RIFLE RANGE BOY

Split (2016) Director M. Night Shyamalan Just a thought... Imagine a scenario... A wage earner puts on a different personality at work, a docile one, bowing to the pressures of hierarchy, not wanting to step the wrong toe and the fan the right ember! At home, he dons a different costume, being the head of the family, can be a dominant sort pushing forward with so much ferocity as he is King in his little kingdom. His child, quite helpless, transfers his displeasures on his faithful dog who just cow into submission for the food he is served daily! Outside the house compound, the dog would morph into such a brutal to guard his territory. In essence, we have so many personalities all keep under wraps under the hood of our brains, waiting to be unleashed when the time is ripe. This must be the basis of this movie where a patient of dissociative identity disorder (split personality) with 23 alter egos. His psychiatrist believes that many of his outward manifestation also affects ...

The Man in the High Castle (Seasons 1 and 2) They say that there is no entity as time. It is just a construct made by Man. Life works just fine when the purpose of your living is laid bare for you to follow, and Nature does not put obstacles in your path. It may work just fine if you live in a utopia, a paradise, a land of make-believe! In reality, Nature had to be tamed. The element of predictability needs to be made clear to avert eventualities. This is where time comes in handy, to put a perspective on the cyclical nature of things. Everything in Nature has a mathematic equation to put them in place and time is a denominator. We have heard of Manzanar, the concentration camp built to place American-Japanese after Pearl Harbour. And the American-German Bund movement which existed before WW2 to promote Nazi in a favourable light. That was it! After World War 2 ended, they were passé. Imagine an alternative universe where the Germans and the Japanese won World War 2! Well, t...

Ignorance is Bliss! You are constantly bombarded with contradictory statements, that 'life is here for you to savour, enjoy, you only live once!' and 'your existence here is for a reason, your presence should spur the race forward or at least your family'. Proponents of the former would insist that the most precious you have in this birth is your life. And it is your God-given boon to enjoy, develop spiritually and make preparations for the elevation of your soul to better heights in the next re-birth. It is as though your worldly duties are secondary and the one that matters is you. Period. You should live life to the fullest, explore beyond yourself, reward yourself, pushing yourself to the limit and beyond. On the other hand, there would be people who have charted responsibilities for everyone. Everyone has a duty to his dependants, kins, society and nation, depending on the situation. In a situation when a situation warrants a decision need to be made betwe...

Flamingos Soul - Alessandra Meniconzi, Switzerland Oculus - Tim Cornbill, Britain Halloween Protagonist  - Constantinos Sofikitis, Greece Borderline - Hiroshi Tanita, Japan Tai Chi - Jianguo Gong, China (note the 1,300 people practising Taijiquan) #3Hearth - Lise Johansson, Denmark Mathilda - Alexander Vinogradov, Russia Sunrise at Sea - Sergey Dibstev, Russia (It is paper, fabric and imagination) Believer - Ajay Maharjn -Nepal Chestnut Avenue - Aleš Komovec, Slovenia Far from Gravity - Alex Andriesi, Romania Swirl, Kovitlanje - Petar Sabol, Croatia Happiness - Shabir Mian, Pakistan Sleeping Beauty - Deveni Nishantha Manjula, Sri Lanka Carry together - Edwin Ong Wee Kee, Malaysia Light from Above - Peter Svoboda, Slovenia The Wanderer - Hendrik Mändla, Estonia The Glass Castle - Ivan Turukhano, Russia ...

First, they said, "Seeing is believing. Don't believe anything until and unless you see it with your very own eyes!" Then it was, "Don't believe everything that you see! The mind can play tricks on you!" They showed two arrows of the same length with one everted ends and the other with inverted ones to prove their point of view. Remember the pool of water when you are stranded on a desert only to realise that you have plunged yourself into a sand dune when you thought you had reached a wadi, an oasis. You knew he meant more than what you heard him say the world is a mirage, a Maya, a smokescreen coordinated by the puppet master. Then they said that a responsible and noble band of brothers wants to set the record straight. They want to record news as it is, from the field as it happens unbiased. You were promised truth right from the horses' mouth. They wanted history to be written as it should be. You thought you knew everything and you were happy. ...

Brimstone (2017) At the end of the day, people forget that religion and the Word were given to man to help them to live with each other in harmony. Most belief systems concur with this train of thought. Belief systems were put in place to give everyone a place in the Sun to enjoy the fruit of their existence. In the race to outdo each other and the gusto to follow the teaching to do what is perceived as right, people went overboard. Instead of seeing the whole picture, they became nitty-picky. They took the meanings of the writings of the scriptures in its literal sense and try to outdo each other by keeping true to the Word as they say it is supposed to mean. And they became hellbent on ensuring that everybody follows it to the core. That is when all hell broke loose. Any semblance of sanity can prevail only when someone within the community has the gumption, without fear of retribution from the unproven divine forces from above, to say what is sensible and what is not! Keepi...

Bhaji on the Beach (1994) Director: Gurinder Chada It is quite clear. Man is always restless. He is never happy with anything. He is always looking for greener pastures. It may be his inborn desire to spread his wings, to improve himself and subsequently propel mankind to higher of achievement. But, what is this achievement? Does progress technological advancement, ease of living or carrying out the traditions set out by our fathers and creating a peaceful world where everyone can hold hands together, look at each other and say 'Joy to the world, joy boys and girls, joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea and the joy to you and me!'? We seem to uproot from their native country, leave stock and barrel and explore greener pastures with a chest full of hope that their newfound motherland would be a land of milk and money. Surprise, surprise. True, some of the things that the new country has to offer are worlds apart with what they grew up. But, their sojourn also marks the...

One man's perception of certain of an event may differ to another's. Just like that his understanding of a part of scriptures may vary. He may cherry pick what he wants to see and the part that is favourable to his agenda. I recently heard yet another interpretation of the iconic event of Bhagavad-Gita. The discourse between Arjuna, the warrior who got cold feet on the eve of a deathly duel and his confidante, Krishna, to most people, is an intelligent dialogue on the purpose of life and existence. Looking at it from another angle, it is psychotherapy. Imagine a student pinning all his hopes to sit for an important public examination. This examination is so significant to him as it is the only way for him to escape the shackles of poverty and hopelessness. His family has put all their faith in him to succeed. The student has been doing well all through his life but somehow, this time it feels different. The pressure is too over-bearing. The thought of his whole life being...

Denial (2016) It is said that the Holocaust is a sensitive word. Firstly, the term has been hijacked only to denote one event, to what happened in Auschwitz and the many concentration camps during WW2 to the 6 million Jews there. True, there were many other equally bad, if not worse, atrocities were done by Man to his fellow kind; this event always took centre stage. Perhaps, Hollywood helped to sell this story too. After all, many of the pioneers of the silver screen were disgruntled Jews who themselves were movie doyens who escaped Hitler's tyranny to settle in America. Human history is marred with many bloodbath events and senseless deaths. What comes to mind are The Indian Partition, The Bengal Famine, death under the Stalin regime, Russian deaths in WW2, Rape of Nanking, hunger deaths during the Cultural Revolution in China, Communist witch-hunt in Indonesia, the Armenian genocide and the World Wars, which may have been actually started off by the Russian Revolution....

Autobiography of a Yogi Paramahamsa Yogananda (first published 1946) During Steve Job's memorial service, visitors were each given a copy of the above book. The same book that Jobs read during his wandering years in India and the same one that he read annually to recharge himself. It must have guided him to think outside the box to see things that others fail to see. But hearing the stories about his regimental and sometimes brutal work expectations, you may need a lot of tenacity to be in his team of game-changers. At least three people that I know had confessed to me that this book had truly transformed the way they viewed life afterwards. It further increased my curiosity to grab a copy. That task was not difficult. A free e-book is available on-line. Well, after completing the book, I still appear the man I use to be. Time will tell whether anything happened. Maybe my inner eye is still shut to receive the wisdom. My scepticism has made me a numbskull, too thick to be...

Hidden Figures (2016) When you are born into the less sunny side of the city, there must be more than one way to enjoy the sun! There surely must be more than one way to uproot oneself to the clutches of poverty and tune of hopelessness. One can be a card-carrying, placard-carrying opposer of the system and rant all about it in social avenues. Or they can brood all they can, hoping for self-pity and immersing themselves in intoxicants to forget their miseries and be the problem instead of solving it! Alternatively, one can be part of the system and try to improve himself by using his God-given faculties and the Man-made facilities to his advantage. It is easy to throw in the towel and wail, claiming injustices by the fate, birth, sins of forefathers but it takes tenacity and character to give a good fight against tyranny. And it need not be violent in action but can be equally brutal! It is 1960s USA and the space race is on. The leader of the capitalistic wants to win this tw...

Padaithaane (from Nitchaya Thaapoolam, Tamil; 1962) Lyricist: Kannadasan My wife thinks that I am nuts, listening to sad songs. No, I tell her. I am not into an exercise of self-pity or melancholy porn. It is just that, like Elton John said, sad songs say so much. I am in for the philosophy. Nietzsche suggested that we all need tragedy in our life, or at least in its art form. Like a Greek tragedy where the two opposing forces, the 'Apollonian' and the 'Dionysian', get intertwined to create art, life is no different. We are brought down from our high chair to the ground by Nature to make us realise of our vulnerabilities by infusing sadness into our lives. Tamil songs just got it right, to infuse intricate facts of life to its audiences when a character is facing obstacles of life. Its messages are immortalised via its many evergreen songs. 'Padaithane' (He Created) from 1962 hit 'Nitchaya Thamboolam' (a ritual of exchanging trays with gifts to ...

Hacksaw Ridge (2016) If I did not know better, that it was a movie directed by Mel Gibson (of 'Braveheart' and 'Passion of Christ' fame), I would have thought that it could be some kind of a divine satire. The idea of a pacifist enlist as a soldier in the Second World War just does not make sense. Surprisingly, it is actually based on true story and such a soldier did walk this Earth and was awarded the Medal of Honour for his work beyond the call of duties in the Battle of Okinawa. He was a non-rifle carrying, conscientious objector, a vegetarian, a Sabbath-keeping Seventh Adventist Church Baptist who believed that he was sent to Earth with a mission. The soldier, Desmond Doss, was convinced that his calling was to serve his country and save the soldiers but without touching a gun but through offering medical help to wounded soldiers in battle. He keeps his faith despite the atrocities he witnessed on the battle field. With a Bible in his pocket and a photograp...

Fences (2016) After going through the hard knocks of life, you resolve to get it. You set your rules and set out not to repeat the mistakes made by the people who were assigned to care for you. You build a wall within a fence and like a hermit in the confines of your cocoon. You think you are doing okay and are not repeating the mistakes of your forefathers. You have seen the darkest hour of life and honestly, wish for your offspring to cushioned off these bruises from their walks of life. You find the only way you know to impart your experiences and make it your God-given duty to educate them academically and socially. You know what? At the end of the day, you realise that your effort seems like an exercise in futility. You are labelled a madman, the reason for their perceived insanity and as a man living in the uncertain glory of the past. As a man, you make one mistake and the whole world pins you down as a scourge of mankind. All your good deeds come down ...