Warning!! :: This post may be considered by many to be highly biased towards Rajnikanth. Can be seen as one which glorifies him. This should be excused, taking into consideration that i am a very big fan….



A five letter word that inspires millions of fans to go into a frenzy or into a fervour at times. Glorification. Hero-worship. The lone superstar of Indian cinema in the true sense of the word.





The above video appears at the beginning of every Rajini movie since Annamalai, and is enough to bring the roof down, with a storm of whistles, claps and confetti at a first-day-first-show at any theatre in the world. Rajini’s popularity is not limited to Tamil Nadu alone, he is hugely popular in Japan also, as he is with all the Tamil population on earth. You can expect the same reaction to a Rajini film on the first day in California as you can expect in the Chrompet Vettri theatre. He’s been ruling Tamil Cinema for 30 years, ever since his debut in Apoorva Raagangal. The undisputed emperor. Box-office king. His macho image and unbelievable stunts on screen may somehow seem laughable for non-tamilians. But hey, consider the results!! Chandramukhi, his latest movie, is rumoured to have grossed in excess of Rs. 80 crores at the box-office, a record for any Indian film upto date, giving Bollywood extravaganzas such as Lagaan and Kal Ho Na Ho a run for their money. He is the second highest paid actor in Asia after only Jackie Chan, and is rumoured to get Rs. 16 crore as salary for his upcoming movie, Sivaji.



He appeared on The India Today list of the most influential people in India. Is a recipient of the Padmabhushan award, the highest honour that can be conferred on a cine personality by the Indian Government. He’s not exactly famous for his acting skills as he is for his mannerisms and styles. He cannot dance as well as his wanna-bes. But who cares? He’s still at the top.

The Cigarette style. Has mesmerised millions of tamil cinema-goers across the decades. Lightning quick. A flick of the fingers, and the cigarette is lighted, another flick, and it sits in his mouth, blowing smoke all around. People who want attention and popularity in Tamil Nadu can either align with Rajinikanth, or publicly abash him in some form, by virtue of which they’ll either earn the goodwill or incur the wrath of his innumerable fans, who swear loyalty and will do anything for him.

But the one main quality that endears Rajni to everyone is his down-to-earth, simple, character. He is deeply religious and spiritual, and frequently visits the Himalayas. He does not politically exploit his popularity. He does not misuse his fan-power. He engages in various service-oriented gestures either on his own, through his Sri Ragavendra Trust, or his fan clubs. He was in a large way responsible for the victory of the DMK-TMC alliance in the 1996 TN assembly elections by means of a single televised interview asking people to support that combine. He rarely appears in the public. He could earn ten times of what he does now by appearing in ads the way bollywood stars do. Shah Rukh Khan once said : I am only here to make money, I know my commercial value, and will exploit it. But not Rajini. The only time he’s appeared on TV in some kind of advertisement is for a polio campaign in 1996. For free.

His 153rd film, Sivaji, is supposedly the biggest movie of his career, directed by Shankar, produced by AVM, and to be released sometime next year. The day the announcement was made, the frenzy begun. Fans, the media and the general public. Speculating. Wondering. As to what the story of the movie’s going to be. Who the heroine is. The music director. Cameraman. A simple announcement whipped up a frenzy among the entire Tamil speaking contingent in the world. Stills leaked out from the movie’s shooting make headlines. The weeks leading up to the movie’s release will be ones of ultimate pandemonium. You have to see it to believe it. Also, the possibility of this movie being one of their Thalaivar’s last movies adds on. Everyone cashes in on Rajni’s popularity except the man himself.

Many say that the reason behind Rajini’s success is his portrayal of roles that appeal directly to the common man. An auto-driver. Milkman. Coolie. Taxi-driver. Some others say it is his charismatic personality in real-life, his simplicity and good-naturedness. Whether its cos of his style on screen or aura off-screen, Rajini commands the attention of the public in Tamil Nadu like no one else in the entertainment field all over India. If Tom Cruise is Hollywood’s most bankable star, then Rajini is India’s version.

Tamil Nadu has a history of hero-worship, that begun with the days of MGR. After MGR, it was Rajini. Now, as Rajini is 56 and his career is coming to a close, there are a host of other younger-generation actors who are Rajini-wannabes. They imitate the man’s style and try to deliver punch-dialogues. But well, a punch-dialogue is meant only for the superstar. Not for any *****-star who imitates him. When Rajni came on to the field, his style of acting, mannerisms, etc were all original. Vijay and Ajith are supposedly the contenders for the title of superstar. Wtf?? There cannot be two superstars. Ever.

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

Well, ahem…yes, i’m back…bored, and waiting for the germany match thats due in an hour. And since i just checked my orkut scrapbook to see if anyone’s ’scrapped’ me, i was hit upon by a brainwave. Why not R-I-P, orkut, i thought. Ok, fine. I looked up orkut in wikipedia, the place where any fool can get enlightened on anything he wants to be, and was face-to-face with a decent length, not-too-long article. It begun with … “The title of this article is supposed to be orkut but is actually Orkut due to Technical Reasons.” Whatever. Who cares if its orkut or Orkut. Maybe they do. But, I sure don’t. If you’ve noticed, I’ve still not written anything useful. Well, thats one of the main reasons people blog, to get the satisfaction of having ‘published’ something on the WWW, useful or not, interesting or downright bullshit.



Anyways, the wikipedia article, written by god-only-knows-whom, started something like this … “orkut is an Internet social networking service run by google ….” (notice the small ‘0′). It then provided the name of the founder, the-guy-who-has-an-unpronouncable-second-name. Its not exactly ‘unpronouncable’, seeing that you can pronounce it the way you want to, only, it might be wrong. There’s always a confusion when there are dots above the letters in a word. So, well, i shall pronounce his name as Orkut Booyookkoookten, in my way. I’m dead sure its wrong. It’s a free country, ain’t it. And his country is far far away from mine. Guess he’s turkish. Who cares.



I’m quite new to orkut, and though i joined a few months back, its only a few days since i’ve been actively involved in its intricacies. This is what my home page looks like…

This page does turn up most of the times i login, but this fella also peeks in sometimes….

Guess the orkut-fellows don’t stock up enough servers to meet the rush. Jammed servers. Bad servers. Infact, its ‘Bad, bad, server. No donut for you.’ The message that comes when orkut has a bad server. Whats it supposed to be?? Catchy?? Funny?? Or something else?? I hate donuts anyway.



So. A social networking service. Aimed at ‘expanding the circumference of your social circle.’ But does it, really?? Orkut is not a new concept, actually. Loads of other social networking sites exist, MySpace and Friendster being the noteworthy ones. Then why is orkut the most popular one in India? Cos its Google that its related to. The only reason. Thereby shooting up to the top. Infact, Yahoo was not the first of its kind-of wesite to debut when it did so in some month of 1995. The backronym states ‘Yet Another Hierarchial Officious Oracle’, and is testimony to the fact that it was not the first. But still, its the leading website now, its annual profits are of the order of 2 billion dollars, beating even Google, which has a higher net turnover, though. I know this is completely unrelated to this post, but still, just occured to me. Since starting in 2004, I think January, it has amassed 20,658,025 members. When it started, it was supposed to be different from the existing players in the fact that it was by invitation only that you could join in orkut. But that has not been a deterrent factor. A major defect in orkut is that people from all over the world are not allowed access to it. If your friend took a job in Iran, he cannot keep in touch with you through orkut, as its banned there, for seemingly ‘ethical’ and ‘religious’ reasons. Another thing that irritates you is that almost 69% of orkut users are brazilians, the idiots who start stupid communities and post in a stupid language (I think its portugese) that no one except them can make head or tail of (hope a brazilian who can read english doesn’t stumble by this blog).



I’m afraid it’s time for me to abruptly take leave now…time’s almost 12.30…i’ll be back with the rest of the rip tomorrow…until then..

Have mobile phones taken over our lives??





Dumb question. Of course they have … if it was computers two decades ago, this is the era of the mobile phone. There was a ‘Voice Your Views’ column in The Hindu featuring precisely the same topic and thats what gave me the idea for this rip. What started as 15-pound bricks now are sleek, easy-to-use, stylish, trendy, feature-filled, and what not … this adjective list is never-ending. They were conceived primarily as a device that could be used to make calls when a land-line (fit only for the museums now) was not available, and to exploit the wireless technology. But well, as of now, their ‘primary’ use is still to make calls, but an array of many other features also exist, each of which would have been awe-inspiring for any layman fifty years ago. Hell, who would have believed even in 1980 that it would be possible to take photos & videos, send instant messages that conveyed your message to any person around the globe in a minute and schedule your appointments, surf the internet, publish blogs online, play games and listen to music and the radio on a small varied-shape object that weighed half a football??? After computers, mobile phones are the technology that has grown double exponentially over the last decade or so. The size, weight and cost of the mobiles have reduced, and the features they can offer are steadily on the rise.



The SMS. Ask any student in the world what he/she would miss most if all mobiles in the world were to suddenly vanish, and pat would come the reply…SMS. Short messaging service. That caters to the general as well as intricate needs of not only students, but other people as well. The best ever invention as far as mobiles are concerned. Most service operators in India today provide 100 messages a day. Not enough. Well, for some atleast. Message forwards. Created in hundreds by the day, related to everything. Mobile jokes. So many things relate closely to the SMS. A new form of English even has surfaced because of the SMS. There’s a separate section in The Oxford English Dictionary that provides the expansions of short-forms used in SMSses. Smileys. Which can depict every emotion of your with semi-colons, braces and hyphens alone. Wow. A whole new world. Everything cos of the mobile phone.



Lets forget the SMSs for a bit. The next big thing - GPRS. General Packet Radio Service. A relatively new invention to the SMS. Through which you can surf the internet on your mobile phone. Soon, broadband internet speeds will be achieved on it. There are separate portals that are especially for the mobile users. GPRS is turning out to be a multi-crore business in our country, and revenues are being generated in torrents, through advertisement, and DOWNLOADS. Wallpapers, ringtones, videos, games, news and what not. Everything costs money, and money makes business.





Games. The next big thing. People are addicted to it. See any owner of a primitive nokia phone, and one of the first questions you’ll ask about the phone is the Snake game high-score. Games, Games, Games. Games on everything, about everything. Downloaded free from some sites. People exchange bookmarks for free game-sites. Gaming mobiles, like the N-Gage QD, especially designed for those freaks (no offence) who can’t stay one day without having tried a new game. Action games, racing games, card games, casino games, battle games. So many different genres. That keep you hooked, for atleast a while. A person who has a decent mobile cannot simply say he has nothing to do and is bored, because supposing he’s ready to spend some money, there’s SO BLOODY MUCH to do.



Ok, lets forget going berserk about the implications of games, SMSs and GPRS. Coming back to mobiles on the whole, there are so many different models, known by their ‘numbers’, each of which caters to a different section of people. Rates vary, from 3,000 to 30,000. Black-and-white phones, colour phones, camera phones, radio phones, GPRS phones. So much of variety and choice. Choose carefully before buying. New models come in very often. They become thinner and thinner. Slimphones, they call them. There’s a mobile available for almost every budget.



There was a recent news article on how the idea conceived to ward off teenagers from loitering in work-areas was fine-tuned to their benefit. The first thing was a new kind-of alarm like device (the mosquito box) that could be fitted outside workplaces where teenagers created problems. It emitted a sound at a very high frequency that adults above around 20 years of age could not hear because of the so-called ‘aging ear’ syndrome. As for the teenagers, it filled their head with an annnoying buzz that forced them to leave the place. More recently, the company (Compound Security Systems) has come out with ‘mosquitotone’, which is sweeping through the entire United States. Teenagers can henceforth be alerted to their SMSs while in class, without the professor hearing a thing!!! See if you can…. hear the tone from here



There’s recently been a huge and still-raging controversy about whether students should be allowed to use mobiles in their college. Ban or no ban, students still will continue to use them with the same intensity they do now. They will device new methods to conceal the phones deep inside their clothing. They will invent new ring-tones only teenagers can hear. A student could feel handicapped without a mobile. Such importance!!! Where did all this result from?? Who is to be blamed???



Ah, DEBATE. We can debate later. There’s too much to debate about, too many things to argue about, too many controversies, too many different opinions. I shall stop here, however abrupt or absurd it may seem. Hell, i’m bored of typing. Will be back with another rip.

“We are all here to do, what we are all here to do”

—said by the Oracle in Matrix