Tables

Sometimes, when you get in early for a weekend movie at the Madras Race Club, you get a wide range of seating options. 

Although, with the way these tables are oriented vis-a-vis the screen, at least one person at each table must decide the movie is not worth watching. Maybe there is an opportunity here to design a movie-watching-on-club-lawn table!

Off cue?

Wikipedia tells us that games played on a cloth covered table, using a cue stick to strike smooth balls, have been around since the 15th century CE, under the generic term 'billiards'. They evolved from outdoor games like croquet and bowls, and have diversified into a wide range that includes billiards, snooker, pool and several variations of each of these. Given that timeline, cue sports gained popularity in Madras fairly late. The following it his is neither very vocal nor very visible - but with my limited experience, that could be true of cue sports in most places in India. 

Considering that Madras was the host to the first ever All India Amateur Billiards Tournament (in 1904), it is reasonable to expect the game to be a little more popular here than elsewhere in the country. However, for some reason, it is not so. I cannot recall any international - or national - billiards champion from Chennai. The same holds true for snooker; and that is even more galling, because that game is supposed to have originated in India. According to the Billiards and Snooker Federation of India, it was created in Ooty - and therefore in the Madras Presidency - in the year 1881. While that claim is contested, with the rival version having Jabalpur as the town and 1875 as the date, we shall in this case accept the version put out by BSFI. 

The Tamil Nadu Billiards & Snooker Association, makes no such claim, however. Having been formed in 1981, a century after the birth of snooker, the TNBSA is more concerned with "controlling and guiding the game in the state", than with weighing in on historical claims. I am not sure what level of control they exercised during the early 1990s: there was a mini-boom in the game in the city, with snooker parlours being set up across the city and, for a brief while, being the to-be-seen-in places. Whatever they did, or did not, one wishes they would soon find themselves a better office space than in this nondescript building on Avvai Shanmugham Salai! 

A different world

Even a rudimentary knowledge of Indian iconography will be enough to know this is representation of Mahavishnu in his form as Padmanabhaswamy - the one with a lotus growing out of his navel - resting on Anantasesha, the divine serpent. Also in the picture are Hanuman, Lakshmi, Siva, Brahma and Narada. This entire tableau is placed above an entrance on Wall Tax Road. 

With so many deities, you might believe that the entrance is to a place of religious significance. In some senses, that might be true, given our penchant for elevating our heroes to god-like levels; but the reality is that once you go past this, you would be entering the fantasy world of the movies. At least, that is how it was until a few years ago. Last year, the posters announced the advent of a multi-storey residential complex, confirming that the Padmanabha has indeed played out its last show, about 5 years ago.

Padmanabha Theatre began life as the Regal; does this tableau go back to those days, when it was placed to bring good luck, or did it come up after (possibly) a change of ownership and name, with the new owner trying to ensure that the re-branding sticks, with this visual representation? If the latter, it couldn't have been too successful - even today, the MTC bus routes indicate this stage as 'Regal'!

Fancy a ride?

One of the attractions on the Marina is the horse ride. No, not the ones on a carousel, but real life horses. Of course one cannot expect pedigreed horses to be walked around on the beach sands, looking for excited kids or young gents wanting to show off. But the horses look healthy and when the grooms trot across to a seeming prospect, the horses seem to share the excitement and trot along without a fuss. I wasn't in the market for horse rides on the beach, but a couple of the grooms came full tilt at me. The first mumbled a price; I kept moving away, uninterested. The second offered to beat the price down. I barely registered what he said, but for some reason it upset the first groom. Hot words followed. 

Within a couple of seconds, the horses had caught on to the mood of aggression. They began neighing and squealing, circling each other, getting back to back, and kicking each other with their hind legs. The grooms had a tough time keeping them down - for about 15 seconds, it seemed that the horses would break loose and a shod hoof would split some flesh and bone. Luckily, the grooms managed to regain control - and maybe the horses also sensed that the argument was not a life-and-death issue anyway.

They came back again, docile as you please. The first groom again mumbled a price to me; it sounded like "50 rupees final price saar". But no, after that display, I was even less inclined to get on to any of the beach horses!

Lingaa

Contrived, yes. 

But I don't have any other picture to mark the birthday of Chennai's Superstar. His latest movie releases in India today and my Facebook timeline is flooded with pictures of the man, and several friends, young and old, either gushing about how they managed to get "FDFS" (First Day First Show) tickets or growling about those who did.

Happy birthday, Rajinikanth! Or maybe the other way around? 

Knock-out

When the IPL started in 2008, it was expected that the Chennai franchise would be one of the top teams in the league. The success of that model has spawned similar leagues in other sports: hockey, kabbadi, tennis and football. Chennai does not have a team in the kabbadi league; the tennis league is in a different, international format and again, Chennai does not have a team there. Though the city fielded a team in the Premier Hockey League (Chennai Veerans), it does not have one in the Indian Hockey League that replaced the PHL.

That leaves football. There were no great expectations from Chennaiyin FC (Chennai's FC) when the Indian Super League began. The team is owned by three non-Chennaiites - Vita Dani (Dhirubhai Ambani's niece), Abhishek Bachhan and M.S.Dhoni. The last named is an adopted son of the city, being the captain of its IPL cricket team. That was the local connect; even the main sponsor, the Ozone Group, is Bengaluru-headquartered. That did not stop the Chennaiites from putting their weight behind the team. And Chennaiyin FC responded by pulling off some firsts: Balwant Singh became the first Indian player to score in the league, Elano Blumer was the first marquee player in the league to score - and is leading the competition for the Golden Boot. And the team has gone on to top the league (well, there is a match to be played tomorrow, which may see Chennaiyin FC going into second place), but hey, we're into the semis.

The team's logo has caused some debate about what it represents. Whatever the official version be, I think it is just symbolic of what we'd do to the competition. We are just going to நாக் (naak) them out!

Cheap ad

If you had been to Chennai about 8 to 10 years ago, you would have been struck by the number of places carrying this man's advertisements. There was hardly a wall in the city that did not have the words "P. James Magic Show 9841072671" written on it, maybe several times over. Every part of the city carried these black letters, sprayed or painted on to the walls with a black-oxide-and-Fevicol mixture, which keeps the letters stuck on the walls for more  than a couple of monsoons. The city's residents probably did not take notice of them too much, but for a few years, they were the one thing about Chennai most visitors were intrigued by, thanks to their omnipresence.

James is a stage name. The man's real name is V. Kennedy; he took his father's - or was it his grandfather's? - name and made it his brand, one that is so ubiquitous that it featured as a question on one the editions of the Landmark Quiz. Kennedy claims that it took him almost 14 years of painting walls to achieve the kind of brand recognition that he has now.

And yet, I have not come across anyone who has seen a P. James performance. Some speculate that the man has passed on, and it is the junior who runs the show these days. The advertisements also appear to have become thinned down. Maybe there is some truth to it, after all. Like Phantom in the comic strip, P.James could also be immortal!

Playtime

It took R. (Kalki) Krishnamurthy nearly three-and-a-half years to write it. It originally appeared as a serial in Kalki, the magazine that Krishnamurthy was the editor of. The first instalment was published in November 1950; with that, the popularity of the magazine went up. Readers waited eagerly for the next issue and the print run of the magazine needed to be increased, going on to touch 75,000 soon. Family members scrapped with each other to be the first to read the weekly and over about 200 weeks, the story of Arulmozhivarman, later Raja Raja Chozhan. Mixing fact and imagination, Ponniyin Selvan was a masterpiece, establishing historic fiction as a genre in Tamizh.

To celebrate the golden jubilee of the work, Magic Lantern came up with a stage adaptation of the epic. It had a hugely successful run, but it was limited - by design. For Magic Lantern, it was an ambitious production and one they carried off successfully. It was therefore only natural that when SS International Live wanted to create a landmark event, they turned to Ponniyin Selvan, and of course, to Magic Lantern.

It was an enthralling drama. Compressing 2,400 pages of the work into a near-4-hour show is not easy and there were enough in the audience feeling bad that many incidents had been left out. But for someone who has not yet read the work (yes, English translations are available), it was a grand introduction to a story so much part of the popular lore that it is treated as history itself!

Toy story

I do not know the number of dedicated toy shops in Chennai. Not having had a need to look for a toy shop in the past few years, I supposed I am past the stage where such information matters to me. But it came back to hit me when the wife and I found ourselves having to pick up toys for a nephew a couple of days ago. In the past, it has always been Landmark, with the decision being which one of their outlets I should go to. 

But that was before the toy store at Express Avenue had opened. This time around, the Landmark options were ignored in favour of a dedicated store for toys and games. Is it the only one in Chennai? I don't think so - there was something called Toys 'R' Here in Nungambakkam, which could possibly lay claim to having been the first such in Chennai. However, they have had to change their name to Mera Baby Shop - and I have no idea if they have had to change their product portfolio as well.

So here is the one at Express Avenue - Hamley's. That larger than life figure welcomes you to the Lego city on the first floor. Went in thinking we know exactly what to buy for the nephew, but even then, ended up spending over an hour browsing through all those toys out there!

Party TV

Well, it is not what you think it is, for sure. Rather, if you thought of it as anything other than a medium of political propaganda, then you surely haven't yet caught on to that part of Chennai's spirit! Kalaingar TV has its offices in the same building that houses the DMK's party headquarters. That would certainly make for some interesting scoops!

Sporting arena

Home - rather, office address - to almost all sports associations in the state, the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium is the best venue in Chennai for track & field events or football matches. It would be a great experience to watch an exciting match or soak in the thrill of serious running and jumping when the stands are full. But the capacity has rarely been tested, mainly because neither athletics nor football arouses serious passions in a Chennaite. Sure, Nallusamy Annavi first came onto the national scene at Madras about 20 years ago with his record setting high-jump effort, but he never considered himself a Madrasi and the fever his record created died out pretty quickly.

As for football, the stadium is rated for international games, but memory strains to recall a decent international football match here. There have been matches of the South Asian games and suchlike, but none that featured high-powered international stars - and there are few local stars in the game.

No wonder then that the stands appear deserted almost all the time. A few hundred spectators watching a league football match or a state-level athletics meet will hardly serve to fill the 40,000 seats in this stadium!

Dance competition

The poster is pretty clear, isn't it - or is it? In these days when almost every business around is going slow on hiring, why wouldn't one respond to a 'wanted' ad? No matter that it almost sounds underworld-ish in wanting 'kuthhu' (to stab) dancers rather than 'koothhu' (performance) ones. The line clarifying that it is only a competition highlights the edginess. And anyone from 14 to 60? What kind of competition is that? Oh, it is for Vasanth TV! But wait a minute, isn't there some ban on children below 16 participating in such shows?

Then, someone tells me that I'm over the hill. Koothhu is old fashioned, kuthhu is what this dance is all about. (Can't you see the models getting ready to execute that perfect round arm swing, which would end in the pointy end of the knife punching through whatever material is in its path?). And, you old fuddy-duddy, there is no ban, just some people like you overreacting to a one-off incident!

Whatever it be, it just shows that 'reality shows' like these competitions are among the easiest to produce - so hey, if I want the TRPs, I'll let everyone participate on TV!

Not NPR yet, but will get there

I must admit that I'm not a great FM radio person; for one thing, my commutes are too short to bother with finding the right station and settling down to listen to it. For another, most of the channels seem to do pretty much the same thing - Tamizh movie songs - so it is hard to figure out which channel I'm listening to at any time. But a lot of that changed with a phone call on Sunday evening - was most surprised that I was being invited as a guest on a live talk/phone-in show. So surprised in fact, that I didn't even properly register the name of the channel that had invited me!

When I got around to finding out, I learnt that 'Chennai Live 104.8 FM' was trying to break new ground. Launched in July 2008, the channel belongs to the Muthoot Group and has been billed as 'India's first Talk Radio FM station'. I'm not sure about that, but inviting me as a guest is definitely proof of their desire to target the "evolved, intelligent Chennaite" . Therefore one didn't have to think too hard before accepting - I do like the sound of my voice and chances of being kicked out of the studio within the 30 minutes I had been given seemed slim. So there I was at 9.30 on Monday morning, sitting across the table and talking to a couple of very high-enthu people who looked like they'd be bouncing around if not for all the equipment that kept them tethered to the table.

Except for the headphones and having to break the conversation for some ads / filler songs, it was no different from, say, a conference call. Krishna and Bhavana kept the flow going, questioning without being combative and making sure that things didn't get too serious - the talk was about 'New Age Managers' and given the gloom all around, we could have easily become mournful - but the two RJs didn't let that happen. Great work, guys; you can be sure that I'll be tuning into 104.8 more often, now!

Getting theatrical

There were - and still are - very few professional theatre people in Chennai. For quite a few in the vernacular theatre circuit, it is a hobby; for others, it is a step to the screen, big or small. Tamil cinema has been fed by stage actors for about 60 of its 75 years - it is only over the past decade that its dependence on the stage has reduced. Also, very few of the actors, once they have a toehold in the movies, come back to the stage. With all that, the lure of the Tamil stage has been diminishing.

As for English theatre, it was always seen as elitist; although the Madras Players, through more than 50 years of their existence have produced several Indian works (translated into English, of course), English theatre is restricted to a small group of fans. The Players, being mainly non-professional theatre folk, have had only a few shows of each of their 200-odd productions. Other groups - Masquerade, Boardwalkers, Little Theatre, Stagefright - have had short lives, or largely hibernating ones.

About 5 years ago, a couple of graduates from MICA decided that Chennai offers the greatest market potential for high quality entertainment providers. Going off the beaten path of advertising / market-research jobs, they set up their event management company here. In the space of 5 years, their company, Evam Entertainment, has captured the imagination of the city with some remarkable marketing efforts. Some of the things Evam has done has brought theatre closer to the people: for example, a public announcement, like the one in the picture, for theatre workshop registrations was unheard of a few years ago. But now, it gives me a chance to go and try out my dramatic skills - and having done so, chances are that I'll go to watch Evam's productions for at least a couple of years, even if I'm booted out of the workshop!