u/Aromatic-Pineapple79

the open mouth gum chewing would be a deal breaker

After the Trivikram - NTR movie announcements, Kollywood and Tollywood groups are fighting over Lord Muruga.., before it was DMK - BJP politicians were fighting over Muruga.

BJP says Murugan belongs to all Hindus. DMK says he is Tamil and Tamil only.

And somewhere in the middle of all this noise, the actual history of Murugan is just sitting there.

So let me tell you what we actually know.

First, who was Murugan before anyone started arguing about him?

In the ancient times,

The land was divided into five ecological zones.

Hills, Forests, Farmland, Coast & Desert

Each zone had its own deity, its own justice system, its own stories and culture. The hills belonged to a god called Ceyon, which just means "the red one" in Tamil.

This Ceyon was not Shiva's son. He had no Sanskrit name. He had no peacock throne or divine army. He was a hill deity. A Tribal, Raw diety associated with spears, ecstatic priests, desire, honey, and the mountain forests of South India.

The priests who served him were called Velan. They would go into trances, Channel the god, Speak in his voice. This is not Brahmanical religion. This is shamanism, a folk religion. This is the kind of thing that was happening in Tamil Nadu centuries before Sanskrit became dominant in the south.

We know this because of two pieces of evidence that are very hard to argue with.

One is a text called the Tolkappiyam. It is the oldest surviving Tamil grammar. Most scholars date it somewhere between the 2nd and 1st century BCE. It mentions Ceyon as the standard deity of the Kurinji, the hill landscape.

The other is a temple.

In 2004 the tsunami hit the Tamil Nadu coast near Mahabalipuram. When the water pulled back it revealed something that had been buried under sand and sea for about two thousand years. A Murugan temple. The Archaeological Survey of India excavated it properly between 2005 and 2007. Radiocarbon dating placed the earliest layer at around 2200 years ago. Second century BCE.

That is the oldest Murugan shrine. In Tamil Nadu. Pre-Brahmanical. Pre-Puranic. Pre the whole Sanskrit theological framework we know today.

So yes. The Tamil claim has serious weight behind it.

But here is where it gets complicated

At the same time that Ceyon was being worshipped in Tamil hills, something else was happening up north.

In Sanskrit texts going back to at least the 3rd century BCE, there is a deity called Skanda. Also called Kumara.

He shows up in Panini's grammar. In Kautilya's Arthashastra. In the Mahabharata. In early Upanishads.

Coins from the Yaudheya warrior clan dated between the 2nd century BCE and 2nd century CE have a six-headed deity (Shan Mukha) on them with inscriptions saying he is their patron god.

This northern Skanda is a war god. Son of Shiva. Commander of divine armies. A Brahmanical deity with an elaborate mythology.

Here is the thing though.

The northern Skanda and the Tamil Ceyon-Murugan are not the same god. Not yet. They share some features. The spear. The commander identity. The warrior aura. But they come from different traditions. They have different personalities. Different rituals. Different relationships to caste and Brahmanical religion.

So what happened?

They merged.

Somewhere between the 2nd century BCE and the 5th century CE, these two traditions started bleeding into each other. It was not deliberate. It was the kind of thing that happens when two religious cultures start occupying the same geographic and social space.

Brahmanical religion moved south. Tamil culture was absorbing Sanskrit influence.  And in this contact zone, Ceyon and Skanda started becoming the same person.

The Paripatal, a Sangam anthology, already describes Murugan as Shiva's son. That is the synthesis beginning.

But here is what is interesting. The Tamil folk dimensions never really disappeared. The tribal consort Valli, who has no Sanskrit parallel, stayed in Tamil Murugan mythology.

So NTR-TRIVIKRAM is about Skanda, not Muruga.

I heard that the CBFC cut 38 seconds from the film before it could release in Indian theatres. They removed 14 seconds of graphic sxu@l activity and 24 seconds of extreme violence. The film was already given an ‘A’ rating, which means it’s only for adults, and CBFC doing this is actually non-sense.

I watched the censored version in theatres. But I heard from others who saw the full uncut version what was taken out.

CBFC didn’t cut just a “hot” scene. They cut a scene that was saying something important. The director used those few seconds to show us who these two people really are and what is actually happening between them.

Inidan censor board is ridiculous

Premise: A man with partial hearing loss has somehow developed the ability to pick up on sounds most people would never catch,the kind of hyper-specific hearing that turns into an actual superpower when you point it at a locked safe.

A criminal gang figures this out and forces him to use that ability to crack safes that shouldn't be crackable. Naturally, things don't stay simple, what starts as one job spirals into something he never signed up for.

What's interesting is I can't agree on what genre this even is, is it a heist film, a love story, or a movie about what happens to an artist when their art is taken from them? Sounds like it's doing all three at once, with a love-story argument doubling as a fight about ambition and who they each want to become.

The story is written really well and the people in it feel real. The movie shows both what the characters feel inside and what they do outside. You care about their lives and the action. It keeps you hooked the whole time.

The music is apparently a big part of the experience too, a mix of jazz, blues, electronic, a Nina Simone track, and a big piano moment near the end. Sound itself is basically a character in this film, which makes sense given the premise.

Anyone here watched it yet?

Nearly 80% of vehicles sold over the past 15 years were originally engineered for E5 or E10 petrol.

New cars can survive upto E20.

When Gadkari says "no vehicle anywhere in the world has had problems with E20," it's not just misleading, it's scientifically inaccurate.

The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) itself has stated: "The existing gasoline vehicles or E20 compatible vehicles are NOT suitable for using higher ethanol blends (above E20). Potential issues like reduced fuel efficiency, performance, drivability, failure of fuel system material and components over a period of usage may occur leading to leakages and other failures."

(We should connect this to - Gadkari's younger son, Sarang, he is reportedly linked to a firm that acquired assets worth crores at what critics call a "meagre price" )

Now I'm not saying there's corruption — but when the Union Minister pushing the policy has family members directly benefiting from that very policy, and when he dismisses every concern as a "paid lobby campaign," it doesn't exactly inspire confidence, does it?

Let me break it down

PART 1 — Which parts get damaged and why

Ethanol is a solvent and moisture-absorber. Your car was not built for it beyond a certain percentage. Here's what it attacks:

Rubber seals and fuel lines — Standard NBR rubber swells, cracks, and leaks when exposed to ethanol beyond E10. E20 accelerates this to 3–5 years vs the normal 8–10 year lifespan. If your car is pre-April 2023 BS6 Phase 1 or older, this is happening to your car right now, slowly.

Fuel pump — Ethanol has lower lubricity than petrol. Your fuel pump uses petrol itself as a lubricant while running. Less lubricity = faster internal wear. Replacement cost ₹15,000–35,000.

Fuel injectors — Ethanol's solvent properties dislodge varnish deposits inside old injectors, clogging the spray nozzle. Cleaning ₹2,000–4,000. Replacement ₹3,500–6,000 per injector.

ECU and fuel trim — The ECU detects excess oxygen from ethanol combustion, thinks the mixture is lean, and permanently increases fuel injection. This is called long-term fuel trim corruption. Over 6–12 months your injectors overwork, carbon deposits build up, and the engine runs incorrectly. Not dramatic. Silent.

Cylinder walls and piston rings — Unburnt ethanol washes the oil film off cylinder walls during incomplete combustion. This is called fuel dilution. Piston ring wear accelerates over 2–4 years. By the time you feel it — reduced power, higher oil consumption — the damage is already done. Engine overhaul: ₹80,000–1,50,000.

Why Gadkari can say "show me one damaged car" — because this damage is cumulative, slow, and distributed across components. No single dramatic failure. Just a slowly degrading engine that the workshop calls "normal wear and tear."

PART 2 — We are paying more and getting less. This is daylight robbery.

Ethanol has 30% less energy density than petrol. Mixing 20% ethanol means every litre you buy contains less energy than pure petrol. Confirmed mileage loss across all cars: 2–5%.

For a typical i20 owner doing 1,000 km/month at 10 km/l — that's 100 litres/month. At 3% mileage loss you're burning 3 extra litres every month = ₹300–330/month extra = ₹3,600–4,000/year extra just because of ethanol.

Now the outrageous part — ethanol costs roughly ₹45–60/litre to produce. Petrol costs ₹40/litre to produce. Ethanol is MORE expensive to produce than petrol. Yet central excise duty on ethanol in your fuel is charged at petrol rates — not at ethanol's GST rate of 5%. The government pockets the difference. You pay full petrol price for a fuel that delivers less energy. Nobody reduced petrol prices when ethanol was added. Nobody offered a mileage compensation. You just quietly got less for the same money.

Simple demand: Either reduce petrol pump price proportionally to reflect 20% ethanol content, or provide an E5/E10 option at pumps like Europe does. Anything else is consumer exploitation.

PART 3 — The democratic failure

This policy was decided without public consultation. Without independent technical review by automotive engineering bodies. SIAM — the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers — raised formal compatibility concerns. Overruled. A Supreme Court PIL challenging E20 rollout was dismissed citing national security (National Security!!!! even court can't help us)— a classification that conveniently makes the policy judicially untouchable.

The financial burden falls 100% on the consumer — lower mileage, faster component wear, warranty voidance, zero compensation. The financial benefit flows to ethanol producers, sugar mills, and oil marketing companies.

When the Minister responsible responds to documented engineering concerns with "show me one damaged car" instead of commissioning an independent technical study from IIT or ARAI, it tells you everything about whose interests are being protected. This Is Where Indian Democracy Fails.

PART 4 — What we as a frustrated consumer can actually do

This is not a situation where posting online is enough. Here's what creates actual pressure:

Contact your MP directly — Look up your constituency MP at loksabha.nic.in. Write a offline letter or email citing E20/E30 vehicle compatibility concerns and demand a Parliamentary question be raised. MPs have the constitutional right to ask questions in Parliament. Make them use it. Force Gadkari to answer on the floor of the House — not in press statements where he can say "show me one damaged car" unchallenged.

File RTIs — File at rti online

 asking the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas for the independent engineering validation report on E30 vehicle compatibility. Ask specifically: which agency tested E20/E30 impact on BS4 and BS6 Phase 1 vehicles? What were the results? If no such study exists, that itself is your answer.

Maybe nothing will happen, because in India, policy is not shaped by public interest. It's shaped by political will, industrial profit, and ministerial audacity (some ministers are selfish evils). And we, the people, are just along for the ride, whether our engines survive it or not.