Aparna’s Blog

A lazy, relaxed day. Surrounded by murmurs. Earphones on. A whole lot of your favourite Rahman’s songs waiting to be listened to. You have been hooked big-time to Puthiya Manidha, Kadhal Anukkal, Kilimanjaro, Hosanna, Aaromale, Mannippaaya and Pudhu Vellai Mazhai for several weeks now that it feels like ages since you last listened to any of your other favourite songs. You press the ‘Play’ button and then you lose track of time, lose yourself in the music, in the melody, in the beats and in the nostalgic waves after fresh waves of memories and thoughts that flow in with each song. It’s amazing how many years worth of memories are compressed into just a few minutes of music! Amazing how Rahman’s music has become such an important part of your life that listening to any of your favourite Rahman’s songs itself gives you a feeling of having gotten into a comfort zone! Listening to each song is an experience in itself and I am so happy that this year we have got so many gems of songs from the man!

I liked Raavanan. Found it much better than Raavan. The first half too somehow seemed to move faster than Raavan. Was it because of the actors, or because I have already watched Raavan or because of the language? Am not sure about that. The climax - not the fight on the bridge, but the scene where Ragini gets back to Veeraiyya - was much better in Tamil than in Hindi. Prithviraj was too good in the role of Dev. Got mesmerized by the visuals, the lighting and the colours of the forest once again. Relished the awesome background score and songs of Rahman once again. I am happy that I watched both Raavan and Raavanan at Sathyam cinemas.

I don’t have a clear answer either for the ‘How was Raavan?’ question or for ‘Did you like Raavan?’ Of course, the answer for the second question is definitely not a ‘No’. But it isn’t a whole-hearted ‘Yes’ either. And that’s why I didn’t even attempt to write on the movie all this while.

Spoiler Alert (But I guess this won’t matter since most of you might have watched the movie by now.)
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I never thought that my blog will ever reach the state in which it is now. Somehow, for the last several weeks, I have been caught up in a pretty hectic routine in which my blog doesn’t figure at all! Thought I will at least say a quick Hi to you all even though I don’t feel like writing anything. Neither the songs of Raavan nor a few other songs to which I am addicted big time nor the architectural beauty of the temples at Thirumalai Vaiyyavur, Siruvapuri and Pancheshti which I recently visited, seem to give me the much needed motivation to write something here.

P.S.: Call it showing off or sharing my happiness with you or whatever you want to, did you see that T.M.Krishna has linked my post in his website? I am so happy!

Isn’t this newly released trailer intriguing? Don’t the sun rays filtered through the trees in the shot where Abhishek & Aishwarya are going on a boat look surreal? The music at 0:24 in this trailer reminds me of the BGM in Roja for the scenes featuring the terrorists. As I read the line ‘The bond between the hunter and the hunted – between the captor and the captive’ in the ‘Director’s note’ in the website of Raavan, I immediately started thinking about how Mani Ratnam has already shown a bond between the captor and the captive in Roja too. Anyway, the trailers are making the wait for the movie release seem longer by the day!

With this song, Mani Ratnam shows he needs neither exotic locales having nature’s beauty in abundance (Pacchai Nirame) nor a fort (Snehidhane) nor a festive atmosphere (Yaaro Yaarodi) and with just brick and cement (and not to forget those yellow and white bed spreads) as a backdrop, he can create stunning visuals too.
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Blame it on the lack of time or the fact that the ability to satisfactorily translate thoughts into words seems to be often eluding me nowadays or sheer laziness, I am now looking at the number of posts that I have written to celebrate 10 years of Alaipayuthey and cursing myself. I now feel like somebody who has a 3-hour exam to finish in just half an hour.

Thinking about exams, I remember the first time I heard a group of people raving non-stop about Alaipayuthey. It was the day of my class 10 English board exam. Having completed the exam well ahead of time, all of us were happily standing outside the school and chatting. And that was when a group of my class mates started talking excitedly about the trailer of the next Mani Ratnam’s movie which was being telecast on the TV channels. They were talking about Madhavan, (at that time, who wouldn’t have done that? ) the music, etc. But I had not watched the trailer yet, since we still didn’t have cable connection at home! Being a mute participant to the conversation, little did I know back then that a couple of months down the line, I would become totally crazy about the movie and the craze would still be on an ever-increasing mode ten years down the line too! And that movie would be the one thing about which it’s difficult to get me to stop talking about. I am in a nostalgic mood now!