RIFLE RANGE BOY

FICTION  Saturday Night with Pa  Farouk Gulsara Saturday is usually a busy day for Pa. After finishing his work at the printing press about 6 in the evening, he hurries home for his routine of fashioning up for his night out with his bosom buddies. Come what may, the appointment must be upheld at all costs, and his grooming and styling must be completed like a religious ritual. After a vigorous shower to scrub the stains of printers’ ink off his skin, he inspects himself in front of a three-sided, half-length mirror, which gives the illusion of a 360-degree view of oneself.  Pa would powder himself with Himalaya on Ice talcum powder and dab his newly shaved chin with the stinging but aromatic Old Spice aftershave. Hair is next. It must be immaculate, and nothing is better than Tancho nourishing pomade. He dons a crisply ironed shirt and matching pants, creases like knife blades, and the drill is complete. This is no quick endeavour. Pa takes as long to get ready as Ma tak...

The Day of the Jackal (1973) Director: Fred Zinnemann It is like watching a sitcom re-run or a delayed telecast of a football game of which you already know the result. This movie describes an assassination attempt on President De Gaulle's life. History buffs would already know that is not how he died, and the attempt failed. Nevertheless, the excitement and anticipation of how the plan was foiled kept the suspense going. Charles de Gaulle became the President of France in 1958 when France had just lost one of their most profitable colonies in the East, Indochina. When the Battle of Algiers reached its peak, De Gaulle discussed the self-administration of Algeria with the guerillas. Subsequently, Algeria became independent, and many Frenchmen were expelled. Under the umbrella organisation OAS, sympathisers of French Imperialism and the military forces decided that De Gaulle had to go.   In October 1962, in a failed assassination, De Gaulle escaped a rain of 150 bullets that rai...

Mission Sabah: The Manhunt V.G. Kumar Das It used to be that Sabah was one of Malaysia's high income earning states. In the late 60s, Sabah was poised to go places. Then the vultures moved in ..... First, they reaped the land of its natural resources. Then they divided the lands and sealed their dominance through the ballot box. Readers well-versed with Malaysian history of the early 1980s would be familiar with project IC where citizenships were given away like M&M's to 'eligible' subjects. Thousands of Filipina boat people flocked to the shores of Sabah to be counted. The project was deemed a whopping success with the favourable state election results (to the national ruling party) that ensued. Nobody actually wondered why most congregations of Pakistanis in the country are centred in Sabah - as if there was a mass trans-subcontinental migration of Pakistan êmigrês is in the 80s. Blame it all on project IC! Not to forget the moral and economic support of Islamic f...

All the troubles of the world  Short Story: Issac Asimov (1958) Thanks, MS, for the introduction to this prolific writer. All this while I have been watching many films based on the writings, sadly without my knowledge. The movies 'I-Robot' and 'Bicentennial Man' are two such examples. 'All the troubles of the world' first appeared as a short story in a 1958 pulp magazine named 'Super Science Fiction'. Since then, it has come out in a Children's Book and even a 20-minute short film.  Within a span of 18 pages, Asimov brought us into a dystopian future where the desire of Man to keep the running of the world squeaky clean crime-wise has brought them a supercomputer that can prevent crimes before it is done. In this world, all kinds of information and thinking processes are recorded by Multivac. Multivac, in essence, is a God-like giant computer that helps in Earth's economy, sciences and most of all, security. By constantly updating Earthlings...

Tenet (2020) This is another movie in which one may go in and come out of the theatre asking, "what was that all about?" It is about time travel and would make sense if one has a little background about time, space and bending time. Viewers of Interstellar should be at a better place understanding the flow and the plot of the story. They would not find it too confusing. Time and space have fascinated man since the beginning from the Hindu tradition to the Greeks right down to modern thinkers. Time is just an arbitrary human construct to keep track of earth's rotation around the sun as to plan seasonal preparation of agricultural activities. It went on to permeate all over our day to day activities. Our mass occupies space and seems to move together with time. Somewhere interspersed in all these is life. And it is all moving forward in an ever-expanding universe, or is it? In an alternative universe, time could be moving backwards as seen here in Tenet, the movie....

Ad Astra (To the stars; 2019) The people around us are the only ones we have got. Nothing more, nothing less. We should forget all our singlemindedness to look out for that special friendship or that unique utopia where we hope to find happiness. There is no one out there looking out for us or anyone calling out for us, dying to make contact. We are all alone perched in this cold place called Universe. Deal with it. We are stranded on this big (or rather small) blue marble floating in space with no intelligent life forms for light-years away. Rather than building a wall around us, between our family members, between nations and diversions that divide us, we should concentrate on building bridges.  This science-fiction adventure film is supposed to be set in the new future, but my guess is that it is not going to be that close. The movie is set at a time when space tourism is mainstream. Travelling to the Moon is akin to flying on a low-cost flight - passengers pay for their f...

The Eyes of Darkness (1981) Author: Dean Koontz (aka Leigh Nichols) This book has been making its rounds recently after the current outbreak of the feared novel coronavirus Covid19. The excitement (paranoia) grew as it was mentioned that the said virus was developed as an experimental bug in a research facility in Wuhan, China. On top of that, the virus in the book is reported to have a 100% mortality rate. The hysteria reached a feverish pitch as more pictures allegedly coming out clandestinely from there dropping like flies after contracting the disease. This story is a simple one narrating the tale of a grieving divorced young mother. She lost her son during his school trip accident. Even a year after his demise, she had not really got over him. She kept seeing him around town. Many unexplained events made her conclude that her child was somehow trying to contact her telepathically or via telekinesis.  With her newfound love interest and a lot of help from her gifte...

https://kitaab.org/2019/08/31/short-story-oh-deer-my-dear/ Mitali Chakravarty    August 31, 2019   2017 best fiction ,  2019 ,  Asian short stories ,  Immigrants ,  immigration ,  short story Short Story:  Oh  Deer!  My Dear… By Farouk Gulsara Malaysia National Day Special Like the Sword of Damocles, his domestic troubles hung over his head. There was nothing much he could do about it. It had gone on too long, too deep. He just had to live with it and move around it. He could not give up everything. There was a nagging heaviness in his temples. He knew things were going to take a nasty turn and it might get worse. He had created some arbitrary goals to improve his life, but this one had crashed it all. But still, life had to continue. As they say in showbiz, the show must go on. He knew it was a bad idea. With all these problems plaguing him, he thought it was inappropriate for him to participate in this ev...