Chennai Express - take me home, to this Southern State, created by Rohit Shetty!

Where my parents failed, to make a nice Tamizh ponnu out of me, ‘Chennai Express’ has succeeded!

I have always had a complex about my Tamizh accent & have been mercilessly teased about it. But with ‘Chennai Express’, the whole of Tamilnadu will have to re-learn their accents, because what I hear Deepika speak, by God, ‘aint the Tamizh I know & can’t speak too well! It made me almost miss the ‘stereotyped fake Tamil accent’ which Bollywood regularly uses, with its roots in ‘Padosan’. Deepika Padukone, ok so you speak Kannada, but surely you sensed that something was wrong with that guttural Tamizh accent?!

I have to pause for more than a moment – to roll on the floor with laughter, at SRK’s declaration, at the ekdum beginning of the CE trailer, that he is a 4o year old – more like 40 going on 65!!!! Dude, either you beg Aamir Khan, to give you that secret formula, which makes him miraculously younger & fitter in every movie, like the curious case of Benjamin Button, or if Jumping Jeetu has any stock left, gulp some spoonfuls of that hilarious tonic, Jeetendra promoted, called ‘Thirty Plus’ (or was it Forty Plus?? My memory fails me, because I am old and foolishly didn’t stock up on 30/40 Plus!!!), because otherwise, you as a 40 year old .... tee hee hee ....

Phuleez ... will someone send one of those last telegrams to Bollywood, informing them that there are regular men in the South! But in case Rohit Shetty is right & the only guys who exist on Planet South are huge, dark, scary, muscular beasts with long curly hair & super thick moustaches, who only snarly ‘Dei’ dangerously & carry chunky weapons, then I need to check, where my husband comes from. All along, in our twenty three years of marriage, my patidev has tricked me into believing, that he comes from a respectable district of Tamilnadu! Hmmmm ... Rohit Shetty knows better!!!

So a la Christopher Columbus, I am setting off on a journey, to seek my roots, in search of that land which Rohit Shetty says is my home:

• The railways stations I know have dully dressed people, stocking up on magazines, water & bananas to tackle the long journey. Much prefer to find the Chennai Express ka station, where lovely lasses wear bright, sexy ‘dhavanis’ – those half saris which our mothers tried to get us to wear, to weddings and functions, before we gratefully graduated to saris.

• My friends in Chennai have such boring backgrounds – their dads work in humdrum regular jobs in banks, hospitals, industries .... only in Chennai Express will I meet a Dhavani clad ponnu, whose father is ‘Don’. Imagine, introducing yourself in your new class in school, ‘Hi! My name is so & so. My mother is a school teacher & my father is a ‘Don’!

• Unlike a good Tamizh ponnu, much to my mother’s disappointment, I did not learn Carnatic Music or Bharatnatyam. But now I discover that I did not learn another dance originating from my state – ‘Kathakali’! Rohit Shetty should have told me earlier – that’s why I have such a large frame – This Tamil gal was built for Kathakali!!!

Like Christopher Columbus, I am setting off, on a journey, to discover this dream place, my homeland, where girls only wear dhavanis, speak a hitherto unknown dialect, the men, like the heroes of Mills& Boon romances, are tall, dark & ________________(maybe after years of association, they will seem handsome too!), where I can croon,

“Imagine, there are no different Southern States,
It’s easy if you try!
Imagine all the States,
mashed up into one.
Yoo hoo, you may say I’m a dreamer,
But I am just a fan of Rohit Shetty & the promise of Chennai Express!”