Kaltxi ("Hello" in Na'vi Language)

For the uninitiated, this is the character Neytiri from James Cameron's on-its-way-to-being-the-biggest-all-time-blockbuster movie, Avatar. Neytiri is a Na'vi princess. Na'vi are the indigenous(read tribal) natives of a distant celestial body Pandora, where Avatar's story is setup. One month back, after the movie's release, fantastic opening and critical acclaim, people were calling it the Jurassic Park for the new generation, now after Avatar has broken all previous records at the box office in terms of business and popularity, it is being compared to Star Wars, the movie that established Science-fiction as a genre in Hollywood.

The reason I chose to use Neytiri's picture in this post is because Neytiri represents the perfect combination of beauty, strength and values that constitutes the masterpiece, Avatar. On the outside Avatar is beautiful with all the complex 3D effects and motion capture technology used in production. But what really makes the movie deserve the phenomenal business it is generating is the underlying story which is the soul of the movie. Sure, its not an original story and the plot might be similar to many movies based on the same theme but the whole setup of Pandora, Na'vi, their belief system and their traditions that James Cameron weaves onto the big screen just makes you fall in love with the Na'vi and their way of life. You feel the grandeur when the Na'vi take a ride on pa'li(Direhorse). You wish you could fly on your own Ikran(Mountain Banshee) and feel happy that our world doesn't have enormous creatures like the Palulukan(Thanator) and Toruk(Great Leonopteryx). You feel a respect for the Sacred Tree and start believing in the Eywa, the all mother of the Na'vi.

There have been a lot of movies that have created alien and magical worlds through CGI and special effects, but Avatar stands out, and makes you think if Pandora is anything more than the alternative evolution path for our planet if we stop ravaging and trying to remodel and customize it as per our needs and wants and start living as one, in complete symbiosis with Nature as the Na'vi do. Imagine if collective consciousness - a belief that all living things are connected and nature tries to keep a balance - something that we dismiss only as a theory with no scientific evidence or tangible proof, were actually to be proven and measured a long time back. Would we be living in concrete jungles and developing new ways to extract previously unreachable oil deposits, deep within the ocean which will eventually release even more harmful gases into the atmosphere? Perhaps not!

Eywa ngahu!!(May the Eywa(God) be with you)


PS: Get used to listening to more such words, a lot of people are learning the Na'vi language, yes there is a complete language! James Cameron hired a Linguistics professor to develop the Na'vi language, it has a vocabulary of around 1000 words.




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