It was always burning!

Have I Got Something To Tell You
Author: Malachi Edwin Vethamani

Listen
Do you want to know a secret?
Do you promise not to tell?
Whoa, oh, oh
Closer
Let me whisper in your ear
Say the words you long to hear
I'm in love with you
Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh ooh…

Not too long ago, that was how it used to be. Now it is 'on your face'. Personal liberty, self-expression, and space availability have led to this. We didn't start the fire; it was always burning… just that it has found mainstream. 

Take the movies South Pacific and Ben Hur, which were made around the late 1950s. Movie connoisseurs would agree that those films had many not-so-subtle references to homoerotism. Nobody raised a red flag then, even though the American Motion Pictures Production Code (Hays Code) was quite clear about its guidelines regarding romance, gay issues, exposure of flesh and cleavage. The filmmakers tried to make South Pacific a feel-good war movie. Aside from the lush jungles, sunsets and beaches, it showed half-naked happy sailors dancing away into the evening. Ben Hur was marketed as a religious epic; again, these unspoken subtexts were buried in the story. The classic scene which did not raise an eyebrow then (but it does now) was when Ben-Hur and Messala drank wine from their chalices in an interlocked arm position, staring into each other's eyes. 

Both created little fanfare, then. … but it was always burning. 

Stories like these were also whispered in the hush in a profoundly conservative society like ours. Things were left to be heard and acted on the sly. Instead, people wore blinkers or buried their heads in the sand rather than accepted reality. 

Malachi Edwin Vethamani's 'Have I Got Something To Tell You' is a collection of stories that may be close to our hearts. It reminds us of the extraordinary journey that we, the citizens of Malaysia, experience in our daily lives. Challenges with race, religion, governmental policies, societal discrimination, and adolescent challenges are all too familiar.

South Pacific

Ben Hur

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N is the new 30?

Nyad (2023)
Director: Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi

When do we pack everything up and call it a day? Is there a time frame within which we are expected to pursue our dreams, complete our bucket list and prepare our souls and minds to meet the Maker? Should there be limits to our wants, and is there a limit to the number of attempts one should give to an endeavour before calling it quits? Is age ever a deterrent to our effort to succeed? Should we give up and give it a go on another day when the going gets tough? Or surrender to let your descendants do it, or attempt it at the next birth?

Most societies advise individuals to cool off after a certain age. Setting ambitions and fulfilling personal aspirations is left to when they are younger. Just how old is old?

Things have changed drastically over the years. With increased longevity and the general well-being of the populace, we can live to push our bodies and minds beyond societal-sanctioned limits.

Some expertise only comes with experience and time spent in the School of Hard Knocks.

Many prolific writers and participants in extreme sports are usually in the older spectrum of society. Still, when is it then the faculties give up on the person? The logical guess would be multifactorial, ranging from genetics to lifestyles.

We should continue executing our plans like we will live forever while planning our future like there is no tomorrow.

Fauja Singh

Octogenarian Fauja Singh must have thought this when he retired from farming. Burdened with the loss of his wife and son, he was forced to migrate to the U.K. Rather than waiting till the end of days when the Grimm Reaper would do his rounds, Fauja Singh worked towards the debut at his first full marathon at 89 in the London Marathon. After becoming a beacon of hope to many, being featured as Adidas' mascot and PETA's poster boy (as he was a vegetarian), Singh hanged his boots at the ripe age of almost 102.

Diana Nyad was a distance swimmer who failed to swim the 180 km between Cuba and Florida. Thirty years after immersing herself deep into her daytime job of journalism and motivational speaking, someone toyed with the idea of revisiting her 'Cuba to Florida' challenge. She was told she was mentally more robust than her 28-year-old self when she attempted the first swim.

The movie is basically about the preparation, execution, frustrations, and failures that she had to slay as she challenged the marine life-laden hostile sea unaided by a shark cage. 33 years after her first failed attempt, with three further tries, at the age of 64, Nyat successfully swam across the Florida Straits in 53 hours. Unfortunately, the governing bodies did not recognise her feat because no independent observers could ratify her swim.

(P.S. Note: Many of these super achievers who live to tell the stories of feats at mature ages are outliers. Even if one is in the pink of health, or seemingly so, a word of caution is deemed necessary. Of course, one should do the appropriate due diligence. Sure, even after dotting the i's and crossing the t's, the naysayers around you will bring you down to the extent that you start doubting yourself. Their intentions may be innocent, but the damage is done. You begin imagining imaginary conditions. Of course, these outliers can be the yardsticks we hope to attain. "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars," they say; a good adage to remember.

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A platonic marriage?

Kathal: The Core (Malayalam; 2023)

Director: Jeo Baby

In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage. Four couples were chosen to have their wedding broadcast on TV. One of the couples was Hèléna Faasen and Anne-Marie Thus. Like a flock of seagulls to the shoreline in summer, journalists worldwide made a bee dive for it. One interesting point that a Chilean journalist was heard telling the world was that the lesbian couple was so ordinary. He had expected them to exhibit in full glory iconography of their sexuality, smut or menageries sexual of nature.

Well, I think that is the problem. Hollywood and our society always stereotype members of the LGBTQI community as sex-crazed people engaged in sex orgies all around the clock. It is forgotten that they also yearn for the same things in life as others: peace of mind, security and knowing what tomorrow may bring. Being gay is more than about sex. 

This Malayalam movie is one of the rare ones, especially coming from a traditionally conservative society, on same-sex relationships. The topic is dealt with civilly without much melodrama and commotion. The character is supposed to be engaged in a gay relationship and does not exhibit the typical effeminate behaviour either. 

Mathew is a respected independent party member who had been nominated as a candidate for a by-election. That is when his wife drops a bombshell. After 20 years of marriage and a 19-year-old daughter, his wife, Omana, files for divorce. In a calm, composed manner, the viewers are slowly told of the issues at hand. 

Even before marriage, Mathew knew that he was gay. He had a partner in the same village. Upon Mathew's father's persuasion, threats and belief that the age-old adage that marriage would solve everything, Mathew is arm-twisted to tie the matrimonial knot. 

Life just dragged on with the matrimonial staying cold except for the mandatory one child. Beyond that, both husband and wife just performed their worldly duties, like Omana caring for the children's upbringing, running the household and managing the ailing Mathew's father and Mathew performing his fatherly duties.

Maybe it was the decriminalisation of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code in 1998 many people surrounding queer people got a relief to live their lives. 

Omana decided to get a life for herself and let Mathew live his. The difference in the presentation is how compassionate everyone is to each other's feelings. There is no animosity or overt display of discontent or anger. Everyone seems to accept things as they are. Mathew is not shown as a sex-crazed homosexual. His former partner is just an innocent bystander watching things as they unfold.

Quite unbelievable to happen in real life. I do not think society, especially an Asiatic one, is accepting enough to value a person by his worth and work alone. Other associated features linked to his birth, family, religion and wealth take precedence. Anyone with a different sex orientation or preference, whether they like it or not, has to live a dual existence. They live in a lie with a loveless marriage.

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It is about domination!

Benediction (2022)
Director: Terence Davies

In my formative years of childhood, I often wondered what it meant to be strong and have others follow your instructions. With my parents’ teachings, I assumed it came with age. Just as I was told to respect my elders, I assumed power and strength came automatically as I grew up. I thought maybe my deeds would carry me through. The Universe would balance off everything in the end. How naive? Bad things happen to good people and vice versa. There is no fair game.

My bubble finally burst. Nobody gave me two hoots about my age. Everybody was trying to dominate the other with the power of articulation or wealth. Eskimos would be sold ice, and drinking water could be sold to unassuming naive dwellers of the tropics. As if nobody caught it when Evian spelt backwards is naive!

Then I caught people selling the idea that time is cyclical and birth is repetitive. This birth is the punishment for the past and a test-bed for the future. Bunkum, I say. Any kind of lesson would require the student to know his mistakes and make amends. How can I improve if I have no absolute knowledge of past karmic ratings? It is kind of self-defeating as the students just repeat the past again and again. The worse thing is he is just thrown into different dens at different birth and expects to do the ‘right’ thing.

As a child also, I realised that by killing more soldiers, one can assert his point of view. The bigger one’s army or the deadlier one’s ammunition is, the better the chance to carry his will. It is not about truth always prevails. God does not decide anything, but the minions made in His image do.

In the meantime, all the collateral damage that both sides are sacrifices made to defend the arbitrary piece of geography or insignia. What a crude way to prove a point? Whilst all these injustices go unnoticed, who is to take notes for the Day of Judgement, if ever there is one. Not to forget the pain, the loss of appendages, property, dignity and sanity; who will be paying for this?

This anti-war movie is about a British post-WW1 poet, Sigfried Sassoon, whose gallant deeds won him the Military Cross but went strictly ant-war afterwards. He defied a direct order but averted being court-marshalled by pleading shell-shocked (that is PSTD in those days). He started mixing with the artistic crowd then (TS Eliot is mentioned somewhere) and established himself as an anti-war post. In keeping with the times, to appease the woke generation, the filmmakers had to insert explicit gay scenes to tick the boxes. 

Disabled 
Wilfred Owen

He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the parkVoices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,Voices of play and pleasure after day,Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.About this time Town used to swing so gayWhen glow-lamps budded in the light-blue treesAnd girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,—In the old times, before he threw away his knees.Now he will never feel again how slimGirls’ waists are, or how warm their subtle hands,All of them touch him like some queer disease.There was an artist silly for his face,For it was younger than his youth, last year.Now he is old; his back will never brace;He’s lost his colour very far from here,Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race,And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.One time he liked a bloodsmear down his leg,After the matches carried shoulder-high.It was after football, when he’d drunk a peg,He thought he’d better join. He wonders why . . .Someone had said he’d look a god in kilts.That’s why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg,Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts,He asked to join. He didn’t have to beg;Smiling they wrote his lie; aged nineteen years.Germans he scarcely thought of; and no fearsOf Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hiltsFor daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.Only a solemn man who brought him fruitsThanked him; and then inquired about his soul.Now, he will spend a few sick years in Institutes,And do what things the rules consider wise,And take whatever pity they may dole.To-night he noticed how the women’s eyesPassed from him to the strong men that were whole.How cold and late it is! Why don’t they comeAnd put him into bed? Why don’t they come?

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Where does the fault lie?

Dahmer: Monster - The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (2022)
Netflix miniseries

I was curious growing up in the mid-70s and watching all those American documentaries about serial killers. I often wondered why all serial killers came from a developed nation like the USA. According to the FBI, the USA currently has 2,000 active serial killers (325 million population @ 0.00006%). On top of all that, it has the most number of its citizens locked up in prisons. Is modernity directly correlated to mental illness? Perhaps the country's vastness makes one go cuckoo or makes it easy for them to think they can hide their trails and get scot-free. Now experts are telling us that the fact that many families who end up with single parenthood end with this problem. In keeping with rising costs, single parents have to leave their children unsupervised and work two jobs. Children have to learn things on their own. In the century of the self, prioritising individuals rather than communal or extended family living may have perpetuated these many behavioural deviants.

On the other side, a country with such deep pockets has the luxury of re-investigating old cases periodically with newer technologies to smoke out perpetrators. Hence, an apparent increase in the number of instances and discoveries.

Or maybe documentaries and podcasts are scavenging deep into the crypts into the police files to meet the insatiable appetite of crime nerds, and they succeed in making every American look like a potential serial killer in the eyes of a non-American.

Jeffrey Dahmer is an infamous serial killer who lured young men and even a 14-year-old boy to his abode, drug, tortured, mutilated, drilled their skulls to infuse with drugs, dissolved their bodies in acid and even consumed their internal organs.

These miniseries try to tell how this quiet boy turned into a cold monster, tracing his childhood and the family environment in which he grew up. One particular thing that struck me is the frustration that Jeffrey Dahmer's father, Lionel, had to go through throughout his life. He was trying desperately to balance his work as a scientist and his emotionally unstable wife and trying very hard to be an excellent father to Jeffrey. All throughout his life, Lionel is searching for where he went wrong.

Even before Jeffrey was born, his mother was popping pills like they were M&Ms. There was a concern about whether these powerful tranquillisers and anti-emetics had long-term ill effects on Jeffrey. The postpartum depression took an enormous toll on his mother. Jeffrey saw his mother overdosing on pills, and he even had to call 911 when his mother was unresponsive one day.

His parent quarrelled all the time. Still, when Jeffrey was six, his mother delivered his brother. His mother became more distant. His father was frequently away at work, making Jeffrey a loner and left to his own devices. Lionel, as his father, tried his best to live up to his role as a father. The parents separated when Jeffrey was 18, and by then, Jeffrey already had a severe drinking problem and was having issues in high school.

The most exciting thing that struck me from the miniseries is the frustrations the father had to go through trying to put Jeffrey on the right track. At no point did Lionel give up on his son. He also felt guilty that perhaps his genes were the ones that caused his predicament. Anyway, Lionel had had occasional thoughts of killing in adolescence. He wondered whether his father-son outings of dissecting roadkill made him cut up his victims later. He blamed himself for being an absent parent. Still, someone had to bring in the bacon. Should he take the blame solely for how Jeffrey's mother turned out? Was he wrong in taking a new partner? But then, Jeffrey's brother turned out normal. Lionel tried to put Jeffrey back on the right track in so many ways. Oh, how much he tried, unsuccessfully.

This is the curse of having a person with mental illness in the family -so much guilt, finger-pointing, and so many frustrations. Not able to get to the bottom of it, they may resign to the fact that this situation is a curse carried on from previous births, and karma is full throttle in motion.

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Charge God for negligence?

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)
Directed by Taika Waititi

Soon after the March 8, 2014, disappearance of MH370, the world went into a prayer frenzy. People from various denominations were in unison in wanting to invoke their respective Gods to give a favourable outcome to the fracas. Despite all the fear of possible eternal surveillance by the powers that be, people soon realised that they could let a magnanimous Boeing plane go missing right under their noses with no recourse to recover it.  

All the penance and the prayers proved futile as we have been made to believe that the vessel just disappeared into thin air. What is the response of the believers? Are you going to move on in life believing that the Divine Forces, in all their wisdom, work in mysterious ways and do what is best for mankind? Are they going to think that they had not prayed hard enough, or would they turn livid, believing that the Gods had let them down?

These thoughts went through my mind as I viewed MCU's latest offering. Not being an avid consumer of comics (I was made to believe in my childhood that comics are a waste of time), the characters introduced in this outing are Greek to me. 

As a devoted theist, Gorr soon discovered that the gods he held in high esteem were haughty, self-indulgent figures who never really cared for their loyal followers. At the height of emotional turmoil, Gorr unearthed a god-killing sword, Necrosword, to become Gorr the God Butcher. Gorr becomes a menace, threatening the existence of God. Thor has to save the day with the help of his ex-girlfriend Dr Jane Foster @ now Mighty Thor, as she can handle the hammer Mjolnir now; Valkyrie, the leader of New Asgard and Korg, an alien warrior.

The film earned temporary notoriety after being banned from being screened in Malaysian cinema halls because of its 'gay elements'. As the story in the movie goes, they is a suggestion that Korg was conceived when two male partners 'held hands over a fire'. And Valkyrie expressed love interest in somebody of the same gender in one of the scenes.

The ban is just viewed as a minor storm in the teacup. Nobody is bothered anymore as those who want to watch it do not have to depend on theatrical screenings. They have creative ideas for accessing it digitally, bypassing local authorities' restrictions. And the rest of the world is actually fed-up that LGBTQI elements are deliberatively inserted everywhere in the name of inclusivity, even though in real life, LGBTQI may only involve 1% of society.

The real issue highlighted here is about expecting 'God' to bail us out from all our follies. Should we accept whatever results come out of our endeavours as the will of God? Should we just pacify ourselves that whatever negative outcome manifest in our actions, we will be judged justly at the end of days? Then, why bother about anything, the discoveries, the legal system, the order and the whole shebang of living if living is for the afterlife? A case in point is the recent sentencing of Najib Razak. Despite all the glaring evidence, he and his lawyers insist they never got justice. His lead counsel even has the cheek to philosophise that only God can dispense true justice. It shows how much he believes in his profession; so much confidence he exudes in Lady Justice! 

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Is it because of Nature or nurture?

Badhaai Do (Congratulations Due, Hindi; 2022)
Netflix

Learnt a new word today, a lavender marriage. 

Sure, the law has accepted the third gender and various sexual orientations. But, mind you, it is not universal and definitely not freely tolerated by many conservative communities. 

To conform to societal expectations and pressures, many members of the LGBTQIA+ community get themselves involved in 'sham marriages'. Couples undergo lavender marriages to appease the family and conceal their socially stigmatised sexual orientations. This is not something new. Rock Hudson, Barbara Stanwyck, Tyrone Power and many more in Hollywood had made arrangements to save their careers. Lately, in Communist China, it has been revealed that gay men hook up with lesbian women through social media to show their 'wife' during the new year visits to prevent nagging from the family members. Same-sex unions are illegal in China. 

Slowly, we can see that OTT (Over-the-top) platforms are trying to override the prevailing societal norms as determined by the local cultures. Some may argue that these OTTs, being international in their outlook, may only have one goal - to push their boundary, provoke, start a conversation, and perhaps create a single narrative, a New World Order for everyone. They do all these while laughing all the way to the bank. These OTTs, media services that transmit directly to viewers, bypass traditional gatekeepers who keep a tab on what the public can consume. Rightly or wrongly, via this film, I get the vibe that they are trying to make LGBTQIA+ mainstream. 

The next burning question that needs to be answered is whether this LGBT tendency is ingrained in Nature or artificially created? Do we all have an inborn sexual attraction that gets suppressed due to social mores - as the woke generation implies, gender is fluid? Or is it because of society's openness and expressive nature that we can tell our wants and dislikes? 

Is the contamination of drinking water from our river polluted with hormones from contraceptives pills, making men more effeminate? Are plastic wastes and toxic hydrocarbon effluent screwing up our internals? Or is it just Nature's way to curb population explosion before the re-set button is ignited.

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

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