RIFLE RANGE BOY

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 h...

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 wit...

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 Ma...

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 fine...

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 fat...