That Bloke In The Big Smoke

It's not often an English pop song is a copy of a Tamil film song, but one example is American hip-hop artist will.i.am's "It's My Birthday", a UK number one hit single last year. It's surprising how this song escaped my notice, but it's always a pleasure to make such discoveries. Wikipedia confirms the connection between the two songs. Indeed there is a reference to the Tamil original in the opening lines of the English song. To come across this while listening to piano renditions of English pop songs on Spotify was especially gratifying, because I had just wondered whether Spotify also stored piano renditions of Tamil and Bollywood numbers. I still don't know the answer to that question, but you could be fooled into thinking there was at least one in the database.

There's a good chance this is going to be the next Number 1 single on the Official UK Asian Charts and although it was only officially released a few weeks ago, it made its way to the airwaves at the beginning of the summer. Composed by an Indian musical director as part of the soundtrack for the Bollywood movie Ra One, the singer is Senegalese-American pop star Akon. And it's got English, Hindi and even Tamil lyrics. With a catchy beat it's win-win-win as far as I'm concerned!

Dear Friend Hitler. That's the name of an upcoming Bollywood movie directed by Rakesh Ranjan Kumar. It's set in the last days of the Third Reich. But taking Herr Kumar to task over his assertion that the Führer had a "love for India", and his producer's statement that "if we should thank anybody for Indian freedom, it should be Hitler", is London-based historian Alex von Tunzelmann. In 2007 she authored her first book, Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire. She's right, most Indians are ignorant about the Holocaust.

Meawhile, India's "censuswallahs" (or census people) have begun their task to determine if the country's population is actually 1.18 billion as estimated. The British introduced the census to the Raj in 1872 and it has been performed every decade since then without fail. This will be its biggest exercise yet. In 2001 the official population was 1,028,610,328. That means in the past decade we've probably added the equivalent of 4 Australias, 1.5 United Kingdoms, a Phillipines or 0.3 US of As. The population count involves 2.3 million "enumerators" travelling to more than 630,000 villages and over 5,000 cities. But it hasn't escaped criticism by some for its inclusion of controversial questions about caste for the first time since 1931. And there are also issues about the way in which India measures levels of poverty.

In case you missed it, the recently re-elected Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa concluded a recent visit to New Delhi by signing agreements on aid, infrastructure and loans. The deals are aimed at countering the growing influence and threat posed by China in the new "Great Game" with India for primacy in the Indian Ocean. A new Indian consulate will open in the southern city of Hambantota, where Chinese contractors are constructing a vast deep water port largely financed by their government's lending arm, the Export-Import bank. The Chinese are also financing and constructing ports in Burma and Pakistan, and have proposed to build one in Bangladesh, forming a chain of the so-called "string of pearls" encircling the Indian subcontinent. Beijing is also building a major road network north of Colombo and lending £140 million to build a second international airport in the south of the island. In March, the Sri Lankan government said China was "supplying more than half of all the construction and development loans it was receiving". And then there's the roads, oil and gas pipeline being built in Burma (to the aforementioned port), the multi-billion dollar infrastructural projects in Pakistan and recent infrastructural offers to Nepal. You can understand why India is worried and rattled, but to complicate matters further, Rajapaksa's visit triggered protests by a section of India's 60 million+ Tamil population. They blame Rajapaksa for the "high levels of civilian casualties" in the final days of the civil war against the Tamil Tiger separatists last year. The Indian government is stuck between a rock and a hard place in a game China will win.

And finally for the health conscious amongst us, a new Indian government body has been "tasked with protecting the country's rich heritage of medicinal and medical philosophy". It's a response to companies, organisations and people in the West claiming to invent "new" yoga practices from ones which the Indian government contend are in fact rehashed versions of centuries old practices. The campaign has already secured major victories that have forced European companies to reverse patents on the "use of extract of melon, ginger, cumin, turmeric and onions" for a range of health products. In each case Indian government officials were "able to comb the new digital library to submit carefully translated excerpts from texts ranging from 19th century medical text books to 5th century manuals of traditional ayurvedic medicine to support their claims". Only a matter of time then before we take matters to their logical conclusion and patent the number 0.

Two Oscars, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA and now the Grammys. Well done A.R. Rahman! Thanks to Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, the Tamil composer sure is riding the crest of Western success. And he deserves it all. Slumdog Millionaire wasn't his finest work but up there with the best. It seems like only yesterday when I first heard his music in one of my favourite films of all-time, the 1992 hit Roja.

It's that time of the year when Hindus all over the world celebrate their version of the harvest festival. For Tamils, Pongal (lit: boils over or spillover) is their most important festival and this year more than 60 million of us will be celebrating our version of thanksgiving all over the world. Pongal is a celebration of the prosperity associated with the end of the harvest season and is celebrated for four days from the last day of the Tamil month Maargazhi (Dec/Jan) to the third day of Thai (Jan/Feb). [Tamil Calendar]

Unfortunately, it is more than twenty years since I last had the pleasure of actually being in Tamil Nadu during the festivities, but even while growing up in Oman I would look forward to it for two main reasons: my sister and I would always get a new pair of clothes and my mum would cook us all my favourite Tamil sweets and savouries.

In fact the 'boiling over' that takes place and gives us the name of the festival comes from the sweet boiling rice that is made by mixing it with milk and jaggery in pots topped with brown sugar, cashew nuts and raisins. The contents are then allowed to boil over and as soon as that happens, the tradition is to shout "Ponggalo Pongal" (see Subject above) while blowing a conch. It is considered good luck to watch the pot boiling over and that's how the festival gets its name and fame.

In the absence of my mum and lack of skills in boiling my own sweet rice dish, I will have to stay content with merely heating up a ready-to-eat packet of a different Tamil sweet dish. In years gone by, my mum would send a packet of pongal with me on my way back to university from Oman after the Christmas break and I would open it on Pongal. Oh well, maybe next year! Happy Pongal!


Sugarcane branches are used as decoration for the prayer-offering set up. We grew sugar cane in our house in Oman!


The traditional plates used in southern India are banana leaves upon which you can find the items used for the prayer (coconut shells, bananas and the Pongal dish itself - the yellow blob in the bottom-center of the leaf). The patterns on the ground are called kolam.

Today is Tamil New Year. It is also New Year's in neighbouring Kerala where they celebrate Vishu. Other parts of India are also celebrating their harvest festivals and New Year's including Baisakhi in Punjab (among Hindus and Sikhs), Rongali Bihu in Assam and Naba Barsha in Bengal (lit. New Year). They call India a land of festivals and true to its name, the festivities continue tomorrow as it is Ram Navaami (Lord Ram's Birthday). As a few of you will be aware, my family name is derived in part from Lord Ram (ie, Ramanathan).

If I was in Tamil Nadu today, I would be participating in the Chariot/Car Festival. It's been more than 18 years!

Today is the most important day in the Tamil calendar: it's Thai Pongal, or just Pongal (lit: boils over or spillover) as it is more commonly referred to. The harvest day festival is our version of thanksgiving and is being celebrated by more than 70 million Tamils worldwide.

But not everybody can celebrate it in traditional ishtyle (Link 2)

( What I Wrote About The Festival Last Year )

India, as I mentioned earlier, is a very cheap country. Especially if
you think in dollars. Occassionally however, bargain-prices aren't
always a good thing. Take for example my experience at a supermarket
last week. I asked for and got the most economical batteries in the
world. Rs. 7 (16 cents U.S.) for a Zinc Chloride AA. As was my luck,
the bloody thing didn't even last a night. Value for money, perhaps?

( Read more... )

Yay! First day of rain since arriving in India. You have to understand that Chennai and the monsoon have a hit-miss relationship. More often than not this wonderfully hot city will descend into a week of stickiness and overcast conditions as the monsoon lashes itself on all regions except here! Then, just when you think it's going to rain, you wake up to a clear-sky day and grumble one's way to work. Today however, Indra (the Hindu God of Thunder & Rain) decided to fill up the manholes and other roadly-crevices with sweet acid rain. Is there more around the corner? *silent prayer*

The rest of this post is rather long and dry for those who don't know much about the linguistic diversity of India. If however you'd like to learn some rather useless information, feel free to ( Read more... )