Kuruvi (Sparrow) – Though the script had scope in showing the plight of the couriers who take things from India to Malaysia and other South East Asian countries and the pitiful state of the bonded labourers in the stone quarries, this was a movie which was loyal in displaying Actor Vijay’s daredevil stunts which even his fans began to ridicule. This is not a review of the movie. In a society where the real Sparrows are near extinct and Bharathi’s Sparrows as the embodiment of freedom have been forgotten, the only Kuruvi that we are left with might be this one. Sadly, though.
The movie has a song ‘Mozha Mozhannu Yammaa Yammaa’. They are non lexicals. So don’t bother about the translation.
The lines at around 00:40 are
'Thillaiyaadi Valliyammaa Thillaiyaadi Valliyammaa Dhill irundhaa nilladimmaa Stop if you have the guts Thillaalangadi aaduvomaa Shall we dance to the shenanigans? Thiruttuthanam pannuvomaa’ Shall we do some mischief?
Intrigued and wanting to know what this Thillaiyaadi Valliyamma had actually done to be honoured with a line in actor Vijay’s song, I did some research.
Munusamy-Janaki was a weaver couple living in Thillaiyaadi which is in today’s Nagappattinam district, Tamil Nadu. The textile industry had crash landed and they moved to South Africa in search of labour through agents. Munusamy opened a small eatery in Johannesburg. Valliyammaa was born on February 28, 1898. Indians were treated very badly in South Africa then. They were bonded labourers; they could not raise their finger against any injustice meted out to them; they could not switch masters; they were humiliated everywhere; they had no voting rights; they could not travel together with the whites; they were not treated as humans irrespective of their educational qualification. They lived in slums. On 14-3-1913 a law was passed stating that ‘any marriage not according to the Church would be declared null and void.’ This meant legal Hindu marriages would be nullified and the wife would lose her status and be relegated to a concubine.
M.K. Gandhi protested against this and the women gathered behind Kasturi Bai. Valliyammaa and her mother Janaki joined the protests. On 29-10-1913 the women started their march from Johannesburg. When they were about to enter Natal, they were arrested at Volksrust on 22-12-1913 and were sentenced to three months of rigorous imprisonment. Valliyammaa was 15. She refused to pay the bail amount and languished in prison. As her health deteriorated, she was released on 11-2-1914 before completing her full sentence. She was only bones when she was out of prison and had to be covered in a rug and carried home. She died 11 days later on 22-2-1914.
She heard someone tell, “Why don’t you people register and become South Africans instead? Indians! India doesn’t even have a flag! What are you really fighting for?”
She replied, “If having a flag is what would give form to India, then here it is”, she said, tearing off her sari and waved it triumphantly, “MY FLAG! MY MOTHERLAND!” It is said that the sari that she tore was saffron-white-green colored and hence most of the flags of the Indian Independence movement were based on these three colors. And the trend applies to the Indian National Flag too.
Once during the protests when a white soldier aimed his gun at Gandhi, Valliyammaa came in the middle and dared the soldier to shoot.
Gandhi met her and asked, “Do you not regret having been to jail? Look at you!”
“If going back to jail again would add to the cause, I would do it again”, she replied.
Gandhi wrote in ‘Indian Opinion’, “We have lost one of the true daughters of India. She did her duty without any questions. She was the embodiment of a true woman’s qualities like patience and self respect. Her sacrifice will not go in vain. The loss of Valliammai would perhaps affect me more than that of my elder brother Lakshmidass. It is said when Gandhi later visited Thillaiyaadi, he touched the soil of the village and sought blessings.
A girl. Not even a lady. A 15 year old girl. Though she had never visited her homeland, she fought for it. We were complaining about our class X exams being tough when we were 15. She was in prison when she was 15. When we were fighting with adolescence, she was fighting against oppression.
This girl’s name has been used in the most derogatory manner by the Tamil cine industry. But then it is stupid to expect something better from an industry which has used the words “Puratchi” (Revolution) and “Thalapathy (Leader/General) with utmost contempt.
‘Viththaga Kavignar’ Pa. Vijay (Viththaga Kavignar = Artistic Poet) penned the lyrics for this song. What kind of stupid art is this? For a lame reason that he wanted a line which started as ‘thi’ and ended as ‘maa’ he has used ‘Thillaiyaadi Valliyammaa’. It seems fair to infer that since he used her name, he should have had some basic knowledge about who Valliyammaa was.
Not even an ounce of thought that she was a 15 year old.
No respect for the life she lived.
No second thoughts about the context of the song in which her name is used.
Can anyone’s named be used if Vijay wants ‘to do some mischief’ with Trisha? Though the poet writes only for money, if a writer is irresponsible then will the society stay sane?
The censor board is a nincompoop, as it is always in such cases. The line has been changed to “Thillumullu Valliyammaa” (Thillumullu = Deceptive in the song’s context). Though it is heartening to see that it has been censored, it becomes useless as the song is released atleast 2 months before the movie. So the original lyrics will stay in the minds and the change might even go unnoticed. Here it is Thillaiyaadi Valliyammaa and hereit is Thillumullu Valliyammaa.
At a time when we are satisfied that we have honoured our nation’s heroes with changing our Facebook profile pictures, updating, sharing, liking and sharing statuses, this is an utter shame to us. Think.
I find it very hypocritical to celebrate a day as Women’s Day. Though I don’t want to venture into the argument of discriminating the women in a way by allotting a day for them, I can’t come to terms with the fact that we dare celebrate the women of our world in such a male hegemonic society. Yes, women have made progress, but we never feel ashamed that the society has been so unjust to women for so long that they actually have to claim their rights and make progress. Another alarming fact is that we never discover the subtle male dominance in every aspect of our life in the so called educated society. We have always had the woman ‘behind’ every successful man. Have we done enough for her to come out to the front?
There is an innate anti-female bias in our families. They are authoritative with the male at the helm. Our children are born and brought up in these male dominant families and it is but natural that this is deep rooted in their minds. A child immediately recognizes that the father is educated better and earns more than the mother; if at all the mother works. Even when we have improved the educational standards of the society, I don’t see any boy marrying a girl who is better educated and earns more than him. Only few girls are allowed to think of studies after their marriage. Once married, the girl is pulled out of her career and the doors are forever shut. One live example is my mother. She learnt veena among various other things before her marriage but the only testimony to her musical learning is her broken veena in our loft. The broken veena is not just an instrument but is actually my mother’s musical talent and dreams. She symbolizes Bharathi’s words “நல்லதோர் வீணை செய்தே அதை நலங்கெட புழுதியில் எறிவதுண்டோ?”(Is it fair to create a beautiful veena and then throw it away in the gutter?) She is not a victim of the society of the past as I see classmates and friends facing similar future. One of my friends (B.Tech) who has just celebrated her first anniversary has been asked to write the bank exam and satisfy her mother-in-law’s traditional expectation of “blessing her with a grandchild”. She quit her first job for her marriage and is now resisted by her otherwise sweet mother-in-law from taking up a job again. Another friend has been awaiting her marriage plans for the past 6 months after college. In her case, B.E. degree is just a status symbol for the family. With these atrocious families in majority percentage in our midst, whose lives are we celebrating on this symbolic day?
The sadder part is that a woman is forced to give up her career for the very reason she is glorified so much in the society – motherhood. While I understand there are practical and maternal difficulties in simultaneously continuing in a job and raising an infant, what we forget is that there is never an attempt to tackle the situation. Motherhood becomes an automatic qualification for a woman to bid farewell to her career; a woman is taught to believe this and there are no second thoughts. Once she is a mother, she has to bury her dreams and ambitions for the sake of the kids. I wonder if the men do any career-ending sacrifices for the kids. I don’t see it changing radically in our future society but there is hope as many young educated men have understood their part in raising a kid and running a family.
The trend continues in love marriages too. They pose an extra challenge for the girl. If a girl marries into another caste, she is supposed to change herself entirely to suit the boy’s caste. A girl marries a Brahmin boy and she has to give up her non-vegetarian diet for the boy’s family if not for him. A boy marries a Brahmin girl and she has to start to adapt if not exercise a non vegetarian diet. The caste I mentioned is just an example. The rule is the same in the inter-religion marriages where the resultant religion will be the boy’s religion. It is rare when the boy ‘sacrifices’ his religious or caste customs for the girl. They always agree upon the boy’s caste/religion.
A bold girl is considered an aberration as is a timid boy. The qualities of boldness, candidness and courage are considered to be of the male entities of the family. Even today’s cuss words are never directed at a boy but always at his mother or sister. We have ‘bitches’ (all female kind) and ‘sons of bitches’ (all male kind) but no ‘dogs’ and ‘daughters of dogs’. The same holds in Tamil too though I don’t wish to educate upon Tamil swear words. Does anyone shut their mouth or swear by a masculine term atleast on March 8th?
I might exaggerate but I really think the FM radios would be at a loss for songs for Women’s Day jingles if not for the sole Kaadhal Desam song. Such is the pathetic representation of women in our Tamil movie industry (I have no idea about others). They are stereotyped, cornered, abused and sometimes treated no less than prostitutes. We have accepted them to be stereotyped in item songs. We have accepted songs which ask to beat up the girl (Kaadhal en kaadhal from Mayakkam Enna) and the ones in which the lead openly calls the girl for something close to prostitution (“ஒன் டே மட்டும் கேர்ள்பிரெண்டாக வரியா? – Will you be my girlfriend just for a day?”).
But then we have our sacrosanct male movie idols who have acted with the same girl as his daughter, lady love and a non-descript friend’s wife. An actress can never think of getting the same roles after her marriage. I believe the audience doesn’t accept this because deep down every man fantasizes the female lead on screen as his own female partner. After her marriage the mind can’t come to terms with continuing the fantasy. Also, she is required to be the perfect Tamil girl upholding the Tamil culture in the scenes and then strip to a bikini for the song sequences. Though we have moved on from times when the girl does not even shake hands with the lead for the preservation of our culture, still the girl falls in love with boy when he lifts her for the first time. Even the richest girl falls in love with the poorest boy; particularly when he has just then helped a blind man by buying pens from him. But love failures are always the girl’s fault. It is always the girl who dumps the innocent boy. Then the kolaveried boy sings to beat up the girl. The industry itself has very less number of women in the technical department of a movie such as composing, lyric writing, stunts, cinematography, editing, direction, etc. They are reduced to actresses, dancers, singers and all those glamorous portions.
The TV industry is no less a culprit. There is not a single ad for branded perfume, deodorant, shaving razor, shaving cream, bike, soap, clothes, shoes that doesn’t say women fall at the moment they see you using the product. And there is always the girl glued to the guy and proving the smoothness of the shaved cheek or the odour of the perfume. This insults both the women and the morals of the men who buy them. If trusting a lemon for the smooth functioning of a car is an insult to the engineer, then launching the same car with a skimpily-clad size-zero model is an insult to the customers. The business elite seem to need women to entice the customers into buying any consumer product.
The nation provides a similar picture. While there are female political leaders, the ratio is less and the reasons in many cases are abysmal. We have had independent female CMs like Jayalalitha, Sheila Dikshit, Mamata Banerjee, Mayawati but still we have the Sonia Gandhis and Rabri Devis. It is highly unlikely that either of them would have entered politics if not for their husband’s fall. There are Sushma Swaraj, Brinda Karat, Jayanthi Natarajan and others in the larger political picture but the local scene provides an opposite picture. My area councilor is a girl in early twenties. She was the daughter of the area politician. She was the candidate as her mother lost in the previous elections. Clearly she is her father’s benami. So where is the women empowerment that we celebrate on March 8th? The Women’s Reservation Bill will give rise to more wives and daughters becoming benamis of the political ambitions of the men in the family than true independent female leaders. It is quite early to decide but the above mentioned female CMs may not have a female successor. Apart from Sushma Swaraj, the only female political successors that I can think of are Kanimozhi and Priyanka Vadra. Sigh.
According to unofficial estimates, nearly 2500 cases of female infanticide take place in Rajasthan every day. According to the 2011 census, the child sex ratio is 914 female against 1,000 male - the lowest since Independence. According to India’s then Home Secretary Mr. GK Pillai, "Whatever measures that have been put in over the last 40 years have not had any impact on the child sex ratio." Do my wishes go to all those girl babies killed?
In our Mother India, as late as January 2012 there have been news reports of girls even at the age of 2 being raped by men. What are we celebrating on March 8th?
Every year hundreds of girls below the age of fifteen are trafficked from the eastern parts of India, raped at Kolkata and then sold in the brothels of Mumbai. This is an organized industry in India. I don’t know how the society looks at men who visit brothels. But the women who are forced into prostitution are seen as immoral piece of filth and not as victims. What change is March 8th going to do to their lives?
All over the world women are being discriminated and become targets in war zones. Do we celebrate their miserable lives on this day?
This post might be termed negative, cynical. Yes it might be. But it is painful to see so many holes in the mind, family and system and yet brag about women equality and empowerment.
I prefer not to celebrate Women’s Day. I would rather think.
