RIFLE RANGE BOY

The End of An Affair (1999) It is not so much about an affair but rather about believing in God. This 1999 version is a remake of the 1955 version starring Deborah Kerr and Van Johnson; based on a bestseller of 1951 novel by Graham Greene.  Set in WW2 London, a writer starts a steamy affair with the wife of a bored civil servant. Their affair comes to an abrupt end when the room they occupy is shelled. The wife ends the affair for no reason, in the writer's eyes. The writer goes off to war and returns a year later when the war is over. The writer meets the civil servant husband, who is in a dilemma. He suspects that his wife is cheating on him. He is in two minds trying to hire a private investigator to snoop on his wife. The writer sees the  PI on his behalf. Actually, the writer is also curious about the new lover. A bumbling PI comes to the scene. He mistakenly assumes that the wife's meeting with a priest is a romantic meeting. Next, the writer's catchup with the wife...

  https://borderlessjournal.com/2024/09/16/finding-the-fulcrum/ I decided to care for my ailing octogenarian mother, not because she willed me a great fortune or because I have a great liking to care for the sick. Neither do I want to gaslight her for all the not-so-nice things she said about me and my family in better health all through her healthy life. This work is licensed under a  Creative Commons 

While scavenging around for the next topic to ponder, I came across a conundrum a friend of a friend was going through. Not many would find it a big problem. Many would not mind inheriting that problem. Others would say, "What problem?" After working all their lives engaging with various businesses to pull themselves out of the shackles of poverty, they can say they have arrived. No, thanks to the governmental racially discriminatory policies, and despite this, they had managed to give their three children an overseas education. Again, the children had opted to settle overseas because of the national social re-engineering policies. The roots are so deeply embedded elsewhere that they find it pointless to return to the roost. Their occasional summer vacation and digital connections would suffice for family bonding. The couples are left to fend for the coop and the empty nest. To complement that, there are multiple landed properties, real estate assets, various incomes, and a s...

Ullozhuku (Undercurrent, Malayalam; 2024) Director: Christo Tomy An old Tamil proverb goes, ‘Tell a thousand lies to make one marriage happen.’ In Indian society and most Eastern cultures, a person is highly encouraged to get married once he or she is of marriageable age.  Before Bharat Matrimony and Shaadi.com came into the picture, the services of marriage brokers were often summoned. Like St Jude Thaddeus, the patron of the impossible and lost causes, the broker, armed with various biodata including age, educational status, skin fairness chart, horoscope, Varna, and juicy family scandals that needed to be suppressed, would come the most appropriate match.  Like in game theory, both sides may have their bag of worms but would find it appropriate to keep them buried. After all, they would see the bigger picture. A married person reaches a certain elevated status in society. Even funeral rituals are slightly different for the unmarried. With time, all these societal norms have...

Bhoothakaalam (The Past / Ghost Time, Malayalam; 2022) Director:   Rahul Sadasivan There is a little wordplay with the title. With the prefix ’Bhooth’, one may wonder whether it is a horror movie. When one starts watching the film, one would wonder whether it is about the ghost of the past. That is what it is all about—how the ghost of the past comes haunting if it is not exorcised head-on. The ugly demonic head of the past has a self-defeating habit of repeating itself, making one go through the malady repeatedly. No one will take kindly to others’ advice on how one’s life should be lived. No one will be flattered when told his head should be checked. That is what it is. Individuals should take a step back, access their mental health occasionally, and take preventive measures or make amends. Be the change. Change comes with realisation and from the inside. No one can make the horse drink water. The horse must first feel thirsty. The need to change comes from within. Viewers wonder...

Over the past few years, a couple of my childhood friends had the misfortune of having lost their spouses to cancer. One of them fought the deadly disease tooth and nail, but unfortunately, after three long years, the disease got the better of her. He lost the good fight. My devastated friend went awol for an entire year, deciding that solitaire was the best remedy for a broken heart. The societal expectation for the grieved to open up his emotions and replay them like a broken record was not for him.  One year after her demise, at 60, he introduced his new other half to the world. Conversations and felicitations on his plunge revealed that it was a necessary indulgence for him. Even though his children were married and he was a grandfather three times over, he felt the need for intimate touch and passion. He is a happy man. The memory of his old wife is very much alive, and he will cherish them till the end of time. Another friend with a couple of late teenage, young adult daughte...

Living 202 2 Director: Oliver Hermanus You remember a time when you were looking at the world that passed on by. You see the stream of people all grown up, handsome, poised, brimming with confidence. You tell yourself that you want to be like them with lots of friends and be likeable. You just could not wait to grow up. In your inner circle, you have friends who think highly of you. You consider yourself the life and soul of a party. And poof! You find yourself to be an old fool. You are a party pooper, a bore, a high-strung individual and a killjoy. People shun you. The younger ones would rather stay away from you to have a good time. They look at you as Scrooge and find excuses to stay away with a six-foot pole. You wonder whatever happened to the bubbly youngster that you once were. Have you become that lone child in the playground with a perpetual sourpuss face who does not want to share his toys? We sometimes lock ourselves in a comfort zone. We think we are all mighty and immort...

The Eternal Daughter (2022) Director: Joanna Hogg This is not your usual horror movie, but it has a Gothic feel to it. It is a dark, slow movie with nostalgia, old age and loneliness hanging over it like a theatre drape.  In the formative when the rebel in us tries to surface, we tend to look at our parents as the worse examples of how parents should bring up their kids. We look at other people's parents and yearn for lost childhood. We blame them for all our not-so-fancy physical attributes and life failures. We could not wait to grow up and get the hell out of their supervision.   Fast forward in time and space. The hard dents of life knock us back to realisation. We look at our parents through a different lens. We realise that life as adults are neither a walk in the park nor a pleasure cruise. Every corner has a brick wall to give us concussions as we rush through life's journey.   We look at our parents and see that the springiness of youth and headiness of being you...