Nayagan and everything Tam.

We watched Nayagan today on K TV. This time, I managed not to cry at all. The last time I saw the movie was about 7 years back. k and I were good friends back then and I managed to convince k and his roommate, Swami to watch Nayagan with me. Although Swami's mother-tongue was Tamil, he was a typical Bombayite like k - meaning, he began all his sentences with, "Abe saale...". So, anyway, we started watching it and all of us became quite involved with the movie (Of course, such is the nature of Nayagan).

There was this really touching scene in the movie where Kamal Hassan asks to see his grandson for the first time and his daughter refuses and Kamal Hassan tries to deal with the denial, hide his tears while hoping his daughter would change her mind and he would catch a glimpse of his grandson. I watched this scene and started crying silently. k and Swami were caught up in the scene and one of them turned to share something about the scene with me. Once they realized I was crying, the intense emotional scene was soon forgotten and I became the target of their attention. Not that they were nice and they consoled me or anything. They mainly made fun of me. And that was when I realized I would never ever watch this movie again with people who do not get as seriously involved in it as I do.

And today, I forgot all about that resolution and watched the movie with k. After the very same scene, he suddenly looked at me and said, "Wait! Isn't this the same scene for which you started crying that day? Ha haaaa!"

And the moment was lost all over again.

I swear, I will not watch Nayagan a third time with k. And if I ever do, it will only be because I know he is going to cry seeing the same scene again!

Anyway, he agreed that it was indeed a good movie and that mollified me a bit. This whole discussion reminds me of another incident.

Many years back, when k was still a novice at everything Tamil, I used to tell him that I could not marry him unless he was familiar with "Mouna Ragam". I was very excited when k sat down to watch the movie and I made sure he caught all the nuances in the movie. And since then, whenever the topic of Tamil movies comes up, k goes, "Whaaa? You haven't seen Mouna Ragam, how dare you exist?" and so on. Serves me right for wanting to share Mouna Ragam with him :p

The other association that he makes with Tamil folks is "Thayir sadam". He makes this ridiculous gesture of slurping gooey rice from his hands all the way to his elbow as if to say we eat thayir sadam like that! Jeez! How can someone not like thayir sadam? Beats me! A year back, we had gone to Atlanta to visit my maama. k, my cousin and I were shopping and we decided to take a to-go for dinner. We were at this amazing desi store called "Shayona" and k got really excited seeing home made kachori, samosas, chola etc in the store. So, he picked up a bunch of "tiffin" items and looked at my cousin and said, "Cool! Let's have this for dinner!" She gave him a weird look and said, "Saadam?" The concept of wrapping up a nice dinner with thayir sadam is lost time and again on poor k. But after the Atlanta incident, he remembers that "Tams" don't do dinner without their beloved thachi mammam :p

Tweet