Panchayats and Karwachowts
Most Tamil moviemakers, it seems to me, are school dropouts, single, rural and perverted. Almost every movie unfolds – and tears apart – in a village. “Kounder ayya!!” the hapless village folk bend over to touch the sand the hero had just treaded to the sound of conches and women making suggestive sounds using their tongues. “Veera Koundaru varaaru, then singam varaaru!” a song resounds in the background as the hero takes a 3-½ minute walk down the lush, green Pollachi fields with villagers waving their “angavastrams” – and “dhotis” – for visual effect and old women feeding him leftovers. The movies, using the village “perrivars” as their mouthpiece, would copiously lecture the audience about the hypocrisy of the rich and the city folk (no differentiation there), dispense the loutish city slickers with tame lessons on jurisprudence and sycophancy, highlight the degeneration of culture amongst the educated (abetted by rapturous applause from illiterate front-benchers), and of c