Between Reviews: The Madras Mongrel

THE MADRAS MONGREL

FEB 8, 2009 – EVER SINCE I CAUGHT KATTRADHU THAMIZH on television, after having missed it during its theatrical run, I’ve been meaning to write about it. I disliked the film intensely, but in the weeks since, I’ve come to realise that this reaction isn’t simply the knee-jerk dismissal that you’d accord a rank bad piece of filmmaking. There are several aspects of this gory drama (by director Ram) that I don’t care for – for one, the choice of a bludgeon as the primary tool of communication – but something about the film continues to gnaw away at my insides, and that’s the unequivocal positioning of the language of Tamil Nadu as, simultaneously, a one-way ticket to nowhere as well as the provenance of great chauvinistic pride.

Prabhakar, the protagonist played by Jeeva with a fanatical glint in his eye, is a graduate in Tamil. Where someone with common sense, in these globalised times, would put himself (or herself) through an intensive computer course or master a fake call-centre accent and open a doorway to instant riches, Prabhakar opts to live by his convictions. He wants to make his living with his learning – and there, apparently, are no worthwhile jobs for practitioners of classical languages. Does it occur to the makers of the film that Prabhakar could take up an occupation in, say, any of the numerous local publications? Of course not – for that line of thinking would be practical, not pyromaniacal.

What Ram wants to do is follow the footsteps of one of the great heroines of the Tamils – he wants to scorch Madras to the ground for its apathy. He wants to raze down the software firms that fork over insane amounts of money to dude-wannabes, who lunch on burgers instead of biriyani. He bemoans the evils of globalisation that make it all but impossible for a Tamilian to live as one – in some sort of idealised womb safeguarded from the noxious fumes of the English language (and by extension, the adopted artifacts of Western civilisation). And he wants to reclaim the urban space that is Chennai for a populace of Tamil speakers that, apparently, can increasingly be found only in the rural landscapes of the state.

So when I was informed that this paper, this week, would be talking about urban issues in a thematic fashion, I could think of no better way to approach the subject than by invoking Kattradhu Thamizh and wondering why Tamil cinema is still so content to paint urban living (and the inevitable Westernisation that it entails) as a shameful pact with the devil. (There were times I felt Kattradhu Thamizh was attacking me, personally, for being Tamil and yet choosing to make a living by adopting another tongue. Truth be told, that’s perhaps why the film continues to fester away in some corner of the brain, because, at least for a second, it made me question my Tamil identity.)

Even in less incendiary films like Mahanadhi and Thavamai Thavamirundhu, there is a gradual sense of a loss of innocence (along with a loss of a beatific way of life) as characters forsake their salutary hometowns on the banks of sprawling rivers and move to the shores of the Cooum in search of a livelihood. You don’t find this in popular Hindi cinema, where urban living is celebrated to an almost ridiculous degree. The stories of the small man have practically vanished, and all we seem to see on screen are stylish slackers from South Bombay. A Paruthi Veeran or a Subramaniyapuram, redolent of fresh earth after the first rainfall, is unimaginable in Hindi cinema today – and it’s wonderful that Tamil cinema continues to tell the stories of the villages.

But when Tamil cinema uproots itself from these villages, I find I identify less with these urban characters than with those South Bombay slackers (and trust me, at least stylish I certainly am not). We don’t seem to share anything but a mother tongue. In theory, Prabhakar should be someone like me, someone trying to make a living in Chennai, who negotiates the ups and downs typical of city living – but where he loses me is in drawing a line on the sand and asking me to take sides, “us” Tamils versus “them.” I’d like to think that part of being urban is being assimilative of the good things, the fun things of the various people and cultures that make up the melting pot of a city – but why are these Tamil urbanites so rarely seen in films other than the ones Mani Ratnam used to make or the ones Gautham Vasudev Menon makes now?

Okay, so Prabhakar is an extreme example – he is, after all, an extremist in every imaginable sense – but why don’t I see myself in ‘Jayam’ Ravi in Santhosh Subramaniam (which is set entirely in a city, and yet resonates with over-reverential family values that are quite alien to me) or Dhanush in Yaaradi Nee Mohini? Where’s the saucy irreverence that characterised, say, Revathi in Mouna Raagam? She wasn’t a South Bombay kid – pampered and privileged with comforts, or locking lips with a live-in boyfriend – and yet, she shared with them a style of speaking, a manner of living, a free-spirited sense of being.

The externals may vary from city to city – but I think the one thing that identifies and links the urban youth all over India is a general state of an existence cobbled together with bits and pieces from everywhere. And that cheerful Madras mongrel is someone I don’t much see on our screens. Our urban cinema is still rooted in a chauvinistic embrace of the traditional and the conventional – and the purpose of this piece isn’t to decry this reality. After all, no one can wish away the commercial considerations that massage most Tamil films into products palatable to the B/C centres. But the recognition of this truth isn’t enough to make me brush off that other, equally valid truth – that there are urban Tamils who, though less in number, are no less deserving of space on the Tamil screen simply because we happen to think in English.

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Posted in: Between Reviews, Cinema: Tamil