The good can be perpetrators of evil too!

Vanavaas (Exile, Hindi; 2025)

Director: Anil Sharma

I was watching this Hindi movie with my wife. It was a melodramatic film in true Bollywood style, invoking filial piety or at least making children feel guilty for not caring for their elderly parents in their twilight years. Sending elderly parents to specialised institutions to cater to their specific needs was never in any Indian dictionary.

The aged father, a widower who still resides in the home of his deceased wife, is suffering from worsening dementia. Despite his physical incapacity, he is a proud man with his own ways of doing things and is caustic with his words. He had built a beautiful house and amassed other properties. He lives with his three adult children, their respective wives, and their children.

The father is still determined to be the head of the extended family and makes crucial family decisions. Probably due to their upbringing, the sons remain silent about the father's tantrums and idiosyncrasies. The wives constantly complain about the father's antics, but no one is willing to budge.

So, when the family made a pilgrimage to Varanasi, the six adults decided to lose their father in the crowd. Without his dementia medications, they thought he would not be able to communicate with passers-by and would not return, eventually withering away in oblivion.

For the record, Varanasi offers avenues for end-of-life care. Facilities are available for individuals diagnosed with terminal illnesses to spend their remaining days in the town, where they can be cremated and have their ashes immersed in the Ganga River afterwards. After all, the Kashi-Visvanath temple is believed to be the abode of Lord Shiva. Varanasi is supposed to be Siva's summer residence. The idea of spending one's final days in His presence makes perfect sense.

In true poetic fashion, sympathetic vagabonds from Varanasi eventually bring the father back to his family home. The children had already sold their family home and were liquidating another property.

My wife, still believing that goodness is very much alive and thriving on Earth, refuses to accept that any child would have the gumption to essentially 'kill off a parent'. In a group of six children, none would agree to stoop so low as to bite the hand that brought them into the world. She insists that the plot is one-dimensional and has deviated significantly from reality. In her mind, no way any human worth his salt would do anything like this.

Scrolling through actual crime cases over the years, I understand that the human mind has no boundaries. It is capable of performing the most profound things and, at the same time, being manipulated or brainwashed into believing the impossible. It is a common occurrence to see how one dominant character can wrap the weaker around his finger to work like an automaton. Case files from the Nuremberg trials, which document the banality of evil, are testimonies to this. In more sedate times, the Stanford Prison Experiment showed that good people can be transformed into perpetrators of evil.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Doing the right things?

Piku (Hindi; 2015)

Are human beings innately wired to know what the right thing to do is? Do people do the right thing because it was is expected of them? Deviation of what is accepted as the right thing by consensus may lend an average in collision with the law. Alternatively, he may be doing it to avoid future repercussions.

More often than not, we make our decisions using our emotions, not reason. Peer pressure, fear of the unknown and unquestioning obedience to the herd all form ways of our response to a situation. Are our actions paved with personal motivations or remunerations rather than altruistic intents?

Sadly there is no universal law for all our dilemmas. We make up rules as we go on. Just when we think we have seen it all and have all the answers, pop comes a different scenario just to mock us.   

If simply existing as a human being is a boon itself, then every human owes a moral responsibility to other humans and in turn in another; what more to the people who are the reasons of your existence - your parents.

Cycling is therapy?

This film questions the above philosophical enigmas in a rather comical and subtle way. It revolves around a whiny father, his forever disgruntled 30-something single daughter and the owner of a taxi service who has to drive both of them from Delhi to Calcutta as none of his drivers can stand the daughter.

Bhaskor Banerjee is a 70-year old eccentric and opinionated widow who drives everyone crazy. He is fixated on his irregular bowel habits. He borders on hypochondriasm and demands undivided attention from his architect daughter. His deceased wife used to deal with all his demands, but after her demise, Piku, his only daughter feels duty-bound to serve him much like what her mother had done. He is quite generous with his unsolicited advice which he thinks is life experience needed to be imparted to generation next. The problem is his opinions are considered passe. But then, social norms dictate that the elders must be respected.

Probably because of the stress of caring for Bhaskor, Piku, becomes a high strung individual. She explodes at the slightest of provocation. Her love life is zilch. She feels compelled to be by her father's side. So when Bhaskor needs to go to Calcutta to settle some property issues and is too ill to fly, she accompanies him, albeit reluctantly. 

The journey turned out to be a life-changing experience for everyone.  Metaphorically, we come to realise that calm prevails when the journey ends. Death is a necessary event for continuity of life.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Look Ma, no hands!*

My last trip to perform filial duties to the people who contributed to my DNA was sort of kick in the butt of sorts.
Suddenly I realized that the lady was not as agile as she used to be. Giving an occasional cough recovering from the common flu, she moved slowly to dutifully complete her duties as a the half contributor to the built up of her offspring who manifests occasionally for a peek. The duty that she had performed all her life for him until he was strong enough to fly off the nest. I thought she appeared fragile with a slight stoop and restricted right shoulder movement.
Recovering from recent repeated bouts of ill health, he, on the other hand looked haggard further exaggerated by the three days' unshaven stubble. Gone are full bodied arm and shoulder muscle mass, he walked slowly yearning for coordination affected by failing eyesight and sluggish blood flow.
Man, it hit me! They have now gracefully slipped into the geriatric population.
Hey, I am not spring chicken myself. With thinning greying hairline with a near visible scalp and soon to hit the half century mark, I hope to be level headed and rational. The world changes around us. We do not have to change with them. We have to just to accept their change and play their tune. You cannot change the world. Insisting on doing so will only cast a label on yourself as a loony, a grumpy old man, living in the past, suspended in time, etcetera.
I gazed deep into their eyes, reminiscening and thanking for all the good times, hoping that the gaze will transfer my soulful gratitude for lending their supporting hands during the falls from my baby steps. Being inadequate in extrovertly exhibiting affection, I was hoping the deep gaze will transfer my inner unexpressed desires. Suddenly all the good times just flashed before my eyes. In those memories they appear so youthful and gay. Secretly (but cursing myself for thinking so), I was hoping that that was not the last long gaze.
After all their guidance either directly or indirectly all those years, now I can say, "Look Ma, No hands!"

*Urban dictionary,
An accomplishment,
Something to say to one's mom after or during accomplishment of something that would usually be done with more than "no hands".
- "Look ma no hands!", when riding a bike with no hands
- "Look ma no hands!", when an insurgent blows up your humvee on a mission in Iraq and you lose your hands. (ref, the wire 5th season) sic. 

A rose by any other name...

An emotion by any other language, with the right acting, will still feel the same....
Watch and learn....