RIFLE RANGE BOY

Like clockwork, not even dust had settled after the Earthquake measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale hit Myanmar; numerous announcements have emerged over the new social media outlets of well-meaning organisations offering services to collect donations for its victims.  We have had all these so many times before. The earliest of these must surely be the Great Tsunami of Boxing Day 2004, which measured 9.1. The world saw a plethora of bodies going hyperdrive, bending backwards, trying to extract money from the well-meaning but unassumingly naive public. The collection, it seemed, was quite overwhelming. Ten years down the line, a documentary was made about the towns hit by the tsunami. It revealed that only one pledged housing project saw living daylight amongst all the broken promises; that too by the personal effort by an individual, the world-famous singer Ricky Martin. The same thing happened in Haiti following its devastating 2010 hurricane. The Clinton Foundation jumped in to hel...

Manjummel Boys (Malayalam/ Tamil; 2024) Director: Chidambaram I was intrigued by this movie after reading two articles. The first detailed a legal dispute between Ilaiyaraaja's side and the producer. The dispute arose when the producer used Ilaiyaraaja's song composition as a background without obtaining permission. This incident added an exciting layer to the movie's production. The second article discussed the Tamil Nadu Home Secretary's directive to the Kodaikanal Police to investigate police brutality against complainants, which also played a role in the movie's plot. This is a gripping tale of a rescue mission that took place in 2006. A group of young men from Majummel, Kochi, embarked on a trip to Kodaikanal in Tamil Nadu, a popular tourist destination. While exploring, the men made a fateful decision to venture into a restricted area. Tragically, one of them fell into a seemingly bottomless pit. The story unfolds as the remaining men, faced with a group of ap...

The Railway Men: The Untold Story of Bhopal 1984 (miniseries; 2023) Director: Shiv Rawail I have come to know of a few people who were working on the Malaysian Railway Lines (Keretapi Tanah Melayu, KTM). They were working at a time when owning a car was a luxury, and interstate travel meant travelling on the train. So much responsibility fell on the shoulders of the Station Master of a railway station. Much like the captain of a ship, the Station Master would take care of his station like a baby. The post carried such pride in the community that people would have forgotten his name. They would just address him as Station Master, much like how one would address a Doctor or Pastor, not by name. Amongst our family circle lived a distant relative who was the Station Master of the Bukit Mertajam Railway Station. The job was a prestigious one, and it carried much prestige. Bukit Mertajam was an essential and busy station. Even though his name was Jaganathan, everyone referred to his fami...

Exit (엑시트, Korean; 2019) Director: Lee Sang-geun Every time I see Koreans in action, be it in sports, movies or showcasing yet another new car, I get depressed. Koreans used to be our whipping boys in the Merdeka Tournament but look at them now, playing the same level of football with the big boys now. Kia started making automobiles in baby steps about the same time as us, but now, Korean cars are making Japanese cars sweat. Ours, on the other hand, is a national embarrassment. With the innovation of P Ramlee and his friends at Jalan Ampas studio, they churned out hits after hits and even won cinematic awards at the Asian level. But now, all we can do is reminisce, brood about lost opportunities and imagine a country that we could have been. Twenty years' master plan to learn, copy and innovate storytelling and moviemaking now sees Korean cinema and miniseries sweeping the world by storm. Korean culture is no longer alien to the people the world over.  This movie is living proof of...

Chernobyl (2019) Netflix miniseries I could not help it but compare the disaster at Chernobyl to the fall of the Malaysian ruling party of 61 years in the last general elections.  Everything was going wrong in 1986, Russia. In 1917, when the peasants were starving, and the Romanov family was perched in their castles oblivious to the people's sufferings, it seemed like the best thing to do. Singlehandedly, the people defended their Motherland from external aggressors. The propaganda news suggested that they had the best leader in the world. In the field of science and technology, they were beyond compare. Proof of their achievements was evident in the area of space travels. Communism took care of everybody, they were told. But happy hours do not last forever. Communism never lived to its promise. Somehow, from the word go, the lure of human desires always superseded the need to do the just thing. Under the cloak of grandiosity, lay beneath a corrupt system which was hellb...

Like a line of falling domino tiles, one by one, they all fall. Yet another one fell prey to the black dog. Even the outwardly strong minded ones with barrage of ammunition to shoot you down if you were to cross their paths, go into fetal position like a helpless infant when the final straw of hay broke their back. Like an epitome of patience, like a turtle she went on her duty on earth with diligence without complaining. Then came the challenges, one, another and another and poof she went all jello. Young and old alike, they seem to be swept by this epidermic. Coming mostly from humble backgrounds, one would have think that after enduring the uncertainties of life for a square meal and other comforts in life, enduring uncertainties by now would literally be a walk in the park. The general consensus is that one could not buy himself out of all troubles. Crying in a BMW, however, certainly looks less pathetic then crouching over a pavement but then the hopelessness are the same. It...

You cannot fault me for thinking that when I am air bound, I am just a particle in the sky away the scrutiny of eyes of people who were supposed to be on a lookout for my welfare. From a person whose knowledge of projectile does not go beyond the problems I have solved in Mechanical Mathematics and understanding projectile vomiting, I cannot be faulted to think that if anything were to go wrong in stratosphere, I would be literally on a free fall. Nobody would know where I am and where to look for me. It is not paranoia or some kind of phobia of flying that drove me to think so. 10  months ago, our plane went missing and till date no one has a clue where it went, where to look for it and what came out the billions spent looking for it. And more recently, another one went missing. They had all the communication records and flight path at their disposal and yet 2 weeks into its disappearance, they are unable to put a closure to the mishap. So, when you are up there, you are re...

Above us only sky? "Why is it that people get all emotional when a plane goes down in its line of duty?" complained a friend after viewing umpteen posts of the downing of a plane involving 166 and  hardly anything on the massive floods that submerged almost the whole of the east coast of the peninsular, affecting close to 200,000 people of all strata and tears that would fall after the aftermath. Is it because traditionally flying involved people who are important performing jobs which would literally alter the course of mankind? Perhaps, it does not hold water anymore, since, now everyone can fly! The glitz of flying as being the domain of the rich and famous was relevant in mid 20th century. Is that the reason so much of resources is spent on its search and rescue missions? I tend to think that perhaps, man's ability to fly is one giant step in their civilisation. Being a biped, walking on land, ability to fly off the ground with no physical contact with Mother ...

  Alive! (1993) I remember watching the trailer of this dubbed (Mexican) film named 'Survive!'. My sister and I were fascinated by the cinematography and the desperation of the passengers to survive in the freezing temperatures of the Andes. We never watched it till now. After the MH370 mystery, I thought of giving it a go. This survival film shows the fighting spirit of humans to live in the treacherous, freezing, barren mountainous terrain of the Andes over two months. A group of young boys and relatives were travelling from Uruguay to Chile. As they descended, misjudgement caused the plane to lose a wing, part of her fuselage and the other wing and finally crash in the middle of nowhere, making it impossible for anyone to search and rescue. With no telecommunications and a limited food supply, staying alive in the cold was a Herculean task. If that was not enough, an avalanche hit the unfortunate victims, killing more passengers who were not killed earlier. The dilemma ...

You tell me the world is a smaller place, that there are no borders but only in our minds, that Lennon prophecy of there is no country will soon be reality. You say that globalisation is bringing us that way. I beg to differ. People are flocking together. People with small minds are flocking together with fellow feeble minded individuals of the same calibre. They are trying to see the difference amongst us rather than rejoice the various journeys that we take to reach our destination. Don't they know that all roads lead to Rome (or Jerusalem!)? Even amongst themselves they aspire to further subdivide and claim superiority over the other. It is always 'they' and 'us'. Even though all DNAs are all 99.99% all the same and they have not found the sequence for stupidity, they still claim that they are 'the chosen one'. They live in a cocoon contented with they have and swear that there is nothing more that need to explored as they been enlightened millennia ag...

Dam 999 (2011) In spite of having a band of renowned award winning film makers in the crew and many accolades to boast, the producers actually lost money making this movie. Before even hitting the silver screen, the movie industry fraternity gave threat their choice of actors and even a court injunction was out to ban its screening. Even though the movie is supposed to highlight the danger of dams and was dedicated to the 1/4 million people who perished in China dam mishap in 1975, the governments of Tamil Nadu and Kerala thought that it would ignite the age old water squabble between the two states. The 999 in the title refers to the 9th September 2009 and it was supposed to depict nine types of human emotions. Vimala Raman - a sight for sore eye Unfortunately, I failed to appreciate these 9 emotions in this film. Perhaps it was the language in which I was watching, Tamil. This film actually comes in four languages, the original Malayalam, th...