Thekkady Streetside Standee

This way to the chemist!

 

Happy Pongal!

Happy Pongal everybody!

A few things of note:

Tonight is the opening of an exhibition of Natesh's drawings, when this key sketch gets real tongue is fork hen is cock, at the Madras Terrace House at 7 pm. Besides the awesome art there will be gun-shaped cookies (Natesh says, "If you can't solve a problem, eat it") and koothu music. Address and more info here.

SANGAMAM: If you're in Chennai and you haven't been to a Chennai Sangamam show yet, you're missing out.  Last night in Kodambakkam there was an amazing string of performances by two phenomenal Thappattam groups... I am not sure of most names, as the Sangamam program seems to bear little relation to what actually goes on stage, but one was P. Raja's group from Panayur, and another was from Andhra... man were they good.  Full acrobatics and human pyramids while dancing and pounding beats.  There was also Dollu Kunitha from Karnataka (loud and wild with heavy bass drums), a very interesting Thavil - Nadhaswaram - Urumi - Bembi group from Thirunelveli (mighty strange grooves), a fabulous Villu Pattu performance, a 5-year-old Silambattam expert, fire-eaters, and finally--live and direct from Thanjavur--"கிராமிய இசைப்புயல்" (the village-music cyclone) Chinnaponnu Kumar, who was in full voice and awesomeness.

 P. Raja Panayur Thappattam Troupe

at Corporation Ground, Kodambakkam, Chennai

On FRIDAY a lot of the same people are (according to the schedule--I hope it's reliable this time) performing in Perumbur at the Corporation School Play Ground, Thiru-Vi-Ka Nagar. After Chinnaponnu, Grace Karunas will be singing.  Terrific line-up and not to be missed.

Sat-Isabgol

by Rakesh

We had a house guest recently who was suffering from some, uh, personal plumbing problems, and I had occasion to remark at the sheer genius of the Sat-Isabgol box.

I mean, look at those fonts!  Look at that telephone! Have you ever seen such a beautiful package design in your life?

Here it is again in Hindi from the other side of the box:

Wow.

New Year's Appalam

"Vocal Chanting" from the next Tamil Nadu Superstar

From his relatively low Youtube view counts, it seems that not nearly enough people are hip to the infectious dance grooves of Tamil Nadu's very own Wilbur Sargunaraj. Please dig the following videos, then go forth and spread the word.

Hindi Pulp Art

Here are a few more samples of the 4000+ Hindi pulp novel covers by Mustajab Ahmed Siddiqui a.k.a. Shelle, the master painter of Amroha, U.P.  These didn't make it into our postcard book of his work, Heroes, Gundas, Vamps & Good Girls, but don't let that stop you from buying it.

There are so many damn guns, you know?  (Acutally Blaft has put a lot of guns on the covers of our own books too, and sometimes I feel guilty about it.  Dear customers: Promise you're not going to get all inspired to start stockpiling firearms and become all trigger-happy like a bunch of psycho American National Rifle Association members. OK? Please?)


This guy's blog has some nice examples of older covers, including some that appear to be Shelle's work.  And there are a bunch more in the nice online collection here.

Bizarre Chennai Kids' Clothing Slogans

by Rakesh

I used to get annoyed at how hard it was to find a T-shirt with a Tamil slogan on it. It still bugs me occasionally, because I find the Roman script one of the least attractive looking of all scripts (if you're not familiar with all the beautiful alphabets, abjads, and syllabaries on Omniglot, it's worth spending some time exploring). But I am now the proud owner of 2 of those popular yellow shirts given away free by the cement companies, which bear their company name and slogan (ராம்கோ சிமென்ட் -- சூப்பர் கிரேடு!) so I don't complain about it so much anymore.

Also, I've been starting to admire the exceedingly strange English slogans that appear in Chennai street fashion, on T-shirts and jeans. It seems that these are not really intended to be read -- it is enough that they are in English, or at least seem to be in some European language, and make vague references to hip or cool sounding "phoren" things like race cars. Or robots. Or dating.

Yesterday, we went Christmas shopping in Thiruvanmiyur; there were a number of kids on our list for whom we meant to buy clothes. We were really blown away by some of the slogans and designs on the kids' outfits at the shop... I think there is some sort of bizarre new textual art form emerging here. Check out this shirt sleeve:

Like, huh?  Is that in Latin for a minute?  Is there some deep Marxist-theoretical interpretation of the 1675 conflict between the Wampanoag Indians and the settlers of New England being referred to here?  What?

Here's another beauty:

I think some African-American literary critic types should be set loose on interpreting that one, I'd like to read what they came up with.

This one reminds me of some iterative-mutating-text experimental poetry I've read somewhere. I like all the different spellings of "Tahiti" and the use of capitals and full stops.

Then there are designs where it looks like the letters of a plaintext have been rearranged or partly encrypted by some algorithmic process.  This one appears to be mostly gibberish, but then note the "FANTASY GOLF" in the center.

There are some that are even more abstract, where it's hard to parse the letters:

I really want to know what that word right before "dreaming" means and how to pronounce it.

Anyway, I wonder where these nameless, brilliant designers are from: Tirupur? Ulhasnagar?  Somebody needs to write a manifesto, I think.