RIFLE RANGE BOY

Yeats, Keats and TS Elliot all wrote fantastic poems. Rumi did the same but at a different level. To connoisseurs of Tamil poems, they transcend all boundaries. A poet can describe his loved ones in so many words, compare her to the lush of Mother Nature or the beauty of a full moon but a Tamil poet tells her at a divine level. Something as mundane as feeling frisky on a wet evening is pictured by Vairamuthu beautifully in a single stanza. (From the 1980s movie 'Raja Parvai' where ironically a blind man describes his feeling to his non-blind companion) "அந்தி மழை பொழிகிறது, ஒவொவரு தூளியிலும் உன் முகம் தெரிகிறது" 'Evening rain is pouring, In its every droplet, I see your face.   Some may call these lyrics cheesy, but it works perfectly well for admirers of Tamil literature. We have heard songs that induce suicide. The Hungarian composer Rezsö Seress is given the dubious honour of composing  Gloomy Sunday  in 1932, connected to more suicides than any son...

PFS 55 GTG 2018 A meeting of students honouring their dear teachers.  ©FG The excitement was palpably clear. Hints of tinges of moistening of the angle of eyes were there but they tried to suppress it. Laughter was free-flowing, so were the stories of an era so distant yet so near. It was a reminiscence of the memory of a bygone era of Malaysia that we yearn to re-live and re-create. Chatter interspersed with occasional bouts of schoolboy chuckling and heckling was drowning the background piped-in music. A student went, "Gagool (as we referred to one of the fiercest teachers in Form 1; after the character in Henry Huggard Ridley's 'King Solomon's Mines') told me that I stank." The speaker is now a former state football player, who, during school holidays, was forever seen in possession of a soccer ball. It appeared like his main intention of attending school was to play football. He could come to school early, at noon, for the afternoon session, just t...

After 26 years, comrades of the same ship pursuing the same paper qualification met up recently. Many things happened in their lives, the good, bad and ugly. Definitely, they had all matured gracefully. They were no more the shy inhibited individuals as before. Hard knocks of life have made them approachable and humble. Each attendee was given the opportunity to narrate their career journey. One thing that I noticed is that everyone had their own outlet to unwind from the demands of their daily dealings. Two cruise along the country road on their Harley Davidson bikes, one spend precious time of solitude in an orchard tugged far from human activity. One continue collecting diplomas and paper qualifications. One immerse himself in the pixels world of photography. Yet one runs marathons and away from his shadow. Quite a number surrender themselves to philanthropy.  Of all of the interesting extracurricular activities that I heard that evening, one insists that she chose ar...