RIFLE RANGE BOY

http://malaysianindian1.blogspot.my/2011/01/true-history-of-chinese-indians-in.html?m=1 As stated by Raja Petra Kamarudin (RPK) RPK A confusion has erupted due to ignorance. It has been stated that the Indians came here as beggars and the Chinese as prostitutes. Actually, if you were to really study Malayan and Malaysian history over the last 500 years or so, you will find that this country’s history is not just about beggars and prostitutes. It is about much more than that. Malayan history has to be dissected into many periods. And each of these periods saw immigration involving almost all the races in Malaysia, save the Orang Asli (the Original People). In New Zealand, these Orang Asli would be the Maoris and in Australia the Aborigines. Therefore, anyone who is neither a Maori nor an Aborigine is a ‘pendatang’ or immigrant. THE ARABS IN MALAYSIA The Arabs and the Indians (Muslims from Gujarat) came to Malaya more than 500 years ago as traders and merchants. Thes...

I come from an era when travelling from Penang Island to Province Wellesley meant taking a ferry or a sampan if you are going to Prai. My generation in Penang also saw the Penang Bridge materialise piece by piece. The presence of a mammoth monolith in the middle of the straits must have created many eddie-currents and turbulence in the waters which in turn must have caused deposition of sands a little distance from the shore. Over time, more soil deposits eventually created a small islet. Birds must have rested on it to break their journey, sowing seed through its droppings. Over the years, during my regular visits back home, I noticed that the islet was literally growing under my nose. From a barren piece of pebbled sand, I saw patchy vegetation. Then came scrubs. And what do you know? In 30 years' time, it became a self-sustained island with trees and a weekend spot for adventurous sun-seeker. Boats can be seen strapped by the beach. Yes, it now has a fairly dense mini-j...

Black Butterflies (2011) I do not understand why and how some individuals from very debilitating backgrounds overcome their dark pasts whereas others are forever bogged in their misfortunes. Whilst the former come out stronger, resilient to whatever challenges that lie their way, the latter cringe and shrivel up carrying the baggage throughout life. Nietzsche said that the one which does not kill you makes you stronger. However, a group of people just throw in the towel at the first hint of difficulty. When Nelson Mandela opened the first session of the post-apartheid parliament, he read a poem about the struggle of the blacks during the apartheid era. It was written by an Afrikaner, Ingrid Jonker, a fragile poet who endured a life full of challenges. Living with her grandmother after her parents separated, Ingrid and her sister were grudgingly taken back by her father after her mother committed suicide and her grandmother succumbed to illness. Growing up with her father was...

Life, and Nothing More... (1992, Persian,   زندگی و دیگر هیچ  Zindagi va digar hich) Director: Abbas Kiarostami This film is considered the second instalment in the Koker trilogy - the first, being 'Where is the friend's home' (1987) and the third is 'Through the Olive Tree' (1995). It is a semi-documentary film that narrates the tale of a movie director and his son who return to the site of the first film to locate its actors. They revisit the area, which in real life, had been hit by a devastating earthquake. It showcases how people in this tragedy hit zone find solace in continuing their lives. Devastation is everywhere. Loved one are dead and dreams are shattered. Homes are destroyed, and the remaining water supply is rudimentary. But, life, the essence of our existence continues. People still manage to put on a smile. They still marry even though it is still within the 'mourning period'. Their rationale was that the dead did not see it coming, b...

When I was young, either by ignorance or defiance, I tended to look down at the wisdom laid down by the Eastern sages but looked up at what, at that time appeared avant-garde, pop culture. With age, hopefully, wiser, I am exposed to the much wisdom that the Eastern philosophers had to offer. And I was just thinking of something I heard the other day. Amongst the numerous moral dilemmas highlighted in the Mahabaratha, there is one which involved a priest. He was just sitting minding his business doing his priestly work. Along came a group of desperate men apparently running from something or someone. The desperate people were running from a band of thieves who were out to rob and probably kill them. They did not want the priest to tell them the direction of their route. Sure enough, moments later, a group of menacing looking robbers appear.  The priest was put in a spot when asked about the whereabouts of the earlier men. His understanding of life is that one should b...

The Man who Knew Infinity (2015) We all know about Ramanujan's story, his inability to secure a good score and a good job due to his fixation with Mathematics and neglect on other learning subjects. We all know how, he, a lowly shipping clerk wrote his theories to a Trinity College professor and also was not given a second look. We are aware of how he was made a Fellow of Royal Society. In his short life, he discovered formulae that would be used to understand black holes a century later! What struck me most about this film is the clash between the two men of different faith and are quite confident and comfortable with their conviction. Ramanujan (played by Dev Patel) is cocksure that the mind-boggling revelation that came to him are mere expressions of the Divine Forces. They just oozed out from him from his deity, Namagiri, during prayers. Ramanujan believed that that is the truth, the end-result that determines the truth. There was no need to painstakingly proving it. Some...

Les Diabolique (1955, French) Nowadays, abuse does not just encompass physical and sexual kind. In development psychology, a different type of abuse is often quoted as having a detrimental effect on the maturing mind. One with no physical evidence but is said to leave a mark so deep that it may just jostle the living daylight out of a person's future. They call it psychological abuse. The constant advice (imparting of knowledge or life experience or nagging as the receiver perceives it) is so painful that living seems not worth it! I find this a little perplexing. I thought what does not kill a person, only makes him stronger! And how is one to know his real potential if he does not scrape the barrel's bottom? The world would have no Michael Jackson if his father just gave in to his whims and fancies of the unknowing child who does not know the purpose of repeated and gruelling training. Nevertheless, that is the recipe of modern parenting for you - a liber...

When Nietzsche Wept (2009) In real life, Frederick Nietzsche and Josef Breuer technically would have never met, even though their paths may have crossed in Vienna. For the uninitiated, Nietzsche is a famous 19th-century German philosopher and Dr Breuer is a neurologist who was Sigmund Freud's mentor who together treated the first patient of psychotherapy, Anna O. (Bertha Pappenheim). Rather fictitiously, the story, which is taken off a novel by Irvin D. Yalom, created an imaginary meeting of four famous Viennese individuals - Nietzsche, Breuer, Freud and Lou Salome, Nietzsche's love of his life. Salome approaches Breuer to request for him to treat Nietzsche who was at risk of committing suicide after she rejected his hand in marriage. She wanted Dr Breuer to treat him for a migraine but at the same time try some of his 'talk therapy' on him to cure him of despair. However, things become complicated. Breuer, even though appearing very composed, contented, prosper...

Ibn Khaldun Heard about a study in psychology by a celebrated psychologist, Dr Dacher Keltnar, from UCLA recently. He stated that empathy and all the values traditionally viewed as virtuous are the things that propel a person to hold power. He is given the power to rule over them by the people who sees these noble qualities positively. Once, the leaders are perched at the top, they somehow lose the same values that brought them to the top. The humility, the patience and the empathy that made them leaders do not apply to them anymore. This, he called 'power paradox'. This fact was shown by him by a simple social experiment. At a road crossing, smaller cars belonging to people of the lower rung of the society tend to slow down and stop for people to cross than bigger powerful cars of the rich. He proposed that the poor and the powerless look out for each other, whilst the powerful feel disdain. Well, perhaps that is why most organised religions look at the rich with...

Thirteen (2016, Miniseries; BBC 3) Thirteen is supposed to be a crazy age to be, especially if you are a girl. You are not a girl, but you are not yet a woman. This, together with the raging hormones, lack of dopamine and sub-optimal maturation of the prefrontal cortex, looks like a lethal cocktail for disaster. Nevertheless, through failures and mistakes, a girl becomes a woman. Just imagine that this transitional period is lost. How would she handle such a situation? How would the family handle such a situation? One day, the scriptwriter of the film was wondering as she was reading a newspaper article, "Whatever happens to all the girls who had been abducted and returned after all the camera lights dim on them? How do their lives continue?" With that thought, she penned this fictitious story. Ivy Muxom was kidnapped at the age of 13 from school and was kept captive in a cellar for 13 years. One fine day, she made a dash for freedom, and she created a media frenzy....

Taste of Cherry (1997, Iranian) Director, Written, Produced: Abbas Kiarostami This may not be your typical movie that you may want to watch to unwind to retire from the stresses of life. It is a slow moving neorealist minimalist movie which is typical of many Iranian films. This time around, the whole movie is shot within and from the confines of a Range Rover. The scenery outside is no Garden of Eden but the drab landscape of a quarry. Apparently, this method had to be done as there were many restrictions in filming there in Iran. This movie has no beginning and no end. This is very much like our daily lives. We live a fraction of time only to experience a brief moment of the world, and we pass, only to have our places taken over by a new pair of recruit. The main character of the movie, Mr Bodii, is seen wandering around town in his SUV, looking for a pair of helping hand. He seems picky with the person he wants to hire. We are left wondering what type of support he is looking...

Just the other day, I watched a youtube presentation of a discussion on the affairs of world economics, mainly European economics, between two world icons, Yanis Varoufakis, an academician with a short-lived political stint in Greek Cabinet and Professor Noam Chomsky, the renowned political activist, linguist and philosopher at MIT. The gist that I gathered from the discussion is that the world is made for the affluent. Nobody gives a damn about social justice, equality, liberty and those standard phrases that go with freedom. It is all a charade. The idea of politics is just to fatten the selected few. The rich get richer, and the poor become poorer as time goes on and the rich squeeze more from the poor. In a press conference recently in 2014, an executive from a multinational company unabashedly told the pressmen that his firm made medicine for the wealthy Western patients who could afford it, not poor Indians, justifying his company's inflated prices of products....

Kabali (கபாலி, Tamil; 2016) The strategy of doing business in the new world is such. Just like in the computer software market, you create a hype. You promise the moon and the stars. You advertise. You create catch phrases. You create a concept, a theme. Then you set a launch date. Everybody waits with bated breath. Could it be the panacea of their computer glitches? Then the release is delayed. People get hot under the collar. Their pulses race. They cannot wait any longer. Everyone thinks that it the one - the greatest invention since sliced bread. Then the floodlights open after what seems like for eternity! And it turns out to be... just another whimper. It is the same old same old with the same perennial issues. They used the same strategy with Kabali - creating a worldwide hype with giant billboards and even posters on Boeing planes. With so much of hoopla, everybody was just dying to find what it was all about. Even people who never understood the lang...

Nenjam Marapathillai (நெஞ்சம் மறப்பதில்லை, Tamil;1963) Screenplay and Direction: Sridhar Sati, daughter of Daksha, had the hots for this hunk named Siva. Siva, however, probably not Sati's father's favourite icon, did not make the guest list of the invitees to her father's prayers. Feeling humiliated that even unimportant guests, like her sisters, for instance, were invited, Sati was overcome with shame and fury. She immolated herself (or maybe also jumped into the sacrificial fire). Sati died and was reborn as Parvati daughter of the mountains Himalaya. Siva, being Siva, whom even Brahma and Vishnu could not predict where he starts and ends, quickly went in pursuit of his divine love. He knew where she would be reborn. But attaining her was another Herculean task that involved celibacy and meditation. That is another story for another day. Their union which took place eventually is the energy that spins the universe. Some quarters insists that Sati's self-sacrific...

My mother was dead sure 55 years ago that her predicament was induced by poverty. She blamed her father for not ensuring that education was given importance to the girls of the family.  In his case, he generally thought that school was quite a waste of time when precious time could be used in the workforce and the continuity of survival. She was crossed that her husband did not have the means to give her pleasure of sitting haughtily cross-legged on her throne as the mistress of her own home but instead had to be contended to make other people's home tidy and clean. She cursed the stars that she was born under that cast a spell that it was necessary to bring in a second source of income to her young family.  And then that happened. It was a series of maladies that were destined to happen as she ventured into her family life. After nine months of carrying an apparently normal baby boy, she delivered a stillbirth! Scrutinising the lifeless stillborn chi...