RIFLE RANGE BOY

We were told to surrender to the care of the shepherd. We should trust him unconditionally, for he has your best interest at heart. He is selfless and would not call it a day until the last sheep is accounted for. He would not harm his flock. Every member of the herd, small or big, meaty or skinny, young or old, is equally important to him. He will not rest his head until every member is safe and sound. So we were told. And it made perfect sense then. Pack your worries, fold it and give it for safekeeping with the shepherd. He would guide us through, and we would be safe. We will be saved. Now that we have crossed the hurdles, we become conceited. We think all these successes are our efforts, ours alone.  When we are told of the good shepherd and their noble intentions, we ask them to think of the true nature of his plan. He has no altruistic purpose. His sole aim to fatten his pack. Every sheep lost is lost revenue. His seemingly caring attitude is merely to fatten us to pr...

How to Win Friends & Influence People  Dale Carnegie (©1936) I must be exuding the aura of being a loner with very few friends that someone actually loaned me this book. He must have thought that it must be a sure way to end all my perceived 'woes'. Generally, I do not cherish books of this nature. To me, they appear like learning swimming by reading. Some things can be acquired only through practice, experience, and dents from the School of Hard Knocks. After reading through it, I find it to be more like a handbook for psychopaths. It tells its readers how to skew others' thinking and actions towards the readers' self-serving needs. The psychopath would slowly play mind games to influence his victims into thinking that they are doing something altruistic akin to how Piped Piper would rid the town all the mice for nothing (thank you very much). And how the children would be mesmerised to his enchanting flute music to march in like zombies in...

Malaiur Manikam (Malay; 2015) Author: Uthaya Sankar SB From the time of Thales, the first European philosopher, the first from the European perspective, the Easterners claim to have known this earlier, the quest to know the secrets of the universe kept on growing. The Greek philosophers thought that the structure of universe could be explained via trigonometry and mathematics. They were excited when they correctly predicted a solar eclipse in 585BCE. From then on, via critical debates and intelligent deductions, many theories were created. At the heights of the Golden Era of the Islamic Civilisation and the courtyards of Agra of the Mogul Empire, majlis and interfaith dialogues were familiar scenes. Each scholar would go as far as learning each other culture’s language so as to understand the crux of knowledge that each had to offer. They understood that what they knew was the only fistful; when what they need to know was ocean deep! Akbar went as far as creating...

I may not be a connoisseur of films, but I sure do indulge in a lot of them, not in the making but as a consumer. Sometimes, I wonder if I am hiding in a fictitious world of make-believe, fantasy and poetic justice. Or that the conventional wisdom that I learned in the course of my growing up facing the hurdles of life are somehow unlearnt and new thoughts are infused. If fact, way back as early as 1905, a Catholic priest had suspected that the newly introduced moving pictures were corrupting the mind of the masses. He objectively demonstrated his theory via a modern-day lie-detector type of a contraption to prove his conviction. Over the years, people started analysing movies and its messages, whether hidden or otherwise. Hence was born the field of film studies. After its successful role of being a propaganda tool of the Americans to justify their entry and actions in the first World War, it continued its heyday of trying to mould and unify the thoughts of the Western-educated w...