The end is nay, but when?

Knock in the Cabin

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Interestingly, the throb of the world's end and a man riding a white horse is a recurring theme in most eschatological studies. We all know of a leader with 666 tattooed on his forehead who would be the proverbial anti-Christ who would ride on a white horse. Then there are the four Horsemen who would be riding in to right the wrong of a decadent world on the brink of extinction.

In Kalki Puranam, the end of kali-yuga will be marked with events signifying the loss of piety and goodness the world over. It will be climaxed with the total annihilation of Earth. The Big Bang would have reached the point of entropy. The reset button would be initiated for time to restart. Lord Vishnu would assume his last avatar, Kalki, to expedite this process by slaying the terrorising asuras. Again, Kalki would be marching in on a white horse. Kali-yuga will be replaced with Satya-yuga. Graham Hancock's research suggests that time is cyclical. One major civilisation is replaced with another.

Most world belief systems have an eerie commonality about a nihilistic future where civilisation would decay and meet a fiery end. The trouble is that no time frame is given for this end, but many are cocksure that he knows that end is nay.       

Depending on which scriptures one reads, the rider on the white horse can be a saviour or a villain. And they had different names. The founder of the Ahmeddya sect may have proclaimed to be Kalki. In the Shia sect, at the end of times, they believed Imam Mahdi would unite the believers and help to rule the world. In Buddhism, Maitreya, a messianic-like saviour, would rule the world.

Some historians believe Kalki Puranam is a later production, unlike other Hindu scriptures. It is said to have been penned in Bengal around 1500-1700CE when a Muslim Sultanate was in power. Are they saying the Muslim reign was terrible and the ordinary people dreamt of a saviour on horseback to rescue them?

In modern times, many doomsday prophets sniff around for gullible souls to convince them the end is near. Like Chicken Licken, they holler around, yelling the sky is falling down, asking people to join in the reception party that greets the Lord when His Kingdom reigns after Armageddon. Every now and then, we hear cults interpreting certain everyday occurrences as proof that the end is near. Many are in the corner for fake news or a brush with the law, like in the cases of Branch Davidian under the tutelage of David Koresh in Waco, Texas, or Jim Jones 'People's Temple' in Jonestown, Guyana.

In the film, when a vacationing same-sex couple with their adopted young daughter is visited by four people talking about the end of the world, they think the four people are nuts. They insist that one of the couple must kill the other or the girl to stop the multiple air crashes and the raging natural calamities. Even though the plot is hollow and the script may not be the best I have heard of late, the movie managed to grab the attention of its viewers via its ability to create suspense. It makes one think.

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Identity has many meanings!

Split(2017)
Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Identity means different things to different people. For some, it is all about religion. No matter which part of the world they practise their religious rituals, it remains uniform. They wear their similar-looking tunic on their sleeves as their badge of honour. 

On the other spectrum, a new generation of society swears by the gender they identify with. It is immaterial to them the chromosomal makeup they carry and how they look phenotypically. In fact, they also believe that gender is so fluid that they may decide to don the gender they feel at the drop of a hat or the side of the bed they get up from. 

Identity sometimes overlaps, too. People who identify themselves as great outdoors enthusiast may also click with bibliophiles. A person in one group may be a member of another. Businesses have long known this, and they sell their products under the guise of lifestyle choices, e.g. targeted mechanise to meet their so-called lifestyle. Politicians use the identity of race, religion and siege mentality to rally voters to their side. Statesmen use sports and flags to stand under the identity of a nation to push its citizens to greater heights. They identify the 'others' who do not share these sentiments as the enemies of the State.

Ancient wisdom needs to appreciate the concept of State-Nation. There is a Man and his relationship within his community. His identity morphs in tandem with the change in his responsibility within his community. A newborn is ushered into the fold with rituals. Once a child reaches puberty, an initiation ceremony, be it a celebration to promote her marriageable status after her menarche or tattooing of boys to honour their entry into manhood. Then, the marriage, the delivery, the funerals and so forth. 

A person's identity changes within his or her lifespan. Even at any time, he has to don different identities: a son, a brother, a friend, a student, a husband, a father and so on. Sometimes, he has to take multiple identities to play his role. His demeanour may alter as and how the role demands him to be. His base is the same, but he has to wear different hats.

The occurrence of multiple identities, even in psychiatrists' experience, is rare. This is different from the ebbs and waning moods that all of us are prone to. We are talking about a total change in personality, mannerisms, accents and demeanour. Of course, for the sake of telling stories, authors push their creative licence to the limit. 

In 2005, Kollywood came forth with 'Anniyan', a nerdy do-gooder Ramanujam transforms into Remo, a vigilante alter-ego who tries to correct the wrong things that Ramanujan is too meek to do.

As part of a trilogy between 'Unbreakable' and 'Glass', M. Night Shyamalan's 'Split' tells about a seriously mentally disturbed with 32 personalities. He suffers from DID (Disassociative Identity Disorder) and has a penchant for kidnapping teenage girls.

At the end of the day, people with vested interests use identity politics to create mayhem everywhere. Instead of coming together as one human race and aiming for utopia, the anarchists and communists, and even neocons, want to press the red reset button at the earliest time possible. For the anarchist, destruction is the seed for a new beginning. For the Commies, armed struggle is the way to change. The Neo-Cons care a damn. Since they have accepted God, for all practical reasons, they are ready for Armageddon. At the End of the Days, they know they have a reserved place in the Lord's bosom in His Kingdom. The Mozzies use identity politics as a victim card for more concession and no contribution.

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The superpower within...

Glass (2019)

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Is having superpower abilities real, or is it merely a construct of our creative mind? We have grown up looking at comics and movies, yearning to be invincible people who could fly like a plane and jump buildings in a single bound.

We longed secretly to have that single superpower, not to change the world, but to be better than the most intelligent guy in class; or the tallest, the strongest, the funniest, pick your pick.

In the annals of time, somehow, we lost interest in all this sorcery. The journey of life straddled us thus far. We look back at our lives and are happy with what we see. We cannot fathom how the heck we managed to achieve all of these. Given a chance to do it all again, we are sure we would not have made it. The hard knocks that life had to offer pushed us to achieve the impossible. Perhaps they awoke the sleeping superbeing within us to fight our inner demons to come out tops. Sometimes we marvel at our achievements and ask ourselves how we did all the things we did - that public exams, that marathon, that earth-defying feat. We doubt we could reproduce such results if we were to do them all over again.

In other words, we have powers within us waiting to be harnessed. We need not go around looking high and low for that push. No beam of light will shine from above to give it extraordinary powers. Still, all have us have that feared Kryptonite that may ruin us. Stay away!

In a convoluted way, this is the subtle message this film is trying to impart. Three characters with superpowers within their own rights - David Dunn (Overseer), Kevin Crumb (with multiple identities, including the Beast) and Elijah Price (Mr Glass).

The Overseer, the unassuming middle-aged man with incredible strength, with the help of with adult son, manages to capture the Beast, who is high on alert for kidnapping four teenage girls. But both Overseer and Crumb are captured and held in a high-security infirmary. Within the facility, the apparently catatonic Glass is also kept. The doctor in charge of them is part of a secret organisation out on a crusade to tell the world that there are no superheroes but disillusioned individuals with delusions of grandeur. In their defence come Glass' mother, Dunn's son and Casey Cooke, the victim who escaped Beast's clutches in the second offering of this trilogy, Split (2017).

Glass plans an elaborate escape route to announce to the world that they indeed have superpowers.

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Nothing really matters!

Old (2021)
Director: M. Night Shyamalan

This may not be the best of his movies to watch. After The Sixth Sense (1999) and Unbreakable (2000), his films have been unremarkable. The dialogue is much to be desired, and the plot may have a few holes here and there. Nevertheless, it stays true to most of Shyamalan's movies that explore the paranormal. It even makes one think. In this offering, one is made aware of the dangers of freebies, the subversive nature of Big Pharma and the triviality of our holding of ill feelings and grudges. 

The main protagonists, Guy and Prisca Cappa, are going through a separation. To break the news to their two preteen children, they thought the family could have one final memorable outing together. Prisca is delighted to have found a fantastic bargain for a beach vacation online. Interestingly, as the movie involves Time and ageing, the couple has contrasting occupations - Prisca is a curator in a museum (purveyor of ancient relics), and Guy is an actuary (predictor of future events). 

Surprise, surprise. The whole beach resort is a front for Big Pharma to identify clients with specific medical conditions and put them up for human experimentation with new medications, without their consent, of course. That particular resort had access to a secluded beach with its unique rock formation markedly accelerated the ageing process. Thirty minutes of the passage of Time is equivalent to a year of ageing. Hence, Big Pharma could determine the efficacy and dangers of newfound drugs in record times. 

With or without the drugs experimented on them, the cruel effect shows their sad transformation from their springy gung-ho self, brimming with confidence, to one where minor skirmishes and shortcomings do not matter anymore. Somehow, all the minor dissatisfactions and disappointments in life do not matter. The brutal assault of Time on our ego is blatant. We reverse roles. From an all-knowing adult who juggles wearing multiple hats, our senses fail us miserably. We are clueless about what Time has in store for us - a tumour, mental disorder, debilitating illness or whatever.

In our desperate search for the elixir of youth and immortality, we have sold our souls to Big Pharma. In return for their uninhibited access to our medical information and other unspecified data, we have become sitting ducks to their snake oil and mumbo jumbos.

P.S. The idea that rock formations profoundly affect Man's growth reminds me of the concept behind constructing a Hindu temple. It could be built as and where lands are available. It had to be aligned to the magnetic pole of the Earth. The erection of the main structure is specific and involves the usage of various metals. The conditions needed to be followed for its intended use. A temple was meant to act as a cradle for charging the 'human battery'. People were expected to drop in to 'charge' themselves to meet their daily challenges. Over Time, as monotheistic religions became vogue, to stay relevant, their functions changed. They had to steer their believers away from Ahura Mazda and the desert gods. In essence, rocks, with their mineral contents, affect humans.

8 mysterious ancient temples which lie more or less on the exact geographic longitude of 79° E 41'54" and these famous temples are Kedarnath Temple (Uttarakhand), Kaleshwara Mukteeshwara Swamy Temple (Telangana), Srikalahasti Temple (Andhra Pradesh), Ekambareswarar Temple, Jambukeswara Temple, Annamalaiyar Temple, Nataraja Temple and finally Ramanathaswamy Temple (Tamil Nadu).

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The beast within us!

Split (2016)
Director M. Night Shyamalan


Just a thought...
Imagine a scenario...
A wage earner puts on a different personality at work, a docile one, bowing to the pressures of hierarchy, not wanting to step the wrong toe and the fan the right ember! At home, he dons a different costume, being the head of the family, can be a dominant sort pushing forward with so much ferocity as he is King in his little kingdom. His child, quite helpless, transfers his displeasures on his faithful dog who just cow into submission for the food he is served daily! Outside the house compound, the dog would morph into such a brutal to guard his territory.

In essence, we have so many personalities all keep under wraps under the hood of our brains, waiting to be unleashed when the time is ripe.

This must be the basis of this movie where a patient of dissociative identity disorder (split personality) with 23 alter egos. His psychiatrist believes that many of his outward manifestation also affects his biological states. In other words, one particular personality can influence another medical condition, i.e. in one form, he actually needs insulin injections! Every personality wants to dominate over the other. The patient tries to maintain a semblance of normalcy by adapting the best personality accepted in society. This balance, however, is tilted when a couple of school girls pray a prank on him. Hence starts the mayhem of the kidnapping the pranksters. In between all these, a ghastly hidden beastly personality with gargantuan might surfaces. I think this part is the one that mental health workers around the world had a bone to pick with this story. They accuse the filmmakers of denigrating mentally ill patients of being cannibalistic! I think the storytellers were trying to suggest perhaps when our guard is down, the suppressed animalistic desires may just re-surface.

This director was cheeky at the end to announce indirectly that this film is actually is a kind of a continuation of his 2000 movie 'Unbreakable'. Cute. The 'Split' does not only refer to the split personality but also a 'tongue-in-cheek-way' to link it to 'Unbreakable' (hint: antonym)!