discounts, bazaar style. Call in the next 20 minutes and you'll get one absolutely free.
• Others-Damn, there is even a gems and jewellery channel peddling 14k gold with all kinds of colored stones like the ones which we get from our gypsy folks (kuravan, kuraththi)

I am yet to see the famous Super Bowl (World Cup 'American football') ads. Almost 3 million dollars for a 30 second spot for each of the ads. Aside, I have no clue why these folks call it a World Cup. I don't think even Canada is included in the group.

Hmmm... The rantosaurus rests here.

A documentary on a documentary

I love watching documentaries. They keep me occupied no end. Especially, I love travelogues and historical ones. Was watching an episode of a documentary "Story of India" on PBS, a educational TV channel in the US. It was maybe on the lines of 'Discovery of India', the book by Jawaharlal Nehru, which was televised and telecast on DD sometime back as 'Discovery of India/Bharat, Ek Khoj', which I used to watch with awe and interest and the chants that started and concluded the episodes were so wonderful on the ears. (Starting chants of Bharat, Ek Khoj and Ending chants of Bharat, Ek Khoj)

The documentary started off with the silk route from China, the Kushanas and Kanishka, their ruler, probably the greatest ruler of northern India. It then moved to the spice route from the west (Greeks, Romans, Spain, Portugal) to lots of places on the west coast, which was famed for the spices, especially pepper, in exchange for our everlasting obsession from time immemorial, gold. Kerala is one of the key trading spots and they show how a big bowed ship is built with just wood and nails, in the backwaters, just the way it was done eons back. The topic moved to Buddhism in time of Kanishka which was a dominant religion at one time. It then goes searching for lost Stupas, of which one in Peshawar has been documented by the western travellers as having one of the largest ever known, but it doesn't exist now, with only a mound marking the place where it might have stood once. A brief vista into Samarkhand, in Uzbekistan which was the confluence of the east and west on the silk road. That scenery there is breathtaking.

Continuing on the spice route, the documentary moves to Madurai, famed for its temple and the trade in textiles that happened during that period, then to Thanjavur, for the big temple and the golden time of the Cholas with Raja Raja Chozhan (gee, they showed some clippings from the movie, 'Raja Raja Chozhan' enacted by Sivaji Ganesan). There is a dialogue with the Mahratta prince of Thanjavur. There is a short sequence about bronzes and how they are cast. Absolutely lovely and intricate moulds and into them are poured glowing hot melted bronze. The artisans use methods followed by their ancestors and do not use a metric scale for measurement even now. The landscape moves to Tiruvannamalai, where they show the Utsavar and the lighting of the Annamalai Deepam.

It was a nice weaving of historical facts with a good narrative.

That program was followed by another on an American moving around in Iran. There was a good discussion of the Shiite vs. Sunni conflict, the hatred towards America, the overthrowing of the Shah, the oil economy, key cities there, the universities in Iran, student culture and social morals there. They have some beautiful mosques there.

Oh! history and the documentaries. I can watch them forever, the travelogues, religious ones, doomsday conspiracies, nature and wildlife, art, sci-fiction and what not!!! It is a time that I feel as never wasted.

Idle thoughts

Idling around with nothing much to do at an alien place (ok, it is not really alien to me) and being alone leads to some slow mind-munching.

Thinking of Idli (idlee, idly, iddili, so many ways for a proper noun) with chutney and molagaai podi/chutney podi. That is my favorite, anyday, over anything. I can have idli for breakfast, lunch and dinner (with caveats though :-)). Doing some random cooking (thanks to MTR for saving me the nitty gritties with its ready to eat/mix and eat collection). I can get idli (what idli, everything Indian that you can think of) at restaurants here, but the chutneys are yuck (maybe the coconut's taste) but nothing comes close to the home made idlis by señora.

Skype rocks, and its video conference, whew!. The voice quality exceeds that of the landline and not to mention, it is free. Helps to stay grounded and connected.

Watching TV at random, with reruns of Seinfeld, Friends, Home Improvement, House M.D., some movies, news and weather channels, and not to mention ads and more ads than the mainline serials. Love [Home Improvement]. Reminds a lot of my home improvement and the wisecracks, hilarious.

Thinking of watching a sundown, tomorrow, on the Pacific, weather permitting.

The ending of a mega-soap serial

Half an hour of my weekday night has been reclaimed!!! [Sigh of relief] Don't ask me what I'll do with the reclamation. I will waste it on something useless, :-) and if I don't, it will be not on a serial again.

I did infer some rules of mega serials in an earlier post (TV Soap Inferences) about Kolangal, the only soap/mega-serial that I watched with any degree of regularity. That serial went down last week on Friday with its guns on blanks, after a run of 6+ years and is off the air from this week. It has been a 'bullet shower' over the preceding few episodes, that would have put a Clint Eastwood western to shame. For a prime time TV show, the antagonist supremo lets loose his revolver, kills an activist (who was the only redeeming part of the serial) in cold blood, poisons his own PA, slaps a kidnapped woman, hijacks a court judge, kills his own mother by mistake, attempts suicide and lands up as an invalid.What a bloodbath! and there is no warning at the start, about the trauma it can cause to people, especially kids. I thought that the serial was going to conclude towards the end of November given the pace of bloodletting, but some last minute twists by our beloved director added a life of 1 more week to the same to add loads of sentiments and tears before the final episode.

RIP Kolangal. Hopefully the concluded serial hasn't gone into hibernation to come back as a sequel to finish the unfinished or untold threads and to add to my sufferance. :-)

Manga Attack

Who are all these? Take a guessing shot.

Kanzo Hattori, Ken'ichi, Yumiko-chan, Shinzo Hattori, Shishimaru, Kiyo, Kemumaki Kemuzou a.k.a. Amara, Doraemon, Nobita, Shizuka, Gian, Suneo, Kiteritsu, Korosuke, Miyoko, Buta Gorilla, Tongari, Benzo, Father, Mother, Mikan, Yuzuhiko, Perman, Mitsu, Booby, Sumire, Pokemon, Ash, Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Charmander ...

Well, most of them sound Japanese, yep, you are right.

Go further ...

If you can figure it out, congrats!!!, you must be having school going kids in your house or regularly be exposed to them. Those are all characters out of different Japanese anime series (called Manga) that have flooded our kiddie TV channels. I blogged in one of my earlier posts about first impressions, but this category is an exception to my conclusion. After repeated exposure to some of these serials by either being at earshot distance and by watching random episodes with kids, I have figured out that some of these are not bad or kiddish at all. :-) You start to love them unconsciously. :-) Some of the animes (out of the deluge on TV) were obnoxious, but a lot of them are fun and good time-pass. Some of them have very catchy title songs and some real good voiceover translations in Hindi (sounds better than English).

Whenever you come across Ninja Hattori, Doraemon, Kiteritsu, Perman, Ata-Shin-Chi etc on any of our cartoon channels in the course of your "flipping channel" routine, pause and watch for some time.

Who knows, you may just ignore them as kiddie stuff and flip out or you may have some real fun!!!

TV Soap inferences

Kolangal on SunTV is the only mega serial I see, that too at random and I wonder how Thirumurugan, the director brainstorms (if he ever does it) on progressing the story forward (or backward). My inferences from watching the serial.

• Handling pregnancy for characters in real life? Hide the pregnancy with loose fit dresses as much as possible till the final week or two. Show only face and up-to-abdomen shots. When time runs out, hide her character from public view until the kid is born and 3 months elapse in real time before the actor resumes. (Devayani has already had 2 kids while on the serial.) Or get the character kidnapped by a sinister character. Or do any of the following steps randomly. 
• Is the story dragging? Kill a member in the serial regularly at intervals or maim them to boost view ratings/sympathy.
• Develop an unrelated side story with flimsy links to main line and develop it only to abandon sometime later. Nobody will question anyway.
• Bring new faces in regularly. Can always prove helpful for side stories and can be left loose and hanging.
• Go off to some remote place for the side story. After all, you can show a full episode or two about that place and get away from moving the story.
• Develop selective amnesia for the characters. After all nothing works better to justify a 'logic hole' or a 'no-story'.
• You can always get away with not showing characters who once were key in the story. :-) After all people's memories are short-lived and distracted. They can always be brought back to life later if you run out of ideas.
• Use a two wife story in the mainline. There is no other easy way to show sacrifice from one wife over the other, create friction between the two (sub) families and to switch context as you like. Harassed husbands are easy to characterize and more so when both the wives have children. Friction between half-brother/sister shall make for a few episodes.
• Have a property aspect in the story and "signature on blank stamp paper" episodes.
• Use a divorce in the story. Can be used to sympathetic or revenge effect.
• If there is a character worth resurrection from the dead, bring em on. There is nobody to question you.
• Keep the negative character fuming and shouting always. This will cause BP to raise for the viewers as well as you. (I pity that person in real life. They will have high BP dubbing for the serial itself) Have the main character talk bravado every now and then, to teach a lesson, but act nothing more. 
• Have a drunkard somewhere in the story line. After all they provide for obnoxiousness and can come in for a tear-jerker later when they realize their folly.
• Make some movement and hints in the story to give a belief that the serial will end. And not to let viewers down, drag it further again. :-)
• Always include a 'ayyO paavam' (Poor Soul!) moment in every other episode. Fridays will have definitely one of these.
• Never show a full episode that does not show grumpiness from some one. Smiling is restricted to only sad smiles.
• There should be no fun tracks in the serial and happiness should be shown for no more than 5 minutes in a week.
• The characters should be fed on glycerine in their eyes.

Do you think the mega serial culture is only here? In the US on NBC, there are soaps that have run for 20 years and above and I think there is one that is still running, "Days of our lives" close to 25 years now.


Characters may come and characters may go, but the soap goes on for years. :)