RIFLE RANGE BOY

Love and Loss Author: Malachi Edwin Vethamani Maybe life has an innate plan to trap individuals. In the spring of youth, when hormones are raging high, we make hormonal-linked decisions that decide our futures. Somehow, hormones control rational thinking. The prefrontal cortex that controls analytical thinking is hijacked by impulses. We take the plunge dazed like a drunk monkey, like a prancing horse with blinkers, head on like sacrificial lambs, only to realise that we are in trouble deep when the dirt (or blood) hits the ceiling. The path into this journey called love stirs all the primal suppressed emotions. It lights up so many intoxicating feel-good emotions within us that we never knew existed. We are swept off our feet, the world is a utopia, and we only see goodness in everything. Maybe nature wants us to sow our seeds far and wide; perhaps it is just its way to improve the selection of traits. We lose interest. We get bored with the same routine and want freedom. We yearn to...

If anything happens I love you! (2020) Animated Short Film This 11-minutes short film won itself an Academy Award in the Best Short Animated film category. In a concise graphic representation, the storytellers managed to capture the essence of emotions surrounding the loss of a young child. This emotional turmoil can make or break a family unit. The gamut of blaming, what-ifs, guilt and fault finding missions would eventually lead to a brick wall among the living but definitely not bring back the dead. The death of a member of a family who has not lived his full potential, however, may invoke a myriad of responses. They say an addition to the family, especially the first-born, unites families. The sight of a newborn will make everyone all jello but strong enough to cement whatever minor frictions that may have been present in day-to-day dealings. It may make or break the bonds between the close relatives, especially parents, in the case of a young child. This short film with no dialogu...

What do you tell a full grown man who is wailing? How do you console him for his loss? The loss of the apple of his eye, upon whose shoulders of all his unrelinquished dream, rested on. The loss of a 31 years young son who just reached the pinnacle of his youth with a whole brand new life laid downed before him to savour. The loss of a son who was just an anecdotal statistic in the doctor's file as an atypical presentation of cancer. What do you tell a man who went beyond the call of duty as a parent to scout for the best of the proven and unproven modalities of treatment to annihilate the tentacles of the spreading crab? And spent his lifetime and retirement savings doing it... Just when the tides were turning in his favour, the enemy struck back in vengeance in full throttle. He fought a good fight but lost the war and the battle. What do you tell his parents to soothe the pain? That their son is now free of pain in a better place? That their son is so good that the Ma...