RIFLE RANGE BOY

There was a time when I developed a compulsion of wanting to know everything about Bhagavadgita. I was told that the holy book had all the recipe for a meaningful life. And I heard about a volunteer at a local temple who was conducting a series of lectures on that subject. My acquaintances were all praises about the speaker and the contents of his classes.   I was drawn in. I decided to give it a try. In the first lecture, all that I heard was that I was nothing. I was smaller than the smallest of the speck in the Universe. I did not matter to the greater scheme of things. Hence, the last thing I needed was my ego. I had to crack my hardshell called ego, following which enlightenment would flow in like an eternal fountain of knowledge. Like how Arjuna had to clear his head of all his doubts to receive the unlimited erudition from the Lord himself. I thought to myself, "I do not need these people to tell me that I am nothing; my wife tells me all the time that my ego is bigger ...

  Oru Pakka Kathai (ஒரு பக்க கதை, One-page Story @One-sided Story, Tamil;  2020) If I learnt anything from Jurassic Park, and specifically fictional scientist Ian Malcolm, I remember a dialogue about how Nature has a way to deal with survival. When the mad scientist in the park only bred female dinosaurs to control the population, Malcolm warned that when species are on the brink of extinction, Nature makes necessary changes for an organism become a hermaphrodite! Reproduction may occur by asexual means. These observations have been reproduced in laboratory conditions in certain snakes, fishes and rats. Parthenogenesis happens regularly in plants, where an unfertilised egg combines with the haploid polar body to produce a diploid offspring that is not a clone. The offspring should be a female if I understand well, since there are no Y chromosomes to go around. The scriptures are bountiful with tales of virgin births and immaculate conceptions. Kunti is said to have been impreg...

Des (TV Mini-series; 3 episodes, 2020) This dramatisation of a 1983 real case from the police files of a seemingly boring man who carried out gruesome murders of equally unimpressive men in a most deliberate manner. He is credited to have killed at least 12 men. An ex-army cook with a short stint as a policeman and a civil servant invites young men to his apartment, makes them inebriated, kills them in various manners, and disposes of them in equally grisly ways. His activities came to light when a drain was blocked. Police were called in when human remains were discovered. The suspect, Dennis Nilson, is quite nonchalant about all his pursuits. He boasts about his crimes and even speaks to an author in the hope of publicising his feats.  The murders and the investigations were later described in a best-seller titled 'Killing for Company'. The TV series shows how all the police investigations and this case, in particular, left a bitter after-taste in his mouth in the chief inves...

My Story: Justice in The Wilderness Author: Tommy Thomas. This book has generated so much publicity, even from people who have not managed to read it. Its sales have soared tremendously, selling off the shelves like hotcakes and has gone into multiple reprints in such a short time. The speed at which police reports were registered almost days after the book's release exposed Malaysian readers' voraciousness.  Whether these people actually read the book is another question altogether. Over the years, Malaysians have realised that rumours carry more weightage than the official narrative. Coffee-shop talks invariably turn up to be accurate, despite all denials. This book just affirms all of the above. In my opinion, this book can be described as a logbook of a person who had completed his tour de force which he considered a national service for his country. He was given a mandate by the people to perform a task, and this is his way of saying this is what he did and what he failed...

The Crown (Miniseries, S1-S4; 2016-present) Netflix I had been resisting the urge to immerse myself into another miniseries for so long. But, no thanks to DKLA's persistent persuasion and continually dangling the proverbial carrot that British history was intertwined in its storyline, I caved in. It did not disappoint but instead turned out to be quite an informative and educational one, actually. It is a sort of a history revision for me, of course, from a colonial perspective and the one which puts the British Crown above all. Throughout the who le series, the Damocles' sword that seems to be hanging over the royalties is the fear that they might be ousted at any time. The idea of a single-family, through lineage, ordained by God to rule over his subjects cannot be swallowed by the common man anymore. The nearest they can get to this by being the leader of the Church. Even then, the Crown members' behaviours were neither Christian-affirming nor exemplary for the subject t...

Waiting for Godot (play, book) Writer: Samuel Beckett Thanks to MEV for the suggestion; for helping me in my journey to crack open my hard shell of ignorance.  Albert Camus and Samuel Beckett fall into the same category of philosophers-writers who lived through World War 2-ravaged France to build a very nihilistic view of life's purpose. Samuel Beckett, an Irishman, who spent a good portion of his life in France, can be credited to have started the 'theatre of absurdism' and received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969 for his books and drama. The life that is laid in front of us is apparently meaningless. In this tragi-comic play, we are shown as headless chickens running, not knowing what to do and not knowing what is expected of us. We are so fickle, always losing track of our purpose and get swooned over easily by events around us. We eagerly await instructions from people in authority without an iota of a clue about the right thing to do. But we wait and follow like...

The Great Indian Kitchen (Malayalam; 2021) After being denied by many OTT channels, because of the Sabarimala Trials' running narration in the background, it made its presence in an obscure platform, NeeStream in Kerala. No, this is not a cooking show showcasing the numerous mouth-watering cuisines from the Indian kitchens. Instead, it is an India bashing film to portray the slave-like conditions in which some Indian brides live as 24/7 cook, wife, servant, and gardener. Simultaneously, in this particularly orthodox Hindu household, she is locked away in a small room away from everybody view for a good one week every month. She is considered dirty and should not be allowed to prepare food, as it is regarded as a divine duty to feed the family's males.  Coming from a family with liberal views on women empowerment (the protagonist was a traditional dancer in a previous life!), she flips one day. She was done with making adjustments to fit in every time. She called it quits and re...