anniyan : meaning alien. It is Shankar's newest film, and I quite liked it, even though it comes across like a rehash of his earlier hits Indian, and Gentleman. Especially, the lead actor Vikram's grouse that everyone blames others' deficiencies for the lapses in the system, while justifying their own lapses by saying that everyone else does it! Pretty cool. Just what I do, and perhaps you too :)

Which is fine, maybe, but upto a limit, since we can't all be perfect. Maybe most of us wont think twice about littering the street("it's just a bus ticket, a little piece of paper"), but perhaps almost everybody would baulk at doing something that we know would directly harm another person. I mean, if most of us weren't like this, then the world would truly be much more difficult to live in.

Its really a number of small things that cumulatively will result in bettering society. I've heard that cities in the US, in the 1960s, were crime-ridden with mafia and thugs, but their civil government is truly enviable now(like that of many other developed nations). So perhaps India will get there too, and the elements that go into transforming society(and hence government), are slowly getting into place - higher literacy, better oppurtunities(though not for all, yet), and more knowledge of the outside world getting into even the rural backpockets.

I am very hopeful, and like it is said in the song, "jana gana mana" from the film "ayitha ezhuthu": "kanavugal vella, kaariyam thuNai", meaning, "actions are the ways to realize dreams.