Letters to the Hoot

Letters to the Hoot

With reference to No Kidding, and Charu Soni¿s criticism of article on Mani Ratnam.

Letters to the Hoot 

With reference to No Kidding, and Charu Soni¿s criticism of article on Mani Ratnam. No Kidding This has reference to the article "NO KIDDING". In the name of Sex Education, all rubbish is being published in glossy journals. Anyone questioning the propriety of publishing such information would be dubbed as a conservative stooped in obscurantism.

At the moment, the question to be addressed is whether Sex education is at all necessary. Eating, Sleeping and Procreation are just instincts which even animals are bestowed with. A human being possessing the unique quality of intelligence and ability to think perhaps does not require sex education in the form it appears in the journals cited by the author.

The unwanted information given in these journals has consequences which go against the very ethos of our philosophy. We have many unwed mothers amongst teenagers as a corollary to this boom in sex education which as the author says is available on the tea table.

Equally guilty are the cinemas- especially the Telugu language ones. The family can¿t sit together and view these films. That is the quality. They are simply disgusting for the sheer vulgarity in the dialogues.

It is like cleansing the Aegean Stables which only a Hercules can do.

T Siva Rama Krishna Sastry

June 13, 2002

More on Mani Ratnam

I am amazed that Charu Soni has decided to champion a filmmaker whose film under critique by Lalitha Sridhar has not even merited her viewing. Apart from several facts about the film that Charu has got so wrong (and how did that happen, one wonders!) her position clearly reflects that in choosing to laud and praise a filmmaker and a film which she hasn¿t even cared to view only goes to firmly entrench Lalitha¿s viewpoint: The holy cows thrive! And how so!

Pamphleteer a cause? No sane person will have such expectations of a filmmaker but what a sane person can reasonably expect from a director like Mani Ratnam is not give life and credibility to unfounded fears that already exist in our society! Instead, his films make people shudder at the thought of adoption or of raising a mentally challenged child. What we don¿t want people to feel is exactly what his films lead them to feel. . "Oh the poor thing!" "thank god the child died..life would be so difficult otherwise.", "god, look at all the problems of adoption." "i will never tell my child he/she is adopted." remarks overheard from people who have seen his films!

And with great expertise Charu surmises that his films sensitize people to issues that NGO and social activists do not do. Where does she get this information from? Sensitize? Look again Charu! The lump is the throat is not sensitization..it is called drama..And get a grip on REAL work that people and organizations are doing!

Charu writes expertly that choosing a child¿s birthday is bad timing but its been known to happen. Duh? Really? Known to happen? To who? To her? Where from stems this knowledge of hers?