RIFLE RANGE BOY

Kanthara (Kannada; 2022) Director, Writer, and Actor: Rishab Shetty Through this movie, I learnt about the 1.8 million people from the districts of  Udupi and Dakshina of Karnataka and the Kasaragod region of Kerala who call themselves the Tulu people. These cultural occupants of Tulu Nadu believe that their land was salvaged from the sea by Vishnu's 6th avatar, Parasuraman, the sage warrior. He is said to have yielded his axe to reclaim the land from the sea. To neutralise the land of salt and change it into a lush, fertile land, he employed the venom of Vasuki, the Snake King. The Tuluvas, as a gesture of appreciation to the guardians of the land, the boars, snakes and tigers, have celebrations called Bhuta Kola, an annual ritual performance. This type of their merriment was what Hollywood thought was exotic when it decided to depict eye-ball gobbling Thugee believers in their second instalment of the Indiana Jones franchise.  I also learned that there is a movement tow...

Kavaludaari (Policeman, Kannada; 2019) Amazon Prime. Most Indian movies stereotype policemen as either corrupt or a superhero who would singlehandedly beat the living daylights of gangsters twice his size, with his bare knuckles. This rare neo-noir movie coming from the state of Karnataka puts things right in perspective. As in many things in life, there is no happy ending in police work. The Universe does not offer poetic justice. Is it our job to right the wrong? Should we just leave it to the divine powers to mete out justice in the afterlife or next birth? Should we use the whole length and breadth of the man-made justice system to punish the perpetrators? Are we justified to use the system to correct the mistakes when the system that we put up to provide justice fails? Can we, like Nadhuram Godse, in his last speech at his trial, justify our violence by quoting Man's history and scriptures which are anything but peaceful.  Doing the right thing may not be easy. In retros...