Rigid Liberalism - Oxymoron of the decade

There is a certain category of liberalism that people of this decade seems to follow predominantly, that I can broadly classify as Rigid Liberalism. It is not new but perhaps not named as liberalism for a long time, however when the left leaning historians, politicians and academia projected themselves as progressive liberals then the whole word 'liberals' actually started meaning something else. That is why the term 'Rigid Liberalism'. i.e A liberalism that does not accept any counterpoint, however much sense it makes. 

Why this rant suddenly? One of my friend, who I am just going to refer to as the 'Blue Necked Happy Man', has been on my case to write a review of the web series called Nava Rasa, supposedly one story per emotion, depicting the nine salient emotions predominantly popularised by Bharatanatyam dancers, however now made as a talking point by none other than our favorite Mani Rathnam. I did see few of the episodes in full and some of them partially. However, one that could be taken out for review (one rice out of the whole pot) is Project Agni by Karthick Naren. 

 As the cliche goes, if you want to show someone as extremely intelligent and academically savvy cast Arvind Swamy to that role. Mani Rathnam created this fad in the 90s, which is still followed by all and sundry. Naming the main character as Vishnu who is calling his friend Krishna for help, while Kalki is the bad guy - both avatars of Vishnu - the director goes to the next level to make sure that symbolism is well-directed and names his wife as Lakshmi kid as rishi - symbolically saying all the rishis are paving the path to reach Vishnu. But in all this, he has to make sure to show that his character Vishnu is an atheist (removing the vibuthi from his forehead after lakshmi leaves the room). Why this urge to show only atheist hindus? It has become a complete cliche in Indian cinema to see atheist hindus, but pious christians and faithful muslims. 

That too if the hindu happens to be well read, he has to be one of the Lutyen's elitists, with a tint of marxism and of course they will always be very humane. And more they bash hinduism, the more humane will they be. This is extremely contrary to the reality where C.V. Raman, Subramaniam Chandrasekhar, J.C. Bose are all fairly staunch hindus. However it seems like the so-called elitists in TN seems to have the burning need to get endorsements from the periyarist gangs for some odd reason. 

While the complete brush aside of hindu systems are visible in this episode, the awe with which the protaganist expresses the ancient Sumerian civilization and the Anunakis - which is termed as pseudo-archaeology even by western historians and archaeologists - which by the way existed in parallel to Indus Valley Civilization, and much later than Ramayana and Mahabharatha times. So even though the Sumerians have done math, they are definitely not the first ones to have done either Math or Astronomy - as claimed in this web series. 

And in the end, the whole build up of this episode is for Kalki, the villain to get hold of DMT - commonly known as Dimitri or N-dimethyltryptamine. Seriously the director seems to have some serious hallucinations (no pun intended). 

Jumping on to 'Guitar Kambi Mele Nindru' by none other than Gautham Vasudev Menon, emphasizes that a Musician of good quality means that he should be in London and in his own words 'he does not belong here'. And what does he create  - the celebrated dance number that gets the grammy award - is nothing other than a basic 'Mullai Pann' or the Mohanam in carnatic scale. All this is showing an excessive erosion of creativity in the Tamil Filmdom due to pervasive nepotism and in-breeding over several decades.