RIFLE RANGE BOY

It was a necessary trip, not a pleasure cruise. It needed to be done.  Just as the restrictions that kept us within our borders were eased, I made a dash for it. I thought everyone would be excited to fly free as a bird all over again - the passengers would be thrilled to meet with their loved ones overseas, and the flight crew with the licence to serve in the airspace, ecstatic to scale the skies. How wrong I was!  The powers that be probably decided to take an excellent last squeeze on travellers one more time, one for the road, before the scare of Covid dwindled away. Out of the blue (not mentioned in any pre-travel requisites), recipients of Sinovac vaccines needed to provide a negative report of their nasal swab for virus detection (PCR-Ag). New directives, it seems. When travellers expressed their dissatisfaction, the staff reassured them that they just happened to have a state-of-the-art laboratory at the airport, by the way, and results could be obtained within two hou...

  House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths (2021) Netflix, 3-part documentary. Director: Leena Yadav Just like a thin line that delineates ingenuity and insanity, there surely must be a fine line separating faith and delusion. There is a constant need to remind ourselves that religion was introduced to mankind to help him to make correct decisions to stay grounded on the most fulfilling path of life. Towards this end, specific do's and don'ts in life were decreed. At a time when humanity's mental facilities were not fully developed, these rules helped Man make rational life decisions. Along the way, these religious edicts took control over logical thinking and questioning culture. Many things were taken in wholemeal from sensory nerve to somatic nerve bypassing cerebral cortex and higher centres. When we were growing up, we thought bizarre crimes and UFO sightings were only seen in the USA and newspapers. I remember reading about the Jonestown mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, ...

Delhi Crimes (2019) Miniseries, Netflix It is often said that there is goodness in each one of us. Correspondingly, is evil also a permanent resident within us or is there an external force that lures us into creating mayhem and entropy? Is evil an inborn trait that dwells within us, only to unleash when our guards are down? Is it a learned experience over the generations and is imprinted in our DNA to help us survive? Are we cursed with the original sin committed by our forefathers, and we, as pallbearers of their act, suffer? Are we lured by the charms of prompting by Satan and his helpers? Others would argue that good and evil are a spectrum of a continuum. One is not mutually exclusive of the other. Everything is a cycle; good and evil are part of an array of an entity. The Universe and its passage in the space of time are not human-centric or animal-centric. We are mere accidental participants in this cosmic accident and collateral damage in the passage of t...