Remo- A living nightmare

For most part of the annoyingly long 140 or so minutes, I was cursing myself for wasting time over the same old garbage yet again. Before the release of the movie, in an interview on television I remember hearing Sivakarthikeyan say "Tamil cinema le ippidi oru padamae irundhadu illa. Idhu romba vithiyasamana padam. Kandippa neengalam enjoy panuvinga." Dude? This is the same story that tamil audiences have been watching for centuries. 

Boy sees girl- Boy stalks girl- Girls rejects boy -Girl already has a bf/fiance- Boy still tries for girl- Girl finally falls for boy- Happily Ever after!?!?

So basically our hero SK(SivaKarthikeyan) - what a clever abbreviation of his name, is the usual 'jobless' boy next-door. I am not sure why most of our tamil heroes are portrayed as jobless these days. Apparently jobless men are quiet appealing according to directors. So, obviously our jobless single hero needs two jobless side kicks (Motta Rajendran and Satish) to discuss his love life or the lack of it. Then of course the dramatic Indian mother (Saranya Ponvannan) Did you think there might be a slightest change in her role? Hell! No! She plays the doting mother(for the zillionth time) who feeds her son hot dosas and laments about his joblessness and his jobless friends. 

Now the heroine. Cue Anirudh music, some sudden climatic changes (slow hair-flying breeze) and cupid strikes SK and director says he falls in love with Kavya ( Keerthy Suresh) So now apparently Keerthy Suresh has taken over the dumb- cute- retarded heroine roles from her counter-parts. So as usual what do jobless heroes do ? Stalk girls of course. When will film makers ever learn? This movie takes stalking to a whole new level. And I prefer not to elaborate on that for the sake of world peace. Anyway after what seems like light years of cliched stalking our hero finally musters the courage to creep into Kavya's house where he sees her getting engaged ( Oh no!) to a rich successful business man. (cliche again) Why? Just why ? So obviously this affluent fiance has to be a heartless b*****d of a character whose true colors will be revealed later in the film. 

So anyway, the plot goes on and one day SK auditions for a role in a big budget K.S Ravikumar film. The role requires him to play a nurse. (- 10 to the director for attempting to recreate Avvai Shanmugi) Sadly he is rejected and on his way home (Still dressed up as the nurse) he meets his lady love on the bus. This scene was completely WTF. Why would you scribble your phone number on the palms of a random nurse you meet on the bus along with that annoying smiley? Why does SK say his name is Regina Motwani? (ReMo it seems) Why would you take a selfie with the random nurse again? Why do heroines have to act like they have the IQ of a five year old? Curved lips, widened eyes, prancing about on screen, taking selfies and drawing smiles? Why can't directors portray normal female human beings? Why am I questioning a SivaKarthikeyan movie? 

Did I mention our retarded heroine is a doctor? (face palm) I am sure she got through management quota only. Anyway now the dean of the hospital (Prathap Pothen) gives nurse Remo a job (bigger face palm) So Remo now goes overboard being the nurse. Doing nothing but exaggeratedly tossing a strand of hair and swaying along corridors. Remo also has a few song sequences cropping up for no reason, some children who adore her, some magic shows and a laughable fight sequence between the rich fiance and our suddenly turned Bruce Lee, Remo. We then have the hero's doting mother who somehow believes that the hero should continue his pursual of the retarded heroine even if it means calling off her engagement. 

After all this there is still some time for drama. A kid who needs to be operated will only do so if nurse Remo performs a magic trick.( Am i supposed to Awww?) For f***k's sake why even listen to a 10 year old. Pointless! The trick obviously reveals nurse Remo's true identity. Finally. (I was waiting for this, as this meant the movie was coming to an end. Yaayyy!) Retarded heroine is furious as she was hood winked. So then you would expect her to say goodbye to SK. But no, apparently not. She falls for SK and they live happily ever after. ( Applause) 

The rest of the film team comprise of Anirudh (Again ah ?), PC Sreeram , Resul Pookuty (Why would you rope them in for such a film? ) 

Now the sad part is this movie is a blockbuster hit, which now gives hope for more directors to recreate the same nonsense. Directed at young male audience's this is far from a commercial entertainer. But in so many instances during the film, I could hear a bunch of boys whistling and breaking into applause. Maybe I should consider calling for a Trump campaign to deport these people. Maybe then we can have some sensible and real films. 

Huh? What?

It was a week ago that I was going about reading the newspaper when I came across this shocking yet somewhat laughable headline:

"A Hindu son can divorce his wife for the cruelty of trying to pry him away from his 'pious obligation' to live with his aged parents and provide shelter to them. A son, brought up and given education by his parents, has a moral and legal obligation to take care and maintain the parents, when they become old and when they have either no income or have a meager income."

Okay! I was appalled. I read it slowly again trying to take in every word and understand what exactly the Supreme Court was implying. I am sure all the feminists out there would have had a field day with this one. I am a feminist myself. Not the kind that belittle men but the kind that are looking at empowering women. 

Anyway, firstly the entire judgement or whatever is clearly flawed and very biased. 

Let's get some things sorted first. The world is changing and so is society. Girls are being educated and are slowly but surely making their presence felt in the male dominant society. When I see this visible change happening I am quiet glad. But then there is this,that caused quiet a stir among us women. 

If you read the clause it says it is cruelty to pry(another word that shouldn't be there) him... Clearly the genius people who put this together did not know the meaning of cruelty. How can asking your husband to move away from his parents be cruel? Hello?! We just moved away from ours. We have been moving away from our parents forever.

Okay I know. A girl gets married and she has to move in with her in-laws and husband and be a obedient 'daughter-in-law' .. blah blah blah. 

Okay so why doesn't the rest of the civilized world follow this? A man marries to start a new life and family. A woman is not married off to serve his parents and him which is sadly what most people think a woman's marital duty is. 

Also, it says it is a man's pious obligation ... So apparently court of marriage, you were not aware that our parents educated us too. We have our dreams too. Some of our parents struggled, they took financial loans and educated us so that we can stand on our own feet when we are out into the real world. So don't we have any obligations? So our dads have to slog when they are old and grey because society would not allow his kind daughters to lend a hand? Do we let them suffer?

The article elaborated that in normal circumstances the wife has to live with her husband's family. For God's sake it is 2016. Wake up people. Child-marriage was normal, Sati was normal, female infanticide was normal. Aren't we making some ideal changes slowly? So why cant we change the way this is done?

There is something I would like to put out here. Recently a female acquaintance of mine received a marriage proposal. The families got talking and one of the first things the boys family asked the girl's was " Will your daughter frequently want to visit you? Because it is not so common for us and might be quiet inconvenient for our family" Luckily the girl's side cut them off immediately. I was stunned to hear this. There are still people who think a girl cant even visit her parents after marriage?

Now all of you don't start thinking I am a cliched feminist. I am not suggesting that the husbands have to leave their parents to suffer. But divorce? How can that be fair? How can that be equality? Our parents made us into who we are now. I wouldn't call this a moral obligation but love and gratitude that we all have towards our parents. A wife has as much right to fend for her parents as the husband. Just taking this as far as divorce just does not seem worth it. I think it is way smaller than that. Something that can be sorted out over a family discussion. Giving the weapon of divorce in the husbands hands is what has angered us.

Women are working now, they are bread-winners too. They have to stop being put second to men, and we have to stop with this patriarchal mind-set. There might be some cruelty from the wife to her husband, but surely living away from the parents is not cruelty.