Just Passing Through...

https://borderlessjournal.com/2025/10/14/just-passing-through/

During my early days of cycling, as I trained during the early hours before dawn, my greatest fear was not the darkness. Beyond fearing fear itself, the next thing that frightened me was the possibility of a head-to-head encounter with a pack of stray dogs that throng the country roads leading up to Genting Peres, the border between the districts of Hulu Langat in Selangor and Jelebu in Negeri Sembilan. ...

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Even the Universe does not bother!

The New Indian Lady Justice
Note the saree, absence of blindfold and sword.
(knowledge replaces brutal force)

I have been naive all through my formative and even adult life. I had thought that Truth or the Universe would put everything in order. In the end, Dharma will rule. No matter how deviant, conniving, or evil humans may be, Nature has a way of tipping things back to equilibrium. 

Little things convinced me of this. When Man thought pests needed to be eradicated to increase their harvest yield, he introduced DDT. Little did he know it disrupted the food chain, from insects to birds and pollination of flowers and back to less yield. The spring of 1962 fell silent. When environmentalists were screaming, 'Save the Tigers on Sundarbans', little did they know that they had later to give protection to the people of that region when the tiger population doubled.

People equate the Courts with holding the balance of Justice. The courts are supposed to be independent, not swayed by emotion or power. We were convinced that everyone is equal in the eyes of the Law.

Increasingly, I think the Law has squinted eyes. One may argue that squinting does not equal altered vision. Neither does it refer to poverty of thought or vision. To the observer, however, it will always appear skewed to a particular side. After all, perception is vital in Law. Justice must be seen to be done.

It is apparent to my lay mind that the verdict of court cases, especially involving senior political leaders, go whichever way the current political wind blows. At the discretion of the learned justices, cases can go into cold storage, be fast-tracked or simply acquitted. When the evidence is too compelling, the accused may be off the hook awaiting temporarily, their cases seeing daylight at a later date (discharged not amounting to acquittal; DNAA), the wisdom of which is only known to the learned justices and the sycophants of the accused.

It is evident that the legal and judiciary systems pander to the might of those in power and bow to the general public's sentiments. The take-home message is that there is no right or wrong. Everything is contextual, including the direction of the public sentiments. Like a flower dependent on the elements of Nature to be pollinated, mere mortals get shoved and pushed around. 

Read the fascinating history of the coming of power of China's first Empress, Wu Zeitan. Her ascent to the throne was spectacularly bizarre. Starting off as a concubine, not even the favourite but sixth in line, she wrangled her way to be the Empress by killing her own daughter and blaming it on the reigning Emperor's consort. Her melodrama paid off. Even as the Empress, she called the shots of how the kingdom must be ruled. Her assertiveness and charisma made all the officials follow her line. She even paraded herself as a reincarnation of one of Buddha's female disciples. That regularised her demigod status and spread Buddhism to sell the religion to justify her maleficences. All the checks and balances were under her thumb. The learned court officers just toed the line in unison. The government machinery followed her tailcoat (or regal royal attire). The economy prospered, and peace was palpable. 

Maybe prosperity and peace of mind are all that matter at the end of the day, not righting all wrongs. One has to see the bigger picture, perhaps.) It is the economy, stupid, as uttered by a fornicator who went on to be the President and got away scot-free. In his mind, he did not have a sexual relationship with Lewinsky as, unlike others, he did think oral sex was sex. He was acquitted of impeachment charges by the US Senate. He is a respected speaker who earns millions around the world. The world no longer expects a leader to be virtuous. As long there is money. In Clinton's immortal words, 'It is the economy stupid!'

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Escaping the glance of Lady Justice?

Taxi Driver (Miniseries, S1E1-16; Korean; 2021)

With the wisdom proffered by age and experiences learned from the School of Hard Knocks, I am convinced that life is convoluted. Nothing one does is 100% right or good; conversely, not doing is not always wrong. If one can justify his actions and give convincing rhetoric, he can be considered a do-gooder. 

The miniseries is about this in sixteen episodes and more than 16 hours altogether. In the crooks-filled metropolitan city of Seoul, there is no shortage of murderers and serial killers. After the tedious process of investigating, collecting evidence and prosecuting, the victims and their relatives find that the courts are pretty docile. More often than not, the accused go scot-free. Sometimes, they get away with a slap on the wrist or technical issues. The feeling is that the perpetrators never feel the pain that the victims and their families endured. To add injury to insult, the wrongdoers mock the system, police and the accusers and carry on the things they do best with impunity. 

With increasingly intelligent lawyers with crooked minds to catch the obscure loophole in the law, more wrongdoers escape the glance of Lady Justice (because she is blindfolded?). Because law practitioners find better remuneration defending the accused than prosecuting them, the best ones bend over backwards to get them off the hook. Forensic sciences have improved by leaps and bounds, and so have the ways to create the element of doubt. The fear of punishing a single innocent person over letting a guilty person for free is always there. The need to convict someone beyond a reasonable doubt is always the mantra.

Victims of serial killers get together to apprehend to mete their own brand of punishment under the guise of running a taxi company. To help out in their endeavour, they get the help of a local mafia lady boss. Hot on their trail is a young prosecutor who senses something fishy going on under the hood of the taxi company.

The season tackles many societal issues that often go unnoticed. A mentally challenged lady is abused at a factory that was supposedly set up for the specially-abled. The culture of workplace bullying to achieve better sales hits the roof when someone is beaten up. A high school boy is bullied because he is poor. The protagonist of the show, an ex-army, had his mother killed by a mad killer and has set his life mission to save victims of the evil elements of society. He passes his name card to the person he thinks needs his help. In this vigilante group are the CEO of an NGO, a hacker and two mechanics.

In the later episodes, the vigilante group realise that they have been cheated by the Mafia, who opt to monetise the prisoners by harvesting their organs! A three-cornered pursuit starts, with the police and public prosecutor's office on one side, the other being the Mafia and the vigilante group.

Playing by the book may not be the best; neither is taking the law into your own hands. What if the situation and circumstances squarely put the wrong person as guilty? It happened in this miniseries. A man was wrongly jailed for 20 years only to be released later after the real killer confessed. Who will return the 20 years of loss of respect, job, love, family life, seeing the world change, and living the one life he had been sent to Earth for?

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You are not what you eat!

No disrespect is intended for the believers, but these could be cautionary tales for others.

Recently, a close relative told me that he had made an appointment to meet a holy man at the unusual hour of 3 a.m. It may appear unearthly to some, but to others, it is referred to as 'Brahmamuhurtham'*, one of the most auspicious times of the day. The holy man wanted to dispel him of some negative energies.

Quickly, my mind wandered to the story of P. Rajagopal, the founder of the world-famous chain of South Indian vegetarian restaurants, Saravana Bhava. A classic tale of how capitalism breeds entrepreneurship and how trickle-down economics works is his life story. Starting off as the son of a poor onion farmer, he ran away from home to work as a chaiwala. He later became a sundry shop owner but was restless. Being the pious person he was (he named his shop after Lord Muruga), he consulted a priest-astrologer about his future. By then, he was married to Vani, his first wife.

The astrologer predicted that his horoscope predicted that Rajagopal could be someone world-famous if he dealt with fire. At about that time, a restaurant was on sale. Taking that as a sign from the Universe, he started his first restaurant in 1981. Rajagopal and Vani worked extremely hard. In rolled in cash, the opening of branches and the expanding workforce. Rajagopal was a kind employer, and his workers were extremely loyal to him. He provided them with accommodation, medical benefits, and even holiday packages. In return, he demanded high-quality work (cleanliness and service) and loyalty.

Rajagopal and Vani's married life lost their lustre soon afterwards. In came Rajagopal's second wife, the daughter of one of his staff.

The astrologer was always behind the scenes, periodically advising on how to improve his already successful business in the future. His chain of restaurants had gone global, and Rajagopal was known as a philanthropist who donated to temples and the needy.

By then, Rajagopal was already eyeing another young lassy, the daughter of another employee. The astrologer encouraged Rajagopal, convincing him he would reach greater heights by marrying her. Trying to escape his advances, the girl, Jeevajothi, went on to marry her boyfriend. One thing led to another, and in 2001, Jeevajothi's husband was killed by Rajagopal's henchmen.

With his influence and enormous wealth, Rajagopal managed to keep bail and stay away from prison till his case went up to the Supreme Court in 2019. By then, Rajagopal was quite ill and died at 71 before he could commence his life sentence.

It has been over 15 years since I last patronised a Saravana Bhava outlet. The last time I savoured their thosai and all their vegetarian cuisine, I could not help but imagine all the blood, sweat, lust and murder that went into preparing the dish. It is perplexing that a person who painstakingly ensured his vegetarian (sattvik) preparations were of high quality had no qualms about exhibiting so much violence and went to the extent of murder to achieve his desires. He is not a good poster boy to sell the idea that we are what we eat. Above all, the brain must function, and periodic self-appraisal is mandatory.

The next time someone claims to have accurately analysed your future through horoscopic facial recognition science, palmistry, and chart analysis of your birthdate, be wary. Remember, the higher your climb, the harder the fall and the more painful it will be on your posterior. 

*Brahmamuhurta is a 48-minute period that begins one hour and 36 minutes before sunrise and ends 48 minutes before sunrise.

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Hindus fight back!

Oh, My God! 2, OMG 2 (Hindi; 2023)
Written and Directed by Amit Rai.

In 1893, Chicago decided to celebrate Columbus' 400th anniversary of landing in the New World with a six-month-long fair. One highlight was an inter-faith dialogue, 'World's Parliament of Religions'. Swami Vivekananda addressed the crowd there with greetings' Sisters and brothers of America!' to a roaring standing ovation. That must have piqued the interest of the American public in the mysticism of Hinduism and other Eastern philosophies. Even before that, Emerson and Mark Twain were already fascinated with Hinduism.

Vivekananda's lecture impressed the audience that Hinduism was a knowledge-seeking way of life. He further opened the path for other Hindu spiritual masters to make inroads into America.

MK Gandhi, however, painted a somewhat different picture of how Sanarthana Dharma was. He portrayed Hinduism as a pacifist way of life, bearing injuries and insults without flinching, turning the other cheek with non-violence being the lynchpin. It gave a perfect opportunity for the colonial master to rule over them over and forever.

In 1921, under the wing of the Khilafat movement, Moplah Muslims went on a killing frenzy, slaughtering Hindus under the pretext of fighting the British to establish a Dar-ul-Islam with the Turkic Caliphate as the head. Gandhi paradoxically told the Hindus not to fight back but blamed them for not understanding their brethren.

That, continuing with the British handpicked post-independence leaders, who continued with Gandhi's pacifist stance, gave the impression that they were all-accommodating yeomen and pushovers. In keeping with ahimsa ideology, India felt, at least Nehru did, that they did not need an army at one stage after Independence.

Of late, the image of a Hindu being a meek, all-agreeing, head-wobbling individual is slowly evolving. In their own way, this is what this movie is trying to hint at Indians, how, over the generations, they have allowed and accommodated other cultures and teachings into their fold that their own highly-placed values had taken a toss. Starting with Macaulay and his educational reforms, Indians began glorifying foreign cultures and frowning upon their own ancient-old wisdom. And now, they have arisen from their slumber, realising that their old-aged understanding of things around them.

The story revolves around a teenage schoolboy who, through peer pressure, is forced and filmed pleasuring himself in the school toilet. The footage is viralled, and the boy is expelled from a private English school.

His father, Kanti, a shopkeeper and a devout Shiva devotee, pleads for his son to be reinstated to no avail. The principal, the school board and even the head priest of the temple. Kanti, who works as hard as he prays to uplift the family status, is caught in a betwixt and between. A simpleton, a non-English person, but to take the establishment to court, demanding reinstatement, a meagre donation to the temple and a public apology to his son. He acts as his own lawyer, much to the amusement of the townfolks, the defence lawyer and the judge. Unbeknownst to everyone, Lord Siva himself has sent his representative to give Kanti a little prodding and moral support.

Kanti's central defence is that sex and masturbation are natural behaviours sanctioned by India's age-old gurukal system. It remains the school's duty to provide sex education and prepare the young to deal with the biological changes of their body, not to treat sex as a dirty and taboo subject.

The irony of the trial is that the majority of the town, primarily conservative Hindus, whose economic activities revolve around a Shiva Temple, are pro-sex education. In contrast, the educated, English-speaking individuals are against open discussion on sex. Of course, God's side wins in the end.

The most stirring moment in the movie is when a sex worker goes on the stand. She indulges herself in the sex trade solely to finance her son's education in a private school. Despite the stigmata associated with the profession, she is left with Hobson's choice -all to give her offspring a better life.

A recurrent theme that seems to be cropping up is 'Kamasutra', the 2nd century Sanskriti text on sexuality, eroticism and emotional fulfilment. The puzzling thing is how a society which was so open to what happens behind the bedroom doors suddenly became so bashful about sexual desires.

P.S. I remember reading about Tagore's family being denied entry to a club for dressing indecently. Using Victorian dressing sense as the gold standard, high-collared necks and long-sleeved blouses replaced bare-breasted ladies draping the modesty with the loose end of their saree. In temples, even the heads need to be covered to show chastity. This, however, came about as an aftermath of the Islamic invasion. Women, wanting to hide their identity to escape the rape and torture by the marauding invaders, covered their heads as Muslim women did to blend in. Over time, that became a tradition in Muslim-ruled regions.

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Nothing personal!

Doctor in The Dock (2022)
Author: Ariza Mohamed 

I have known Staff Nurse (SN) Theresa since 1988. She embodies what I perceive as a true manifestation of the lady with the lamp. Though she may not be the social reformer and statistician that Florence Nightingale was or her contemporary, the flamboyant Mrs Mary Seacole, the nurse who nursed convalescing Crimean War soldiers to health, she did her own share of saving lives.

Growing up in an orphanage, Theresa felt a need to repay society. She did not see the need for a family of her own.

"The world already has enough children and enough broken families!" She commented once.

Outside her regular busy duties at the Maternity Ward of a public hospital, she managed to squeeze time for inmates of an orphanage, old folks' home and church.

Her dedication at work was exemplary, earning the best employee award many times over. She would go out of the line of duty to help her parturient patients, even teaching them the minor points about breastfeeding during the graveyard duty.

I was reminded of her while reading this book. An Obstetrician was sued for negligence 16 years after the event. The Obstetrician, the author, had seen a mother who presented in an advanced stage of labour at 26 weeks of pregnancy. The mother was in the process of being transferred to a tertiary centre that could handle premature babies when delivery ensued. The baby later developed cerebral palsy. 16 years after the delivery, the Obstetrician was sued for not suppressing labour when the mother presented at her practice. The plaintiffs' (the baby and parents) bone of contention was that delivery could have been averted or delayed if labour had been suppressed.

Four long, harrowing years later, after reaching the stage of the Court of Appeals, the doctor was relieved of her negligence. Still, the complainant was awarded the most enormous compensation in a Malaysia medical negligence case, RM 8.9 million.

The author describes her experience dealing with the bureaucracy of the legal system. The emotional and economic turmoils that the doctor endured are indescribable. Her whole life appears in front of her as a wasted one, serving, helping the needy, forgetting food and sleeping, all just to be assessed condescendingly. All her academic laurels appeared pale in her current position. Netizens, with a crystal clear vision of hindsight, were quite brutal with their opinion and caustic with their remarks. Even before the courts had set the hearing, these armchair judges, jury and executioners had already crucified the accused.

Leaving the fate of the future of a person of science to be determined by the learned who could not differentiate between ECG and CTG seems unfair. No matter what they may say about practising being an art, ultimately, it is science that decides what this or that modality of treatment is appropriate. Assessment by members of the medical fraternity is more relevant. But, in reality, are the men in robes and sharks really going up their chunk in the game of medico-legal interplay? That is bad for business.

Coming back to the case of SN Theresa. It happened during one of the nights she was on duty. A mother had just delivered a few hours previously. Theresa, after helping her out with breastfeeding and settling her with her baby, continued with other duties. A colleague saw the patient sprawled awkwardly on her bed. She alerted others, and soon, a code blue was initiated.

The patient had collapsed due to a non-obstetric reason. An aberrant splenic artery had ruptured, and she bled in her abdomen. Surgery was prompt and successful, but the patient succumbed to lung complications two weeks after the episode.

The family sued the hospital for medical negligence. During the trial, Theresa was called in to give testimony. So when the Plaintiff's lawyers inquired about the events before the collapse, Theresa narrated what actually happened. She was taken aback by what the learned lawyer had to say.

"You mean to tell me that a government hospital teaching and guiding a recently delivered mother through breastfeeding at 1.30 in the early morning, and you want me to believe that," he went on all four barrels. "I put to you that your whole nursing team neglected the patient and only discovered to be out cold."

It had come this. An armchair critic, a lawyer who makes a living out of others' misery, who taught himself medicine through the clinical practice guidelines online minus the pressure of peer assessment telling a dedicated nurse who answered her calling she must be doing her work. I do not know the trial's outcome, but as was narrated, that incident got stuck in my mind.

Seacole and Nightingale

The author left clinical practice for a teaching career. The last time I heard, Theresa had retired from Government services. She divides her time between extending her much-needed services to her private patients, orphanage and old folks home.

The era of a paternalistic attitude of the medical staff towards poor, helpless patients is long gone. A medical personnel is just a spoke in the machinery of modern society. Health is a commodified product sold to individuals who demand perfect health as an undeniable right with no margin for error. Then, a small fraction of people gain from falling sick. Sometimes, unaffected parties have nothing personal against the medical workers. They are grateful to them, but they see a lot of money, if unclaimed, going to waste, but it could come in handy to ease the pain of falling sick or being debilitated.

N.B. Florence Nightingale OM RRC DStJ was an English social reformer, statistician and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during the Crimean War, in which she organised care for wounded soldiers. Mrs Mary Jane Seacole was a black 'doctress' who did her style of treating weary battle-fatigued soldiers, which involved spirits of the beverage kind. A British born in Jamaica to a Creole mother, she ran a boarding house and dabbled with herbs. In 2004, she was voted as the greatest black Briton

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Nunca Más? Never again?

Argentina 1985 ( Spanish, 2022)
Written and directed: Santiago Mitre

After years of lawlessness in Argentina, after Peron and many ineffective military leaders, the people managed to democratically elect a government in 1983 after the disastrous Falkland Wars. The memory of the extreme torture, planned disappearances, complete lack of dignity and rape in the Dirty War just before peace could not be written off. For the first time after Nüremberg, a court tried military leaders for crimes they carried out as military personnel.

The country was split is whether to persecute the perpetrators. The people decided they should not be persecuted amongst their peers, i.e. court marshalled, as the whole machinery was complicit in the crimes. A group of the population benefitted from the army leaders' action; hence, they objected to prosecuting the junta members.

Against this background, Prosecutor Julio César Strassera and Luis Moreno Ocampo are chosen for the unenviable task. The trouble is none of the senior lawyers wanted to be in the prosecuting team. They had to resort to a group of non-lawyers and inexperienced fresh-of-the-boat lawyers for the job against those responsible for the bloodiest dictatorship in the history of Argentina. Amidst death threats, political interference and bomb explosion, the team presented a compelling account of the torture the victims of the ruling government had to endure in the name of 'protecting' the nation's sovereignty against rabble-rousers.

This film reminds me very much of the time surrounding the collapse of Najib's regime in the 2018 General Election. In fact, we are still out of the woods yet. The political chameleons complicit in 1MDB and Najib-UMNO's shenanigans are in the same team, which is supposed to be the new ruling party. In essence, the new boss is much the same old boss. Maintaining the hegemony of race and religion in a supposedly multi-ethnic nation was the primary justification for siphoning the country's wealth into UMNO's coffers. Because of this, the newly elected Attorney-General met resistance at all levels. As later events proved, even the then-PM turned out to be a fox guarding the proverbial chicken coop. Even the current weak government comprise the remnants of the regime that brought great infamy to a nation flying high in the 1980s with the promise of becoming a developed nation by 2020. It started its automobile industry at about the same time as Hyundai. Look at Hyundai and compare it to Proton. Korea's football team had made an impact in the World Cup, while Malaysia still struggles to draw with Laos and Nepal. Need not mention about respective movie industries. 

Argentina's 1985 Trial of the Juntas witnesses' descriptions of the atrocities the victims went through are nothing new. The many accounts of torture, humiliation, extrajudicial murders, and non-conformer forced disappearances are not relics of the past. Evil is still very much lurking in society. It rears its ugly head not only in war zones or in mobs. It is even present in civil society. If not, we would not see the brutal murder of Kevin Morais, the abduction of Pastor Koh or the many triad killings that gloss our mainstream media.

(P.S. The chief prosecutor's closing remark during submission included the phrase 'Nunca Más' - that never again such misfeasance should recur. As the human race is around, as long as human greed remains unquashed, atrocities will continue no matter which type of politics is practised.)

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Money can buy justice, or at least freedom!

Trial by Fire (2023, Miniseries)
Netflix

A management professor once told a joke about the Indian justice system. An 80-year-old man appeared for a molestation charge. After looking at the charge sheet, the judge queried, "you are accused of molesting a 16-year-old girl. Why? At this age..." The octagenarian replied, "Sir, I was also 16 when it happened!"

That is how long it takes the cogwheel of justice moves. It is not an Indian problem but a worldwide phenomenon. Part of the law school syllabus must be a paper on creative ways to dodge a trial and get away with it.

People enter a movie hall thinking they will be transported to a world of make-believe and forget real life's stresses for the next two hours or so. What audience who flocked to Uphaar cinema hall in Delhi on June 13th 1997, was far from it. They ended up struggling to stay alive when a transformer exploded. 59 people succumbed to smoke inhalation.

The general public patronises various public venues thinking that the licensing bodies and the enforcement units will do their part in ensuring safety for the general public. Victims of the fire also realised the hard way that all the while, the public has been short-changed. The businesses had been trying to maximise profits over safety. The local councils have been sleeping on their jobs as well. The question begs whether they deliberately looked the other way after their palms were greased.

Illegal extensions, indiscriminately increasing seats, and the erection of private viewing terraces only blocked exits. The doors were locked and bolted to discourage illicit entrees into halls, trapping and smoking the desperately trapped patrons to their deaths.

When the push came to the shove, even emergency response teams failed them. Their snail-paced lethargic swing to action was much to desired at a time when the public is aware of their rights is embarrassing.

Even the long arm of the law and cogwheel of the system appears to be dragging its feet. After 25 years, the parents of two teenage fire victims, Neelam and Sekhar Krishnamoorthy, are yet to see justice to be meted out to the owners of the ill-fated cinema hall. They, together with other relatives who had lost their loved ones in the fire, had taken a civil suit against the owners for negligence. They allege that they had neglected the safety of their clients.

The owners, big shots in Delhi, who had a hand in all development projects, are said to be big philanthropists with big community projects under their belts that seem untouchable. They are able to engage big-wig lawyers, and even the judges appear to feed off their hands. Delays and postponements are norms. Even the lawyer assigned to the defence by the Central Bureau of Investigation looked disinterested and needed prodding and feeding of information to proceed with the case.

Neelam and Sekhar, who wrote a book about their whole ordeal, had embarked on extensive TV interviews highlighting fire safety in public places. In one of such interviews, Neelam, out of sheer frustration, had blurted that she should have just taken a gun, shot the cinema owners and claim insanity rather than having faith in the legal system that seem skewed to protect the rich and famous. The rest of the population can just be taken for a ride with the false pretence that justice will prevail. In reality, money can buy justice or at least freedom.

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