Nothing like being free!

Kummathy (Bogeyman, Malayalam; 1979)

Director: G Aravindan

Most viewers would not have heard of this movie maker, mainly known as a legend in the Indian alternative cinema field. Unlike the masala Bollywood kind of logic-defying escapism that excites the masses, these artsy films only fascinate people who see beyond the story and what is shown on the screen. Some label this film as the best Indian movie ever made.

The movie came to the mainstream's attention after Martin Scorsese's team restored the old, lacklustre copies found in the Indian film archives in 2021. Scorcese announced this movie was one of his favourites at its restoration premiere in Italy. The original cinematographer, however, still preferred the analogue version, as he thought it had more texture and character.

It has been popularised as a children's movie and is usually screened on International Children's Day.

The first thing one notices when watching this film is that he feels like a child. Remember the time in our childhood when we were mere observers, watching and learning, seen but not heard? There is hardly any dialogue, but there is never a dull moment. Scene after scene, we are overwhelmed with the fantastic landscape of Kerala's countryside (God's own country). It draws us to a time when life was simple, running to school was fun, playing with friends was exhilarating, and days were long. Every new discovery is a new adventure. It was not so much our own antics that thrilled us; we were fascinated by the peculiarities that adults exhibited.

Chindan and his similarly aged preteen friends have a gala time. They play, run, prank, and observe the world go by. They are particularly drawn to an eccentric shaman who periodically comes to the village, singing and dancing along the way. They suspect the shaman has magic powers. They befriend him. During one of their play sessions, the shaman playfully changes them into animals, such as a monkey, dog, monkey, etcetera. Chindan becomes a dog. Before the shaman can change them back to their usual selves, Chindan is chased by another dog and goes missing.

Chindan's family goes looking for him, but in vain. By that time, the shaman had moved to another village. Chindan's family only brings back the dog; unbeknownst to them, it is actually Chindan.

A year later, the shaman returns to the village. Chindan, the dog, runs to him for an emotional meeting. The shaman recognises the dog and changes him back. Chindan returns home. Understanding the torture of being trapped, he releases his caged pet parakeet to freedom. 

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A historical figure not often mentioned!

Swatantrya Veer Savarkar (Hindi, 2024)

Director: Randeep Hooda

It is funny how names like Savarkar, Bhagat Singh and Subash Chandra Bose escaped our consciousness when we were taught Indian history in school. We were only told of Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian Congress Party and their brand of civil disobedience. Gandhi's passive demeanour, recurrent fasting, and imprisonment eventually won India's Independence. Oh, right! Savarkar and the gang were branded as terrorists and troublemakers, destroying the order, culture and modernity the highly evolved superior race brought to the lost natives. 

Now, we are told of alternative narratives of events that may have happened during the 200 years of the Raj's rule in India. The victors control the narratives, but entertaining the other side of the story is worthwhile. Let us not forget that the immediate reason for the British's sudden exodus from Bharat was not just the bludgeoning British debt to India incurred during WW2 but the Indian Navy Mutiny that kicked out around the time of the trial of captured INA soldiers in 1946.

Savakar has always been and is still labelled a bad boy. He used the word 'Hindutva' way too often to make British and non-Hindus hot under their collar. Even in today's context, the mention of Hindutva brings forth the image of a saffron-donning warrior hoisting a flag with an image of a ferocious-looking Hanuman as a motif. In the eyes of those in opposition to the second-term ruling party BJB, this is a dog whistle for the battle for Hindu domination, a.k.a. Hindutva. 

Not in Savarkar's mind, however. He chose the path of aggression against the invaders. The secret society 'Abhinav Bharat' was his brainchild. It became a nidus for many young spirit men to take arms to assassinate British leaders who wronged Indians. Savarkar looked at Hindutva as a political, geographic, and cultural movement linked to the region from the Sindhu River to the ocean that is Bharat, as it is considered their ancestral land. He used the concept of Hindutva to reel the masses, Hindus and non-Hindus alike, to chase out the invaders. Unfortunately, in modern times, it has taken an oppressive meaning to mean to oppress the minority, the weak and the downtroddden in the fringe of society.

Even as a student at Ferguson College in Pune, he was a rabble-rouser. Being a brilliant student, he managed to secure a place to study law in London with the help of local sponsors who were also quiet revolutionaries. It was in London that he blossomed. He landed in India House in Highgate, the hub for Indian revolutionaries. Famous icons like Madam Cama (who brought India's plight to the Socialist Forum in Stuttgart in 1907 and unveiled India's 'Tricolour' with the word Bande Mataram and logos representing significant religions of India), Madan Lal Dhingra (who assassinated the officers of the Secretary of State for India, Curzon Wyllie) and many other rebels had met Savarkar there. 

Early Tricolour -1907

In 1907, Savarkar wrote 'The War of Independence' in response to Britain's celebrations of the quashing of the 1857 Indian Rebellion. This mutiny also called the Sepoy Mutiny, caused the British to introduce tight gun control and draconian measures to curb Indian resistance. Savakar's book has become the handbook for future Indian freedom fighters who opted for Independence through armed resistance. Savarkar looked at the 1857 mutiny as India's First War for Independence. 

In 1910, Savarkar was arrested for multiple charges, including starting a war against the Crown and was deported to India by sea. When the ship docked at Marseilles, he attempted a dash to freedom but was rearrested and returned to the British after much deliberation. In India, he was sentenced to fifty years at Kala Pani in Andaman Island. The world passed him by. His brother was also jailed on the same island, but they never met till much later. The state confiscated his family property, and his wife, mother, and sisters lived as paupers. Savarkar's degrees were withdrawn. 

By 1921, Savarkar, after writing many petitions after petitions, was transferred to Ratnagiri prison on the mainland. He obtained restricted release by 1924.

He was ideologically opposed to many of Gandhi's proposals. He felt Gandhi and the Congress Party were too appeasing to the British demands. It was no wonder why none of the Congress members were ever jailed in Kala Pani. Gandhi's Sathyagraha movement was oppositional to his violent approach to clinching Independence. Savarkar suggested that Indian youths should partake in British Army training and combats, in contrast to the Quit India movement and Congress's refusal to enlist for war. These exercises, he thought, would be helpful in the Indian War of Independence later. Savarkar was also inimical of the Khilafat movement.

As the head of the Hindu Mahasabha, he allied with the Muslim League to successfully compete in many provincial elections. 

Be careful with whom you pose in a photo.
Here, Savakar (centre) is seated beside Godse
(dark half-jacket)

Savarkar is reputed to have helped to erect the Patit Pavan Mandir when Orthodox Brahmins refused to let Dalits into their temples. It now runs an annual Ganesh festival, which all castes attend.

After Gandhi's assassination in 1948, Savarkar's name was dragged in again. The assassin, Nathuram Godse, was a member of the Hindu Mahasabha and RSS and had allegedly had a meeting just before the said killing. The Kapoor Commission was set up to ascertain his involvement, but the decision was left hanging. Only in 2018 Savarkar's name was erased as the co-conspirator of Gandhi's shooting.

Savarkar died in 1966, soon after his wife's death. He fasted himself to death, refusing food, water and medicines as he felt his work on Earth was done.

The irony of all is that the man of passive resistance, Gandhi, died a violent death. In contrast, Savarkar, who advocated violence as the means to win Independence, died in a relatively passive way without giving a fight.

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We haven't changed!

Emancipation (2022)
Director: Antoine Fuqua

This movie is about an Afro-American slave in Louisana who lived around the 1860s during the American Civil War. A man who never knew his ancestry, age or birth date. His master called him Peter, so Peter he was. All he ever wanted was freedom and to be with his wife and children. What he got was incarceration, and he was transported to slog it out as a manual labourer on the expanding American railway line. Even though he heard about a decree that freed slaves, all he got were abuses and beatings. The photograph of his bare back, laden with keloid-filled scourge-whipped scars, was a selling point for abolitionists. This graphical representation not only manifests the pains the slaves had to endure in the development of the country but also shows the gall a fellow human being would inflict on his own kind. 

Parents tell their children to be kind and loving. The Book instructs us to love one another and that God created us in his own image, but that advice is only applicable to his own kind or the white race.

'Scourged back' of Peter or Gordon (~1863)
The former slave whose photo was
circulated by the Abolitionist Movement
during the American Civil War.

150 years moving forward, are we any wiser? I do not think so. Our wisdom remains skin-deep. We continue beyond one's colour and justify our evil deeds with the selective interpretation of the Book. Despite all these, we are told to stay hopeful and be the change for better things to come.

To appease the woke generation, films like these reinforce the idea that continued racial persecution is the primary reason for the discrepancy in living standards of blacks in America 150 years on. Academicians like Thomas Sowell continue denying this postulate. He vehemently stresses that affirmative action only produces a weak generation.

As a history student at the primary school level, what I grasped from my school books was that people from the North felt terrible for the slaves and wanted to free them. How naive?

In reality, it was all about economics. Abe Lincoln had no undying compassion for the blacks. He had no unending desire to break bread with them or drink with them. He only wanted to free them and pack them off to Africa, maybe Liberia. The South depended heavily on slaves to move their labour-intensive agricultural sectors. Cotton picking and sugarcane production needed much manpower. The South was not willing to surrender their slaves so easily, hence the Civil War.

Unfortunately, even though The Emancipation Bill was passed, the former slaves were ill-prepared to withstand the pressures the Bill brought. Lincoln was assassinated. The blacks had the power but not the ability to partake in deciding their fate. Then came the Ku Klax Klan and their hooded witch-hunts. Jim Crow laws ensued. All these measures did nothing to their well-being. 

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The movie revolves around Peter's escapades as he escapes from the clutches of slavery to the grasp of the guard dog, the jaws of the swamp crocodile, and the end of the barrel of the gun. He was finally rescued by the Union Soldiers and lived to tell his account of his misadventure.

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Bitter pill to swallow!

Aftershock (2022)
Director, Producer: Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis

In the 70s, active labour management was the craze in the Obstetrics circle, especially amongst the countries that looked at the UK as their point of reference. This kind of treatment was first tried out at the Royal Dublin Hospital, promising short labours, lower caesarean section rates and safer outcomes. It soon became the golden standard of managing parturient mothers in most labour rooms.

There had been debates on whether Dublin's figures and definition of labour were only agreeable to some. Many argued that the system tends to over-medicalise something quite natural that people have been doing for aeons. Medical intervention tends to involve surgical intervention, it is alleged. Unfortunately, with eyes constantly scrutinising for clues to stir dirt when a medical outcome is not to their liking, medical practitioners tend to practice defensive medicine. Better be safe than be bogged by handling complications, a battery of legal suits and the threat of being struck off the register.

An often overlooked and unmentioned fact about Dublin's 'active management' is that mothers had a named midwife with them, i.e. a midwife who sees her during pregnancy and through her labour. Labouring mothers are at ease with a familiar face besides their partner. It is said to allay anxiety and generally gives a feeling of achievement. This is why many opt, in the West, at least, for homebirths or at birthing centres.

This documentary is about two maternal deaths which occurred within a short span of time within a locality. In October 2019, a 30-year-old, Shamony Gibson, died two weeks after her delivery of pulmonary embolism. The family allege that her initial symptom of breathlessness during pregnancy and after delivery was trivialised. In the second case, in April 2020, Amber Rose Isaac had to be induced for worsening liver functions and low platelet (HELLP syndrome). She had to undergo an emergency Caesarean Section. Unfortunately, she died on the operating table with extensive haemorrhage. The family was unhappy that the staff were late detecting her medical condition.

One might say it is a medical misadventure. In this time and age, people unfortunately still die during childbirth. Somehow, the BLM (Black Lives Matter) movement needled its head to push for the family to rally to demand justice. They find a disproportionately high number of Black women are failed by the US maternal system. After infiltrating every nook of society, the BLM movement and their leftist friend have something else to stir true.

The widowers of Gibson and Rose Isaac form a strong bond and rally to highlight their plight through rallies. They seek systemic change in the medical system and legislation to ensure proper care.

[PS. One thing often overlooked is that the population is marred with the problem of obesity. Obesity carries high morbidity in any medical condition or intervention. Pregnancy, when the body is in a hypercoagulable state, brings forth even more danger. No medical practitioner worth his salt will ever talk about this to a plus-sized patient for fear of being accused of body shaming.]

[PSS. As medical services become more expensive, compounded by the fear-mongering drive of the pharmaceutical and allied industries. In this increasingly litigious climate, when over-investigation is necessary, medical services are at risk of being exclusive to the rich. The WHO's cry for primary medical attention as a human right remains, at best, can be only given at the bare minimum. Restricting expensive treatment to the deservingly ill but can ill afford is the bitter pill to swallow. Sadly the patients who need the therapy most are those not financially able to pay. The bow has to break somewhere]

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The sweet smell of freedom

Swathanthryam Ardharathriyil (Malayalam, Freedom at Night; 2018)

In terms of world cinema, this movie not score high on the scale of creativity. As far as Indian cinema is concerned, at least one given to minute details to the storyline, this would be number one.

Like Papillon and Shawshank Redemption, this film centres around the planning and the execution of a jailbreak.  The first quarter of the movie shows the circumstances upon which the hero gets imprisoned. In prison, he plots his prison break after recruiting his accomplices. There is not a dull moment as the storyteller managed to fill up the story with characters with compelling backstories. The props look real, and the actors are made scruffy and muscular enough to fit the bill of hardcore criminals. The fights look authentic and short enough to get the message. The music suits the situation, and the escape plan appears believable enough. There are a few failures and sudden changes of plan to hold the suspense. 

The inmates' plan is to dig their way out of their bunks to get to the outside of the prison complex and subsequently escape by boarding the midnight train, hence the title 'Freedom at midnight'. The only thing that kind of defies logic is how they managed to wash that amount of sand and dirt down their tiny toilet. Indeed it would have clogged up in no time.

Besides that tiny faux pas, it was a good attempt at procedural drama. 3.5/5.

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Freedom and liberation?

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Everybody yearns to be free. They want to be liberated. They dream of eudaimonia. Sadly, their search for bliss is anything but fulfilling.

When we are young, we long for the time when we are adults and do not have to play to the whims and fancies of our parents or to bow to societal pressures. We thought we had to conform, as a payback measure to our parents to all the food, accommodation and care rendered in our teething years.

Then we get our keys at 21, and we thought that is it - our path to unleashing the caged animal within us. With education came conformity and decorum. With a life partner came mutual respect, reciprocity, tolerance, empathy till death do us apart. With the expansion of the family tree, came commitments, responsibility and leadership by example.

The elusive freedom and liberation just slither us by. We tell us that is just the circle of life. We still bear hope of release from the shackles in the horizon, and we straddle along.

Cornered at a wall, we ask questions, when will rescue come? At senescence, perhaps? We seek solace with people who possess wisdom, supposedly. They raise more queries with their elusive double-tongued talk. Maybe, they themselves are equally in the dark. They escape embarrassment via their non-committal double-headed didelphian speech.

We tell ourselves to suck it up, for the uncertainties were sins of past doing and that we still had time to rectify the next birth. We labour through. More trials and tribulation are hurled at us. We accept graciously. It is an appraisal to probe our conviction and faith. We falter, and our partner does. We take it in our stride. Oh freedom, oh liberty, where art thou?

Will they come when we are free from our worldly duties? Or is it when we separate from our earthly bodies? Perhaps only when we are free from the cruel cycle of rebirth?

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson

The right to offend and be offended

http://www.familytrek.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/DI-I-offend-you.jpg

I saw a video clip recently on the social media. It took place within the confines of an underground train. A mother was seen nursing her infant in a sparsely occupied coach. She was admonished for exposing herself in public. The man who accused her of public indecency insisted that his liberty of not wanting to see a naked lady had been denied. Slowly, the fellow passengers joined to support the lactating mother, but the man stood his ground. He accused her of not bothering about how others would feel seeing a naked breast in plain view. The argument went on for some time till it was time for one of them to disembark.

A few months ago, a Muslim man is a Hindu-majority village in India was lynched to death when the village holy man announced that a particular occupant was in possession of beef. A mob, primarily vegans who thought that by controlling their cravings for blood and meat would be able to reach eternal bliss and be one with God, decided to ambush the Musalman's abode and make mince meat out of him.

So, there is a dilemma between what is offensive and when it acceptable to feel offended? Is it all right to offend another as it is an individual's right to do what he wants? Is it not also a person's right not to be ridiculed of his practices and be offended? The world community has agreed that every human creation has been bestowed upon him certain rights. Hence, by right, he should be able to demand those things that are due to him. But, only he alone is entitled to human rights, not the person he is offending?

On the other hand, feeling offended is the story of humanity. This offence drives him to strive harder. The natives who felt offended by the antics of their colonial master for treating them as sub-human were the driving force that pushed them to strive harder to squash the yoke of colonisation. This inferiority complex pushed humanity forward to fight orthodoxy.

Are we mollycoddling the minority or the vulnerable by giving them an umbrella of protection by shielding them from the reality of the world? Perhaps we should reflect upon these two quotations:

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

~Eleanor Roosevelt

“Avoiding offense means that we don't accept each other as equals.”

~Ayaan Hirsi Ali (activist, reformist, opponent of FGM)

Toe the line?

I have the urge to laze around all day on a Sunday because I know that my services are not needed. I convince myself that I should reward myself by patting myself at the back and tucking myself to sleep. After all, I have been on my feet all week long. Even God who created the Universe rested on the Sabbath.

Fine. I pamper myself on my rest day. My regular activities and clockwork-like demands of duties kind of puts my biorhythms in place. That is, I know I will need to do this and that with the satisfaction that whatever I am doing serves a certain purpose in continuity of life; of my life, my progeny, my lineage, perhaps the next generation and wishfully mankind on the whole.

I shudder to think what will happen when I am given the standing orders or 'privilege' to stop doing all these. No more deadlines to meet and no more compulsions to present myself in person to perform my one thing I am given the pleasure of! What happens next? Am I going to slide down the path of slackers, surely ending to the pleasures of inactivity, procrastination, of sleep and decadence? It will surely take a mighty load of willpower and inner prodding to maintain this level of activity, alertness and suppleness of the joints, age minding!

That is the same rationale in laying down rules and regulations for feeble minded humans to follow. Let loose, the herd-like minded human species would be heading life like headless chickens, crashing into things aimlessly indulging into purposeless activities, going in circles satisfying only their primitive biological needs of gluttony, sleep, sex and procreation and sensual gratifications. 

Just to give a push to a particular direction to evolution of our species, the selected 1% of the upper crust of the society must have laid out the framework of dos and do nots for future generations to follow whilst putting the fear of eternal condemnation into it.

Sure, the restless would question the merits and authenticity of such claims and hence would cry for tangible proof. Devoid of such hard proof, they too, at times of desperation and the tide is high, would bow to submission just like Blaise Pascal (Mathematician, 1623-1662) prophesied that from a mathematical probability standpoint, it makes more sense to be a believer than not. As eternity is a mighty long time. The question is what do we call the Higher Force?

What is it that you really want?

After the demise of Singapore's founding father, LKY, the question of personal liberty and freedom versus the need for Big Bro to oversee things for the nation's greater good made its rounds. Proponents of human rights and individual freedom would argue that the Government has no business barging into personal lives and tapping into our telephone calls. After gruelling all the wrong decisions in the past and paying dearly, the West could no longer trust their governments. Instead, they would let their elected leaders mess up all people's (Third World) future than their own. The leaders are elected servants, and they are there to serve.

On the other end, paternalistic leaders feel that human beings are just brainless blind invertebrates with a herd mentality. They just follow their peers without much thinking or analysing! This was proposed by Sayyid Kutb, the Egyptian school inspector who earned a scholarship to the USA. In his daily dealings, he discovered that people are only obsessed with materialism, violence, and sexual pleasures. They are clueless about what they actually want in their lives, and they need strong leadership to pave and lead the way. His ideology became the spine of many ultra-nationalistic and religious bigots.

LKY has an impressive set of laurels to prove that his formula of regimentalised dictatorship had been pivotal in transforming a backwater village into a first-class metropolitan city. His foes would say that the only difference between Kim Jong Il and LKY is the prosperity of its citizen. But is not that the end of all, being prosperous and affluent? Or is something more than being happy, belly full and money jingling in your pants and knowing your old age is taken care of?

Can freewill ever be free?

Now how often have you heard, "Stop controlling me, let me be free!" "I just want to be me. Me with my own desires." It is actually nothing new. This kind of mantra seems to have been around since the turn of the 20th century for the generation next. Everybody wants to be left alone to do things at their own freewill.

Just like an indoor pet who rushes through the front door whenever it is ajar, human beings (whether they like it or not, they are still animals) always crave for something that they do not have. Without savouring what they already possess, they yearn for the unattainable or the utopia that only exists in their imagination.

Can people really be free? Is freewill really free? Can people ever be free to be and do anything as and when they feel free? Are our thoughts really free?

What dictates our will? Is it not a sum of all the indoctrination given to us via our parents through their upbringing, the teachings that they learnt from their elders who eventually learnt it as the word of the Divine. Our actions, intentions and willpower is determined by the composite of these conditionings. So, from the word go, there is no freewill. What we think is already moulded our years of learning via example. When we make a decision especially in a public domain in view of others to be judged, we would always decide to take the path of the majority or least the path that we know would be supported by a sizeable others.

Even when we are alone, when the decision is not viewed by other to judge, the fear of God and morality dictates what we do. If we were left really free with no responsibilities or no remorse on our actions but only to satisfy our animalistic instincts, our course of actions would only be geared to gratify our real primordial needs, that is cardinal, food and gluttony, sleep and satiety. That is the end point. This human trait, unfortunately manifests under extreme duress or during a mob.

Press freedom versus privacy!

Shubun (Scandal, Japanese; 1950)
Director: Akira Kurosawa

The theme of this movie is still relevant today. The talk of the need for the public to know everything versus the space for citizens and people in authority to safeguard their secrecy is an ongoing debate. Where the line should be drawn on the Truth is anybody's guess. With the recent leakage of supposedly private intimate poses of celebrities to the media is proof of this ongoing debate on this debacle. The boundary of what is indeed trash and what is news is progressively blurred as the public gets all excited with trivial unimportant happenings or smut that happens to people in the limelight or are the people in the press simply sensationalizing these trivial non events?
Again, Kurosawa had chosen a modern looking post war Japan with a Western outlook. People are dressed in Western clothes, jackets, pants and dresses and the ladies were donning cropped modern hairstyles. The recreational activities mirror their Western counterpart. Instead of horses at the races, in this movie, cyclists were the racers!
The legal system is also Western in outlook. With modernisation come the scourge of modern living, journalists.
Even back in the 50s, pressmen had become a nuisance to modern living especially amongst the rich and famous. This, is the basis of this movie.
After seeing Toshirō Mifune (a Kurosawa regular) in mostly stern and serious roles, here he is seen as a happy smiling free wheeling artist, Ichiro Aoye, motorcycling by the countryside painting natural landscapes. During one of these trips, he gives a ride to a famous singer, Miyaso Saijo, unknown to him at that time, after she misses her bus and was heading to the same inn as himself.  Miyaso, a shy artiste, was moving around incognito but was identified by a tabloid reporter. As she was sipping tea in Aoye's room dressed casually in kimono, they were secretly photographed. And the tabloid has a field day promoting a non-existent secret love affair of the singing star. Suddenly, the general public recognises both of them everywhere. They are both everybody's darlings. The paper is also happy, laughing all the way to the bank with their sudden increase in circulation.
Aoye is not amused, however. He intends to sue the tabloid for invasion of privacy. Ms Saijo later joins in.

Comes in attorney, Hiruta, a failed lawyer who had lost the rat race in the dog-eat-dog world of lawyers offering his services to represent Aoye. The role of Hiruta is played by Takashi Shimura, another regular feature of Kurosawa's movies. Unlike his previous outings where he is docile and reserved, Shimura is a fast talking lawyer, at least initially. He has a heavy sorrow of a burden that he carries on his back. He has a very sick TB infected daughter at home and an unquenchable addiction for the races. He feels inadequate both as a father and a lawyer.
The publishers, fearing that they may lose money at court, entice Hiruta by sponsoring him at the races and bribing him.
As the case progresses, Hiruto's throwing of his case become apparent to everyone. His clients, however, still gives him a chance as they get closer to Hiruto's charming but ill daughter. This further depresses Hiruto who is caught in a bind - he is cheating his clients blind even though they go all out to cheer and fete his terminally ill child!
Along the course of the trial where the tabloid's defence attorney, a prominent law figure from the university, has a field day, Hiruto's daughter succumbed to her illness.
At the crucial moment, during submission, Hiruto makes clear to the court of the defence's treacherous attempts at bribing him and turns the case around in his clients' favour.
A nice feel good movie which tries very hard to show the goodness in every individual. Just like the 1946 Christmas movie 'It's a wonderful life' the formula of using the songs 'Silent Night' and 'Auld Lang Syne' seem to work wonders to highlight this point.
In embracing the cultures of their captors, even the Japanese have these songs sang in their own lingo. They don't go around complaining that they have been wronged by a world conspiracy to outsmart their success and bring down their culture.In the 70s many rock bands like 'Cheap Trick' were pleasantly surprised when they performed live in Budokan. Their fans in this non-English speaking land could sing every verse of their songs word to word!

Feel free to be free...

Another pastime that I occasionally indulge in is T-shirt watching. Some of the things written on them could be quite entertaining. Of course, some of them could be construed as sexual harassment if uttered by an individual. As it only written and not uttered, nobody gives a second look. Actually it is meant to be looked again and again! T-shirts with messages like 'Wish these were brains', 'Hammer says "You can't touch these"' would fit this bill. My favorite must be 'My girlfriend went to Vegas and all she got me is this lousy T-shirt'. Not to forget the abbreviations of the word 'Fornication Under Consent of the King' purposefully spelt as the abbreviations of 'French Connection United Kingdom' to  give a false sense of grandiosity to its wearer. Grandiose feeling by its wearer who is awed by his the fact that he is not wearing a garment but a statement. A statement that he dares to be different and fight against the self imposed worldly prejudices against him!
Just the other day, I saw this man who from his appearance as a vagabond with his disheveled hair, unshaven 1 week's stubble, more of a beard, worn out Japanese rubber slippers which had seen much better days, walking aimlessly with his gaze far into the horizon donning an equally worn out T-shirt screaming with red clenched fist and the fiery red words 'Walk for Freedom' emblazoned on it.
My curious mind wondered....
What kind of freedom is he looking for? Is he not free to wonder where he fancied - unlike a time not so distant in the past, where signboards like 'Dogs and so and so not allowed' were placed outside reputable restaurants. Is he not free to be restricted to dress in a particular way or manner (lack of) of grooming? Is he free to speak as he pleases? Is he not free to pursue his dreams if he had any?
Even the epitome of freedom, the bird, is not totally free. He is not free from his daily obligations to look for food. He is definitely not free from predators and pranking kids.
Maybe our homosapien friend wants to be free from the curse of the cycle of karma!
For all you know, the T-shirt could be a discard from a formerly radical thinking individual who had turned his back and to the dark side of capitalism because it is more self gratifying...