RIFLE RANGE BOY

Body Of Lies (2008) The talk about this film came about after the recent catastrophes in Christchurch and Colombo. What started of possibly the work of a lone wolf disillusioned wacko or deviant religious groups may actually be hiding the deep-rooted tentacles of international psyops. In the case of Christchurch shooting in a mosque, it may not just the work of a lone wolf going on a shooting spree because he cannot stand what he sees around him, but cannot do it in his home because of tight gun laws but in New Zealand instead. He may be just a pawn in a greater chess game involving players at very high levels via remote control. And the bombing of the churches in Sri Lanka is not just due to vengeance to the Christchurch mishap. A disgruntled Sri Lankan Muslim did not suddenly decide to be a human bomb to settle a score. Investigations slowly reveal that the perpetrators originate outside the country and gleam in joy seeing the devastation, creating anarchy and benefitting f...

Petta (2019) Before Hanuman and Sugriva could help Rama with his rescuing work, they had to fulfil specific tasks in the Vanara kingdom. Sugriva's twin brother, Vali had forcibly taken over his throne and his wife. On his defence, Vali feels that Sugriva had betrayed him. Vali had previously gone to fight a demon deep into a cave. After not hearing about his whereabouts, Sugriva assumes Vali to be dead, closed the cave door to trap the beast and took over as the ruler. Sure enough, the returning Vali was not pleased. He not only fought back the realm as well as his wife too. Vali had obtained a boon through Brahma who happily bestowed upon him the power to draw half of the energy of his opponents who should encounter him face to face. Rama has to help out in return for the Vanara army. To defeat the mighty Vali, Rama had to resort to what some warriors would call a dirty tactic. He instructed Sugriva to start a fight with Vali and from behind the covers of a tree, he mor...

https://kitaab.org/2019/05/25/short-story-gandom-gandom-by-farouk-gulsara/ Half a decade after the Japanese invasion, Malaya was wising up. Malayans did not believe that their colonial masters were their saviours anymore. Everyone was talking about independence and everyone was laughing a lot these days. People seemed to be in a hurry. Office workers, in long dark baggy trousers and long sleeved starched cotton shirts, wove through pedestrians, scurrying on their shiny new bicycles, ringing their bells. The cyclists appeared to be annoyed by the slow-moving bullock cart with lethargic bulls sauntering along the tarmacadam roads swishing their tails rhythmically in the tropical heat of Penang. Honking in the background on the island’s little street were the Morris Minors and the Austin multi-purpose vehicles, the latest additions to the city landscape. Oblivious to the vexation they were causing, the pullers of the bullock cart batted their lush eyelashes, seemed to mutter somet...

It all started with a digital election glitch in a locale in Brussels in 2003. The officials realised that an unpopular local candidate secured more than the vote she should. The number 4096 struck a chord with the IT personnel but passed it off as teething problems of digital voting. That is the number of votes that the computers accidentally added to her tally. A further assessment suggested that 4096 is 2 to the power of 12 (2¹²). As input into the computers is in multiples of 2 (2⁰, 2¹, 2²....2¹¹,2¹²...), somehow the part (bit) which controlled (2¹²) got lit. Hence, this flip caused the addition of 4096 to the tally.  Now, the challenge was to ascertain where the surge to this flip came about. Investigators were soon made aware of similar unexplainable occurrences in the airline and automobile industries. There were instances where autopilot settings had to see re-set as it had gone berserk. There was even a plane that suddenly plunged into the ocean. Aircraft, as they ...

The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000) Director: Robert Redford At first glance, one can see that there is Hindu philosophy written all over it. Even the title Bagger Vance had an uncanny ring to the word 'Bhagavan', which means God in Sanskrit. It must be no coincidence that the storyline mirrors that of Mahabharata. If in the Battle of Kurukshetra,  a nervous Arjuna had the jitters on the eve of the great battle, here a talented golfer, Rannulph Junuh (Matt Damon), who had seen better times before going to World War 1, has to fight his inner demons to regain composure to win a golf tournament and re-live his life as he was supposed to. Just like how Krishna, the Bhagavan's avatar, appears to put Arjuna on the right track, here 'Bagger Vance' (Will Smith) manifests from nowhere to put Junuh's life in order. The gist of the story goes like this. Junuh was an up and coming golfer in the era before the Great War. The war made him a wreck, and he soon went to obli...

Tashkent Files (2019) It was 1966. India had just won a war with Pakistan after marching into Lahore with their tanks a year earlier. With his slogan 'Jai Jawan, Jai Kishan' (Hail the Soldier, Hail the Farmer), Lal Bahadur Shastri, tried to instil nationalism and boost food production. He remains one of the most liked and cleanest PM. He shares his birthdate with MK Gandhi, but only a few remember. He goes to Tashkent (then in Soviet Russia, now Uzbekistan) to sign a declaration of peace with Pakistan with a clean bill of health but returns in a body bag. Just hours prior to sudden breathlessness in the wee of hours of the morning, he had called home.  A national leader's death, a man of his stature, would typically require pre-set protocols to be followed. Unfortunately, in spite of his family's request for a post mortem, it was not done. Their insistence that Shashtri had skin discolouration and there were cuts over his neck area which were passed off as usual...

The Boy in Striped Pyjamas (2008) When we were very young, we used to think the world of our parents. They were the strongest, the brainiest and the smartest. Somehow, they knew everything and could do no wrong. Slowly, we grew older and started hating their guts. We view their world viewpoints as archaic and promise never to be like them. We abhor their un-PC statements and over-glorification of the good old days. And yet with the passage of time and dents from the School of Hard Knocks, it soon dawns upon us their wisdom and ability to juggle so many things despite their limited resources.  This film is historical fiction from the point of view of Bruno, an 8-year old son of Army Lieutenant, in Nazi Germany. His father is stationed in the countryside to take charge of a concentration camp. The young boy befriends Shmuel, an 8-years old Jewish inmate, on the other side of the concentration camp. Bruno burrows himself into the camp to help Schmuel locate his missin...

The world has been under the impression that Africa was a dark continent, that it was primitive. Scholars always refrained from using the words 'philosophy' and 'wisdom' in the same sentence when it came to Africa. People tend to look at this vast continent with scorn as a place where its natives delved in black magic and the belief in the occult practices. The truth is far from that. As far as philosophy is concerned, Africa can be divided into two geographical locations - North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. The contributions by the North African dwellers are said to be predating the Egyptian dynastic era. With the spread of the Abrahamic religions to this area, many thinkers gifted their input into Jewish, Christian and Islamic epistemologies. Offhand, philosophers such as Augustine of Hippo, Ibn Sab'in, Ibn Rushd (Averroes), and Ibn Bajjah come to mind. The Sub Saharan region, however, is more complicated. With 3,000 over tribes occupying that area with no wr...