Police, leave them people alone?!

Naalu Policeum Nalla Irundha Oorum (4 Policemen and a peaceful town, Tamil; 2015)

Directed by N. J. Srikrishna

This full-length comedy came and went without creating much of a storm. Naturally, it received little rave review. All the actors were very green, except for Yogi Babu, who did not play a vital role here, anyway.

The story is a comedy of errors, poking fun at how the police's assertion of their importance screws up the peace of an already peaceful village.

The small township of Porpandhal is so peaceful that it has received Best Village awards for years. There is no crime, and the police station sees no need to open on Sunday. The four policemen there lead cushy lives, working from 9 to 5 and playing board games all day.

The police HQ takes notice. It plans to shut down the station and transfer its staff to Ramnath, an area notorious for serious crimes. The policemen panic. They try to justify their presence by creating petty issues here and there.

Little did they expect what would finally pander with their little tweaking. They send out a petty thief to steal the village committee's collection monies, making the police appear as heroes when they retrieve the loot later. They hoped this would prevent the police station from closing and allow them to maintain their leisurely lives.

Unfortunately. the money that the thief stole got burnt in a fire. The committee chairman accuses the shopkeeper whose shop was razed by fire as the thief and of lying by purposely burning down his shop to hide evidence.

When the police tried to intervene by making the temple priests as mediators, a stash of dirty magazines was found planted in the temple grounds instead, angering the temple committee members. They, too, go ballistic against the rest of the villagers.

At the end of the day, the once exemplary peaceful village now becomes a war zone. Everyone ends up in arms against one another. The policemen, though, get their wishes fulfilled. They stay put.

Everyone is trying to prove their worth. A doctor is worth his degree only if people fall sick. A mechanic will be out of a job if everyone's vehicle is maintenance-free and immune from breakdowns. In the same way, lawyers will be jobless if no one runs afoul of the law. Lawyers may also turn a non-issue into a national crisis; leave it to them. The same goes for the police, too; so much power and nowhere to flaunt it can be pretty intimidating.

Respect is earned. People are free to respect each other if they think their existence is respected. Try greeting a random guy on the street. Invariably, he would reciprocate your salutations unless he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia or believes there is a catch.

The moment the other party thinks that he is taken for a fool and feels cheated or discriminated against, that is when all human decencies end. The experiment was done by a third-grade school teacher, Jane Elliott, in 1968 after Martin Luther King's assassination highlighted this effect. She wanted to show how it felt to be discriminated against. The all-white class was divided into two groups- the blue-eyed and the brown-eyed. The blue-eyed students were given preferential treatment and compliments. The experiment was reversed but only lasted two days. From the short experiment, she found how easily people deemed 'inferior' fitted into the role so quickly and saw how fast the mild-mannered students in the 'superior' 'group became devils.

The lesson learnt here is that everything is honky dory when each other's liberty is respected. He flips when one's position is threatened or feels he is taken for a pushover. The suppressed reptilian mind awakens, and like Pandora's Box, evil thoughts and actions will be unleashed. All shields will be up to ward off anything that resembles hostility. The societal-imposed social inhibitions go out of the window!

May not! The Wokes and BLM sympathisers seem to scream from the depths of their lungs to de-fund the police. They argue that having a police squad is damaging to the existence of the minorities in the country. Alternative? Let looters have a field day, businesses finding it not cost-effective to apprehend or persecute offenders with minor thefts or simply close their retail stores and opt for online businesses only. 

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

google.com, pub-8936739298367050, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0

As long as law is respected...

Escape from Mogadishu (Korean; 2021)
Director: Ryoo Seung-wan

We go to bed at night knowing jolly well that we will get a good night's sleep. We can get up the next day to go to work, self-assured that our workplace will still be standing. We queue at the checkout counter to pay for our goods because it is the civil thing to do. We do not go around breaking into premises because we know that the long arms of the law will finally catch up with us.

This peace of mind is what we, as a society, gave up for law and order. The powers-that-be promised to care for us, and we, in return, would sacrifice some of our liberty to suppress our inner desires to do what we wanted. When the government loses its grip on power, all hell breaks loose. The evil side of mankind surfaces. The respect for law takes a backseat, decorum disappears, and mayhem will ensue. All special privileges vanish into thin air. The law of the jungle takes over where the rule of law fails.

The diplomats of two warring nations of the Korean peninsula, North and South Korea, found this out the hard way. Somalia in 1991 was in turmoil as President Barre's government was overthrown by General Aidid's rebels. It was a time when the Koreas were still trying to gain entry into the U.N. (This is news to me! Even though Malaysia was already in U.N. since 1957, the Koreas had been struggling to get in since 1949. Then the Korean War came, and the Soviet Union opposed South Korea's entry. Since 1973, North Korea has become a U.N. observer.)

The Koreas were frantic trying to gain votes from African countries for U.N. entries. They were sabotaging each other for this purpose. The level of animosity reached a feverish pitch until Somalia fell into anarchy and the rebels destroyed the North Korean embassy staff scurrying for refuge. Against much hesitation, the South Koreans gave humanitarian support and together, they tried to escape from Mogadishu as the hostile rebel troop terrorised the country. After all the fight for survival, they go separate ways acting as mortal enemies. At the height of desperation to stay alive in Mogadishu, they covered each other's backs and grew to like each other.

'Escape from Mogadishu' is a gripping action movie with high suspense and edge-of-the-seat value. It is based on actual events but with a liberal sprinkle of artistic liberty. If 'Black Hawk Down' was America's viewpoint of the Somalia situation, this film's South Korea's version. Maybe one day, we will get a Somalian version of the debacle.

(N.B. Perhaps Malaysians should give a pat on themselves. Being a young democracy that came into existence as an independent third-world nation 65 years ago, it did specific earth-shattering things to its government without much turmoil. It booted out a corrupt government through a peaceful election. It further sent its ex-Prime Minister to jail for corruption and may send more for the same.)

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

When there is no governance!

Bure Baruta @ Cabaret Balkan (Буре барута @ Powder Keg, Serbian; 1998)
Director: Goran Paskaljević

I learned about this director when I watched 2016 'Dev Bhumi, Land of the Gods'. This film is another of his many highly acclaimed directed movies.

Made in the heady times of the 1990s when the Balkan country, Yugoslavia, was on the cusp of disintegrating, and every ethnic group was embroiled in conserving their dominance. Slobodan Milosevic's Army was terrorising, and the economy was in the pits.

This era even brought a new English word - 'Balkanisation'. Like Yugoslavia, which was synthetically united by the winning political powers of the Second World War and their own as six sovereign nations, Balkanisation is the term given when a few provinces want to gain autonomy from a country.

The film's first dialogue reminded me of a recent conversation at a dinner table with a friend. "This is a goddamned lousy country; why would anyone want to come back?" That was reminiscent of what someone uttered when the father of a young lawyer who excelled in his studies at a prestigious university overseas announced his intentions to return home to serve the country. *

Taman Sri Muda, Shah Alam

The movie is a composite of many loosely interlinked stories that show what happens when the rule of law collapses. People are only courteous to each other when they going is good. When the element of security is threatened, or when economic opportunities dwindle, our society suppressed animalistic behaviours surface. Gone are chivalry, respecting the weaker community members, respect for private property, concern for human dignity, regard for human life and sanctity of human bodies.

Human beings are considered civilised when they transfer their security duties to a third party, i.e., governing bodies and not getting their hands dirty. As long as these governments continue their control and legitimacy, law and order are maintained. When governance fails, and Man has to resort to his primordial ways of dispensing justice, the outcome is ugly. The dormant reptilian brain awakens. 

* What started off as an Asian tiger with lots of hopes for the future, with the sound administrative background left by their colonial master, all the new nation of Malaysia had to do was to maintain its brain and head for more unexplored frontiers with the sky as their limit. But instead, the elected leaders opted for a self-defeating myopic path sacrificing meritocracy for supremacy of a certain race and religion. People say to coup de grace came when the elected government of GE14 was sabotaged by their own leaders in the name of race and religion again.

** Just after writing this post came the story of residents looting a convenience store after the massive floods in Shah Alam. Rather than emphasising the lack of rescue missions provided by the powers that be, the police seem to be more concerned that a crime has happened. They had forgotten that people were stranded on the roofs for more than 48 hours!

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

Instigators, aplenty!

Malik (Malayalam, 2021)
Written and Directed by Mahesh Narayanan

The recent Pew survey on religious and cultural attitudes revealed that most Indians respected each other's religion and took pride in their Indian identity. The only sore point was that they showed reluctance to having a person of a different faith as their neighbour. This point must have been exploited by politicians to usurp and stay in power. They try to create animosity between neighbours of other beliefs, use the arm of administrative and policing machinery at their disposal, and continue the legacy left behind by their colonial masters, divide and rule.

On the evolutionary scale, it is natural to go from homogeneity to heterogeneity, not backward. But no, not the leaders (and the press too), that is bad for business. The socialist and the generation who have been suckered into the woke culture will not rest till society collapse is complete and anarchy is the flavour of the day.

'Malik' tells the tale of a closely-knit Muslim and Christian community living by the coastal region of Kerala. In this small fishing village of Ramadapally, there is a mosque and a giant statue of Jesus (a miniature replica of 'Jesus The Redeemer' in Sao Paolo). They respect each other, and life goes on in harmony.

As their catch dwindles, they have to supplement their income by carrying contraband stuff in their boats. A business rivalry then develops between factions. The main character, Ali Ikka and his sidekick David managed to get the lion's share of the loot through creative out-manoeuvring. Ali marries David's sister, but David and Ali split ways when David wanted to baptise Ali's child whilst Ali wanted to bring the child up as a Muslim. 

The tsunami, which hit the shores, disproportionately affected the Christians more than the Muslims. Politicians and police utilise this division to their advantage. Riots, police shootings, gang-related violence and pandemonium are the apparent sequelae.

Unity is something quite fragile. It should be able to stand the hard knocks and gales that come by. On top of that, parties with self-interests find this the Achilles tendon to destroy a society. To destroy is easy, but to build, a Herculian task!

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

Rules for life

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (2018)
Jordan B. Peterson

Life is easy when you are living it with your eyes closed. For an idiot, life is a bliss. He does not analyse or overanalyse things that happen to or around him. He lives for the moment. There is in the now and the past; no future to worry about. In his eyes, everyone is good, and they mean well.

In reality, life is not so straight forward. Inherently, we build a hierarchical pyramid. The occupants at the top perpetuate their positions by merely being there. Their positions ensure continuity of power and status, much like the analogy of lobster that Peterson often quotes. The hierarchical order in any society is exemplified by our crustacean friend. The lobster, a remnant of our ancestral past, illustrates how any societal structure works.

The higher up a hierarchy a lobster climbs, this brain mechanism helps make more serotonin available. The more defeat it suffers, the more restricted the serotonin supply. Lower serotonin is in turn associated with more negative emotions – perhaps making it harder to climb back up the ladder. Serotonin gives one courage and confidence to fight for better, mate and territory, which will consequentially attract better food, healthier partner and subsequently better genetic pool in the offspring. In other words, society ensures that the occupants at the top of the pecking order and the ones at the bottom find it hard to move up. 

This is one of the books that try to answer difficult questions in life. The problem is readers with a short attention span like me tend to forget the questions as he starts reading the answers as well as get lost grasping the answers too. Everything is a rollercoaster of circumlocution. Nevertheless, the discussions surrounding the answers are quite engaging, even if your answers are not obvious out there.

It seems that we are re-exploring what our elders once taught us, but we thought that it was old fashioned. When we were young, our parents insisted that we rise early in the morning. We did not see the relevance then, but we now know that it makes a lot of sense. We thought following a timetable was madness. Now we realise that Man needs a fixed routine to maintain sanity. Following a religion gives them a tuft of hope when the going gets tough. Rudderless without a set of rules for life, their life goes asunder.

The following rules of life as set by Peterson would make more sense after reading the book.

Rule #1 - Stand up straight with your shoulders back
Rule #2 - Treat yourself like you are someone responsible for helping
Rule #3 - Make friends with those who want the best for you
Rule #4 - Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who others are today
Rule #5 - Don’t let your children do anything that makes you dislike them
Rule #6 - Put your house in perfect order before you criticize the world
Rule #7 - Do what is meaningful and not what is expedient
Rule #8 - Tell the truth, or at least don’t lie
Rule #9 - Assume that the person you’re listening to knows something you don’t
Rule #10 - Be precise in your speech
Rule #11 - Don’t bother children while they’re skateboarding
Rule #12 - Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street

This YouTube video gives an excellent summary of the book in a summarised and animated form. This type of advice is targeted towards the younger generation who are keen to turn their lives into something worthwhile. Unfortunately, these types of information do not excite the younger ones as they are eager to enjoy the spring of their youth and utilise their freedom to the limit. To them, philosophy and doing the right thing can wait. He has a large following in his native country, Canada.

P/S. We think we have it all under our control. How wrong we can we. Dr J Patterson recently recovered from devasting complications of benzodiazepines which he started to consume them to deal with the stress of caring for his wife's ovarian cancer and his daughter's debilitating juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. 

P/S/S. Peterson became popular among the conservatives for his vehement opposition to the demand of transsexual to choose a pronoun of their choice.

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

Equilibrium through destruction?

The Equalizer (2014)

Suddenly, somebody I knew blurted out, "Hey, Equalizer 2 will out soon!"

Not really remembering anything about the first Equalizer, I inquired, "Was it any good?" to which he babbled something to the effect of as if I had committed a cardinal sin. So I made it a point to view the film myself, and I am not impressed.

Appa used to be hooked to a TV series with the same name where a team of do-gooders went around helping desperate. I never went around watching it as I had many other pressing deadlines in my life then. Appa had a cult following for it, but I would not say he was a die-hard fan. Halfway through the episode, he would be in Slumberland, especially after his long hours spent in the bank working with other people's hard-earned money. So much for being an ardent fan!

The TV series

This 2014 movie based on the TV series defies logic. So many of the executed plans are too far-fetched and bends reality so much that it appears almost like a sphere. But, like many films that glorify the 'Don't mess with Pop' genre, it is a feel-good movie that gives men who over their prime a boost of self-confidence. Whether it would translate it anything concrete, that is a different question.

The story tells of a lone wolf fighting against the whole might of the mean Russian mafia. An unassuming man who works as a DIY Home Improvement store supervisor has all the know-how and contacts to track down and hunts down every single baddie who made life a living hell for the people he knew in the neighbourhood. Then, like Robin Hood, he distributes the loot from the thugs.

At a philosophical level, the take-home message seems to be working at a very high intellectual level (just a thought, though). To right a wrong, immense energy is required. Out of anarchy comes order. To maintain peace, one needs destruction. For peace to be in place, might is necessary. For Vishnu is take charge, the Destroyer's job of Shiva is essential. The order is maintained through the chaos.

I know I am going to give the sequel a miss.

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

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

Disorganised synchronicity?

The first day on the road trip told me all, that there is order in chaos. The haphazard needling and swerving of 'auto' vehicles with the constant blaring of car horns just complemented the irate of the impatient road users stuck at the railway crossing at the heat of high noon.

Nevertheless, my host tells me later, there had never been a fatal road accident in Cuttack, the second biggest town in Orissa (rebranded Odisha).

It precisely describes the dynamics of how the system works in the greater part of India. On one hand, you have the poorest of the victims of globalisation, scrapping the barren barrel of hopelessness whilst the end sees the shakers of global conglomerates. You have the victims of caste segregation deprived of basic amenities, decency and opportunities. Then there are the heart-wrenching tales not much different than of Ambedkar's rise from rags to fame.

There are minions who find contentment in living a whole life performing menial repetitive tasks and there are entrepreneurs with Earth-shattering proposals with simplest of devices. There is wisdom in the mundane.

It is a land of extremes, the land of plenty as well as one dearth of substance. It takes a kind of something to make India go around. With the dense population and the hive of activities, despite the chaos that goes on a daily basis, it is a wonder that things actually move forward. It is one place that proves the butterfly effect may, in fact, be a real thing. A little flutter and a little wave there may just upset the whole dynamic of things. Things appear chaotic but in that bizarre scenario, the sun still rises and things get done, nevertheless.  

Order in chaos?

Hava Aney Dey (Let the Wind Blow; Hindi; 2004)

This Franco-German of a Hindi film co-production had too much on its plate. No doubt, it had won many global independent awards the world over but the fact remains that its storyline is too ambitious to cover in one and half hour of screening. It tries to deal with so many things without going deep into any of the issues it tries to invoke.

The protagonist, Arjun, is an 18year old youth, is at the crossroads of his life. On one hand, he sees his widowed mother working day and night trying to put food on the table after his gambling father died early. The mother is putting all her hopes on her only son to make it to university. In her eyes, that would be the panacea for all the poverty woes. Arjun is disillusioned by all these. He sees his blue collared friends struggling so hard with no hope ever hitting it big in life. He also sees the rich just loafing around enjoying life and spending (wasting) their money without a care. The lingering dilemma is whether education makes one happy and whether it a passport to success.

In the background, there is a constant reminder on the cable TV that a nuclear showdown is brewing over the India-Pakistan border.

Arjun is not a bright student, though. With all his nocturnal intoxicating habits and trysts, studies hardly interest him. What interest him, however, is a fellow student, Salma. He joins the school drama just to be by her side. He discovers his natural talent in acting. The theme of the show is a scene from the Bhagavad Gita where Arjuna has the cold feet before the Kurukshetra War and his qualms about killing his cousins, somewhat mirroring the two brothers' (India and Pakistan) faceoff! As a side issue, we are introduced to Salma's grandmother who was a freedom fighter who fought for Indian independence and decided to stay back in India and not migrate to Pakistan. Then Salma's parents also work tirelessly for the uplifting of society.

Arjun's best friend, Chabia, a mechanic who gets Arjun to do his vices and also has the contacts to get him out trouble has his own his issues his cabaret dancer girlfriend. The girl loves him but not his poverty, Chabia loves her but not her job.

Along the way, the audience is given the impression that the country has no future but to venture out of it to prosper. In this case, Dubai seems to be the haven. Even that never materialised for our stars. Just as they make plans to leave for Dubai with the farewell party and all, nuclear warheads of India and Pakistan head towards the heart of each other's major city.

The cinematography is so surreal, with many street scenes and lingo that we are all too familiar. Interestingly, that was the very reason why the film had issues with the national censors. It eventually never got screened in India as the filmmakers would not comply with the censors' demand to bleep almost 20 minutes of its dialogue.

Through this film also you get to understand how the chaos theory comes into effect. With so much random things happening around so many people, there is still a semblance of order, and the sun still shines. People still grew to fulfil their dreams and lead a full life.