RIFLE RANGE BOY

Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan Author: Caroline Fourest (2007) For Mature Readers Only. For the longest time, Tariq Ramadan has been hailed as a moderate Muslim. He has been looked upon as the person who would be the go-between to help to salvage the good name of the religion. His paternal grandfather established the notorious Islamic Brotherhood, but that did not prevent him from having his voice heard in the international arena. He asserts that he cannot be blamed for the sins of his grandfather and the baggage that he carries with the family name. Nevertheless, he is proud of his heritage. Tariq, probably named after the first Muslim conqueror in Europe when he invaded Spain, also shares his name with the pillar of Europe, the Rock of Gibraltar, called Rock of Tariq in the Islamic world. His wife is Isabelle, an ex-Catholic, now plays the picture-perfect image of an ideal Muslim wife. His brother, Hani, a non-practising physician, gave up his...

An MGM presentation. James . Fitzpatrick's Travel Talk The Voice of the Globe. (the 1930s)

Sairat (Wild, Marathi; 2016) The Marathi cinema has the reputation of producing the first-ever full-length Indian film in 1913. Honouring the doyens of the yesteryears, the Government of India gives out an annual award to an icon of Indian cinema for lifetime achievement, named after the director of this movie, Dadasaheb Phalke. Unfortunately, over the years, it lost out to its glamorous, world acclaimed and well-funded cousin, Hindi films of Bollywood. Of late, Marathi films are making a come back of sorts after the Government of Maharashtra made it tax exempted. Many Bollywood actors and directors are jumping the bandwagon to dwell on the craze. 'Sairat' is the highest grossing Marathi film and is the first to cross the ₹50 crore mark. The story is nothing spectacular. It is a tale teenage love of members of contrasting classes (a fisherman's son and a landowner's daughter). The lovebirds are hellbent on being with fulfilling their youthful desires despite...

Credit: New York Times Is it just me or is it plain for all to see? I feel that the economists are the new leaders of the modern world. They seem to portray the image that they have a crystal ball in front of them and they are well aware how our society is heading. They talk as if they hold the steering and have total control of the rudder to manoeuvre the human race in the right direction. Their destination is the abode of the money God and its path is paved with gold. The lure of it seems so lucrative in a world where God is dead, and we killed him for something so fulfilling. These economists, the new theologians, speak in meaningless jargons like 'quantitative easing', 'ROIs', 'paper loss' and 'bull run' which are just rhetorics to pacify concerned laypersons. Funny a few centuries ago, we may remember of yet another brand of leaders who used to talk in doublespeak invoking fascinating fables and inspiring words like 'Grace', '...

Credit: weknowmemes.com Look around us! We are indeed living in a third world, ruled by leaders whose subjects are still caught in the feudal era, at least in their mindsets. Even though they enjoy the benefits of modernity, their subservience is reminiscent of the natives of the bygone era; not of the thinking and curious one reflective of years of education spent on them. Anyway, the learned ones have all left the roost. The ones left to occupy the vacuum are runaway employees, economic refugees, fly-by-night snake-oil salesmen and overstaying sojourners who had been legalised through umpteen amnesties that were carried out to smokescreen the authorities' incompetence, to create economic opportunities and to fish for potential voter bank. Some of the ones who opted to stay behind or lost out in the chase to scoot off the country when the opportune was ripe are generally too patriotic for their own good or had missed the gravy train. The other day, I heard an interesting ...

Funny, this thing called empowerment. The person who holds the strings to power stays in the background and remains incognito. He does not want to be seen to be powerful. He looks simple enough and abhors to be under the spotlight. He scorns attention. He is happy to be the invisible play-maker. http://clipart-library.com/ On the contrary, the powerless naively tries to exert his authority through the pompous display of his thoughts. He yearns to be in the limelight and wants to make his stand clear, loud and succinct his viewpoint. Even though his two-cents' thought is not cared for much by anyone, he feels contended. He had stood for his rights like it would change the course of the celestial bodies! Feeling contented that he has done the right thing, his life is blissful. He knows he would be rewarded handsomely one fine day. The puppet-master and the wise ones remain in the background, smiling to themselves, watching the drama unfold and probably chomping on their popc...

BBC Timewatch: The Princess Spy (2006; Documentary) Her maternal great-great-great grandfather is Tipu Sultan, the Mysore Ruler who died defending his nation against the marauding British forces on his Motherland. But Tipu Sultan himself is listed by the Hindutva movement as one of the monarchs who was engaged in the systematic destruction of Hindu civilisation. (But that is another story for another day!) Her father, Hazrat Inayat Khan, is a Sufi Master, a musician and a pacifist. Her mother is an American, Ora Ray Baker @ Pirani Ameena Begum, was a poet and a musician. She, Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan, was born in Russian, grew up in France and had to flee the Nazi invasion. If her great ancestors fought the tyranny of the British, Nisa Inayat Khan @ Nora Baker @Madeline @ Nurse @ Jeanne-Marie Renier, worked on the side of the British against another savaging army of the time, the Nazis. She was an established writer, musician and a child psychologist. During the war, she served ...

Dr Rama Subbiah Scholarship Fund Golden Jubilee Celebration (1967-2017) Most of us who studied in the local universities are quite familiar with Dr Rama Subbiah Scholarship Fund which had been a boon to many underprivileged varsity students of Indian descent. Not many of us, however, know much about Dr Rama Subbiah and the genesis of this fund. Dr Rama Subbiah (1933-1969) is first Malaysian Ph D holder in the field of Linguistics. Working as a lecturer in University Malaya and Chairman of NUPW-PPN Hostel Management Committee, he financed, out of his pocket, accommodation for TAR College Indian students who had to commute long distances on a bus from out of town to study their A-levels. That started in 1967. From then on, the hostel students contributed their hostel security deposit money to start a scholarship fund. Many individuals later pledged small but regular contributions to this embryonic scholarship endowment which was initially named 'The Indian Students Scholars...

@AryamanBodh One of the regular feature during my childhood days was the visits by lonely housewives to engage in a prolonged banter with my mother. In RRF, my childhood home, a new neighbour had just moved to our oft-emptied next door flat. In came a seemingly perfect family, the head of the family, a tall, lean man donning dark glasses in the midst of the dimly lit corridors of the neighbourhood. He would walk as if he had a severe case of cervical spondylosis, straight-backed, walking straight ahead without tilting his heads even for a moment as if he had a mission in life like a racing horse prancing on with blinkers. The wife, a slim lady with long wavy hair and polyester floral sari with a faced stained in turmeric powder, an Indian natural skin whitener and scar-blemisher, would follow suit, well aware of the roving eyes around her. To complement this seemingly perfect couple was a pair of children of every dream of a middle-class family of the 70s - a daughter and a son....

The Jew is not my Enemy (Unveiling the Myths that Fuel Muslim Anti-Semitism) Tarek Fatah (2010) Warning: Only for Mature Readers It is often said it is good to forgive and forget. People also say that to err is human and to excuse is divine. We have seen nations fight in one generation, only to be allies in the next. But somehow, the Muslim-Jewish animosity seems to have last centuries. The earliest record of Jewish betrayal happened during the Battle of Badr (Trench War) when Meccan pagans ambushed Prophet Mohamed's army in Medina. A group of Jews who were chased from Medina for breaking certain treaties joined forces with the Meccans. As the going was tough, and the mighty Meccan army could not infiltrate the Medinians, the renegade Jews tried to coax the Medinaian Jews to double cross. Here, the story turns cloudy. After the win, Mohamed is supposed to have personally killed about 900 Jews to be buried in trenches. The authenticity of such an event has been argued f...

Ozark (Miniseries, 2017) The art of storytelling is the primary skill that keeps our human race going ahead with the passing of time. With narration, we are able to impart values and messages that help to carry through hardship. This skill also helps the leaders keep his flock together. When the herd is convinced with a precise narrative, its members would willingly crane their neck to the slaughter when the time is ripe. Traditionally, stories are laced with ethical values, and poetic justice would always prevail. Over time, this type of set-up, somehow, seem not to excite the general public anymore. They thought they heard it all. They wanted more. That is where our current stories seem to head. The main character of our tales are no more heroes but rather anti-heroes. They come with a dark past, involved in a subversive activity, and the whole premise of the storyline is get away scot-free from whatever crime that the protagonist is up to. The excitement is all abo...

Tokyo Twilight (Tōkyō Boshoku, Japanese; 1957) Written and Directed by Yasujirō Ozu. Parents usually try to sugar-coat the family environment and cushion their every fall so as not to ensure their childhood era is normal. They try to shield them from bad news and hide unsavoury situations from their views. The children still find out, and if they do not perform well, they blame it all on their far-from-perfect childhood. Sometimes the single parent tries to fulfil the missing parent's role and mostly fail miserably. Perhaps for the sake of the children, most parents bite the bullet, try the sort out their differences and make their family stay intact. Yasujirō Ozu is widely touted as the most Japanese of Japanese film directors of his era. In this flick, he tells the story of a middle-aged bank officer and his two daughters (Takako and Akiko). The mother is not in the picture, whom we later discover had eloped with her lover. She left with the father three children, the ...

Odd Man Out (1947) Produced and Directed: Carol Reed This film, the first of Carol Reed's trilogy (the other two being ' The Fallen Idol ' of 1948 and ' The Third Man ' of 1949), is described by Roman Polanski as being his favourite film of all time, even better than 'The Third Man'. This movie has been praised to high heavens for many reasons, mainly for its cinematography and narration. I thought its story was highly symbolic of life itself. That, people come and go in our lives, some join in merriment,  some to achieve some kind of endeavour and some motivate. There would be people who would promise to stay through thick and thin but scoot off at first sight of trouble. There would be some who would betray or make a buck or two out of you. At the end of the day, only a couple of people would be with you until the end. In this flick, the loyal souls who stay till the end seem the love of the protagonist's life and the man of God. Set in Norther...

The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives Zbigniew Brzezinski (1997) Everybody wants peace on Earth. The political leaders wish for peace in their land. Believers of all faiths, without fail, include in their daily prayers call for eternal peace on Earth. We all know this type of bliss, smiling from ear to ear without an iota of worry in their minds, stays only as a figment of our imaginations. Like in the narration of Kali and the state of the world, life is a constant battle without the weak and the mighty. It is a continual flux of turn of tides of the interplay between the powerful crumbling down to become weak and the downtrodden rising from the ashes. Empires may crumble, and slaves may turn emperors. This book is the perspective of President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor. Written in 1997, when the USA was the lone superpower, Russia and China were weak, and Islamic Jihadism was unheard of, some of the strategies that made ...