Woods vs Trees

An old family story which my late mother used to narrate with relish relates to more than six decades ago, when I was possibly about three or so. Apparently we had gone visiting to one of our family friends. when their  daughter, who was about seven or eight years older than me called me to play with her and her brothers, I apparently refused and she is supposed to have grumbled that I would be happier counting the number of buttons on each person's dress rather than playing with other children. This makes it quite obvious then that this trait of looking at details (like being a grammar Nazi) is firmly embedded in me. After all, an experience of six decades is nothing to be sneezed at!

There are different ways of looking at this behaviour - it can be described as attention to detail or being a perfectionist, for instance or less charitably, as indulging in nit-picking or being pernickety. The description always lies in the eye of the beholder. Be it as it may, this has affected the way I observe things, the way I dress, the way I speak, the way I write and even the way I post on social media. It is almost crazy but virtually every post of mine undergoes a round of editing before I actually publish it.

This near-obsession leads me veering towards OCB or Obsessive Compulsive Behaviour sometimes. For instance, in my last work space, starting from my desk, every little bit had to be exactly in the same place - the book shelf and the books on it, the items of stationery, the computer et al. If a visitor cane to call on me and shifted one of the guest chairs, almost by the time he or she exitted the room, I would adjust it to its original place with millimetric precision. In other words, the old cliche 'a place for everything and everything in its place' seemed to rule my life. As I grow older and become more forgetful, however, this trait is useful - as long as I remember to keep everything in place, in the first place!

When I became a teacher, at first, this led me to correcting even mistakes of grammar in assignments submitted by students. Fortunately I soon realised that this was just detracting from the main goal and making me less efficient. I stopped wielding the red pen on at least grammatical and syntactical errors pretty quickly. I was also quick enough to realise that people generally do not like to see their mistakes being pointed out. This was brought home firmly in a private forum of friends where I pointed out a minor inconsistency in a forwarded joke and got roundly chastised for my pains.

There is a Malayalam saying 'adhikam aayal amrithamum veshum' meaning an excess of even amritam (the Holy Nectar) can result in poison. While the focus on minute details definitely leads to perfectionism and results in a good job being turned in, every time, it could result in missing the woods for the trees, if one is not careful. By and large, today, in all walks of life, the focus is on getting the job done. Excessive attention to detail could derail this process. The art of course will be to strike the right balance.

Will this stop me from being a Grammar Nazi in future? Highly unlikely !

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Theatres - touring and otherwise

In more than six decades on Mother Earth, have seen God knows how many movies in theaters all across India. This is despite my frequency of film viewing in movie halls tapering down through the years from frenetic to regular to occasional to rare. These halls have ranged from bug-infested ones in some small towns of India to some of the posh multiplexes of today and the films themselves have morphed from exclusively black and white versions to their digital cousins today with state-of-the art technical sophistication. However there were a few unusual viewings which form the subject of this post.

A pretty unique experience was seeing a short film in a Cinerama projection - I think, in the American pavillion at a trade fair in Delhi's Pragati Maidan, when it was still called Exhibition Grounds, almost sixty years ago. This was a wide angled projection on a very large curved screen which consisted of three separate screens. Together with surround sound, it made for quite an exciting spectacle. I vaguely remember I watched a motor race.

Fast forward a few decades to Chennai, especially to the main artery of Anna Salai. Before the term multiplex was common, even in the '70s, Chennai had at least three complexes on and off Anna Salai with more than one screen. Since, in each complex, each screen would exhibit a film in a different language, a wider audience was covered. One such complex was the Vecumsee complex which housed three theaters - Safire, Emerald and Blue Diamond. The last named was notable for having continuous shows. One could go in at any time and come out whenever. I remember going to see Dial M for Murder finding the show was half way through and then seeing the next show, continuing till the point where I started.

But this was exactly the way I saw my only film in a touring cinema. I am not too sure they exist today but these were quite common some years ago. Entrepreneurs bitten by the film bug would set up a temporary structure in a big field, usually outside a small town and normally just off a main road to provide easy access for the audience. The seating would be fairly rudimentary, but all the basics of a regular show - a screen, a projection room, a ticket counter, classes of seats - would be present.  After a few weeks, when business flagged, the structure would be dismantled and set up in another town in the vicinity. This is the reason they were known as touring cinemas.

I joined a large group based in South India in their bicycles division as a management trainee in the mid '70s. As part of my training, I had to accompany a couple of sales officers on their regular beat and observe and absorb. One of the places I covered was a small town in western Tamil Nadu called Gobichettipalayam. The Sathyamangalam forests where the notorious bandit Veerappan operated is not far from this town.

The company dealer in this town had a partner who operated a touring theater and insisted that after we finished our work, my colleague and I should accompany him to see a show there. Once I found out that it was an MGR starrer, I was very keen to go as I had never seen till then a film starring this hero.  I remember that the film was called 'Neerum Neruppum' - Water and Fire, based on Alexandre Dumas's Corsican Brothers. It was the story of two twins separated at birth and what made it fun was that one twin could feel whatever the other brother was feeling, even miles away !The audience  lapped it up, being involved to the extent that they would call out to the hero when the villain was treacherously sneaking on him behind his back. Of course the faithful would tell each other also not to worry, the Big Chief (the thalaivar) would turn around in time - and of course he did, to the accompaniment of whistles and claps ! These comments added to the spice of watching the film.

We had actually reached the theater just after the intermission and were well in time to see the villain get his just desserts and were ready to leave when the show ended. However our host insisted that we watch the next show at least till the point where we joined in the previous show. This is why I had no problems of wrapping my mind around the idea of continuous shows at Blue Diamond, a few years later.

Somehow, the idea of viewing a movie in a hall spending a mini-fortune on it (and then probably being disappointed with the film itself) just doesn't grab me nowadays, I would rather see it on Netflix and start and stop my show at my own convenience. There is nobody there to stop me seeing Bahubali for instance in four or five bite-sized bits of half an hour, like I did recently - and the small convenience I liked was that the film starts at the point where I left off last time, when I start seeing it.

Immersion in the process? Co-creation of product or service? So be it !

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