Sins of my Father?

The Batman (2022)

Director: Matt Reeves

Long ago, easily more than 30 years ago, when we were a newly married couple, I had the privilege of living a few doors away from a retired postmaster. Looking at us, just married and waiting to embrace life with all its vigour, he felt compelled to dispense his dose of unsolicited wisdom to us, to me especially, like to son he never had.

I remember him telling me that I should evaluate everything I did in life very carefully as its repercussions may reverberate not only during my lifetime but that of my wife, children and my next birth! In other words, my deeds spiralled to catch on to my linkages. I kept it stored in my biological memory bank for future reference.

Some years later, I heard of someone who had her past life analysed by a holy man in Tamil Nadu. She approached someone in this town which is reputed to have storage of palm-leaf inscriptions (olai) of all humans, Indians or otherwise. She wanted to know the reason for her stormy relationship with her beau. It was not too long later that her inscription was found. She was told it was a miracle they found hers quite so soon. (sure!) In her previous life, she and her partner were illicit lovers who had masterminded her then-husband’s murder and eloped to live apparently not-so-happily ever after. Hence, they have to endure punishment in this birth to repay back payments!

Batman these day are no more the comedic

slapstick kind of the 60's TV series. These days,

Batman movies are dark and deeply philosophical.

In a single stroke, that could be the answer to all the incomprehensible life dilemmas - why bad things happen to good people and vice versa, why children get cancer and babies get congenital syphilis! How is anyone going to repute something intangible as that? The buck stops there. There is no point in arguing further on something that cannot be disproved (or proved).

Over time I have realised that I cannot be responsible for all the wrongdoings of those dear to me. I cannot be held accountable if my adult child decides to rob a bank or misbehaves with the opposite gender. Likewise, do I have to pay for the karmic sins of my father?

Increasingly people are leading separate lives. They do not work or behave for the well-being of the collective. This is the century of self, where self-interest supersedes everything else. It is I that solely matter. Hence, no one will take in another fatherly or teacherly advice. “Just leave me alone. Just do your part in my life and get off my back. Like Frankie said, it did it my way; I want to live while I am alive. It’s my life!"

The question of the sins of Bruce Wayne's father comes to the fore in this bleak Batman offering. The Riddler, moving with the times, is now siding with the Occupy Wall Street movement and is going Batman's jugular. Thomas Wayne had made some unfulfilled promises. And Bruce has to pay for his father's sins.

Robert Pattison gives a stellar performance as the reclusive, brooding superhero who is finding answers for things that happened in his life, much like a handsome Dracula trapped in his blood-sucking ways.

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

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.