Monday, March 14, 2011

Kuzhappam (Confusion)

I am in Chennai! I AM IN CHENNAI! I am in Chennai! It is has been a few weeks since I landed in Chennai but have been busy. Seriously. Life is good and I don't know what else to say. On this blog, what better way to celebrate my recent relocation to Sambhar land other than restarting the forgotten series on Tamil serials? Here we go, this post is on the most important aspect on which the Tamil serial rides, confusion. You might not have noticed the kind of confusion I am talking about. It needs some guts made of steel and some Himalayan patience to sit through several consecutive episodes, take notes, and then make sense of them! Please remember that I have been through some life threatening circumstances when I was observing that monster from close quarters with a notepad and pen in hand. Appreciate it...

There is A. There is B. A is married to B. A has three siblings - C, D and EB has two siblings - F and G. C, D, E, F and G are assigned random genders but it helps to be have a majority of females. Since A is married to B, it is a high probability that F is married to D! C is married to H, an outsider to the original family. G is most probably a male and is currently unmarried. A and B have a couple of kids, I and J. D and F also have a couple of kids, KL and M. G is in love with J and she knows that. Their families have agreed to that. But K is elder to J and she wants to marry G.

I is the most undereducated in the family and he married someone, N, commensurate to his status and they have a kid O. Then there is this guy, P, who is sincerely in love with J and she knows that. P also has absolutely no chance of landing J, and she knows that as well but doesn't seem to do anything about that! 99% of the time P has a really sick and slowly dying mother, Q.

L and R are sincerely in love with each other. As if one more twist is required in this story, S wants to desperately marry L and her brother T wants his sister M. Needless to mention, R is excruciatingly poor and S is outrageously rich. L has a group of friends - U and V. V also loves R, in spite of knowing that she loves his friend L.U know it, but deems it absolutely unnecessary to discuss this trivial issue with L. R has a step mother W, who is always plotting her downfall, and a step sister X, who empathizes with R and goes against W. I don't know where, but somewhere in the middle of things there are two antisocial elements, Y and Z, trying to kill someone or the other. Somehow, just somehow, they always fail to do their job and are promptly excused every SINGLE time.

Now you would want to know why R has a step mother and what happened to her father. But as you may have noticed, I have run out of the English alphabet! Probably next time I will try to rewrite this post with Tamil alphabet. I can create 247 characters that way. Now you tell me, which part of the story did you not understand?

Here is where the confusion simply explodes, the same A to Z appear in different roles every 30 minutes. Somebody's wife in this serial becomes his sister in the some other. Two guys fighting over a same girl from 6:30 to 7:00 become business partners from 7:30 to 8:00. For all the doubts I have ever asked my Mom regarding the Tamil serial, she has had a standard reply, "Adhu vera serial da". I guess all is well until she throws tea at my face. Oh yeah, enjoy the insanity until it lasts...

...thodarum
(to be contined)

P. S - All you CAT crackers, solve this family tree if you can...