RIFLE RANGE BOY

He had heard of it all. At every corner, the naysayers were there. They were free with unsolicited advice that he should not forget where he came from, that the pinky would only grow to the size of the thumb, and that a sparrow should not dream of flying majestically like an eagle.   As if the road ahead was not uncertain enough, these doomsday philosophers jumped on the bandwagon to sow the seeds of doubt.  Already in turmoil, trying to pull oneself by the bootstraps, the negative vibes are the last that anyone wants to hear. But they yak on... He was raised in an environment where he was told to respect others and not to tell somebody off on the face; he would just smile it off.   The element of doubt still lingered, however. The quandary was whether he was indeed doomed to fail. With perceived divine guidance, he persevered.  He had the grace of his family as well. The answer to his doubt must have been answered finally. Not only has he proved his critics wrong, b...

More than enough people are quick to sneer at India after Vikram's successful soft landing at the Southern Pole of the Moon. On one end, people were quick to say that the whole exercise was a hoax. It is an illusion. Then, others blurted that a country that cannot provide toilets to its citizens and whose population mostly live below the poverty line should not be sending rockets to the Moon (and playing with nuclear bombs). One even threatened to stop monetary 'aid' to India, conveniently forgetting any discussion on repatriation monies after years of looting from India.  Firstly, everyone knows there is no way for everybody to prosper in sync before society moves up one notch higher. Things happen in tandem. There will be people who will have to do catching up, and there will be those who will lose out in the race for prosperity anyway. The only people who believe that the world needs equity are communists. Again and again, it has been proven that human greed surpasses an...

When you reach a certain age, everybody around you who apparently shows concern on your well being will give you unsolicited advice asking you to slow down and take things easy, that now is the time to the fruit of your labour and the sweat of your hard work. They would often quote you instances and examples of apparently healthy individuals just dropping dead like flies after a seemingly trivial chore. The way they coax (or put you in a corner), they seem to be cocksure of their facts and pretty soon plant the recurrent seed of doubt, uncertainty and fear in your brain. Admittedly, no matter how much there is of better living condition in the afterlife, we rather grow old, sick, wasted, unwanted and shoved around than die no time sooner, preferably never! You will slow down, fearing for the worst, the unknown enemy. You become sluggish, puffed up, unfit and fat, poorly coordinated and a ticking time bomb. When your pin is unhooked, you disappear, become another statistic and every...

I wonder how many told 'The Turbaned Tornado' to retire at 89 and instead play hide and seek with his grandchildren when he actually embarked on his first marathon in London in 2000! Just the other day, whilst immersed in my weekly LSD and my brain soaked in cathecolamines and endorphines, a middle aged seasoned lady runner just whisked pass me. She must be in her middle age with her thick wavy pony tailed silvery hair. Being as typical as a Malaysian can be, I followed my first impulse to compartmentalize her into her ethnicity, which I figured that she must be a Malay Muslim. I gathered from her lone wolf individual runs that she had been doing, (I never start a conversation with her, I just assume from deductions and assumptions), that she must a loner. She must have had detractors who must have tried to convince her to don the chastity exhibiting head scarf. There must have been pressures for her to dye her silvery hair to something to the shade near ebony...