Want to break guitar strings in good company?

Recently we saw the development of large affordable housing by the Swarnabhoomi group of companies in Chennai. They had a huge parcel of land outside Chennai on which they launched an ambitious plan to build a1000 houses or more. To make it even more attractive for future residents the group decided to develop around these houses an educational centre. The first institution that got going was the Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music (SAM). Compared to the usual practice of establishing schools and colleges to cater for the never-ending demand for engineers and doctors this was a bold departure.

A couple of years ago there were hardly any institutions for young musicians to sharpen heir skills but now SAM would be the institution which can groom and even discover new talent. Shyam Rao a drummer and professional musician in Chennai was picked by the group to head the venture. The chance to work with world-renowned musicians is what prompted Shyam to join as a faculty member. Shyam feels that it is very important to be initiated into music correctly. The present system is for musicians to claim a grade by passing the Trinity college examinations. This we hear is not entirely the best way so SAM is focused more on the students and not so much on certification. Right from the start they had no fear that it may be difficult to attract students as Shyam was convinced that they merely had to set up a good school of music and the students would come automatically.

The quality of musicians who have passed out from the Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music is good. AR Rahman has actually used them in his work which says a lot. Musicians attending a course also get the opportunity to interact with musicians whom they would otherwise never have met. As one person said "I got to break a lot of guitar strings with big time musicians." What he meant was that he had the chance to interact with them on a social level too. SAM comes out like the kind of place where one would love to go and just hang out.

It was AR Rahman that made his career.

Playback singer Srinivas says that he was virtually forced into becoming a chemical engineer because in his family everyone was a qualified engineer. He says he had no option but to become one himself. He worked for a full 10 years in an engineering company and even tried his hand at marketing until he decided that enough was enough and walked away from his job and tried his hand at singing. While at college he had started singing and it was no doubt the female following that he had that made him opt for that as a career.

After he started singing for the movies he found that most music composers were content in getting a singer to sing the song exactly as they composed it but the one man who was different was AR Rahman. Srinivas said that he used to try and put every singer in a corner only so that the singer would have to think out of the box and contribute something on his own. It was that one trait that set him apart from many of the other composers. Srinivas says his growth as a singer was also because he chose not to concentrate only on playback singing. His foray into non-film music and stage singing exposed him to a larger arena. He even started composing songs on his own. But it was his first experience singing a song for ARR that stayed in his mind.  Srinivas had responded to ARR’s call thinking that he was going to get a full song but on going to the studio he was shocked to find that he had been called just to sing chorus. For a full-fledged playback singer that was like being called up on stage and then being insulted.

On hindsight Srinivas said he was grateful for that one opportunity to sing chorus because that opened his mind to the endless possibilities in music. He has pretty strong views about the reality shows that are popular today on television. He is not in favour of judging singers just for the way that they can faithfully duplicate an original song. He looks for something special from the singer; something that highlights his own character. According to him a contestant cannot be expected to be just a Xerox copy of the original. Srinivas has very many more original ideas and one can see in the conversation that he has a mind of its own and is not prepared to take anybody’s word unless he is convinced. Listen to him as he explores the world of music in India.

Hard work and all is all fine but you need luch too.

Santosh Sivaraman passed out of Vivekananda College in Chennai. His parents and family were all professionals in some field or the other but he didn't do any of that because he wasn't quite ready for it. Those days most people hankered for a job in a bank or to become a civil servant or a doctor or an engineer but Santhosh confessed that since he was not particularly bright though he never did well in academic fields. He always did better outside the classroom.

In spite of being a backbencher in college he had some of the finest brains sitting on sides of him in class. In his defense he says it is almost always that backbenchers turn out to be the leaders of the future. He was one of the lucky few whose father’s allowed them to take a room and stay outside of college hostels and even his home. He admits that he never ever wanted to work; which is strange coming from a man whose father was in the army.

But now in a strange reversal he continues to work while his more famous classmates and associates have all retired. What happened was fortuitous. One day he read about glass at the US Consulate library and right after that he came across a man who knew how to bend glass tubes for making neon signs. He got him to make a little glass Ganesha and he gave it to a friend who ran a small souvenir store. A doctor bought it for the princely sum of Rs 100/-. That was the start of his present business, which is making and exporting hundreds and hundreds of glass Ganeshas. He hit upon a clever idea of involving unemployed women to canvass for orders. So these ladies went out and sold them to customers in all sorts of places. Places that he could never have accessed. Santhosh had no idea of what he was getting into on that fateful day when he came across that man bending glass. Listen to his fascinating story of luck.

Rajinikanth laughed and Chinni Jayanth was made.

In one episode of RUMBLE featuring Chinni Jayanth I dug into the background of this very versatile actor. Chinni started out as a mimicry artist but then there are so many of them that he stepped into comedy. The real difference between Chinni and other film comedians is while most of them can imitate what has already been done by an actor he can get under the skin of the character and show you how they would have acted in any kind of situation. That takes unique talent. Unlike many others he started comedy in college. That was different because most Kollywood film artists have never been to college. In his first film while working as a character artist he used to pass the time of day on the sets by imitating other crewmembers. He used to do it so well that his costar who was none other than Rajnikanth used to laugh at all his antics. That gave him the conviction that he could entertain people with just his comedy and soon he took to performing on stage. His first show was in the town of Virudhunagar. Many people would remember the early days of Chinni Jayanth when he started doing commercials. The very first was one where he imitated Rajnikanth in a Tortoise brand mosquito coil ad. Then one day he set out to become a producer. Revathy who was a famous leading lady in Kollywood cinema helped him tremendously. She went out of her way to support him in making a movie called Chinnapulla.

He says cinema making has now changed from being a sprint to a marathon. Your competitors have increased greatly and nobody knows who will win. He says filmmaking has also become a gamble. Chinni says his one performance at a major stage show when Rajnikanth, Kamal and Amitabh were in the audience changed his life greatly. As the show was almost entirely in Tamil he realized that the star from Bollywood was looking completely bored. That's when the organizers talked to Chinni and asked him to do something, which could entertain Amitabh Bachchan also. He went on to do a stand up version of Kaun Banega Crorepati to the delight of everyone. Taking a leaf out of Rajnikanth’s book he too always tries to inject morals into his comedy.

All in all Chinni is a fascinating person and you will enjoy listening to his priceless imitations

Don't aim to make cult films. Only a few watch them.

One lazy afternoon I watched a Tamil film called Oram Po at Udhayam theatre in Chennai. I had decided to duck into the theatre to escape a really hot afternoon. The show had started when I entered and as I found my way to my seat the noisy crowd of students were having fun throwing peanut shells at each other. I had chosen Oram Po because I thought it was a flop movie but when my eyes got used to the darkness I realized that the hall was full and the audience was roaring in laughter. Later I contacted Pushkar and Gayatri the directors of the film and they readily agreed to be interviewed. It was interesting take on the art of film making by these two young filmmakers. Pushkar feels that being considered as makers of cult films is actually not a good thing as such films are seen only by a few people as opposed to mainstream cinema which is watched by people in the hundreds of thousands. Gayatri and Pushkar are married to each other after they met during college in Chennai. Their friendship developed then into a longer-term relationship. They discussed their college days while doing a course in Visual Communications in Loyola College. They felt it was a very interesting course when compared to doing a regular degree course. After they went for a short course in filmmaking to the United states they came back to dig deep into their own experiences while growing up in Chennai and it was those little experiences including auto rickshaw racing and bike re-modeling that gave them the seed of an idea for making the film Oram Po.

The film starring Arya and Pooja was a huge hit. It also featured John Vijay who was first seen on television and then worked for FM radio. He is probably the quirkiest actor to appear in Tollywood films. Pushkar and Gayatri’s second film was called Va Quarter Cutting, which turned out to be a delightful movie that could simultaneously be considered mainstream and cult film. It went into the details of a dry-day (alcohol free) in Chennai. These are usually days on which National leaders were born or died or achieved a career milestone. The Government of India tries to promote abstinence by declaring the occasional alcohol free days. The film was also a trip into the criminal underbelly of Chennai. SPB Charan and John Vijay play critical roles in the film in which two people go in pursuit of a bottle of rum. Gayatri and Pushkar are trained filmmakers as opposed to somebody who went into filmmaking just because it was their passion. They are now working on their third movie and listening to the script it promises to be a riot. Listen to them as they talk about their life thus far.

Nobody gets taught in College. You have to learn on your own.

Very often it is not the hero but the character actor in a movie who walks away with all the accolades. This is all the more true when we talk about Kollywood films. Heroes in our films are always super heroes swinging from the rafters, kicking the villains in their nuts spewing fiery one-liners and romancing the heroine all at the same time. So when a villain turns up on screen who can take a kick in the nuts with a wry grin we can’t but stand up and applaud. John Vijay got into the entertainment business by accident. He signed up for a Bachelor of Arts from MCC a well-known college from Chennai but was chucked out for his shenanigans. So to pass time he signed up for a course in Visual communications in another college.

By his own admission he was taught nothing in class but learnt enough by simply hanging around in the car park under the trees in the campus of Loyola College. Somewhere along the way he was spotted by his fellow course mates as a likely candidate for a film they were making. The film was ‘Oram Po’ and he played the part of a garage owner involved in auto rickshaw racing. His portrayal won him a large following. He was merely being himself but he must have been lucky for that was exactly what was required of him.

More cine roles followed, as did assignments on TV. In this interview he gives his take on life, relationships and his simple yet profound views on charity. As usual John is a riot. Though he has now been accused of being stereotyped in his portrayal, no one can deny that his zany one liners delivered in his crazed style has the audience whooping with delight. 

I first came across John when he dropped into my office one evening. He was a friend of Mathew M.C. another unique character who was sharing my office. The two of them were always up to something and most evenings would see a motley crowd of musicians, models, students and out of work artists drinking beer and wolfing down large quantities of hotdogs dripping with mayo and relish. John would turn up wearing a clean and starched dhoti and kurta topped with a brocade turban wrapped around his head. He was in the process of setting up a marketing company and his trademark wasa bottle of mineral water which he would give away to all and sundry.

Even then I had predicted that he would find a place in Kollywood and that he did eventually.

Dr Radheshyam claims a sure cure for Cancer!!!

It is not everyday that you see a man walking in through your front door and then nonchalantly narrating mind blowing stories. ‘Stories’ maybe the wrong word, instead should I say ‘as yet unverified truths’. Whatever the word I use, Dr Radheshyam who presently lives in Coimbatore doesn’t pull his punches. Within fifteen minutes of the start of our meeting and with zero drama and fanfare he said, “I know how to cure Cancer.” 

He goes into greater detail as we settle down into a conversation on camera. Except for bone cancer and cancer of the brain, Dr Radheshyam says he has the definitive cure for the dreaded disease. I am not sure what he means when he says that that cancer as all about ‘free radicals’ but I promised myself I would read up on it. He says he has cracked the cure for Cancer entirely through the reading and understanding of ancient Indian medical treatises.

In ancient India the sage Sushruta was the first to classify surgical operations. His ‘Samhita’ defines and explains surgery and its tools in his great work of 120 chapters in five parts. He describes eight different operations for surgery, like cutting, opening, scratching, piercing, inserting etc, and finally stitching up. He was both a practitioner and a teacher of surgery. His contribution to the ancient cultural heritage of India is invaluable. Sushruta Tantra became Sushruta Samhita not over night, but by taking its own time, something like a thousand years. Sushruta became very famous and soon his work was translated first into Arabic and subsequently it reached Europe through Latin and English.

Dr Radheshyam says that though he is by training an Oncologist, all sorts of patients approach him particularly when they are beyond conventional cure. They track him down to his clinic cum research center cum factory in Coimbatore. He was born in nearby Perindurai, which has some of the driest climate in South India. As a consequence of that a sanatorium had been established in Perindurai by the British to treat TB patients. He completed his basic medical degree and then proceeded to the USA in pursuit of a doctorate. After practicing for nearly three decades in the USA he felt the urge to revisit his roots and started touring different parts of India. He also started reading up on herbal cures and was increasingly drawn to the idea of making medicines based on ancient Indian knowledge.

You can listen to him explain all this and more in his own words by watching him on my interview on RUMBLE. “India is a blessed land and almost every single plant on this earth can be seen here. If they are not native, they can at least be grown here.” He first started identifying the different medicinal herbs and finally started producing medicines that could be dispensed as tablets, capsules, in liquid form or as balm. He claims confidently that he has even developed painkillers more powerful than anything existing, which will be good news for people at the end stage of incurable deceases.

He tells me that on one occasion within a period of fifteen days he raised a patient’s level of platelets from 15,000 to 250,000 and saved him from long and expensive treatment. Same for a diabetic who was referred to a hospital as one in urgent need of dialysis. Instead of requiring a couple of lakhs for Dialysis the patient was up and about after spending a more affordable twenty thousand. He then jolted me by saying that Big Pharma hates him and that even his physical well-being is threatened. He is also suspicious of large corporate hospitals, which he says only frightens people into useless and expensive treatments. Watch him and come to your own conclusions.