Hey, eat your words!

He had heard of it all. At every corner, the naysayers were there. They were free with unsolicited advice that he should not forget where he came from, that the pinky would only grow to the size of the thumb, and that a sparrow should not dream of flying majestically like an eagle. 

As if the road ahead was not uncertain enough, these doomsday philosophers jumped on the bandwagon to sow the seeds of doubt. Already in turmoil, trying to pull oneself by the bootstraps, the negative vibes are the last that anyone wants to hear. But they yak on...

He was raised in an environment where he was told to respect others and not to tell somebody off on the face; he would just smile it off. 

The element of doubt still lingered, however. The quandary was whether he was indeed doomed to fail. With perceived divine guidance, he persevered. He had the grace of his family as well.

The answer to his doubt must have been answered finally. Not only has he proved his critics wrong, but he now has proof of the whole world’s accreditation to show. All the naysayers can now eat humble pie. The journey to the pinnacle had been fraud with shrapnels and heartbreaks, but what the heck. Hoisting the trophy was all that worth it.

GOPIO, Global Organization of People of Indian Origin, in its continued journey to open cooperation among the people of the diaspora, during its annual conference, honoured POI icons from various industries - security, logistics, telecommunications, etc., from the world over. 

Dato M. S. Murthi
GOPIO International Business Excellence Award 2023
Legal Practice

                         

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

Burning, burning...

©FG

You tell yourself the citizens of the country sponsored your medical studies. With a fragment of the cost of what you really need to pay, for peanuts, you got a degree. Of course, it was no easy walk in the park on your part, either. All that midnight vigil, the missed outings with buddies and the humiliations at work by seniors later on in life were your sacrifices. You were convinced that your job description would read as crucial as a bomb disposal unit. Your vocation would turn the direction of the country, it seemed. Not to forget the stresses and guilty feelings that haunted you as your patients died in your tour of duty. You can but not complain about your predicament as it was entirely your decision to plunge head in. Some reverence comes with the job, nevertheless.

Those, however, were too few and far between. The same hands that express gratitude to you would be the same ones that point accusatory charges against you. You thought they were placing you on a dais like they do to their Gods, right? When they deified you, they meant you are supposed to be infallible, and when things go south through no fault of yours, they cannot blame God, so they blame you.

If you feel it is unfair to bear the brunt of such responsibility on your tiny shoulders, by all means, move on. They are others who would gladly take over until they, too, burned out.

You are expected to do what you say and say what you do. You are just a spoke in the wheel of life. Others can use you and abuse you. But you cannot. They can be dishonest or lie through their teeth to your face. They can connive to get a big profit out of you. They can make fraudulent claims. No, siree, you cannot do any of that. You are supposed to be the paradigm of virtue. It does not matter if businessmen abuse your good office to enrich themselves. After all, they have their eyes on the money, and you have yours on the soul. So you like to believe...

(P.S. The whole equation gets distorted when the medical studies are self-financed. It is no more of paying back to society but back to the coffers. Sometimes it is an investment. Altruism rarely is in the picture.)

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

Are you ready for the challenge?

Paava Kadhaigal (பாவ கதைகள், Sinful Tales, Tamil, 2020)

Netflix Miniseries S1, E1-4.

From a movie-making, storytelling or cinematographic point of view, this anthology of four stories hit the nail and gets an all-star rating. It also deserves an A+ for the attention-grabbing edge of the seat type of suspense in my books. It is all hunky-dory for entertainment value, but somehow, I could not help it but compare it to the novel 'Mother India' which came out in 1927 when the heat of self-rule was very much in everybody lips. It can be described as a polemic book that attacked the practices, religion and every fibre of Indian society. Katherine Mayo, the author, a historian by training, thought that India was not fit for self-rule and independence looking at India's treatment of India's women, animals and the untouchables.

What do you know? Despite all the leaps and bounds that the society had bounced, the storytellers decided that the old formula of societal discrimination against LGBT, women, castes and victim-blaming would sell. Are they covertly telling that Indians are not ready to meet the new world's challenges as they are still stuck in the colonial era's quagmire?

The first story (Thangam, Beloved) deals with a love triangle where falls in love with a Muslim girl against both families' wishes. This is complicated by the girl's gay brother, who is supposed to be the bridge for their union, who also falls for the sister's beau. He, however, sacrifices his affection for the sake of his dear friend and beloved sister. But both families are having none of those and have no qualms into resorting to honour killing for normalcy. 

For the record, India had legally accepted transgender people as the third sex since 2014. It replaced the 153-year-old colonial law set by the Colonial Powers which viewed the same-sex relationship as an offence. Since antiquity, hijras (the third gender) have been recorded in Indian history, including Kama Sutra, to straighten the record.

The second offering (Love Penna Uttranum, Let us Love) tells the nefarious act of Janus-faced local politicians who seemingly promote inter-caste marriages, but in reality, vehemently opposes it. He does not hesitate to stage an accident of his daughter who fell in love with the politician's lowly driver. Things become intricate when his second daughter turns up with her friends and confess to being a lesbian. 

The funny thing is that the murderous father eventually realised his wayward ways, turned over a new leaf, had to leave his wild country to become a regular person to learn rap music in a civilised country like France!

The third story (Vaanmagal, Daughter of the Sky) takes a swipe at the perceived Indian society's propensity to victim-blaming. A pre-pubescent girl is raped (after a mix-up), and the family is more interested in hiding the 'shame' and taking the blame for such a malady to have taken place. Seeking legal redress and punishing the perpetrator are not options as they viewed as a humiliation to the victim. At one time, the mother even thinks of killing off her 12-year-old kid for bringing shame to the family! This episode is a subtle attack on the Tamilian practice of public announcement when a girl attains menarche. It is construed as a roll call to deviant to pounce on an unassuming young girl. 

The final episode (Oor Iravu, One Night) is the heart-wrenching one which is probably based on a real event. After she had eloped with her boyfriend from her village two years previously, a father visits her gravid daughter. She is now settled in the city with a stable job and a lovely apartment. Their union was opposed by her family because of the boy's caste, hence the clandestine arrangement. It appears had mended his ways and invites the couple to his home for a baby shower celebration. The suspense is what happens in the father's house—an intense performance by Prakash Raj, who always excels in character roles. 

Good entertainment value. 

(P.S. The Bollywood 1957 national award-winning blockbuster 'Mother India' was a rebuke to the novel of the same name portraying a stoic self-sacrificing single mother who, despite the adversities in her life, manages to bring up her two sons.)