RIFLE RANGE BOY

To Leslie (2022) Director: Michael Morris When you laugh, everyone laughs with you. When you cry, you not only cry alone, the whole world laughs at you. You also know that winning a lottery only solves a few of your problems. On the contrary, it creates more issues and shows who your real friends are. No one becomes rich after winning a lottery. Another thing. The whole architecture of modern society is set up to make your life a decadent one. It makes partying enjoyable. Extragavance is revered. Alcohol is hailed as an indispensable social lubricant. The media promotes, and society encourages its usage. Nobody talks neither about its addictive nature nor of its destructive potential. But still, when a country is red and needs money, booze and cigarettes are the first things to be taxed under the heading of sin tax. Society glamourises smoking as if it spurs the creative juices but fails to mention the respiratory ailments, the dependence and the expense that ensues. To top it up, ma...

1950s P Ramlee The teachers thought he was mental. Living in his own world, humming to the tunes that emanate from his mind, they were sure he would end up as a nobody. Some even toyed with the idea of sending him off for a psychological assessment, and perhaps to a lesser taxing environment, unlike the grammar school that he is placed in. Collectively they thought he belonged to the loony bin. Surprise, surprise, 20 years on, he was composing music, making movies and winning international awards for his acting skills. The boy grew up to be the one and only, the legendary P Ramlee, a national treasure.   An elderly auntie once told me that she and her husband had decided to leave their first home in Lorong Seratus Tahun in Penang. They were particularly disturbed by the loitering of boys along the roadside, strumming away their guitars and crooning into the deep of the night,  crooning in their high pitched squeaky voices.  They were not thrilled by their unkempt beehive ...

I was fascinated with the concept of having a drawing room commonly seen in Victorian homes. All the while I thought it was a place where architects drew their plan or generals drew their strategies to cannonball another helpless native country. Only of late, I came to know that the drawing room is nothing as romantic as that. It is simply a room where the men simply withdraw after finishing their dinners while the ladies engage in tete-a tete or organise the maids to clean up. The men would withdraw, smoking their expensive cigars, sipping down their port wines and stir up the prospect of creating business opportunities. The same concept seems to work at pubs and smokers' room in country clubs. A place where same minded people would congregate and talk about small things that could one day eventually change the world. Many world decisions, engineering feats and history had been created in these spaces — a little indulgence in sin to build the camaraderie that would survive th...