RIFLE RANGE BOY

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, b...

©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 ...

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...