I Love Thamizh Movies

                                                                    I Love Thamizh Movies

Some background to make the material in this write-up even halfway comprehensible.

I am the firstborn of a physics teacher (in college). Then, you could say that physics is in my blood, but I would not. Yes, I am interested in listening to any number of interviews/podcasts of physicists of the highest level, and Nobel Prize is not a definitive metric in this regard in my mind.

I am a civil/structural engineer by profession and I retired from the profession 19 months and a week ago yesterday. In the final ten years of my professional life, I taught the college level first year course on mechanics, which is the foundation of structural engineering which I taught for 2nd year students and also PG students. Yet, even after more than a year and a half,some hull fouling of structural engineering is clinging to the sides of my brain. This becomes active when I see the fight-scenes in Thamizh movies.

I am not exactly embarrassed to admit that I refer to some scenes from the movies in my classes, for example, why the hero jumping off of a two- or three-storey building cannot land even on a mound of sand without bending his leg at the knee and possibly at his hips too. But, that is precisely what we see on the silver screen (there no silver on the screens, though).

Some villains would be kicked so hard by the hero that they would slide perhaps ten feet before hitting a traffic barricade conveniently placed for the villains to come to a stop. 

In a Hindi movie (copied from the James Bond movie Octopussy, in my opinion, the worst as the villain was not villain enough), an antique car accelerating and continue running on its metallic wheels (the tyre material had been shredded) on the rails. This is definitely impossible as both the metal surfaces are too smooth to offer any resistance; resistance is necessary, and teachers call it−and I do too−unnecessary waste. But I immediately explain that if a thing is necessary, it cannot be a waste! By the way, the wheels have to transfer some weight to the rails for friction to be mobilized and the wheels to run on the rails. I am surprised that Thamizh film makers have not woven this scene into any of their movies. Maybe they have and I am not aware. Mea culpa.

The villain sees in the wing mirror of his car that the hero is following him, perhaps in a motorcycle, a three wheeler, a car or a bus, but at a distance. The villain hasn’t had the time to read what is etched in glass in the wing mirror–Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. No wonder he is surprised when the hero is literally upon him in a trice!

An automobile would have cartwheeled and its occupants would emerge almost unscathed, with only some bruises on their arms, legs, or face. This is a combination of physics and physiology. Oh, yeah, then how come that individual alone escaped from the airplane wreckage in Ahmedabad not too long ago? The meaningful answer is, it is some sort of a “5-sigma” event. A meaningful mumbo jumbo it is, I admit.

In movies, the villain fires a handgun, and the hero sort of moves his head sideways and the bullet whizzes past his ear.  The muzzle velocity from a handgun is about 300 m/sec. If the hero is about 10 m away from the villain, after the gun is fired, it would reach the target in between 0.03 to 0.05 seconds. I cannot imagine anyone shaking his head sideways in that period.

True, I do not take my structural engineering brain to the movies. Yet, it grates me when I see things that are not even absurd. Yet, as a mental masochist, I enjoy the fight-scene in Thamizh movies!

Raghuram Ekambaram