The Slumdog Millionaire Of Chennai :)

A Tamil family returned from Europe tour recently.

I asked the man about the trip. He regaled me with the following story:

He and his family were part of a tour group guided around the Vatican by a French lady. Other tourists were from the US, Canada, Japan, Korea etc. ‘If you keep looking at each painting, it will take you more than 4 years to see them all’ warned the guide I believe. The group still paused involuntarily in front of a painting in which a man was seen stabbed. The group asked the guide what the scene was about. The guide posed the question back to the tourists who had no clue. From the motley crowd came a single answer from our Tamil man, ‘it is Julius Caesar!’

Found this clipping luckily 🙂

 

The tourists were astonished and the guide was impressed. None expected a dusky, short and stocky south Indian guy to give the right answer. The guide asked him how he knew (when the supposed elites who were from better part of the world could not guess).

The man smiled to himself and the family couldn’t help laughing but they kept quiet and not explaining.

Reason was simple. The man has seen the same scene enacted in Tamil pictures many times – especially this one was played by thespian Sivaji Ganesan in a dream scene in a very old Tamil film from the ’60s! He became the Slumdog Millionaire instantly in Vatican, drawing from his cherished childhood filmy memories, he being an ardent Tamil cinema buff!! Looks like he virtually lived in the dooring talkies in those days, watching old tamil flicks many times over in ‘tharai ticket’ (floor ticket lolz) in his village !!! History what?! Art what?!

I couldn’t stop laughing hearing it from him. True, I will know any day Romeo & Juliet, Socretes, ‘You too Brutus ?!’…. I mean Julius Caeser, Shah Jehan etc., even if I am shaken awake from deep slumber and shown their paintings! Tamil cinema educated me before my history and literature books could!

Closing the post with our CM Jayalalitha as Cleopatra (!) in this evergreen Tamil romance melody. She is seen in this song with our former CM M G Ramachandran (MGR) who is the hero: Tamil Nadu is a unique state where 2 CMs romance to eternity in silver screens: a feast to our eyes! World record!! JJ is awesome in this number.

 

Even poor, illiterate villagers in Tamil Nadu know Egypt, palm trees and pyramids from this song as you can see 🙂 That is why Bollywood heroes like Hrithik Roshan etc are romancing in Switzerland and New Zealand. Indian IQ is a lot improved thanks to our film stars 🙂

Can anyone explain to the peasants of Tamil Nad what is a Robot, better than how Rajnikanth did with the Shankar picture??!!