RIFLE RANGE BOY

Un-freedom (2015) Probably the ban on this film skyrocketed its popularity. An indie film made by a debutante filmmaker director using relatively unknown actors (minus Victor Banerjee), using unconventional cinematography technique and storytelling suddenly stirred everybody's fancy. The censors probably thought that there were too many scenes with the unnecessary meaningless show of flesh and gory violence was too much for the general public to stomach. Two unrelated stories are told in parallel in two different corners of the world, in Delhi and New York. The shots are abrupt and tend to move at a fast pace intertwining scene to scene. Halfway through the movie, you are still wondering where the film is heading, and both events are related. Anyway, they are not, but the symbolism is there, much about it later. In Delhi, a bride runs away from her wedding to be her lesbian lover, a Caucasian free-spirited hippie painter who is a promoter of the LGBT movement. The trouble ...

Today, two articles from the mainstream newspapers fascinated my simple mind. In the earlier pages of the Star, flashed in his saffron coloured robe and trade mark Afro hair was Sai Baba, the God-reincarnate and the story of his demise at the age of 86 (there is confusion,some say 84). And on his weekly column, a guest writer was writing about the octopus-like tentacles of corruption permeating into every strata of society of India and its prevalence of mammoth proportions there. I think that this two stories coming from the same land is a contradiction of sorts.  On one hand, we have the land with the most number of holy sages in the world and on the other end we have corruption, the main reason of collapse of most Empires and civilizations! At one time (1950 to 1980), all UFO sightings were exclusively in USA. Just like all, most holy men come from India; it is also seem to be a fertile ground for proliferation of religions - Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Jainism, Bahai, Ju...

3.2.2010 Man, an animal, created by God, is full of contradictions. He will claim to be a vegetarian because he cannot stomach the cruelty of killing animals for meat but has no qualms about abusing the small men, maids, pets or other animals. He will go to great lengths to fulfil his religious obligations but bear the sight or see eye to eye with his siblings or offspring. He will insist that his food must be ‘pure’ (free of any animal contaminants of any kind – be it of trace elements or seasoning) but has no problem throwing food, over-indulging, hurting and traumatising the feelings of the servant who, through his ignorance or feeble-mindedness may have added oyster sauce or shrimp paste to his master’s stirred fried vegetables to earn extra points! He does not realise that his original reason for being vegetarian is to control his innate inner animal desire to be carnivorous. Still, he craves vegetarian chicken, vegetarian mutton or vegetarian prawns. Anyway, all of the a...