No use for hue and cry!

Brief Encounter (1945)
Director: David Lean

When we are caught in a twist, it sometimes feels appropriate to solve our problems ourselves without creating a hue and cry. Bringing out in the open, getting numerous opinions and getting their worthless two-cents' worth of advice may occasionally cause more problems. Being truthful out in public to the aggrieved party may not be the best choice too. Honesty is not always the best policy.

This obscure film directed by the same man who did classics 'Lawrence of Arabia' and 'The Bridge over River Kwai' also did this gem. The screenplay was written by the famous English playwright, Noel Coward. The film tells the tale of a happily married mother of two and a brief encounter with a charming gentleman en route her return from weekly shopping at the railway station. The occasional weekly meeting turned into something romantic. The gentleman himself was a married man, a doctor, who works once a week at a nearby hospital. Soon realising their wayward ways, after many souls searching, the affair comes to an abrupt end when the doctor uprooted himself to South Africa.

What do you know? This film was voted by BFI as British's #2 in their list of top 100 movies of all time, after 'Third Man'.

A relevant philosophical question that begs to be answered is sexual loyalty. Values change with time. At the time this film was made, after WW2, after being drawn into the working force in droves to meet local demands in the labour force, women felt empowered. With more freedom, came sexual liberation. It was a time of conservatism, however. Morality varied from class to class. For the middle class, the sanctity of marriage is revered, and promiscuity outside the institution is frowned upon. How things change over time?

P/S: Hue and cry is a common law process where bystanders are summoned to help apprehend a criminal. (Wiki)

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With claw, cleaver or cleavage, they clamour...

They are no more the weaker sex, the fair one, the one who plays second fiddle, the subservient one, the one to be seen but not heard. Sometimes, their presence was not even made aware as veils hide either their enclosures or their faces.

Nanthini

The world realised that second-classing half of the population was counterproductive. With the demand for extra pairs of hands in meeting the requirement of the times, the members all sexes were pulled in. 

For the first time, women realised that they too could walk shoulder to shoulder with men. With generations of oppression and suppression, their DNA must have understood there was dire need to evolve to stay relevant. Now more and more of them came out their cocoons, demanding equal rights. The powers that be had to relent.

By then, everyone realised that it was the way to go. The cake was big; there was plenty for everyone.

Somewhere along that path, something went astray. Socio-economic rights were confused with biological differences. Even though both sexes had been intrinsically made with differing roles and liberty, ladies insist that they want the exact leeway that was provided to their other opposing half. Rather than looking at their position as like that of two eyes working in synchrony to provide stereoscopic vision, now each eye liked to think that one is superior to the other.

Lately, the gender with the extra X chromosome had realised that they had a secret weapon. Liberation of sexes saw more than tunics that became scantier. The less the people hid, the more people wanted to see. Ladies have mastered the art of showing too little too much; giving little to the imagination but stirring the curiosity, nevertheless. Raising the hemline and lowering of the cleavage were sure ways to raise eyebrows or capture a roving eye.

Once the attention is of the intended is grasped, they moved in. Absorbing the knowledge denied to them thus all this while, they demanded more. They cried foul when their opportunities were denied. They wailed and drew crowds.

The coup de grâce must surely lie in the skilful exposure of the mammary glands. Enticing of the intended unassuming victim to ogle may knock him off his rockers. Even though the subsequent course of events may have been mutually entertaining and beneficial, or even educational, it is the self-proclaimed 'weaker sex' that decry injustice. They have no qualms in washing dirty linen in public and is equally at ease at invoking secretions from the lacrimal glands for good measure. Mission accomplished, and they would soon scale greater heights.

What is the point of all these; to prove that they are more powerful and resilient? Biology has already shown that their kind is already strong. After enduring aeons of hardship, their survival skills and ability to combat adversaries are proven. Their strength must have come from their task of carrying, caring and protecting their young from the womb. Now, if they wilfully decline that role, are they going to lose that quality in time to come?

A scene from 'Young Frankenstein'
Remember the line?

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Freedom and liberation?

traveldigg.com

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?

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