No endeavour goes unnoticed!

Children Of Heaven (Iranian; 1997)

Written and Directed: Majid Majidi

https://www.filmslop.com/reviews/childrenofheaven

This film conjured an avalanche of memories from a forgotten time in my childhood, when poverty prevailed and every penny mattered. We, the children, were meant to be seen but not heard. We were expected to accept what was given, and demanding anything more was deemed abominable. Gifts were to be cherished and utilised until the next buying season. Shopping for clothes and footwear took place once a year, just before Deepavali. We could not complain if the items were torn, damaged, or outdated. Such complaints would be met with a barrage of insults or other forms of abuse. So, we simply made do with what we had.

On one hand, my sisters and I often wondered why we did not turn into raving lunatics while growing up in such a restrictive environment that suppressed all our opinions and desires. Perhaps we already are. Or challenging situations strengthened us, enabling us to endure numerous adversities without crumpling under hardship.

Perhaps the verse from the Quran, Surah Al-Baqarah 2:216, has merit: "But perhaps you hate a thing and it is good for you, and perhaps you love a thing and it is bad for you." It emphasises that our perception is not the best judge. There is always a silver lining at the end of hardship.

In impoverished rural Iran, nine-year-old Ali collects his sister Zahra's shoes from the cobbler. Although the shoes have seen better days, Zahra needs to wear them to school, as they are the only pair she has. Their father is unemployed, and their mother is unwell after delivering her third baby.

After collecting the shoes, Ali stopped at the sundry shop to buy potatoes, as his mother had requested. He left the plastic bag containing the shoes outside the shop, but the recycling man accidentally picked it up, mistaking it for rubbish. Ali panicked when he realised this. Despite his frantic searches, he was unable to find the shoes.

Not wanting to burden their already flat-broke parents, the children decide to share the shoes, as Zahra attends the morning school session while Ali participates in the afternoon one. Unfortunately, their respective schools are pretty distant from one another. Much of the film depicts the difficulty of getting the shoes across the village for Ali to use. They have to dash, but Ali invariably arrives at school late, receiving a ticking off from the teacher. All the running ultimately helps Ali win the cross-country race, which promises, of all things, a pair of new trainers.

In another subplot, Ali's father believes his bad times are over when he secures a job as a gardener. Unfortunately, the grand dreams he had built after receiving the money were consumed by medical bills and repairs following his bicycle accident. Man plans, God disposes!

A simple yet meaningful story, 4.8/5.

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Nothing like being free!

Kummathy (Bogeyman, Malayalam; 1979)

Director: G Aravindan

Most viewers would not have heard of this movie maker, mainly known as a legend in the Indian alternative cinema field. Unlike the masala Bollywood kind of logic-defying escapism that excites the masses, these artsy films only fascinate people who see beyond the story and what is shown on the screen. Some label this film as the best Indian movie ever made.

The movie came to the mainstream's attention after Martin Scorsese's team restored the old, lacklustre copies found in the Indian film archives in 2021. Scorcese announced this movie was one of his favourites at its restoration premiere in Italy. The original cinematographer, however, still preferred the analogue version, as he thought it had more texture and character.

It has been popularised as a children's movie and is usually screened on International Children's Day.

The first thing one notices when watching this film is that he feels like a child. Remember the time in our childhood when we were mere observers, watching and learning, seen but not heard? There is hardly any dialogue, but there is never a dull moment. Scene after scene, we are overwhelmed with the fantastic landscape of Kerala's countryside (God's own country). It draws us to a time when life was simple, running to school was fun, playing with friends was exhilarating, and days were long. Every new discovery is a new adventure. It was not so much our own antics that thrilled us; we were fascinated by the peculiarities that adults exhibited.

Chindan and his similarly aged preteen friends have a gala time. They play, run, prank, and observe the world go by. They are particularly drawn to an eccentric shaman who periodically comes to the village, singing and dancing along the way. They suspect the shaman has magic powers. They befriend him. During one of their play sessions, the shaman playfully changes them into animals, such as a monkey, dog, monkey, etcetera. Chindan becomes a dog. Before the shaman can change them back to their usual selves, Chindan is chased by another dog and goes missing.

Chindan's family goes looking for him, but in vain. By that time, the shaman had moved to another village. Chindan's family only brings back the dog; unbeknownst to them, it is actually Chindan.

A year later, the shaman returns to the village. Chindan, the dog, runs to him for an emotional meeting. The shaman recognises the dog and changes him back. Chindan returns home. Understanding the torture of being trapped, he releases his caged pet parakeet to freedom. 

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Nasty brads are bred

Ratsasan (ராட்சசன், Tamil, Demon; 2019)

It looks like serial killers have all migrated from the US to the Indian sub-continent, specifically to South India. Lately, we have been seeing a spate of gory thrillers and they seem to highlight deranged intelligent killers who take pride in their killings. Recently (June 2020), we watched a Tamil movie named 'Penguin' with the same layout. Deep-seated unresolved childhood issues are the primary reason for all these purposeless bloodbaths.

Some religious leaders assert that a child is born like a white cloth. It is up to the parents and the society to colour and draw captivating patterns on them to strike a chord with people around him. They believe that parental guidance would determine their child's religiosity and conduct. Hence, the onus is on the parents how their offspring eventually turns out to be. 

On the other hand, others believe and I concur that children are inherently evil. They are born uninhibited. We all have grown being exposed to heartless classmates and teasing cliques. They have no qualms uttering hurtful names, not because they can but because they want to. They draw pleasure and peer approval from these tormenting acts. It is the societal conditioning that teaches them how to conform to societal norms and mores. The evil thoughts must be still lurking deep within them but suppressed as per necessity to adapt. Social scientists have looked into this. There was a famous experiment where toddlers were left in a museum. Initially boisterous and cantankerous, they soon learnt to maintain silence after observing the behaviour of others. 

Quite often we hear of students bullying their classmates and how bullies leave a deep scar in the minds of growing children. This 2019 film used this theme to justify a boy's truthful killing of school-going girls. A boy with progeria (Benjamin Button disease) is ostracised and humiliated by his classmates. He grows up to avenge against the bullying in this suspense-filled full-of-twists police drama. Give this a pass. 3/5.

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The destructive forces of a revolution?

Karwaan (Hindi, Caravan, 2018)


Just to recapitulate what Jordan Peterson mentioned in his book 'The 12 Rules of Life', we tend to assume all social ailments or individual problems that one faces in the process of growing up must be solved with a radical restructuring of one's culture. The call for social revolution is heard loud and clear amongst the young chicklings in every generation. The oft-quoted complain among the youth is that adults are not in tune with reality or are living in the past. Names like fossils and dinosaurs have been heard. On the part of the elders, it is pejorative as well. Their offsprings have been referred to as the generation that would bring down civilisation.

What we often forget is that revolution by nature is destructive. Look back at history. Revolutions have always been of chaos, destruction and re-setting or jump-starting a failing system. If every generation feels that the generation before them had wronged them, there must be something wrong somewhere. Aeons of living together as a community, and we are still struggling to pave the best way from childhood to adulthood. Surely this cannot be true. The parents cannot be wishing ill of their downlines. This is contradictory to the theory of the selfish gene and maternal reflex of walking into a hopelessly burning building to save her young. Logically, after going through various challenges over the centuries, the human race would have surely come up with a blueprint on how to tackle teenage and growing pain issues. But then childhood, adolescence and teenage is a new construct of the 20th century. Before that, children were just little adults, beaming with desires to grow up and fill into the shoes of the adults. The priority was the community, not personal liberty.

Time is an excellent teacher. Hopefully, before the young gets all her life muddled up, they would realise that all the ranting and whining were indeed well-intended.

So, it was told...
A 5-year-old child would think that his father was the strongest, bravest or the fastest than any of his mate's father. At 10, he would not think too much of him. At 15, he cannot see eye-to-eye with him. At 20, he likes to avoid his father altogether. He only communicates with his mother (to pass the message). Then life goes on. At 40, now with children of his own, he understands that it is a Herculean task to be a parent. At 50, he appreciates his father's deeds. At 60, with his father dead and gone, it is all full circle again - his father is the strongest, smartest and most patient man.

This movie tells the story of three people who go on a journey of self-discovery when one of the protagonist's parent's remains was accidentally couriered to the wrong address. Avinash is living in daze working in an unsatisfying job, forever regretting of not pursuing his passion for photography. He has a bone to pick with his father, who had died recently during his pilgrimage, for making his childhood a living hell. His father had unilaterally decided what was best for his future.

When Avinash received his father's coffin, he realised that the sender had mixed up the package. He had to send the box to the rightful owner and reclaim his father's body. He got the help of a friend, Shaukat, with his van to travel from Bengaluru to Kochi. On the way, they had to pick a young girl, Tanya, the granddaughter of the other deceased.

The three characters all have 'daddy issues'. Avinash had a father who objected to his choice of carrier. Shaukat had a drunkard and abusive father. What puzzled him was why his mother took all the abuses and chased Shaukat out of the house instead when he raised up to question his father. Tanya grew up without a father from the age of eight. He had succumbed to cancer. Looking at Tanya's rebellious behaviour opposing all the values that Avinash holds dear to his heart, he realises that that was how his father would have felt. With the benefit of being grilled in the School of Hard Knocks of Life, Avinash can see more things than what the young Tanya just simply fail to realise.

The cinematography is quite breathtaking as the characters drive through the country road to God's own country. Watching the film just reignited our cycling team's earlier plan to cycle in India. Before the COVID pandemic brought all travels to a grinding halt, we were interested in a 950+ kilometres cycling tour through Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. 

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Unfinished work on Earth?

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)

You grow up focussing on all the unsavoury traits in the elders around you and promise yourself never to emulate. Hold behold, you grow up and do the exact same things that you found offensive and did not want to do in the first place.  You turn out to be the same person you despise.

People around you realise that, but not you. You become angry when you are reminded of the fact. You carry the anger throughout your life, burning yourself in the inside.

When you realise your shortcoming, life becomes beautiful, it seems, according to the encounter between Mr Rogers (Fred Rogers of 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood' fame) and an Esquire journalist, Lloyd Vogel.

The said interview took place in 1998 with Tom Junod and his Esquire article became the basis of the movie. The screenwriters took the liberty to spice up the story and hence renamed the reporter.

At the time of the interview, Mr Rogers was already a household name. American children grew with him in the living room, telling them about the difficult facts of life like war, death, race, being handicapped and bullying. He was the then Oprah of the day for children and had all their difficult questions answered.


Vogel, a cynical man, is bogged down with his own issues. Growing up without a father who left him and his sister when their mother fell ill, he has an axe to grind when the father returns with his wife that he left his mother for. The journalist, a young father, cannot connect with his wife and his young daughter.

©The Atlantic

Vogel cannot believe a person as perfect as depicted in the TV show can exist in real life. His series built a strong friendship that lasted a lifetime.

In 2018, there was a documentary out showcasing the work done by Fred Rogers in WQED studios and later PBS to stimulate pre-school children awareness. Ordained as a Presbyterian minister, he found satisfaction working with child psychologists and emphasising long lost qualities like patience, reflection and 'silence in a noisy world'. Despite being a man of the Church, he found it more appropriate like impart the teachings of Book not by overt external representations, like donning the collar or mentioning God's fame. He preached via actions, listening and music. He is an accomplished pianist and a lifelong swimmer. 

Towards the end of life, he became progressively depressed, conflicted and angry. Perhaps he felt that his life's work had come to zilch after the 911 incident, the increasing hatred and inclusiveness among people. He was also accused of promoting the 'entitled' generation as his mantra is to make every child feel special. His inclusiveness of treating everyone alike earned him the label of promoting deviant sexual orientation as his co-star turned out to be gay.

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Every birth should be wanted?

Capernaum (Capharnaüm, Arabic  کفرناحوم‎, Lebanon; 2018)
Story, Screenplay, Direction: Nadine Labaki

I remember a family in Penang which had so many children that even the family members never knew how many siblings they had. The mother had so many miscarriages, stillbirths and twins that she gave away that if she were in Stalin Russia, she would have been conferred the 'Order of Maternal Glory' award. The last time the siblings counted, the tally was 16. Despite growing like wildflowers on a shoestring budget provided by the single breadwinner of the family, they all achieved success in their own accord by adulthood. Nobody had arrested psychological development due to a lack of parental attention. 

It was a time when children were viewed as God's gift. Never mind if Man a lot to do with it to make it possible. The extended family concept of living ensured that everyone, especially the older ones, was cared. 

Soon with the changes in societal values, many realised that children were not God-sent but were Nature's way of revenge and testing your resilience. They were viewed as karma's gameplay.

This Oscar-nominated film is reminiscent of many of the ones churned out of Kollywood. Of hand, Pasi and Thulabaram come to mind. Not all God's gift is divine, prudent planning is essential. Restraint in overindulgence is a no-brainer.

In the Bible, Capernaum is the name of the village Jesus sojourned after his successful fight with the temptations of Satan in the Judean desert. People in Capernaum were the testimony to many of His teachings and witness to miraculous healings. In metaphysical terms, it refers to a place of comfort. Sarcastically, the filmmaker decided to name his flick such. The family is the place where most people find solace. In this movie, the family, specifically the heads of the family are depicted as the source of all evil, the propagator of problems. 

Order of Maternal Glory

Labaki, during one of her interviews, mentioned noticing many young children running around the streets of Beirut. Her prodding of these little people finally managed to showcase something alien to most of the net-serving First-World millennials. 

Zain, a 12-year-old boy, is in court suing his parents for his birth. In a flashback manner, his life story unfolds. Having no identification papers, no school to go to, staying in a debilitated rented room for a home, growing up with parents who had all the money for cigarettes and booze but not for the kids, Zain has to work odd jobs to support himself. He sometimes feels that he has to protect his younger sister who recently attained menarche. He tries to conceal her coming of age as he knows that his parents would quickly marry her to the shopkeeper who keeps eyeing her. Before he knows it, she is whizzed off by the shopkeeper, much to his resentment. He runs away from home to befriend an Ethiopian illegal immigrant, Rahil. She is a single mother with a lactating infant. The story progress with Zain babysitting for Rahil and caring for the child when she gets arrested. 

Zain later discovers that his sister died haemorrhaging due to complications of sexual intimacies. A raged Zain stabs the shopowner, his sister's husband, and ends in jail. Through a social worker, he sues his parents.  

I remember during our childhood religious classes, we were reminded to celebrate our birthdays not by blowing candles, cutting cakes and feeding the neighbourhood, but by prostrating at the feet of both parents to show gratitude for our existence. Unfortunately, not everybody looks at their life as a blessing. A failed contraception, a deceiving partner, failure to contraception access, societal coercion, ignorance and more may be the reason for somebody's birth being unwelcomed. The birth of a child is the beginning of the series of maladies. Not to forget children who are not born in the pinkest health, in the fairest of skin tone or the preferred gender. In economically challenging times, another mouth to feed is another strain on the family dynamics. God forbid, a sick child adds many added to the husband-wife relationship.For aeons, negative value has been placed on birth. Procreation has been viewed as dirty. Our presence, our leaving of carbon footprints have shown a detrimental effect on the environment. We have been said to be the product of the Original Sin. Many Christian sects and even Buddhism have expressed their anti-natalistic stance on this matter. Celibacy is viewed as a favourable path to achieve enlightenment. 

Economists, on the other hand, would accuse this of being a communist, a neo-conservative or a leftist agenda (pick your choice). There is a concerted effort by them to depopulate the Earth and replace people with complicated algorithms to create their perceived Utopia which is actually a living hell, lifeless planet only to cater for the few elitists. For economists, people are markets to sell their product to enrich themselves.

Raphael Samuel

Suing his lawyer parents for his birth.
Just to fulfil his parents' self-centred
individual needs, he has to endure
the stresses of living a life on Earth.
The parents are quite happy for him
to file a case. If the Courts deem that
his case has its merits, they would
be glad to fight for their defence.

anti-natalism - a philosophy that argues that life is so full of misery that people should stop procreating immediately.

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

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What chicanery!

Image Credit: freerepublic.com

Is it not funny that people who are the least experienced in a particular subject are loud in their criticisms of the said issue? They hide in the company of the same (nimble)minded and are vociferous in the call for their ideology to be accepted by the main stream. They seek the nod of approval of their herd who by then had been blinded by their rhetorics which seem to make perfect sense to the feeble minds. The flock vehemently uphold their shepherd's pointers without once invoking the faculty of reasoning. At the back of their reptilian brain, they have their doubts, but they find it easier to conjure up to their master. For fear of cognitive dissonance, they give in.

Imagine a man of God who vowed to take celibacy as his aim of life advising his assembly on the best way of bringing up children. He may not be the best person to be knowledgeable of the nuances of attending to the needs of a child embroiled in the ever-changing and confusing world of adolescence. But, hell no, his indulge in age-old scriptures qualifies him to pass sweeping statements of the correct way of rearing the lamb. Never mind if it risks the danger of the helpless lamb to the slaughter, it must be right as that is what our elders say. It does not matter if the dynamics of the world has changed.

Then there are those who, with their limited experience dealing with a small number of children, proclaim that they have the foolproof method that can do wonders out of our offspring. They may have done well with their kin till now but is that proven track record that everything will be hunky dory till His kingdom comes?

What can we do? Rather than clashing head-on to show that no one size fits all in parenthood, is it not wiser to just agree? Nod the head, mumble a few grunts of approval, mutter a few explicit under your breath, grab the popcorn and wait patiently for the drama to unfold.

The fellow who blows his horn the loudest is likely in the biggest fog.

Advice meant only for others?

By Devdutt Pattanaik 

Konark Sun Temple

One of the most disturbing stories that we find it the Puranas is the story of Krishna's son Samba, whose mother was the bear-princes, Jambavati.

 He dupes his father's junior wives by disguising himself as Krishna and is cursed by Krishna that he will suffer from a skin disease that will enable his wives to distinguish father and son. Samba is cured after he builds temples to the sun. All sun temples in India, from Konark in Odisha to Modhera in Gujarat to Markand in Kashmir, are attributed to this son of Krishna.

Samba also attempts to kidnap Duryodhana's daughter and this leads to war between the Kauravas and the Yadavas. Peace is restored, and the marriage is solemnised, only after Balarama, Krishna's elder brother, and Samba's uncle, in a fit of fury threatens to drag Hastinapur into the sea. 

Then there is the story of Samba pretending to be a pregnant woman and duping sages who were visiting Dwaraka. They sages were not amused and cursed Samba that he would give birth to an iron mace that would be responsible for the end of the Yadu clan. 

Must not Krishna's son be as noble and divine and wise and loving as Krishna? But that is not so. Samba comes with his own personality and his own destiny over which Krishna has no influence. Or does he? 

Can we wonder if Samba was a product of his father's neglect? For was not Krishna spending most of his time with Arjuna and the Pandavas and in the politics of Kuru-kshetra?

There are hardly any stories of Krishna as father. He is a friend, philosopher and guide to Arjuna, but the only stories of father and son are of tension, rage and violence. 

In conversations about corporations, we often forget about the other half of our lives, the personal one. 

As more and more people are working 24x7, thanks to Internet, and smart devices, the lines between professional and personal, work and life are getting blurred. In fact, people feel noble when they sacrifice family for work and guilty when they take a holiday to take care of their family. 

Family is not seen as achievement. Children are not seen as purpose. They are seen as obligations, duties, by-products of existence, even collateral damage.  

We admire leaders who sacrifice family for a 'larger' cause. Like freedom fighters who neglect their wives and children. Like business men and entrepreneurs and consultants who spend most of their time in office.

With the rise of feminism, women are also working. Parenting has been outsourced to maids, teachers, computers, video-games and grandparents.

 Women who work in the office have not been compensated by their husbands spending more time at home. Instead women are made to feel guilty for not being good mothers. No one questions men for not being good fathers. Eventually, the office wins. Absent parents rationalise how office is more important than the children: we need the money, the children eventually grow up, surely our needs are also important. 

Many great Krishnas in the workplace discover that they have nurtured Samba at home: sons who either follow destructive paths as they seek attention, or sons who make their way away from parents, as they have grown used to not having them around. Who wins?

Corporations were supposed to create wealth for the family. Now families are creating only workers for the corporation. 

We have many more Krishnas in this generation and maybe many Sambas in the next.

http://indiaopines.com/samba-lord-krishna-son/

It's time to say no to our pampered student emperors

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationopinion/12073349/Its-time-to-say-No-to-our-pampered-student-emperors.html

The Rhodes statue row can be blamed on a generation raised to believe that their feelings are all that matter

A student wears a sticker calling for the removal of a statue of Cecil John Rhodes from the campus of the University of Cape Town Photo: Reuters/Mike Hutchings

By Harry Mount

5:45PM GMT 29 Dec 2015

1750 Comments

The little emperors have grown up. The babies of the late 90s – mollycoddled by their parents, spoon-fed by their teachers, indulged by society – have now reached university. Some of the brighter ones are now at Oxford, demanding that the Cecil Rhodes statue at Oriel should be torn down, because of his imperialist, racist views.

"Universities are reaping the whirlwind of two decades of child-centred education"

We shouldn’t be so surprised. If you’ve had a lifetime of people saying “yes” to you, of never being told off, you remain frozen in a permanent state of supersensitivity. I wasn’t offended by the Rhodes statue when I was at Oxford 20 years ago. But, even if I had been, I wouldn’t have thought my wounded feelings should be cured by tearing apart the delicate fabric of a beautiful university.

Universities are reaping the whirlwind of two decades of child-centred education. That whirlwind has imported imbecilic trigger warnings – when academics have to warn students that western European literature, from the Iliad on, is full of sex and violence. It has also brought the pernicious idea of “no-platforming” – when students refuse to give a stage to anyone who doesn’t fit with their narrow view of the world.

We shouldn’t blame the student emperors for all this. Their warped supersensitivity is the fault of the generation above – the teachers and parents who have so indulged them. I first noticed the disaster of child-centred education six years ago. Near my childhood home in north London, there is a late-Victorian school. According to the noticeboard outside, it didn’t have a headmaster. Instead, Mr MJ Chappel was called the “lead learner”.

The implication was clear. Mr Chappel wasn’t placed in authority above the children but was ranked alongside them. Children have as much to teach the teachers as the teachers have to teach them – an idiocy that’s difficult to attack because it sounds so charming; and because people like me sound so evil when we disagree.

  Photo: PA

That idiocy is now endemic through the primary, secondary and tertiary education sectors. I resigned from a provincial university lecturing job recently, when the disease struck my department. My colleague said it was my fault if the less clever, less hard-working undergraduates did worse in exams than their brighter, harder-working contemporaries. I was told not to penalise undergraduates for bad grammar or spelling mistakes. And I had to dumb down the exams.

The last straw was when I was told to cut down on facts in lectures. “You’re here to teach them how to think, not what to think,” the head of department told me. The tragedy was that the undergraduates weren’t little emperors. They were longing to learn facts, spelling and correct grammar but they had had precious little exposure to these things at school.

And so they sailed on serenely into the world of work, blissfully unaware that employers would throw their applications straight in the bin because of their bad English. I saw the final punishment for child-centred education a decade ago, when I worked on the Comment desk of the Telegraph. One of my jobs was to keep an eye on the interns.

Ntokozo Qwabe and the Cecil Rhodes statue on Oriel College in Oxford Photo: Rex  Photo: Rex

A charming bunch they were, too. What was astonishing, though, was how some of them took to having their grammar corrected. Because they’d never been told off about bad grammar at school or university, they logically assumed it didn’t matter; that I was some dreary old pedant, enforcing a code that died out some time in the Middle Ages.

I didn’t mind. It was no skin off my nose. But they should have minded – it was only the interns who either knew their grammar, or were chastened and informed by correction, who ended up getting jobs on the paper. Why should they have thought any differently? Throughout their education, they had been repeatedly encouraged to think their wounded feelings must trump the teacher’s, or employer’s, right to instruct.

"Every time the authorities are accused of racism, they bend over backwards to soothe the offended egos of the little, tinpot dictators"

The same applies to the row over Rhodes’s statue. The authorities at the university have, so far, continued to pamper the student emperors. Every time the authorities are accused of racism, they bend over backwards to soothe the offended egos of the little, tinpot dictators – rather than telling them that they, the teachers, are there to tell the students what to do; and not the other way round.

Harry Mount is author of How England Made the English (Viking)