Disclaimer: this information can be conceived by someone who will appreciate English as opposed to the language by the same name that doesn’t resemble it.

This is an outburst of any normal individual who would stand by what he was taught and what he can understand. Let’s go back to the golden old school days; would we dare write a sentence like this, “C u 2mro ma frnd, gud nite” and, still walk without embarrassment? It would definitely surprise everyone that the gibberish within quotes is the language of the day. I don’t know if the world is heading to Apocalypse, as Hollywood strongly suggests but, English definitely has got a glimpse of it. I know that this topic can leave a lot of room for people squealing in self-defense or, the others confidently supporting the contrary with their tails between their legs. We get to see more alarming variations so hell bent on popularizing and masking their insufficiency only to ruin the rest – wouldn’t it be more ironic if I choose to ‘rap’ about this than ranting? Everyone can very well understand when the barriers for learning a new language owe to your native language rather than your “valued” negligence. For that matter, I’m not even going to make a mention about spoken English – that’s being meticulously and carefully crucified for years now. Let me introduce you to the people who would be so willingly causing the downfall of a language that has originated from a land of great history – I’ll chose to refer them as the ‘Leeches’ through the rest of the content. The ‘leeches’ in our context, are the distinguished people who take pride in slaughtering the linguistic rules in the name of style, flaunting it to the generations to come and eventually bring about the total collapse of the language. Fortunately, the leeches are only on the rise and there is still hope to contain the contamination. But, let’s not forget that even the ever-expanding universe of ours started from a tiny little speck; so, beware of the leeches!

The advent of e-mail and mobile phones, have not only shrunk the world and brought it closer but it has had a similar effect on English – words and sentences have shrunk to a near incomprehensible combination of alphabets, numbers and a furiously exceeding number of punctuation marks in the wrong places. How many times have you seen “!!!!!!” or “???????”? Using more than one exclamation DOES NOT emphasize the reader to be overly surprised - it never has and never will! Again, this is under the assumption that the reader is not a leech too. Well, we can’t read or write ‘Leechese’ when we aren’t one of them but, they do it with absolute ease. I want to see how I look like from a leech’s eyes – by far, they have seen me as a misled critic who cannot appreciate the virtues of simple people and has fun at their expense. If that is the effect satire can have, well, I embrace their view with utmost sincerity and will endure. Coming to talk about the contribution to this, the west takes a lion’s share. I hail from southern part of India, which has a rich heritage, and now rotting with the rise of “open” culture. You don’t have to dig deep to find out what it is all about – the literal translation is good enough. Culture doesn’t have much to do with following a language right but, I’m amazed at the level of confidence with which people write incorrect English; I cannot quite recollect since when it became widely acceptable. I was fortunate enough to have known a handful who could share the view from my head – I would’ve most definitely thanked ‘God’ here if I weren’t an atheist. If I start quoting examples of how bad English could get, that can even be mistaken for a whole new language; which, it has already started to become. The company which I used to work for had an English forum where people can do a bit of writing and, it started off great like every other shiny MIG does, before it crash lands. It was like seeing a man growing back into a monkey; do I hate monkeys? I love the world.

Ever wondered what an ellipsis is, in the context of English language? It is the three dots after a sentence which is meant to introduce a pause or to have some implied meaning that was omitted. But, I see people using a hundred dots between every incomplete fragment of their terrible writing. To top it up with some cream, they use exclamations too – expressive shit! My point here is, if you choose to write, why not even try to be grammatically correct. English is now stretched between the urgency of communication and the ignorance to learning and has transformed into a code which is perfectly encoded and deciphered by the Leeches. Now, who really cares about grammar or being grammatically correct? I remember the Joker’s words – ‘Does it depress you to know how lonely you really are?’ I really couldn’t eat the fact that people who can’t tell the difference of a noun from a verb write pages of blogs and are celebrated as writers. Their ‘work’ has ‘inspired’ people to write similar crap and we see it everywhere – looking for an example? Try fishing in your fish bowl. Every time when I’ve tried to be critical about something, people get so offended calling it as an act of discouraging the ‘writer’. There’s a religious following of American English and that is never the language that would be taught to someone in school. People pick them up mostly from movies and start using their own versions of the already corrupt language. If everything that do not conform to Standard English can be made acceptable by calling it ‘casual’ or ‘colloquial’, that is definitely a problem with our attitude towards it. I’m only making a call to everyone to take a wee bit of care when writing something even meant just for your eyes.

Yes, I did see the movie – bear with me before I take you through the torturous two hours of my recent experience watching ‘Aayirathil Oruvan’. After an extra long movie night with more than usual alcohol, you might hit on a dream like this a few minutes before you are actually awake. I’d rather put up a public apology note instead of a disclaimer to have gathered my guts to watch this terribly compiled movie. I wish the Director could also use one to brandish his supposedly daring attempt to make this film. A fantasy movie, so to speak, does not have to compromise on the basic realism of life and sanity; He fails so miserably right from the first frame of the movie. The director does have a glaring disclaimer about the portrayal of historic characters; if he was so particular about qualifying his idea, the whole movie is a disclaimer by itself – a single line “THIS IS NOT A MOVIE” would have cautioned movie watchers to make a wise decision about spending the rest of the time watching carelessly woven crap. To begin with, there were too many reviews stating that this was a brave attempt by Selvaraghavan to open a new dimension in Tamil film making – I choose to think that senseless bravery is a fool’s virtue. And, coming to the idea of unraveling a new path in Tamil film industry, he’s certainly chopped the wrong tree. This is definitely not one of these movies that leave you in the edge of your seats with questions in your mind and, makes you squeeze the internet for answers.

The movie starts with a missing archaeologist (Prathap Pothen) who vanishes somewhere near Vietnam in search for a lost civilization from the 12th century. A group of experts led by an archaeologist (Reema Sen) takes the help of Prathap’s daughter (Andrea) to unlock the mystery behind her father’s disappearance. The director tries to drive home the point that there are still hard-hearted followers of the Pandya legacy to banish the trace of the Cholas and, reclaim a valuable sculpture that was lost when the last Chola prince escaped their clutches. No one has any clue about why the loader (Karthi) and his Band of brothers board the ship - let’s forgive that and carry on, shall we? Reema sen plays a skimpy clad bad girl gunslinger with a contrasting Andrea, always with a cherubic calm searching for something (we assume it is her dad). A private force led by a smoking barrel loud mouth (Azhagam Perumal) joins the experts with his brigade for security – “Guns. Lots of guns.”. The audience would have been innocent enough to least expect glimpses of Apocalypto or Raiders of the lost ark until now. Again, Karthi has tried too hard to fit himself in a role that veteran actors would kill for – I was then convinced about the director’s ‘Dream cast’ after these 15 minutes of the movie. After a series of nonsense and a brief song, the pack reaches the island; the whole team engages in a fight for life against red painted men, vicious snakes, fire and all possible ways of extinguishing life. Unpredictably, only the three people get stranded together! They walk through all possible terrains, run through childishly designed computer graphics to find the place they’ve longed to see. The insanity in this movie never seemed to end; there are people screaming right from the beginning and we are only halfway through. We are to kindly excuse the bad language in this movie as it is a soup from a number of Hollywood movies – especially, the girl fight makes you puke if you can even read your name in English.

The viewers are to discover that the director has a real talent to drive people insane with his nonsense; he’s imparted that to his version of the Cholas as well. After this, the movie takes a plunge into another world which is black, gory, cannibalistic, disgusting, incomprehensible, and bloody ridiculous. Here comes the last Chola king (Parthiban), taking pleasure in watching bloodshed – this sequence of scenes are so cacophonous and maddening. The history we have been taught of tells us of the Cholas as one of the well civilized, art-loving people and not as pitch black, white haired blood loving zombies – remember the disclaimer? Reema sen talks about her (funny) Pandya ancestry and the important people in the government who are determined to carry this task. After an epic battle with arrows, guns, rocks the movie ends with Karthi leaving with a boy from the Cholas. Phew! I really want to cut out on a lot of derogatory adjectives but, I’m still sane enough to hate this movie. I really would love to see someone stir up a defamation case against the Director for manipulating the history of South-India in the name of fantasy. How brilliant to have tucked in the song ‘Appadi podu’ in the last few minutes of the movie! Hail fuhrer! The helpless and distressed Chola women dancing to the song is sure to make the audience melt into tears. Reema sen did not cease to have that cheap look about her and the other two “actors” were strong competitors too. Karthi could have been easily replaced by a donkey and, the production could have saved some more money to cast another scantily clothed. On the flip side, even the director could have been replaced by a donkey; we don’t understand what a donkey thinks either!