RIFLE RANGE BOY

Fire Bird Author: Perumal Murugan (translated from Tamil by Janani Kannan) In my opinion, this is how a novel should be written. From a mundane job of riding on the bullock cart, traversing the country roads, looking for suitable land to start farming and hence to prosper his young family, he manages to tell the whole shebang of his family politics and the people and politics of the land he was passing through to scout.   Kuppan decides to take a long ride to the edge of the state with his faithful handyman, Muthu, in search of land to buy after a family feud. Being the youngest male child, he got the short end of the stick. His elder brothers decided that their father's land had to be divided. Perumal tells how the division of ancestral land works. Even the parents were given a measly piece of land. Kuppan, the timid one in the family who grew in awe of his brothers, did not fight back as it was not his colour to clash head-on despite his wife's constant nagging.   Through fl...

Kadaisi Vivasayi (Tamil, கடைசி விவசாயி , The Last Farmer; 2022)  Director: M. Manikandan As you grow older, you think you grow wiser. You assume you are slowly getting the neck of how things work around you. You realise everything in Nature has a pattern, and everything around it is tailored to adapt and survive. If you were a farmer, you would figure out a greater force that balances everything. The worms, ants, bees, birds, butterflies and flowers are all part of this delicate equilibrium. No one member is more important than the other in each other's survival. Try killing the creepy crawlies like the DDT experience taught us, and you will have an eerie, dull, quiet spring with no colourful butterflies or chirping birds. Like that, in other aspects of life, you mellow down. You realise that there is no point in getting excited about everything. Most things resolve by themselves. The younger ones around you think you are too laid back. You give in easily. They are convinced you ha...

A friend sent me a Youtube presentation outlining the nitty-gritty details of India's new Farm Bill 2020. This news seems to be the flavour of the month that hit most portals dealing with news from India. Pictures of Sikh farmers in a protest demanding justice is making its appearance in most channels. Wanting to research more into this, in an investigative manner, I approached a few of my many friends about it. Everything has to be taken in context, I finally understand. The first person I interviewed said that he has no opinions as he is a Malaysian, and things that happen in India does not bother him. His ancestors left Punjab because the state could not provide; hence, he has no love lost.  Along the way, I find that the media, which is highly influenced by the West, had a lot of negativities to say about India's 'bad' way of handling the situation. One of the darlings of the liberal society, President Justin Trudeau had a lashing towards India's 'unsympathe...

Merku Thodarchi Malai (Westward Continuing Hills, Tamil-Malayalam; 2018) மேற்க்கு தொடர்ச்சி மலை  Vedantha teachings told us we are all the same, part of a bigger consciousness that is the Universe itself. We were told to treat each other as brothers as indeed our Athma (souls) are all part of the Paramathma which is Brahman itself, the Creator and the Created. We have all been sold a broken dream. We were told that the path to happiness is through economic improvement. Like in Martin Luther King's cheque in 'I am a dream' speech, we were all given a bounced cheque. A cheque took naively at face value only to discover a little too late the stamp 'Return to drawer'! When we improve our socioeconomic standing amidst a life long struggle of sacrifice, we realise that the goal post has been lifted. We find that the separation between the haves and have nots had widened many folds over. We are to be, still, the mouth-agape child that once was yearning to be like his...