Monday, February 13, 2006

Srirangam - 3


During my trip to Srirangam, I noticed this curious phenomenon of posters celebrating weddings. I wonder what's in it for the friends and families to spend money on informing all and sundry about the wedding of their dear ones. We are not talking about some stray posters here; they were competing quite seriously (and successfully) with those for movies and for personal loans from ICICI bank! I saw tons of them on Amma Mandapam Road.

Just take a look at some of them:

Another standard trick seems to be to include the SuperStar of Tamil filmdom. He is there in two of them, offering his blessings with a benevolent smile. In particular, the last one features only him, but not the couple!

7 Comments:

  1. Anonymous said...

    Abhi: I think its not a coincidence that the last one features the likeness of the Thalaivar from a movie in which his character was called Saravanan. In case you are not familiar with Tamil, the bridegroom's name in that third poster is Saravanan :)
    Also the second poster has the first lines from 90s Rajini song where he offers his best wishes to the married couple! This particular movie (and the song) was based on Amitabh's Lawaaris.

  2. Anonymous said...

    these kind of posters are pretty common down south. For all you know, these posters might be the handiwork of the so called friends of the couple who are getting married. You can see these posters in Autos, Buses and walls.

  3. Abi said...

    Anti: Thanks for the additional info. One of the posters is also for celebrating the wedding of a Rajni Fan Club in Srirangam. It sort of makes sense.

    Kaps: I know this 'poster culture' is not new. But my question is why? What is the motivation? Political ambition is the only 'explanation' that I can come up with.

  4. Anonymous said...

    Thanks abi for your postings on srirangam with a mention of murali coffee.I felt like being in my hometown srirangam while i am miles away in Israel now.

  5. Abi said...

    Rama: You are welcome! I am glad you liked this set of posts.

  6. Anonymous said...

    Abhi: If by political ambition, you are referring to Rajini's political ambition, then you are mistaken. Rajini's political ambitions seem to have died down now. It seems that he is taking every bit of care to ensure that no confusion is caused by any of his actions.
    But visibility could be a reason. I mean, if I were to se a Rajini poster somewhere, as a fan, my first thought is to kinda read whats on there. So his image seems to aid the information transfer. And with film stars being demigods in TN, it might be far from the truth if I were to say that the image is there simply for good luck.

  7. Abi said...

    aNTi: The political ambition that I am talking about is not that of Rajni, but that of friends and families of the married couple, or that of the groom or the bride. They want visibility in the local community, and Rajni's presence on the poster gives it to them. To be fair, one of the posters is actually by a Rajni fan club; presumably, some key member of the couple's family is some functionary in the fan club.