Chaos in the city

Chennai, One of the biggest Indian cities is slowly becoming the home for different categories of industries. With more enterprises in each industry establishing their base or branch in Chennai, city keeps offering more jobs and keeps attracting more youth from all over India. Lack of proper Infrastructure for these mass immigrants to the city makes “Life in Chennai little miserable.”

Development of residential area when compared with that of jobs being created is very meager and this creates a situation where people get clogged only to those few (developed) areas where all the amenities are available. Most of the residents are renting the home as only few have the affordability to buy home (because of the huge real estate prices). All these create a huge demand for good rental apartments (in good residential place) and rental values are already increased many folds.

Road infrastructure over the years has been improved a lot with fly-over being erected in parts of Chennai (which had traffic congestions) to ease and regulate the heavy traffic. The increase in the personal vehicle is too huge and its projection increase in the future is alarming. City buses services are expanded and frequencies are increased yet there is still lot more demand. Autos and Share Autos rather than servicing the people actually play a big role in creating traffic congestion and accidents. There is a huge demand for other transportation modes within the city as the city keeps expanding its border every year.

Affordable schooling and hospitals are few and becoming rare. Restaurants have become the kitchens for most of the bachelors and almost every family wants to dine out at least twice a week (or more than that), All these puts the demand for good quality restaurants at its peak and there is an increase in the waiting time, food prices at these restaurants.

Needless to point out the demand for trains, buses and flights going to out station cities and people even cancel their trips to native places if they are NOT getting their tickets in advance. Also there is a huge demand for hang out places other the existing malls and beach.

There is a huge demand for everything in Chennai with more and more people entering the city and trying to use its limited infrastructure. Chennai city planning and development by its authorities has been improved a lot over the years yet it is way below its needs and its need projections in the future scars the metro development authorities. The growth at which city’s population is growing is way higher than its infrastructure growth.

Solution to this demand VS supply gap cannot be easy and will be difficult. Few solutions that I think:

• Far more strong governing bodies with greater vision can make the mess look better.
• Moving at least half of the government administration out of Chennai will give more space for proper infrastructure developments
• Government should mandate any new industry establishment to provide few basic amenities to the neighborhood of their new establishment.
• Moving few jobs to tier two cities
• Schools, Colleges and industries can probably adopt different timings for their daily routines
• Creating self sufficient townships could be solution in restricting the movement of people over the whole city
• Limiting the usage of personal vehicles and increasing the usage of public vehicles is the need of the hour but implementing this would be difficult unless public transportation modes are available with more choices.

Metro development authorities can probably analyze select few developed cities (which mirror Chennai in terms of industry establishments) on their infrastructure developments over the past 40 years and can probably work on the developments. Finally the residents of the city should co-operate well with any new laws/changes to bring in better infrastructure. Do better things today and hope a better society tomorrow!! :)

Life of few in Renganathan Street

I went to hiatus state in the blogging world for quite some time due to laziness and time constraint. Of late I have watched good number of quality movies (English and Tamizh) and one such movie has brought me back again!!

I was very happy about movies like

• Aayirathil Oruvan
• Goa
• Vinnaithandi Vaaruvaya
• Angadi Theru
• Avatar
• Up In the Air

I wanted to review all these movies in a good way but I would prioritize to review Angadi Theru first and if time permits, I would review them all.

I was not very much looking for this movie in the theatres and went to this movie as there was no other promising new release over the last weekend to watch. The only hope on this movie was the director of the movie, whose first movie was well received by people. So that gave me a zero expectation and fortunately it was more than a good movie.

The movie starts with a Beautiful song followed by a vehicle accident on Chennai city streets which caused deadly injuries to the protagonist of the movie and moves to the flash back of his memories. The movie then moves to the village in Nellai district showing the hero’s family struggling to make their ends meet. There comes one more blow to the hero’s family with the death of his father in an accident, Hero who is school topper has NO other choice other than leaving to Chennai city to work in a Textile retail giant who(employer of shop) employees the members of his caste. Textile retailer recruits only those people who are financially deprived OR those members in the family which don’t have any head of the house supporting them; hoping that those employees would stick to them doing what they want to do.

The movie then brings screen the life of such employees working in Renganathan Street in Chennai.

• Employees are required to work long hours with no rest and are provided shelter. food in worst possible environment as crowds
• Harassments against all employees if they don’t do what the supervisors ask them or if they play around the work place
• Strict and vigilant supervisor who was on look for opportunities to put the employees in trouble
• Employees should not fall in love with those working there

On this difficult environment our hero and heroine falls in love and face their hard times while continuing their work there.

First and foremost I would like to praise the director (Vasanthabalan) for bringing a very close to real life story on screen with an intense screen play. His focus on storytelling and his efforts to make the audience feel “how worse the life of those employees” are his huge plus and needs a mention. Director with few scenes running through the film portrays the life of many people in the Renganathan Street other than the protagonist. I liked this very much. He is really one among the few directors whom we can trust to provide more such good movies in the future and I am very hopefully he will achieve great heights.

Next the heroine Anjali, I really wonder if she was one among those real life employees to play that role with so much of detailed expressions and body language. She is vibrant, falls in love, fears about her supervisor and at the same time scolds him at his back, get anger at her lover when he is confused to choose between love and life and also she worries about job and family. She has performed wonderfully and scores in all the scenes. Finally her expressions during the climax make us feel the pain she has endured. The director must be lucky to get her in this role.

Hero Mahesh is NO less than the heroine in acting and no one would believe that this is his first film. Also I would like to appreciate Director A Venkatesh (the supervisor) who played the role in such a way that even if we see him in real life; we would probably keep away from him. I hope he must have taken a real life example of the character and depicted it.

Sneha plays the cameo role well and nothing challenging. All other characters have contributed their best efforts and fits into the storyline very well.

Music by Vijay Antony and G V Prakash is more than good and fits into the movie with ease. Dialogues by Jayamohan are powerful and add more meaning to most of the scenes. Cinematography in tamizh films these days are more than wonderful and Richard Maria Nathan has done the same.

Movie questions the Humanity and life of those less fortunate workers, Brings light on those Textile Retailer’s arrogance and attitude towards employee, makes feel bad for those employees.

Angadi Theru – An example of best talents in tamizh film industry which depicts the ground reality of Renganathan Theru!!