Trickling Thoughts - Innocence Lost Ignorance Regained

While watching Ramany Vs Ramany, the first thing that stuck me was the lifestyle portrayed. Right from the house to every person characterised, it takes one right back to those times. A typical, urban middle class, chennai household, with a lengthyyyyy hall connecting one entrance to another with rooms spanning about like train compartments. A mandatory tree or atleast a sampling of a plant at the entrance with a scooter rusting near the gate, with girls tying cloth peice as hair bands, their modern style statement of that time ala simran and square specs competing with googles..the list is endless. It seems like the original feel good series. You can even realise the infamous chennai mid afternoon peak summer heat with most of the actors seen wearing sweat stained costumes.

The series has two parts. In the first part the lead pair are Prithviraj and Vasuki. The story setup revolves around the troubles and travails of newly married couple. Especially when both of them are working and career oriented. Prithivraj being himself, is dumb and boring and tries his best to look funny. But the lady of the show steals the thunder with her performance. She is so very natural as a modern day girl who flirts effortlessly on screen and carries the show with her stellar performances episode after episode. The supporting cast Poovilangu Mohan and the lady who comes as his wife, she was a permanent fixture those days for villi characters, they do a commendable job. The way she merattifies Mohan with mere "hmmmm" and the way he responds meekly with another "hmmm" is really funny how much ever number of times they repeat it. Saying all this, the first part of the show was dry to say the least.

Its the second part of the series featuring Devadarshini and Ramji in lead that is rollickingly funny. The story moves around the theme of upper middle class married couple with a school going kid. Its so real and full of obvious situations from day to day life that, it hooks you right in from episode 1. Wonder who the writer is. She is BRILLIANT. The way she brings in humour into day to day situations is simply amazing. Devadarshini...WOW..what can i say. I've become a big time fan of her performances. She reminds a lot of Madhuram (NSK's wife) in her dialog delivery and acting style. Simply awesome she is. Even normal lines, she makes them into killer punchlines. She has been the soul of the series and deserves all the accolades. Suprising packet is Ramji. Never really liked his dances or his acting. But in this series he plays an able sidekick to Darshini. All the episodes are based on real life situations like how housewives handle sales person, voter id data mismatch conundrums, husband complaining on how unimaginative is the wife's cooking and her responses, issues surrounding festivals and their real worth...every single one of them is spot on. My favourite one being the episode where they go house hunting only to realise, they had been searching for the same house where they were living everywhere. It was so very apt and funny at the same time. Another one being their housewarming ceremony where everyone gifts wall clocks and how the new house echoes without any furnishings being done. Total ROFL epsiodes. The best part being, more than the humour, its the way in which one can easily relate to those episodes. Kandippa everyone would've witnessed such incidents in their own life and seeing the funny side of it rocks big time.

I always felt that tamil series lack seriously good comedies on the lines of F.R.I.E.N.D.S or like so many other witty series abundant in English. The so called laughathons are drabs and in a way its not fair to expect them to churn out day after day top class stuff. During the era of weekly series, the quality of writing and the creativity was at its best. With the advent of daily soap cryathons, guess writers in general have become script spitting machines and very rarely one hits upon a decent episode or a portion of it at best. Which is missed in the ocean of crap they produce every day. The concept of never ending tv has killed creativity and
gone are the days when there wud be no program after 11.45. The circling symbol of DD used to spell end of the day and also the dawn of new day. Azhagan padathula kaatra mathiri ...samachar followed by static symbolically meant rest for everything. 24hours news venumnaalo illa ethachum story solanumnaalo..how the heck is it possible?!! Even the real brains behind those series would've become bored by now. The disease has grown beyond the description of over kill. And eventually the bubble will burst.

The series that came in before the dawn of the daily soap, seem to have a genuineness about them, how much ever one criticises the tuesday single set dramas of DD, they had real variety in content and performances were awesome. No wonder, so many of the senior movie artistes owe their alleigance to DD.
In a matter of a decade and half, satellite television has effectively ruined the drama industry.

RIP creativity.