RIFLE RANGE BOY

Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway (2023) Director: Ashima Chibber I remember another case involving a Malaysian couple working in Sweden on a diplomatic passport in 2014. They were charged with child abuse when they smacked their children with a bamboo stick (probably rotan ) for not reciting the Quran. The parents were imprisoned for instituting corporal punishment on their children, something unheard of in that society. Even though a Malay proverb surmises that 'one should live by the law of the land' ( di mana bumi dipijak, di situ langit dijunjung ), this obviously, does not apply to Malaysians in a foreign land, furthermore when it involves propagating religion to the generation next. There was a barrage of condemnation by netizens upon the country that decided to persecute their guests.  A columnist in Malaysia even called Sweden's long remand period "a travesty of universal justice" . The parents, upon return, after completion of their incarceration, received a hero...

Badhaai Do (Congratulations Due, Hindi; 2022) Netflix Learnt a new word today, a lavender marriage.  Sure, the law has accepted the third gender and various sexual orientations. But, mind you, it is not universal and definitely not freely tolerated by many conservative communities.  To conform to societal expectations and pressures, many members of the LGBTQIA+ community get themselves involved in 'sham marriages'. Couples undergo lavender marriages to appease the family and conceal their socially stigmatised sexual orientations. This is not something new. Rock Hudson, Barbara Stanwyck, Tyrone Power and many more in Hollywood had made arrangements to save their careers. Lately, in Communist China, it has been revealed that gay men hook up with lesbian women through social media to show their 'wife' during the new year visits to prevent nagging from the family members. Same-sex unions are illegal in China.  Slowly, we can see that OTT (Over-the-top) platforms are trying ...

Shoplifters (2018) Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda What is the meaning of being a parent? Is it merely a process of transferring genetic material or a legal process determined by a piece of certificate and the State? We all know that being a parent is beyond all these. There is love, cuddling, touching, nurturing and many more. But then we also see abuses and unconducive environments set by parents for the growing minds. The low-key movie tells us in a very unusual way what it is to be family. A family, in their definition, does not involve Nature but rather tend to imply that it involves appropriate nurturing techniques that prepare children to adulthood and make their lives on Earth worth living. It does not conform to what we expect a typical family to be. The film starts with a slightly older man with a young preteen boy pilfering something from a convenience store. Then we see that they live in a bare thread cramped living quarters with a mother figure, a grandmother figure and anothe...

You can only motivate someone so much. After that, it is left to nature or genes as one may call it. The more you push him to the brim, the higher the chances are that he may just flip. Everyone has his own capability to achieve his place in space and time at his own pace or bar of achievement. We cannot set our target and expect everybody else to follow. And just because the other person does not reach our expectation, it does not mean that he is a failure. At his own leisurely pace and his perhaps longer duration, he may actually attain enviable dizzying heights. The ability to explore and try out one's varied, sometimes eccentric ideas, not following blindly to preset norm is the cornerstone of innovation that started the Industrial Revolution at the end of the 19th century which categorically ended the greatness of the feudalistic empires of the world to be replaced by republics and people's rule of law by consensus. Let it be....