RIFLE RANGE BOY

Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez (2024) Netflix miniseries I learned a new word today: parricide. It is the act of killing one's parents, sometimes as a universal term to include murdering relatives. It is not peculiar to our modern times by no stretch of the imagination. All through human civilisation, children have been killing the hands that fed them, directly or indirectly. Ancient Indian scriptures have numerous accounts of patricide. The Greeks, Babylonians and the Norse were not far behind. Even though the Mughal emperors had to kill to grasp the throne, the most they did was kill their siblings, like how Aurangzeb, the militarily savvy son of Shah Jahan, is said to have masterminded the brutal killing of his brother, Dara Shukoh, the tolerant one liked by the subjects. Aurangzeb did not kill Shah Jahan. He merely dethroned him and kept him in prison till he died. King Asoka, who advocated the Middle Path of Buddhism, did not follow the path of passivity. He had to kill ...

The answers on Earth are not easy to come by, especially when it comes to questions about the purpose of Life and ways to steer it. Why some people are born with all the options in life, with a silver spoon, in a rose garden, but are too blind to use them for their benefit while others have all the zest to do all the things in life to better themselves without any opportunities. Assoc Prof Munjed Al Muderi This topic of discussion came up the other day when the story of an Iraqi doctor, now Assoc. Prof. Munjed Al Muderis, who was given a new lease on life in Australia after running away from his birth country flashed in a newsfeed somewhere. Dr Muderis was an ambitious young doctor in an Iraqi University when the Republican Guard showed up and ordered him to mutilate his patients who happened to be Iraqi soldiers. Refusing to conform, as it was against the Hippocratic Oath, he finally had to make a dash out of the country and eventually ended up in Christmas Islands as just a...

The Indian side of the border. A spanking new complex in the pipeline. It is a daily affair, of public display of brotherly rivalry. The old wound of a state that was curved at will at a stroke of a pen. As the sun sets, both nations remind themselves they are of one DNA but two divided by politics and religion. It has become a ritual to irritate and provoke either side with their high flying kicking drills, the heaving of chests at each other and theatrical display of mocked emotions. Even though similar ceremonies are carried at two other border towns, the one at the trunk road between two sister cities, Amritsar and Lahore take the cake. They share a strong bond. Maharajah Ranjit Singh who united the states in Land of Five Rivers (Punjab) and held the honour of being the only force in the history of mankind to tame the hill tribes of Afghanistan, made Lahore his capital and honoured his guardian religion by building a golden outlook to the Hari Mandhir to see it as ...