RIFLE RANGE BOY

Pyaasa (Hindi, Thirst; 1957) Director, Actor: Guru Dutt Legend tells of a certain wanderer who kept looking for the meaning of life in all the places. He meditated for hours, walked into the wilderness, exposing himself to the element of Nature and trying to seek answers in cemeteries and crematoriums. He would rub ash from funeral pyres to humiliate himself and consume the human flesh of the dead to crush his ego. We can just imagine the treatment he would have received as a living being. Shunned by the public for his shabby appearance and bizarre behaviour, the general public would be mocking him and shrugging their heads in disproval. This guy, Siva, must have found wisdom in his endeavour and started voicing his finds far and wide everywhere he went. Only after his death, people began appreciating his prophetic pearls of wisdom bit by bit. Before we knew it, the whole narrative started to make sense, and the rest, they say, is history. Fast forward to the present, he is positioned ...

Sanju (Hindi; 2018) That is the problem with modern living. With the plethora of information at their disposal, people think they have everything they need to know at their fingertips. With this knowledge, they believe they are in the best place to make a balanced decision. True, in most situations, the various angles of looking at an issue are laid bare for scrutiny. In other cases, however, the news is generated to keep the writer relevant, so that the publications stay forever in the limelight. A case in hand is the use of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin in the management of patients with mild to moderate COVID-19 infections. Keyboard warriors who before this did not know the difference between a bacteria and virus can now rattle out the pros and cons of each modality of treatment. Equipped with the little knowledge gained from anecdotal studies, they are quick to bring down institutions that have been handing down management guidelines for decades. They immerse in meani...