RIFLE RANGE BOY: All the small things!

#Home (Malayalam, 2021)
Director: Rojin Thomas

We look at other people's lives and go agape. We think our lives are nothing to shout about compared to others, but we soldier on with our otherwise unglamorous life. We tell ourselves that it is our God-given duty or dharma to do the things we do as our responsibility, our raison d'etre. What is more, when we are old and unproductive. This world is no place for ageing dogs. As they say, when you age, even your shadow does not respect you. Your life experiences and life lesson are considered passé. They are deemed too worthless to put to use to fight the challenging current times. In essence, we are looked upon as a mere goods train being pulled by the engine, dragged to its destinations.

The seniors go on accepting their situation as fait accompli. Yeah, our lives sucked, but it is what it is. Of course, we were once young. We also had dreams and ideas of what was right and what was not. Unbeknownst to us, our actions must have impacted somebody's life somehow. There must be someone somewhere who benefitted from our efforts.

This is one such movie. Oliver Twist (yes, his father was a bibliophile) is a retired man who is quite happy doing all the handiwork around his home, caring for his aged father, and occasionally chatting with his childhood buddy Surya. Oliver's elder son, Anthony, a first one-hit scriptwriter, has hit writers' block. As his producers breathed down his neck for the script as multiple deadlines came and went, he came back for inspiration. Every time Anthony sees his father, he feels frustrated. He asks himself why his father is such a bumbling old man and a constant embarrassment. He fancies his girlfriend's father, an erudite person with a PhD who had just written his autobiography.

Anthony gets desperate as another deadline approaches, and he has no script to submit. Oliver has a great story of his past to tell Anthony but fears that it is not glamorous enough.

Life in Oliver goes through ups and downs. Finally, the seeming good-for-nothing father-figure in the family actually has performed such a tremendous life-altering deed that saved somebody's life. That somebody is none other than his girlfriend's father. If not for Oliver, the PhD holder would not have such great heights.

We should continue doing our small deeds. Somehow, these insignificant gestures would snowball into something big and potentially earth-shattering.