Death, not the last frontier!

Settum Aayiram Pon (செத்தும் ஆயிரம் பொன், 

Even after death, worth a thousand sovereigns, Tamil; 2020)

Netflix

We paint our faces to make them presentable to the outside world, just like how we dress our dear departed as they leave on their journey to the other side. A make-up artist does that to make the actors look desirable. The undertaker does the same - to showcase the deceased so that the mourners can only see a pleasant looking corpse; devoid of the pain and misery of the tail end of his life.

In a way, life and death are the same. A make-up artist and an undertaker do the same job, masking the unpleasantness of reality. Like a birth which is celebrated with revelry, so should death. The joy of the cry of a newborn child is comparable to the wailing of the aggrieved mourners.

In most Eastern cultures, deaths are noisy and long affairs. The graphic display of emotions and rituals are actually ways to help the relatives resolve the separation issues and put closure to the death of a family member.

This film reminds me of the many Tamil films made in the 1980s with the villages as their backdrop. Like those movies, the actors are generally newcomers, and the theme is something intertwined with the traditional village folk practices. Here, the filmmaker narrates about the meeting of a grandmother and her granddaughter and the handling of the issues that kept them apart. The grandmother is the official 'village mourner', someone assigned to create the tone of melancholy in a funeral by belting rhymic songs interspersed with playful use of words in painting the deceased's life achievements and setting the mood of loss.

The granddaughter, a make-up artist from Chennai, is summoned to come to the village to settle some property issues. She grudgingly comes. Her parents had bad blood with the villagers and had to leave, hence, the resentment. The granddaughter was apparently married off at the age of five to the opposition of her mother. The supposed husband is the one who dresses the dead. In a way, applying make-up is the family tradition, one for the living and one for the departed.

Because of delays in the paperwork of the land transfer, the granddaughter has to stay behind. This becomes an opportune time to rebuild the broken bond and her understanding of the village practices—a great movie with natural acting. The spoken dialogue may appear vulgar, but we have to admit that is reality. Nobody bothers with niceties in real life. The style of photographing is surreal, as if the viewers are there in person witnessing the charade. A memorable scene is when a two-timing husband dies in the embrace of his lover, and the two women of his life fight over to perform the final rites. This commotion is reminiscent of a moment in a 2009 Japanese movie, 'Departures', where a closet crossdresser is wrongly dressed in the wrong garment to the furore of family and relatives.

The title of the film refers to a Tamil proverb, 'Yaanai irunthaalum aayiram pon, iranthaalum aayiram pon' (யானை இருந்தாலும் ஆயிரம் பொன், இறந்தாலும் ஆயிரம் பொன்), which tells the insignificance of the human body. A corpse is worthless once life departs, perhaps only useful as a cadaver in a medical school. An elephant is worth a thousand gold coins, dead or alive. A living elephant is helpful for hard labour and a dead one for its tusk and hide.

Worth the while. 9/10.

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It ain't over till the fat lady sings!

Game Over (2019)

It is always easier to follow the weather-beaten road. After the imperfections, the potholes, the unevenness may have been corrected, or the path may carry a warning sign. Unfortunately, in this era where individualism and self-expression takes a paramount role in human development, the onus in handling curveballs in life is placed squarely on the individual's shoulders.

Previously, one can look back, follow the path of least resistance, have faith and move forward with confidence with the Divine Forces as the guardian angels. Failure is accepted gracefully as if it was meant to be anyway.

Modern men (and women) do not subscribe to such determinism. Intellect has given free will to fight whatever eventualities. It also gave them the ability to think of the possible adverse outcome and the fear of the unknown. Not all minds are equipped to handle such stresses. Some crumble. Memory is sometimes a curse, especially of a traumatic one. 

Life is not as simple as in a computer game; lose one life and still have two in hand. In reality, it is one wrong move, and it is game over.

This story is well crafted one with many symbolism. It is a genre-bending thriller about a gamer who is recovering from a stressful situation; probably an assault of some kind which happened a year previously during New Year's Day. 

It is New Year's Eve, and her panic attacks are recurring. The tattoo that she had got inked a year previously has started hurting. A visit to the tattoo parlour reveals that the ink had been contaminated with the ashes of a brutally killed girl. And the deranged killer is back.

The storyline is relatively predictable, but it comes with a twist at the end. It gives three possible outcomes to the ending depending on how one strategise one's move. One should use one's nature-given faculties to determine one's fate, not leave fate to decide one's life.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Got your nostalgic fix?

We are told that the fundamental need of man is simple. All he needs are food, sleep and the chance to procreate. The high water mark of procreation, the ecstasy of climax, must have been added by Nature to lure Man to help in the continuity of his species. With increasing complexity, when Man started living in communities, and social mores began creeping in, their fundamental needs zeroed on food, clothing and protection from the harmful elements of Nature. With further sophistication, when the society progressed, the essential things in life do not remain basic anymore.

There used to be a time when food was a necessity, or perhaps obligatory, for one's body to be able to burn enough energy for one to garner sufficient might to provide for his loved ones. With their God-given limbs, the immigrants and the sojourners alike tried to change their fate through sheer hard work and willpower. Whatever came their way which was nutritious and palatable was consumed for sustenance.

Now, food is a novelty. It has become an art form, an experience and an indulgence. With affluence, it has become an over-indulgence, actually. We no longer eat to live but rather live our lives to eat. This, we do despite knowing very well the ill-effect of gluttony and sloth. But we pamper ourselves with catchphrases like 'you only live once' and 'these are the simple pleasures of life'. 'You live once' may be true if you do not believe that karma is a bitch that would return to haunt the living days out of you to make you feel the pain of starvation, but that the life lived once should not be a burden to society and the immediate family members around you. But then, in your next life, you will not have any recollection of your past misdeeds!

During my trip to Penang recently, it came to my attention of a hawker who sold authentic Penang home-made coffee. His core business, his only one, is to sell coffee and in its various variants. That is it; somewhat like Starbucks minus the accompaniments. The irony of this unfancy hawker stall is that it is so famous that people from the island over throng to this joint. They do not mind waiting, sometimes more than half an hour sacrificing valuable time to enjoy their cuppa. Even outstation visitors were well aware of its caffeine-rich condensed milk sweetened blend. People do not seem to mind the somewhat unsophisticated surrounding of its premises.
On the contrary, I think it adds to its pull factor. People these days are suckers for nostalgia. Anything with a hint of our past sells (like hotcakes); unlike a time in our distant history when nostalgia was indeed a disease akin to what is now termed as PTSD!

Note the somewhat orderly queuing of patrons. Malaysians are notoriously disciplined to appear obedient in two places: when buying food at a lowly joint like under a tree/ by the roadside or at a betting outlet (Magnum4D, Sports Toto or DaMaCai). Also, notice the symbiotic nature of the shops around the vicinity. Eateries mushroom the coffee pushcart to justify its existence! The sight of unplastered walls of buildings, I suppose, adds to the authenticity and the yesteryear feel to the beverages served. ©FG

The skyline of Penang; the complementary compromise of the old and the new. Living true to the idiom that 'one who forgets his past does not reach where he is going to', Penangites excel in the juggle of re-enacting the past to head for the future. It also helps that this exercise draws money. After all, money changes everything. ©FG

 https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

We are all programmed?

Aruvi (அருவி, Tamil; 2017)

Let's face it. People are expected to live within preset rules. The society sets what is acceptable, what is happiness, what is beauty, what should our aim in life be and it decides our desires and aspirations.

We are enrolled in schools to be educated in a rote manner, taught to act in a predetermined manner, told what are good virtues to fit into society. At the society level, we are all like lambs to the slaughter. We work for the big corporations who sell us things that we do not need. The media sets values that are favourable in modern living. They pluck the strings of our heart to crave for things that the big corporations are willing to sell at a cost of an arm and a leg. We think we will be happy with the purchase but surprisingly, happiness is but an elusive dream.

The world emphatically asserts that all man are equal. In reality, it is just hogwash. People are arranged in a pecking order, with the wealthier ones perched on the peak of the pyramid controlling the poor ones at the wide-based structure. The female gender is given second-class status. Human values and humanity take a back seat whilst advancement in career and accumulation of material wealth take precedence. The weak and the sick in the community deserve their statuses.

'Aruvi' deviates from the usual formula of Tamil movies. Gone are the typical love melodramas and Romeo-Juliet sort of unrequited love. The first half the show keeps us wondering what is going on. There are some arrests and there is talk of a terrorist link. Slowly, through the interrogations, the real world unveils. Even then, we are kept in suspense why Aruvi is ostracised by her family after growing up in such a loving environment. 

After living with her girlfriend, Jessy, and later with her transgender friend, Emily, she turns up at a local TV station. The station is famous for a talk-show which exposes social ills. The rest of the story explains the purpose of Aruvi's visit and the surprising turn of events that follows.

 https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Swing at the New Leftist

Fools, Frauds and Firebrands, Thinkers of the New Left
Roger Scruton (2015, reprint)

I was always under the impression that the input from the academics and intellectuals is the one that is propelling the world forward in the right direction; averts hegemony by a certain group and tries to create a sort of utopia where fairness and justice is handed to all. With a single stroke of his pen, the author puts all these thoughts to the bin. He paints them all as troublemakers, who promised utopia but what they offer instead is dystopia, mayhem and destruction.

For a start, he defines the leftist as the group of people traditionally seated to the left to King Louis XVI, the despotic monarch whose reign ended with the 1789 French Revolution. The members of the Estate and Generals usually were placed to the left while the nobelties occupied the right. Of course, it is all perspective which is right or left depending on whether you are an audience in apalace or looking from the monarch's end.

It is a tough book to read. With the many name dropping and verbosity of the writer, he steamrolls most modern thinkers, if not all, as frauds. They speak in unintelligible speeches using meaningless jargon like in Orwell's 1984 Newspeak. They justify their assertions with absurd mathematic formulas.

The author systematically destroys intelligensias from France (Lacan, Deleuze, Badiou, Foucault, Sartre, Camus) Germany (Hegel, Heidegger, Habermas, Althusser), USA (Galbraith, Dworkin), Italy (Gramsci), British (Thompson, the Fabians) and the representatives from the former communist block (Lukás, Žižek). Even though communism has proven to have failed, these people are actually promoting communist ideology in a new approach where capitalism (the burgeious ideology) is portrayed as the bad guy out to destroy man's freedom and liberty. They failed to realise that these are very same idea as the right wingers (read: democratic process) have been trying to do over the centuries - to find law and order in society, to propel the human race to a higher level and the promise of a better future.

He praises the philosophers of the yesteryears, the Greeks thinkers and later  ones like Spinoza and Kant. The conservative side of politics has had something going. Unfortunately many misfortunes happened along the way and Man wanting to look at other ways of doing things have embarked on the leftist agenda. Even though, their economic models have repeatedly shown dismal results, they are hellbent to come out with yet other strategies to put forward their scheme!

A nice perspective of view from the other side.

Excerpt From: Roger Scruton. “Fools, Frauds and Firebrands.” iBooks.

“Whether it be the Palestinian intifada, the IRA, the Venezuelan Chavistas, the French sans-papiers, or the Occupy movement – whatever the radical cause, it is the attack on the ‘System’ that matters. The alternative is ‘unnameable in the language of the system’. Didn’t Paul Cohen prove the point?

As in 1789, as in 1917, as in the Long March of Mao, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, the work of destruction feeds on itself. The Event is ‘the void at the heart of the actual’. Fidelity to the Event means commitment to nothing. The windbaggery of Žižek and the nonsemes of Badiou serve one purpose, which is to turn attention away from the actual world, from real people and from ordinary moral and political reasoning. They exist in order to promote a single and absolute cause, the cause that admits of no criticism and no compromise, and which offers redemption to all who espouse it. And what is that cause? The answer is there on every page of these fatuous writings: Nothing. ”

“Leftist Newspeak is a powerful tool, not only because it wipes away the face of our social world, but also because it describes a supposed reality that underlies the genial appearance and also explains that appearance away as a deception. ”

“That feature of ideology has long been apparent. But exactly the same goal of hiding reality behind inviolable screens of words can be found in the mathemes of Lacan and Badiou, in the litanies of Deleuze and Guattari, and in the rhetorical questions of Žižek as he patrols the world in search of those who still possess the risible belief in the Big Other and who have not yet discovered that they don’t ex-sist.”

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson

The modern theologians

Credit: New York Times

Is it just me or is it plain for all to see? I feel that the economists are the new leaders of the modern world. They seem to portray the image that they have a crystal ball in front of them and they are well aware how our society is heading. They talk as if they hold the steering and have total control of the rudder to manoeuvre the human race in the right direction. Their destination is the abode of the money God and its path is paved with gold. The lure of it seems so lucrative in a world where God is dead, and we killed him for something so fulfilling.

These economists, the new theologians, speak in meaningless jargons like 'quantitative easing', 'ROIs', 'paper loss' and 'bull run' which are just rhetorics to pacify concerned laypersons.

Funny a few centuries ago, we may remember of yet another brand of leaders who used to talk in doublespeak invoking fascinating fables and inspiring words like 'Grace', 'original sin' and a promise of an eternally peaceful place so beautiful that beats everything on Earth.

In both cases, the followers are left confused, not comprehending whether such a place actually exists, the Xanadu or the Shangrila! Some are left wounded, burnt or confused while the leaders laugh all the way in the cover of the night, under the cloak of wizardry, chuckling all the way to their own havens!

The modus operandi is the same. When money replaced ethereal God as the most important thing, so did the gatekeepers. They just wear different costumes and chant different mantras. Economists and bankers are the new theologians.

First world problem in the third world!

Credit: weknowmemes.com

Look around us! We are indeed living in a third world, ruled by leaders whose subjects are still caught in the feudal era, at least in their mindsets. Even though they enjoy the benefits of modernity, their subservience is reminiscent of the natives of the bygone era; not of the thinking and curious one reflective of years of education spent on them. Anyway, the learned ones have all left the roost. The ones left to occupy the vacuum are runaway employees, economic refugees, fly-by-night snake-oil salesmen and overstaying sojourners who had been legalised through umpteen amnesties that were carried out to smokescreen the authorities' incompetence, to create economic opportunities and to fish for potential voter bank.

Some of the ones who opted to stay behind or lost out in the chase to scoot off the country when the opportune was ripe are generally too patriotic for their own good or had missed the gravy train.

The other day, I heard an interesting conversation between a few millennials who were, at least from the impression that I had, feeling 'guilty' of being privileged for having the comforts of modernity. They think that they had to pay back to the society. One of them suggested working at a soup kitchen. She related her fulfilling moments serving the needy, reminiscing the glistening of moist eyes of the persons of a full stomach. Another narrated her experience teaching the homeless and the sheer bliss of educating the ignoramus and the joy opening the inner eye of knowledge.

Some of us, the baby boomers and Generation X, who had the privilege (or misfortunate) of growing up through the trying times when the country was jubilant of extricating itself from the colonial yoke, experienced the feelings of underprivileged first hand. We do not have to imagine the hunger pangs and being missed in a conversation or joke that is over our heads. We were there and would like to believe that we had passed that! There is no guilt feeling, and there is no need to 'payback'. We realise our good fortunes, lucky stars and good karma that we give back to society in our own ways.

Nobody cares, really!

The Hills and the Sea (2017)
Director: Andrew Ng

Nobody actually bothers about the little people in this world. They only matter to leaders when they are not on the ruling side or to ruling leaders when it is time for their re-election. Otherwise, it is just lip-service.

This 25-minute documentary highlights the effects of overdevelopment of Penang Island to the coastal fishing community of Tanjung Tokong and the displacement of the Dusky Leaf monkeys from the hills of Penang.

Reclamation of lands around the Penang has utterly destroyed the corals, swamp and the marine life around the bay around Tanjung Tokong. Small-time coastal fishermen had been sustaining their family for generations with their little boat catching fishes, crabs and prawns in this area. The building of high rise luxury apartments had not only damaged their rice bowls, but it has also made them strangers on their own turf. A portion of the lagoon had been cordoned off and is classified as private property.

Pleas to the powers that be by the fishermen representatives for aid for bigger boats and durable fishing nets as well as equipment for deep-sea fishing has fallen on deaf ears. The silence from the leaders is deafening. Somehow, these little people feel sidelined to serve the interests of the developers. They are not anti-development but merely want to be able to join in the merriment of living in comfort as the state prospers.

The scarcity of land also pushes development towards the hills. The introvert occupants of these hills, the Dusky Leaf monkeys are feeling the brunt of loss of habitat and difficulty in finding food as the highway cuts through their home. Researcher Joleen Yap highlights the plights of these cute animals as they become road kills when they have to venture far from their usual surroundings for survival. Her efforts seem to be bearing fruit as the people high up have agreed to reassess the environmental impact of the project. Things like canopy bridges are in the pipeline to ease their access to the other parts of the island.

This film debuted at the Malaysian Freedom Film Festival on 2nd September 2017. After the screening of the documentary, the Director, Joleen Yap and the representatives of the affected fishermen were there in person to highlight their grievances.

The Return of the Amazons

Last Tango in Halifax (2012-present, S1E1-S4E2)

After fifty years of bra burning and empowerment of women, this is what you get. After enduring the second-class treatment and the cold shoulder treatment from the general public to show their prowess all these while, they have developed into strong willed individuals who are well prepared to handle the hurdles that come their way. This is exactly what you see in this movie.

All the female characters dominate the show all the way. They decide, they control, they insist, they do, and they get away with anything they deem fit. It is indeed a matriarchal world. They rule the world, run the household and its daily chores, manage the farm, balance the accounts and go out to work. They choose whom they want to live with, stay married to and choice of gender of their man. Maternity is at their disposal. They are master of the fertility and feminity. No man is going to tell them what to do.

Men, on the other hand, are depicted as weak, indecisive, wimps, imbeciles, drunks and mere followers. They quickly toe the line as their perception of life is simple, to just go with the flow. There is no need to get uptight about something that may not happen. Nothing a good chill beer and a good night's sleep cannot cure. Somehow, everything looks clearer the next morning.

Women, by nature, maybe remnants of the traits of their cavewomen ancestors who safeguarded the caves and children from ravaging beasts when the men were out hunting, still retain their proactive and forward thinking strategies. Hence, they plan many steps in advance to avert catastrophes. This invokes ire the male species. They accuse women of creating a mountain out of a molehill, putting the cart before the wheel and looking for problems when there is none.

These enigmas are not just mere first-world problems as we can these changes develop in the newly emerging economies. With affluence and availability of educational opportunities, the fairer sex has made significant strides even surpassing the masculine gender who still live under the delusion that they are the chosen one to lead the human race. They hide under the cloak of tradition and religion to keep the already dimming ember burning!

This ongoing BBC mini-series tells of a couple of septuagenarians who are re-introduced to each after leaving their school kids puppy loves at school. After leading their lives with their own sob stories of blood and tears, they rekindle their old flame. They discover that through some errors of circumstances, their teenage love affair was nipped in the bud. Their passion gets a second life. They marry to the persons that they had loved all these while and inherit with it the trials and tribulations of each other's family. On the man's side, he has a daughter who is a farmer and a widow with a teenage son who fathered a kid. The daughter has her own problems in love and is haunted by the death of her abusive husband.

On the woman's side, she has a daughter who is going through an unhappy marriage with a writer with a drinking problem and philandering eyes. The girl, with two school going sons,  also re-discovers her life-long suppressed lesbian tendencies. Her lesbian, on the other hand, long for a baby as her biological clock keeps ticking away.

With all these masalas, there is no short of episodes with issues over issues to ponder.

Money begets money!

Hell or High Water (2017)

It has got opposition against corporate American written all over it. This movie must have liberal democrats drooling all over. It is a simple neo-Western story like the one one sees in a pulp fiction. Two brothers go on a bank robbing spree and two Texas Rangers going after them. Doesn't sound original, does it? In fact, it could have been plucked from the many Westerns we have seen before. But, see beyond it. There are no horses and there is more than meets the eye.

In the modern world, being born poor is like hereditary disease passed from generation to generation. The poor is caught in a spiral, like a snake catching its own tail, a vicious cyclical self-defeating spiral. To come out of the rut, you need money which is sparse when you are poor. And to top it all, education, which the elites claim is the sure pass to unchain the shackles of poverty is no cheap feat. There appears to be a concerted effort to keep the poor poorer and the rich richer than they already are. Money begets money and destitution multiply helplessness. The bigger corporations, in cahoots with the powers that be who were elected to keep the general public's interest at heart, have standards that tighten the screws on the members of the lower rung of the society. They go on their work like business as usual. Come what may, come hell or high water, they will ensure their profits and share-owners' dividends do not dwindle, even by a dime!

This film tells a tale of two brothers who had just lost their old mother. The elder brother had just been released from prison. They had grown under an abusive father. The younger had himself gone through some rough patch. He had cared for his demandingly sick mother and pines for over his ex-wife and his two young sons. The family farm had seen better times. It had been neglected by him and is soon to be repossessed by the banks after some shady legal wranglings. To top it all, there could be petroleum in their land! So, the brothers came with a series of bank robberies from the same bank that is executing the foreclosure to pay them back and place a trust in the same bank for the younger brother's family!

Hot on their trail is an unlikely duo of Texas Rangers; a near to retirement racist-statement rantings Ranger and his Native-Mexican assistant who just had it with his boss. Even though the story is predictable, the movie remains memorable for its good acting, the unforgettable lines with heavy Southerner mannerism and figure of speech and the hopeless environment that it depicts - the real picture of inland America - in debt, empty, dirty and sleepy towns with no economic activities. The only viable business is eatery and banks! And the whole system, the long arms of the law and even the public is out to protect the big guys, the corporation.

Memorable lines...

• I've been poor my whole life, like a disease passing from generation to generation. But, not my boys, not anymore.
• He wouldn't know God if he crawled up his pant leg and bit him on the pecker. (referring to an evangelist)
• Blood always follows the money.
• Sometimes a blind pig finds a truffle. (one time lucky)
• Justice isn't a crime.
• Now that looks like a man who could foreclose on a house. (referring to a banker)

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger?

Moonlight (2016)

It used to be that the offspring are just offshoots of adults, brought to the world to replace the labour force once the elders become unproductive, withering to the test of time and elements of  Nature. The juniors will learn using their God-given senses to develop themselves by the time their bodies show signs of going into adulthood. There was no need to spend any time to appreciate childhood, to learn and mould their later character and vocation. Life was simple. You just be grateful to your parents for helping you to survive through childhood and continue the family business. No need to think too hard. You just live for the family and the community you show your allegiance.

Somewhere along the way, things changed. One generation decided to play Mr Nice Guy to all sides. They kowtow to the demands of the elders and play dance monkey to their children. That just shook the balance.

An adolescent, in the present era, has to endure so many adversities at various levels as they saunter into adulthood. As a sound education is a pre-requisite in adult life, the pressure to acquire a sound paper qualification can be a daunting experience, especially if you are immersed in an underprivileged environment where many day-to-day events drag you down from your ambitions. Your peers do not motivate but instead become a stumbling block, always there to ridicule and bully at your attempts. If that is not enough, there are too many role models who give mixed signals on what is 'normal'. Then, there is pressure from the peers to conform to the herd. Many family units, these days, are just fractured units, nuclear or sometimes led by a single parent, with finances being a major stumbling block. We, being urban dwellers, a consumer society with a scarcity of food from the surroundings, have to fulfil our biological needs first before we look into the nitty gritty fine prints of life.

But still, against all these odds, some amongst us, like the lucky gamete that managed to fertilise that solitary ovum in an environment that is so cruel, have their inner eyes peeled opened to have an inner realisation of what need to be done to survive and come out smelling of roses. That itself is an enigma. It is just so easy to slip-slide into oblivion.

This award winning all black film with an Oscar to show is a coming-of-age story of a young boy as he grows without a father figure, living with a junkie mother and an equally hostile school environment teeming with bullies and name-calling peers. It is a heart-wrenching account of the journey of this boy who discovers himself, love, sexuality, friendship and the baggage of family. A good watch, from the play 'In Moonlight, Black Boys Look Blue'.

Go with the flow?

So it all takes is for someone to snoop around to look for another destination. A place where people lead an idyllic life living in symbiosis with the elements of Nature with the divine forces as their guiding light.

Venture capitalists move in. They show them the carrot and the lure of what money can do to enrich their 'impoverished' lives. They influence the elders who steamroll all oppositions who want to maintain the status quo. The general public thinks the opposers are just spoiled sports, reminiscing the old times, living in the past and naysayers who do not move with the times. The time to live is now, and they do not want to be left behind. So builds a frenzy to join the bandwagon to draw sightseers to see what they had to offer. They were willing to play dance monkey to the tune of the first world revellers.

Slowly, the native's lives change. Their age-old tradition of caring for humanity rather than worldly materialistic things is but a thing of the past. Rituals and prayers are only for display which they do like zoo-caged animals or museum artefacts. Hey, it draws the crowd, and it pays for 'modernity' and 'development'. They all want to move forward in life, want to go one step ahead of what their forefathers left them. The world is changing, and they must catch up, they thought! They want modern education, modern amenities, industrialisation, and avert their fathers' brutally unproductive ways. They want to do catching up with the rest of the world. For how long are they going to be cocooned on their so-called glorious past?

Like that modernity embraced them.

Fast forward.  What they see is their people in the same helplessness. The only difference is that it had become worse with the introduction of greed as the primary armamentarium to prosper.  The leaders have cherished this introduction of modernity. Gone are the community spirits and the need to live for the continuity of the clan. They, instead, have become chess pieces in the game of the rich. Their way of life has become a hedonistic indulgence of affluence to spread the foreigners' beliefs as if the natives are too stupid to understand Nature and live to respect it. They give the jungle dwellers things under the pretext of bringing them out of the yoke of ignorance, but time has only shown the invaders' cluelessness. See how many of theirs are disillusioned with their 'progress' and joined the simple way of living that the natives have been practising for aeons?

There must be some wisdom in the words of the forefathers!

Alms ceremony. Daily ritual ~6 am. Monks and trainee monks will parade in saffron robes

to receive rice and other food for sustenance. In return, donors would receive blessings.

Many boys from unprivileged backgrounds would join the monastery as an outlet for poverty,

hunger and lack of opportunities.

FYI That is not lipstick she is wearing. It is due to a natural gum that she chews to give an

alluring pinkish hue to her lips!

In a Hmong village near Luang Prabang. A wife can be bought at the price of two buffalos (around USD 2000)

Children in a village in Muang Ngoi, along the Nam Ou River.

Hmong Village

Hmong Market

Ning Ning Guest House in Muang Ngoi.

Hmong Village

A cast of a bomb, a reminder of the turbulent times

Buffaloes

View from Peak Point Muang Ngoi

Nam Oo River. Flows from China. 4 dams to be built along its path to generate electricity for

self-sustenance and for export, soon to cause irreparable damage to its natural fauna and flora.

Bliss

Idyllic

Picture perfect

Sunset at Phui See Hill, Luang Prabang.

Kwang Si Waterfalls

Kwang Si Waterfalls

Carefree, care less, careless

Ladybird, Ladybird (1994)
Director: Ken Loach

Now, how often have we seen of individuals, in our day to day lives, who are obviously leading themselves into situations of self-destruction and hopelessness? The clear and present dangers of their moves are apparent to everyone except themselves. They stare into abyss and abyss becomes a part of them. They plunge into acts which self-destructive in nature. They go astray, but there is nothing you can do about it. Your pleas and words of advice just fall on deaf ears. Just how often you have heard them say, " I know what I am doing!", "I am in control here!", "Just leave me alone!", "It is my life!" actually and "Don't control my life!"
In the era of self-empowerment and individualism, nobody can put them in order especially if they are no longer minors. These people not only spiral into self-destruction but pull others into the whirlpool of the same.

The authority takes charge of their lives, but these people do not take it lying down. They resist and retaliate, using emotional blackmail as their shield and tears as lubricants. Lest they forget that the affected parties of their actions also need to lead lives of their own in an emotionally comforting and stable environment. Forget man-made secular legislations, and ancient men used the fear of the watchful 'eyes' of an unknown Being and the repercussions of their worldly acts in an eternal after-life. Our ancestors tried to put law and order into society and put the responsibility of parenting, to take care of the after-effects of our innate biological need to sow our seeds.

This disturbing film is supposedly based on a real story. I suppose we have to be wary of this precept 'based on'. With artistic licence, the sequence of actual events could have been spiced up to arouse our fancy.

It starts in a karaoke bar. Maggie, a single mother with four children from four different fathers, gets cosy with a Paraguayan political refugee, Jorge. The tell their past lives to each other and like a flip of a coin, they start living together. Jorge is a mild-mannered man, but Maggie is a fire-brand woman who has anger management issues and has had repeated relationships with abusive partners. Because her four children were partially burnt in a trapped burning council apartment, the Social Services decide to send her kids to foster homes. She had locked them in when she had gone to work.

The title of the film refers to a silly nursery rhyme of a mother whose children were trapped in a burning house!

Jorge and  Maggie go on to have a baby. Unfortunately, Maggie's past came haunting her. The social services' officers caught up with her and took her newborn, not once but twice.

The filmmaker tries to highlight the problems of single-parenting and the society's seemingly careless attitude towards carefree lifestyles.

Inevitable by-product of affluence?

See what I picked up off WhatsApp...


*Parent Induced Wastefulness* (PIW)


When parents strive to give their children the best of everything at an early age, they are sowing seeds for materially insatiable monsters that are prone to sloth, apathy, avarice and fear.

Don’t stand in self-defence as yet. I have proof.
As I sit in my counsellor’s chair day after day I encounter an altogether a new disorder that I have come to label as- *Parent Induced Wastefulness* (PIW).

Here are a few examples:

* 26-year-old Manas does not want to finish his Engineering degree because he does not ‘feel like’ studying.
But he harasses his parents every day for money.
He tells me that whenever he did not feel like doing any particular activity, his parents told him he could quit.
They always said they did not want him to get ‘stressed’ like they were when growing up.

* 34-year-old Raghav is a qualified Engineer and is married for two years but his wife is not ready to live with him hence the counselling.
He is qualified alright but refuses to stick to any job as it makes him feel stressed!
Every two months he runs back home from work and wants his parents to solve his problem like they did every time he refused to go to school.

* 28 years old Anjali does not want to go back to her one-year-old marriage because it is too much for her to work in the office and then look after the household.
She wants her mother to come and live with her and do the household work.

There are many others...
but all originating in overzealous parents wanting to protect their children from even the smallest discomfort in childhood.
You love them alright, but when you shell them from the adversities of life, what you are doing is bringing them up in a sterile environment.
The result: the moment they are exposed to the world their immunity buckles up and they stand threadbare wanting to run away from everything that is anything but comfortable.

They have to live in this very world and away from you.
Do you really love them?
Or do you love yourself more?
If it is them, then you would ensure to make them future ready- let them face, talk to them, provide support, but let them face housework, studies, bullying and adversities.
Tell them money is limited and let them learn to hear a lot of ‘NO’.
That’s what makes them 'FUTURE READY'.

- *Dr. Sapna Sharma*
Psychotherapist, Spiritual Counselor, Life Reinvention Coach & Motivational speaker.

The blurred boundaries of friend and lover zones

Ae Dil Ki Mushkil (Hindi, 2016)

Gone are the days when the sanctity of conjugal union and the adage of one man to one woman is guarded until the end of time till death do them apart. Poetic justice would be the order of the day as if one person was born for the other. Love triangles would invariably end up with either one sacrificing his/her love or his demise. The sanctity of marriage or love was kept 'pure'. Coming together of man and woman (only man and woman) is for ever, and there is no such thing as changing partners. People do not break relationships because it does not fulfil their inner desires or because it is meaningless. They make do with what they have and find happiness even the most hopeless of circumstances. When offspring come into the picture, the purpose seems more clear cut.

That is in the perfect world of Tinseltown. The celluloid industry used to set the standards of how live should be lived and stuck set in its agenda of praising the age old Indian idea of monoamory and loyalty. The World has changed and ancient ideas have become passe. Hence, Bollywood too has to metamorphose.

The gender role too has changed over the years. From a docile, submissive and non-confrontational stance who would exert their influences from the sidelines in the yesteryears, women have evolved to statures of wielding power, self-reliance and self-sustenance. In the matters of the heart too, they now hold the rein of what they feel and what they desire. They are no more the ones who needs mollycoddling but instead take the upper hand of things. Wearing the pants is no more the masculine domain. Conversely, generations of shielding by their mothers of their prized jewel crowns by their mothers have turned into fragile wimps who need emotional lullaby and potty training. 

This film courted meaningless controversy when the casting directors decided to employ an actor from their neighbouring country's not-so-glamorous movie industry. It snowballed to become yet another divide in the country into a dichotomy who claim nationalistic spirits through division and the other via inclusion. In the end, the tiff just helps to give free publicity. The movie makers smile all the way to the bank whilst it means little to the little men on the streets. 

The movie tells the tale of a wealthy kid's supposedly doing MBA in London and goes around in search of love in the wrong people. The person with whom he falls flat for, only look at him from a platonic angle. The melodrama which follows deals tries to convince its audiences that people of different sexes can do everything under the stars including sharing the same bed at night and call the relationship 'just friends yaar!'

The test of faith

A friend whom I know was complaining to me recently. I know him as a faithful servant of a temple. He spends most of his precious free time doing chores at a temple with the believe that he was doing his bit to keep the faith going. He was hoping that his little deeds, will keep the seed of his religion going. His conviction was further strengthened when an offspring came into the picture after many futile attempts of medical intervention at fertility. He was compelled to accept that that produce was indeed divine in origin but not the immaculate type!

Tmn Connaught to Angkasapuri

Hence, his journey into the Divine deepened. He felt that he had to give his life and soul trying to live up the messages imbibed in the good Books. Within the confines of his abode and the surroundings of his place of worship, living it up to the teachings were no brainer. Everyone visiting the house of God naturally became well behaved. He had control of the behaviour of his family members in his household too.

But... Once he sets his foot out of his comfort zone, things turn combative. One familiar driving around the city would agree that it is a war zone out there and all human decency is drained out once one starts the ignition. Any little iota of civility and courtesy goes out of the window the moment the driver places his posterior on the seat. Scouring for a place to park the vehicle awakens the cannibalistic gene of our long lost ancestors. And get a slight scratch on your hard-earned horsepower and lose your sanity.

Sea of patience. Cubaan!

With all these challenges, I can understand why my friend complains that all his dharma and deeds at the temple is nullified. As much as he can, he tries to fall the teachings of the sages to practise patience, tolerance and the art of giving rather than taking in all his daily ventures, as mere mortal, he failed at all levels. His faith is tested on a daily basis. Maybe the learned mystics and wise men never had to brave the KL traffic. Karma is neither instant nor slow. Rules are made to broken.The guardians placed to protect turn predators to feed on hapless occupants of lower rung of the food chain.

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