The deafening ruckus of the slogan chanting slowly dies out as I get my fingers to type. The past few days have been pretty busy with all these followers, and the sea of banners with my name emblazoned on them. At first I assumed they were mischief-mongers irked by my scathing review in the previous post. Turns out they are all my supporters showing their support and endorsing my candidature for the indiblog awards. I actually prefer more educated slogans like ‘jab tak suraj chand rahega, maxdavinci ka raaj chalega‘ or my personal favorite ‘jab tak rahega samose mein aaloo, tab tak dil pe raaj karega maxu‘. Of course the above can be true only in la-la-land which for now I refuse to leave. As reality slowly dawns upon my pea brain I see the sea of supporters are not at my porch but crazy consumers braving the chilly winter winds as they line up outside bestbuy and walmart. Thanksgiving in this country not only brings dead turkeys stuffed with gods-knows-what to the dinner table but also heats them up like a furnace from inside. They cool off by camping outside malls all night and then busting the doors open to grab anything they can lay their hands upon. Common sense would tell you to find the nearest restroom and relieve yourself for standing outside for close to five hours. However the stacked shelves tempt you into indulgence as you are overcome by greed to stack up on stuff just because it’s cheap.

We seem to be deviating from the reason for this post by talking about the spirit of thanksgiving. Without an iota of shame whatsoever, I solicit your support as the awards are now open to public voting. Some of us have forged alliances and are collectively garnering votes. PUB is one such alliance where behemoths like Ramesh Srivats and KrishAshok have come together and have been rather generous to include me as well. It almost makes me feel like an octopus swimming alongside two sperm whales! Hold your thoughts before you call us a bunch of narcissists, we may be blatanly asking for votes but then we aren’t bribing you with color TVs, country liquor or biryani packets. Truth is that we are too cheap to do that, even if we could afford to do so. If voted to power, we promise more laughs with weekly posts and regular programming.

There is no vote appeal without a set of promises unless you
are
on a
reality showunless you are on a reality show where you get people to send you text messages every week. This is no SMS campaign and we only ask fro you to go online and vote for us with a valid e-mail id. We promise more venomous posts and scathing reviews every weekend and more tweets on a regular basis daily. We shall solve the water problem in the south by cutting canals across the Ganges and diverting all that water down south. We shall provide employment to all outsiders in Mumbai by creating another city and thereby separating the rice for the chaff. More North Indians girls will find employment in the film industries of the south, where as the top heroines fro nteh south shall graduate to Mumbai. The communists shall be routed out of Bengal and Himesh shall soon star in a Michael Bay film.  The only correction here being that instead of blowing up vehicles and buildings we’d blow up the protagonist instead! Sonu shall get more movie offers in Bollywood so that he doesn’t have to sell his wares in Gulbarga, as long as he is happy behind the mic and doesn’t evince interest in front of the camera! Then the usual promises of free education to the under privileged,  healthcare for those who cannot afford, eradicating poverty and promoting world peace. I even came up with a slogan ‘Garibi hatao, desh ko bachao‘, but then sensing that I may be picked up by political scouts, I shall stop here

We’ve been nominated in two categories for ‘Best Entertainment Indiblog‘ and ‘Best Personal Indiblog‘. Voting is open from the 25th of November to the 10th of December, lets hope that the 150+ subscriber count that my RSS feeds tell me is correct and atleast half of you vote for us. You can vote here, and all you need is a valid email-id, so do vote with all the e-mail aliases you have.

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This man is innovative in his blog posts. He talks to Gods via Baba Bangali and questions them like Karan Thapar. He watches every Bollywood movie and alerts the entire human race to avoid the bad ones. I mean he is practically a messenger of Human Rights!

This is what Dinesh Babu who blogs under the moniker maduraiveeran said when he tagged me for a ‘Brilliante Weblog’ award. I wonder what Karan Thapar has to say on the comparison, he might prefer an early VRS! I was obviously kicked and I love such cheap thrills, so stop rolling your eyes! Well I may not be all that worthy and there are many others who I would call brilliant in the true sense. It’s only a token of mutual admiration and all in good fun. So lets just celebrate some link love and pray for the mental block to vanish so that we can get back to the normal slander at Dappan Koothu. Even if there is no jury or governing body, and the award carries no value per say, it still
demands
a thank-you speechit still demands a thank-you speech! Ok here goes, I’d like to thank my parents for introducing me to computers when other kids were watching ‘He-man’ and the internet while all others could think about was Malaika in Chaiya Chaiya. I should also thank the technicians at my webhost who work day and night to keep my site up and alive, despite the heavy traffic. (It’s my speech OK!, so anything goes) Last but not the least I ought to thank my readers who over the past year have been regularly following this space and leaving insightful comments. If I have never before done it then let me say it now, Thank you for being part of Dappan Koothu.

Anantha(formerly Anti) had tagged me close to 10 months ago to recycle 5 keyword based posts. It’s always an honor to be tagged by celebrity bloggers, but I didn’t have any quality posts to link to. Late may be I, But
latest I comeLate may be I, But latest I come as the great man would say. Not wanting to undermine the tag by linking substandard posts, I take it up now also since I cant think of anything intelligent to write about beside racking up the archives. Now I’m not sure if I can stick to the rules of the tag given the wide range of stuff that features in this space. But again there’s no hard and fast rule so I’m going post whatever seems a best fit. Not sure again if you can’t link more than a single post but let some free spirit prevail! However for the benefit of others and people who might pick up the tag, the original rules were as follows.

The rules of the tag are: Post 5 links to 5 of your previously written posts. The posts have to relate to the 5 key words given (family, friend, yourself, your love, anything you like). Tag 5 other friends to do this meme. Try to tag at least 2 new acquaintances (if not, your current blog buddies will do) so that you get to know them each a little bit better.

Family: I generally don’t have many family related posts but then this one I wrote for my mom before leaving for the airport when I was going home on a vacation. There is this other post I wrote as part of a review for ‘Vaaranam Ayiram’, where I got a bit personal and wrote a note to my dad. The fact that they read my blog keeps me in check from being inflammatory and steer clear of controversy. That reminds me that there’s a lot of scope for some family anecdotes.

Friends: I just realized that I have no friend related posts and a search for the keyword gies me no concrete results. It actually gives me some ideas for further posts but sadly nothing to link here. So in trying to make a vague connection like those ‘Tata Crucible’ quizzes, I manged to think of two posts. The first is a preview I did for the much hyped ‘Kuselan’ which turned out to be a damp squib. That’s where I put together my ‘Amar Chitra Katha’ knowledge of the ‘Krishna-Sudama’ story. We can do another far connect for the keyword and link this post where I reviewed ‘Dostana’. The connection? Dostana has to do with friendship and hence under this category.

Yourself: Someone said that I’m too impersonal on this blog and I just found out that it’s true as well. I can however link this post where I huffed and puffed about my thesis and bragged about finally finishing it. No wait, I did do a flashback series some time ago and that does apply to this category. There was this post and this follow up bout a teacher in school and his butchering of the queens language. There was also this post and its sequel about a ragging incident during college.There are many such stories that may see the light of day after so heavy pruning and censorship.

Your love: People who know me in flesh would agree that me and love are as rare as Mallika Sherawat in a chudidaar. With great difficulty I was able to search these two posts where attempted to mix love with some cynicism and my favorite digs on Bollywood. There area also a few in the so-called shayari series the latest being this one that I typed on my phone on my trans-atlantic flight back home.

Anything I like: This space has allowed me to play with my two other passions cinema and mythology. There was this one that begin as a comment on KrishAshok’s post. There was this post where Lord Krishna got himself a FaceBook profile. Ganesha graced this space and so did the first ladies of Indian mythology. It’s tough to pick a few from the cinema category and I’ll link you to here instead. This post however gave me great pleasure to write and it was in the angst of being cheated by MI3. I might however toy with a similar theme pretty soon.

Now I am supposed to tag 5 bloggers whose blogs I love to read. There also has to be a newbie among the ranks for some encouragement. The trick here is that almost everyone I know has been tagged for the award tag and the 5 things tag was also done by a lot of people on my blogroll early this year. I am therefore going to tag a bunch of people who have become my virtual-roomies over the past few months. We spend more time pinging each other on GTalk than we probably speak to some real people. Never having met them, I actually know more about them than most people I know in the real world. So let’s bend the rules again and tag 7 people instead of 5, since it’s my favorite number as well. There they go in no particular order,

Buddy : Avid bookworm and someone who shares a similar liking for all forms of humor. It’s hard to imagine how we never knew each other before. Hopefully the coming years will be loads of fun and give rise to some collaborative antics. His dislike for cricket and love for reading being our only disconnect! Has a very different wavelength and lateral thingking that make for some brilliant posts.

Gradwolf : Once upon a time a sweet Mambalam boy now devious wolf on the prowl for unsuspecting innocent grad students. Interesting character who comes of a the quintesential chamathu TamBram but has layers to him and a whiff of the Mumbai spirit as well. Big time ARR, Mani Ratnam and quizzing fan and hence hours of masti ensured.

Sthita : Poor soul often mistaken for being bong despite tatooing the words ‘Maa telugu talli’ on his chest. Chemical engineer who chucked the pippetes and burettes for a graduate degree in Media and Journalism. Very few dare to chase their dream and refrainf from taking the safe route, here is exhibit No.1. Try asking him about telugu literature, its script or even the difference in the knots of sacred threads(poonal) for Iyers and Iyengars! A living encyclopedia on art, literature, music and the scriptures, try him sometime.

Idling : One of the most handsome looking tambrams on Facebook who gave up a lucrative career in an excitingly promising Silicon Valley startup to return to his homeland. Currently working on a venture to energise rural India using alternate sources. Irrespective of how things shape up, the guy is an inspiration to many and has thousands of stories to share.

Chutney : The lone lass among this league of cheap gentlemen, Chutney is a young chirpy CA by day and photoshopper by night. The currently presiding chairperson of the Chenai Mokkai Sangam and a great ability to whip up posts laden with humor and traditional tambram household lingo. My official tamil instructor for the Chennai dialect/slang and soon to be rechristned ‘Rowsu rani’, chutney is always spicy!
UPDATE: A perennial jollu party by day and peter party by night, Chutney is a gay-boy loving, treat-dodging Iyengaress with a flair for comical writing and a penchant for pun

G-Lady : The high priestess of the Chennai slang and a reincarnation of a 60′s movie villain. Sharp tongue, no-nonsense attitude, tonnes of wit and many stories to share. At times can be as sweet as Balu Mahendra’s heroines but can also drag you by the collar out of a bar and thrash you on the street.

kusublakki : Is technically a newbie, but none of her posts even remotely seem like that. Big fan of SaReGaMaPa and Grey’s Anatomy and Sonu Nigam which ensures tonnes of hours on GTalk. Shares a fetish for long forgotten songs and spends nights looking for them on youtube. We always share a constant one-upmanship for lyrics of old songs and unearthing gems of a lost era of Bollywood. The only other person alive I know who might have dared to watch ‘Love in Nepal’ and ‘Jaani Dushman’!

Guys, You gotta do the tag if you wanna claim the award!

A few others have also tagged me which I shall take up in moments of such mental block. I should however acknowledge Rads for having tagged me to write quirky things about myself. I frankly don’t think I’ll be able to do that for it will end up being a multi-part post and I’d rather stay away from some self-defacement. Kindly adjust!

There, done with a post that int eh end took more research thatn the usual crap. So much for a creative mental block!

(Image Courtesy: The Hindu Business Line)

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