A hole in the bucket...

Last week i had an oppurtunity to watch a glimpse of the movie "billa" (not the new billa but the old rajini kanth's version) courtesy SUN TV the only Tamil channel that is visible in this part of the world through dish network. I dont have the patience to connect my computer to the TV screen to watch other channels but that is for some other day.

The part i just got the glimpse was the scene where Billa is chased by police. bills escapes from the police in a car, he goes in opposite directions in one way lanes, the police still chases him, he drives very crazily still the police chases him, he hits medians and other obstacles with his car still the police chases him, he somehow gets into a horse and rides down on it on mount road still the police chase him, he goes into kamarajar salai adjoining marina beach, the police still purse him, he goes near Napier bridge the police finally catch up on him and they shoot him down, he gets up and jumps into ..... yes jumps into cooum with his bullet injuries.

I was dumbfounded !!! not because i was surprised that Rajini could jump into cooum inspite of heavy bullet injury but to see that the cooum was cleaner than i had ever seen at that point of the bridge. Probably it was say 25 years before that movie was shot? probably Just in 10-15 years from a little murky but clean river at that point of its journey it has become brackish utterly poisonous river. I think Arjun in mudhalvan also jumps into the river at the same point of cooum. I remember how brakish it looked in that movie.
this is just a sample of the great innovative genius of tamils at display.

This is just not cooum, Coimbatore has its own cooum the Noyyal.

Now to the real topic which i wanted to write:

All i have heard about Documentary film festivals is that they would show documentaries from many countries with varying themes. But i have never heard of any documentary film festival organized on just one specific theme. But recently there was one documentary film festival just organized on one specific theme of "Water"!!!.
This doc. festival was held in india and what place on india would be more appropriate for it? any guesses yes it was held in the most notrious state which does not give a damn about water treaties. Yes, it is a great oxymoron. Bangalore hosted it.

The festival looks like showed more than 70 documentary on that theme. As usual documentaries from many countries were shown. It focussed on water wars between states/countries, water mismanagement, death of rivers etc.,

Many indian documentaries also were there. There were couple of documentaries on Tamilnadu rivers. (is there any river except tamiraparani that is exclusively in TN??)


There was a documentary named : My name is palar.
Another one by name : "A hole in the bucket".

The first one by the name itself we can understand it talks about the river palar.

the second film is about the water story of madaras. I could even find a web site for this documentary.

http://www.kanavuppattarai.com/hib.htm

It looks like the director is a woman and her name is Leena manimekalai. I did not watch the documentary but the brief write up on it by "The frontline" magazine and also the commentary on the website sounds very intriguing. I think it would be a good watch.

But what really disappointed me is the documentary was funded by "govt of netherlands".

I am now becoming a firm believer that more than the corrupt government, only NGOs and comitted citizens can bring up any change on any thing. Is there any doubt to this even after reading about Rajendra Singh? ( 2001 Magsaysay Award winner and reviver of many dead rivers in Rajasthan).