Any which way but loose.

The Mule (2018)
Director: Clint Eastwood

It may not score high in the dramatic storytelling department. Neither would it be of high octane action nor of unpredictability tally. Nevertheless, the viewers are left pondering on the subtle message that it questions.

Clint Eastwood, now at almost 90 years young, after donning his rugged cowboy persona and uncompromising cop images at the height of his acting career, understandably assumes a more sedate role here. 'The Mule' is a straightforward tale of a Korean War Veteran, Earl Stone, who, after having put his work way ahead of his family all his life, to go back to his family upon foreclosure of his horticulture farm. In his heydays, he had won many awards in flower shows. 

Toughie of spaghetti westerns

His business went out of flavour after the internet business became popular. He is scorned by his family members, including his ex-wife and daughter. His granddaughter, with whom Earl is close, is getting married, and Earl has to help out. A chance meeting of her granddaughter's guest draws Earl to smuggle drugs across states. Somehow the pull to perform more trips just keeping on mounting as every turn of events becomes a reason to get more money - his dilapidated truck needed changing, the War Veteran Centre needed repair and so forth. His luck finally ran out, and Earl is apprehended. What does he have to do in prison - do his favourite pastime, gardening!

It makes one wonder what is actually the role of the father here. If he spends too much time outside the family circle working, i.e. to provide for the family, can he be blamed for missing all the so-called family time and skipping 'memorable events'? Conversely, if the parent decides that spending quality time with family rather than raking moolah for their wellbeing is more important, will the rest be happy? Can strengthening familial bonding be a substitute for wealth to prosper in life? 

@ 90 years old.

Either way, the father is going to be at the receiving end of it all. He may be accused of being an absent parent if he is not around and be taken for granted if he is seen everywhere in the household while not providing the bacon. Amidst all these, one wonders where the needs of the father go to? Is he supposed to quash all his happiness, immerse himself in providing for the family and find joy within the ambit of his familial achievements? Is his fate sealed once he utters 'I do'?

Nursing a dying tiger back to health is no guarantee that it would not pounce on you at the height of its hunger pangs. With the empowerment and wisdom imbibed upon the downlines, they use the very same new-found knowledge to attack the hand that fed them. They blame all their misgivings and failures in their lives on their perceived sub-optimal parenting. 

(P.S. 'Any which way but loose' is the title of Eastwood's 1978 movie. The title soundtrack was sung by Eddie Rabbitt. The title is an abstraction from the phrase 'you turn on any which way but loose'. The girl turns him on but cannot turn (cut) him loose, i.e., release him or give him back his freedom.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

They don't make them like they used to!

V. M. Shamuganathan
(1938-2017)

Just a few months short of completing his eight decades of existence, the soul that who infused part of his genetic material into my DNA sighed his last breath in the early hours of Christmas 2017. At a time when most revellers would be in a state of a stuporous daze after a long Eve dinner, he did his last bodily duties and travelled into the horizon to the Otherside. He died in his sleep, finishing his dharmic obligations.

At a time when serenity was the order of the day in the green-lushed tropical port city of Penang, in 1938, he was a born to first-generation Malaysian parents. His cry was greeted with smiles and waves of laughter of thankful parents and relatives.

Growing through the tumultuous years of the Second World War, the sluggish economics years of the post WW2 era, the poverty of joblessness, the street-smart years of the 50s, through the euphoria of the independent Malaya with 15 other siblings, he had seen it all. The whirring sounds of Japanese planes, the meagre diet of tapioca and rationed low-quality light, nature as his playground, having sacrificed education to feed the hungry mouths of the siblings, the courting style of the late 50s in the newly independent former British colony, the marriage, the loss of the first newborn, the elevation of living standards, the fall from grace and the proud moments brought by the three offspring.

November 1958

The opulence brought with it the lifestyle disease of diabetes at the age of 35 years. The undercurrents of the bug reared its ugly head towards the late part of his life in the form of two significant episodes of hemiplegia which resolved miraculously with a minimal residual handicap. He lost two toes on his right foot after a recalcitrant infection burrowed under the fascia. He fought that valiantly. Grimm Reaper must have been working overtime on his case. The morbidity of disease pounced upon him again. Renegade cells on the bladder wall underwent malignant change. He stood stoically against the cancer cells to bowl them over.

He even came out of his recent bout of fight against with the spreading sepsis with flying colours. He defied the odds, at his age, to have a full recovery and healthier than he had been.

October 1986

December 2017

Feeling victorious after thumping all the obstacles that came his way, he must have lied down to sleep in content, albeit the aches and pain of time, in the early mornings of Christmas Day. The hum of the silence of Yuletide morning must have gently rocked him over to the abyss of no return.

Still smiling from the comfort of lying on the lap of Mother Nature, he left his earthly body. Unlike the time when he was born, when he was crying and the others in the world smiling; he lay in a boxed abode with a perpetual grin whilst the others were wailing.

We are intertwined in a cosmic bonding destinies called genes that interact us with affections indestructible with the passage of time. You are one, and I am one, and we are in this together. We are all a piece of existence. The final rites with its symbolic representation of our brittle and subjective existence on earth affirm our karmic and infinite interaction with another.

The inner diety that seeks its soul mates, in this case, father and son, has completed yet another cycle. The recital of ancient slokas and mantra, rendered with Agni as the witness, hope to call upon the all-encompassing Consciousness, to purify and elevate the soul. May his soul protect the living. May the bliss of Knowledge comfort the loved ones and help to live the legacy that he left behind.

(N.B. Thanks AqS for kind words)

Last Kiss

What do you tell a full grown man who is wailing? How do you console him for his loss? The loss of the apple of his eye, upon whose shoulders of all his unrelinquished dream, rested on. The loss of a 31 years young son who just reached the pinnacle of his youth with a whole brand new life laid downed before him to savour. The loss of a son who was just an anecdotal statistic in the doctor's file as an atypical presentation of cancer.

What do you tell a man who went beyond the call of duty as a parent to scout for the best of the proven and unproven modalities of treatment to annihilate the tentacles of the spreading crab? And spent his lifetime and retirement savings doing it...

Just when the tides were turning in his favour, the enemy struck back in vengeance in full throttle. He fought a good fight but lost the war and the battle.
What do you tell his parents to soothe the pain? That their son is now free of pain in a better place? That their son is so good that the Maker wants the whole of him? That the Maker likes him more? That the Maker knows best? That it is fate? That whatever happened for a good reason!#*@? That he would want a good farewell, rather than doom and gloom surrounding his departure?

"Why did it happen," the father asks. "Where did I go wrong? Did I not do something right? Have I not been a good person? Have I not paid my dues in alms? Have I not did my penance? Is it a punishment? What about my regular prostrations at the lotus feet of the Almighty for pleas of continued blessings and peace on Earth and my family? Is it a curse or is it karma?"
There seem to be more questions than answers. The departed may not be around in person. The memories of his existence on Earth would linger on forever. His physical body may be gone but not the moments that were spent with the loved ones.

With so many unanswered questions, he bends down to kiss the cheeks of his beloved son for the last time before the cortege leaves... on a long journey back...

Go, find excuse!

I came across this card which was sent from a daughter to her father on conjunction with Fathers' Day. Not a flattering message, I should say. Looks like the daughter seem to be blaming her failures in life and the recurrent wrong choices in choosing partners squarely on her father, the contributor of half of her chromosomes. Just because her father did not mollycoddle her but instead showed her the reality of life, she looks at it as an abhorrent. She must be thinking that real dads are like the TV sitcom dads who would take all the tantrums of the young ones and also apologise for their own shortcomings. Dream on. Adults in real life have too much ego and have an important role to play nurturing them through the hard knocks of life unlike their tinseltown dads who play their 30 minute role, smiling all the way to the bank.
You say you came to learn that someone who hurts is same who loves through your fathers actions. You sound like a smart girl - able to appreciate the finer subtleties of the language and poetry. You are probably smart because of the way paved by your father who ensured daughters are no second class citizens. They also have the right to education just like his son, your brother. Now, you are big and strong and smart, you are smart enough to bounce off all the misgivings of life on this man.
Didn't the man act hard on you to correct you, to put you back on track, because you almost went astray? Is it because of his guidance that you able to maturely assess your failures and analyse of your own shortfalls? May it not be his drilling that made you still standing tall despite the calamities that you had to encounter in your short life?

It is easy to find fault. Anyway, there is never a cookbook recipe for parenting. He may have done what he thought was best for you. Perhaps that made him the man he is, able to provide and care for you and your family. For every 10 bad points you identify about your father, there must be 20 more of the contrary.

Remember, when you point your accusing index finger at others, invariably your last three fingers would point at your good self. The thumb may point to ground (nature) or up (sky, God)!

Fathers' Day special?

Early this week, my favourite  radio station advertised that they were going to interview the father and son politician pair in their Breakfast Grille segment in conjunction with Fathers' Day over the weekend. I was curious to see (hear) how they were going glorify this father of a figure who attained notoriety via his digital display of his bedroom antics with his mistress which he claimed was with the approval and knowledge of his wife not many years ago. A politician, being a politician, thick lichenified skinned and shameless, managed to return to hold the helm which he once lost. Not much to my surprise, the duo did not appear together. In its place, Sr. was interviewed on his political party and agenda and nothing about being a father.
My learned uncle, ever so bitter with his late father, offered his fatherly words of wisdom to me when I was growing up. "Anyone can be father. To be a good one, that's one should thrive to be!". In my books, I suppose a good father should be one who should be able to provide for his family in his own able way and be a pillar of Gibraltar and a yardstick for his kids to emulate. Talking from experience, we all would not appreciate our old men until we ourselves got into fatherhood and discover the intricacies of diplomacy and wriggling through sticky situations as a father. By then, we would realise that we had indeed evolved to fit into the shoes of the man we had earlier never saw eye to eye in our earlier younger blooded days and never wanted to be like - our fathers. Happy Fathers' Day!