RIFLE RANGE BOY

Shakuntala Devi (Hindi; 2020) A joke that my friend once told me comes to mind. A child, aged 5, will think that his father is some kind of a superman. He is strong and invincible. At 10, he is still looked up upon. In the teenage years, the relationship sours. By 20, son and father do not see eye-to-eye. Father tries to pave the path with his wisdom, but the son thinks his ways are passé. He soon refers to his father as 'your husband' when talking to his mother about him. He only communicates with his mother and does not engage in any form of conversation with his father. Things just happen in a ritualistic manner. Son gets married, has a child, slowly enjoys parenthood. He soon realises the intricacies of parenting. By 45, he is impressed by his father's ability to juggle work, family life and skill to educate his siblings with his meagre income. By 50 or 55, the son tries to make up for lost times. When the son is 60, the father has passed on, and the son starts prais...

A few things involving youngsters hit the headlines. Their vocal expression of their opinion on a certain world leader (Amos Yee) and certain brand of politics in the country (Aisyah Tajuddin from BFM - it was not her opinion anyway but of the station ) got them lampooned with vile remarks. One of the caustic comments hurled by cyber-warriors was their bad upbringing. Their parents were accused of failing in their duties of moulding their offspring into socially acceptable beings. If only life was so easy. Forget about what they said and why they said the things that they said. Is it that easy to mould one's child the way one's will? No matter what facilities are available or not available, the path of their future may take different routes. It is not easy to bend one's likes and dislikes to the tune of society. We can inflict regimental punishments and rules for non compliance but if the mind is not willing, it may just shut itself from reality and whirlpool itself in...

Transparent (TV miniseries, Season 1; 2014) Living is easy with eyes closed. When you start analysing your existence in life, the purpose of life and start questioning every shred of existentialism, life becomes too complicated. It make living impossible for you and those around you. When you feel discontented and yearn for the perpetual unattainable pleasures in life without appreciating the joy and magic that is around you, life can be a living hell. This, in essence, is the bane of modern living. We are unsure what we actually want in life. We are forever lamenting that life sucks and things could be better. We reach out beyond borders that are accepted as norm only to realise that that is not we were looking in the first place. This new TV show just completed its first season, released for binge consumption by Amazon. The ten 30-minutes episodes narrate the saga of a dysfunctional family. The father, Mort/Maura, is a respected professor, who decide to come out in the open abo...

http://time.com/3154186/millennials-selfish-entitled-helicopter-parenting/ Millennials Are Selfish and Entitled, and Helicopter Parents Are to Blame Nick Gillespie @nickgillespie Aug. 21, 2014 There are more overprotective moms and dads at a time when children are actually safer than ever Peter Lourenco—Flickr RF/Getty Images It’s natural to resent younger Americans — they’re younger!— but we’re on the verge of a new generation gap that may make the nasty old fights between baby boomers and their “Greatest Generation” parents look like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Seventy-one percent of American adults think of 18-to-29-year-olds — millennials, basically — as “selfish,” and 65% of us think of them as “entitled.” That’s according to the latest Reason-Rupe Poll , a quarterly survey of 1,000 representative adult Americans. If millennials are self-absorbed little monsters who expect the world to come to them and for their parents to clean up their rooms ...

Don't know why, this week, two of the people just went on rattling about the problems they were having with their kids. Not to solve their problems but to ventilate, hoping to hear that they had not done it all wrong but they did all right. To hear that they did what was right in that particular frame of time, in that specific situation, with the resources that they had. It looks like everyone is in the same boat, expectations on the duties performed. The receiving party, however, feels that it is their birthright to be given on the platter. Through thick and thin, the providers provided, feeling that the responsibility was theirs to shoulder (ain't too heavy 'cause it is their flesh and bone). What they expect in return is gratitude and respect that they had given their elders. But then, times change and values change. Gratitude in the medieval times is paid back with life, in the spanking new technology-driven 21st-century world, it would be a 'like' on your ...

Young King Solomon Now it is that time of the year where a certain group of teenagers aged 17 will be mollycoddled with their favourite cooking and given lots of space in the house. They would be kings, ensuring peace and quiet in the house and metaphorically could get away with murder. Refrigerators would be packed with chocolate and packet drinks. And the queue of parents waiting at the school gate to pass the hot burger or brain soup is a sight to to behold. All these in the hope that the parents would not be blamed for their failures in examinations. As more and more Malaysian parents become rodents in the race for academic excellence, character building, extra-academic performance and development of the non-dominant side of the brain takes a back burner! But that is another story... I remember back in November 1994, in the wintery chilly winds of Edinburgh, I was walking aimlessly past the museum when I bumped into, of all person,  my euphoric varsity...