Because the clairvoyant said so?

Zulfarhan Osman

A news report piqued my interest recently. The parents of a murdered college student prostrated in prayer right after the verdict was announced by the court of appeal that six accused would be hanged. Later, they told reporters they were showing their appreciation to the Almighty as justice was done. 

These types of news often leave me more perplexed than I already am. An overseeing Almighty who was cognisant of all the things going on with their loved one but procrastinated would typically get a cold shoulder. If He were a mere mortal, He would get a notice of professional negligence for napping on the job. His nemesis, the horned and tailed one, through His proxies in robes, would have a field day trying to act smart and reenact all the fraction of seconds when danger could have been averted. But deep inside, these Satan's representatives on Earth thrive on maladies like these. 

On one hand, we are products of the Original Sin, imperfect in every way and prone to being tempted to wrongdoings. However, we are still expected to bear the effects of our misdeeds. 

We are expected to forgive and forget like He forgives us every time we commit a sin. And we claim that the justice He metes is just. Yet we investigate, leave nothing unturned, exhume, and do a forensic investigation to the last foxhole to pin down the perpetrator and hurl the whole might of the law against him. We gain joy in seeing the accused squirm and hide in shame. We call this justice prevailed. 

On the other hand, we have an abundance of examples of the victims' families forgiving their aggressors. I covered this in another post. (See here.)

(P.S. For the curious, the abovementioned case happened in a military college in Kuala Lumpur. In 2017, six students, then 21, accused a 17-year-old junior of stealing a laptop computer. A seer had earlier identified the 17-year-old as the thief. The six students, together with 12 other friends, try to beat and torture the young boy to confess. They burnt his body and privates with hot iron. The perpetrators concealed him from the hostel warden, and delaying medical attention, the 17-year-old succumbed to his injuries two weeks later. The six accused were found guilty and sentenced to 18 years of jail. The accomplices were jailed for three years. The six were given sentences to hang at the Court of Appeal.)

(P.P.S. Alfred Hitchcock's 'Rope', based on an actual event, comes to mind. How two students of Chicago University in 1924 thought it was cool to snap the neck of a 14-year-old boy!)

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Time to ponder!

Kahlil Gibran's Little Book of Secrets, 2019
Kahlil Gibran, Neil Douglas-Klotz (Editor)

(first published 1932)

That is it. There is no secret. Like every seed we sprout, each extracting our own energies, in different shapes, forms and sizes, build our leaves and flowers, but have to face the sun to get our nourishments. We may take different routes like that, but lest we forget, all roads lead to Rome.

Secrets? There are none. The answers are all within us. The problem is that the more answers we seek, the more questions pop up.

Khalil Gibran, a Lebanese Christian from the Eastern Christian Church, landed in the USA after spending a fair amount of formative years in Lebanon. Exposed to either side of the hemisphere, his outlook on life is quite profound. Here is an example of his thoughts and invitation to think.

A clergyman who preaches the dangers of sin and the need to follow the spiritual path meets a dying man during his travels. He was about to help him but was warned by the man about saving him. For he was Satan. Nursing him back to health would mean saving Satan. On the other hand, what work is there for the preacher if Satan stops his evil? The preacher would be out of a job. What evangelism is there any more? There is no Satan to spew his venom. In a way, both depend on each other to prosper. Without sin, there is no need for salvation. Without the poor, there is no one for the rich to flaunt. Without the slave staying dumb, the master cannot continue squeezing the noose on the poor.

Another point to ponder...

"Maybe a funeral among human beings is a wedding feast among the angels." Whilst man mourns the loss of one of his kind, the angels have a new member. Akin to the birth, the ushers smile when the entree (baby) cries. At death, the exiting member is happily relieved of his worldly pain, but the mourners wail in pain, unable to bear the separation.

N.B.

Kahlil Gibran (Arabic: جبران خليل جبران ) was a Lebanese-American artist, poet, and writer.
Born in the town of Bsharri in modern-day Lebanon (then part of Ottoman Mount Lebanon), as a young man, he emigrated with his family to the United States, where he studied art and began his literary career. In the Arab world, Gibran is regarded as a literary and political rebel. His romantic style was at the heart of a renaissance in modern Arabic literature, especially prose poetry, breaking away from the classical school. In Lebanon, he is still celebrated as a literary hero.
He is chiefly known in the English-speaking world for his 1923 book The Prophet, an early example of inspirational fiction, including a series of philosophical essays written in poetic English prose. The book sold well despite a cool critical reception, gaining popularity in the 1930s and again, especially in the 1960s counterculture.
Gibran is the third best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu.

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Who / What is God?

Kadavul Irukindran

from the movie 'Ananthi Jothi' (1963)


It seems that poet Kannadasan started off as an atheist. With time, through his voracious readings and research for his songs, he claimed to be an avid practitioner of Sanathana Dharma (Eternal Duty) or Hinduism in his later years. Many of his later compositions brilliantly express the entity we assume to be God - the Force that puts order to things around us, the seen and the invisible, the heard and the silent, the felt and the void.

Here, Mahakavi Kannadasan, in a 1963 composition, tries to explore the meaning of God, which carries different visions to different people, from an external force that oversees every move to an internal mechanism so intricate that it does its own checks and balances.

You say He is not there because you cannot see Him. When you float but cannot see the air, you are hovering upon. When you close all your senses to the external stimuli, is the something you feel is God?

In the crypts of darkness of the night, you awaken. It is pitch dark, but you can make a composite picture of the person before you. There is something beyond what you see.

The melodious sound of music transcends the listeners to an elevated level. The right pluck excites the right heartstrings of life. You dictate the musical notes, but can you see the shape of the music that raises you?

Nobody knows what the other person's heart feels. We cannot read the writings in one's heart, but our gut gives a feeling about it.

Buddha may have deceased, but his guidance remains. The knowledge, the path to life, is that divine? Has truth and charity become unfashionable? After reading about how karma hits back and history repeats, should we be stressing ourselves but let nature take its course?

At a time when justice seems unattainable,  and public display of resentment seems futile, when justice is unamenable to the law and whip, let the long arm of Time shall take charge. Time would not hesitate to save the day, slowly but surely! Hence, Time must be God. Is this rhetoric to pacify a crying baby, or is it the secret of life?

This song appears in the MGR-starred 1963 movie 'Anantha Jothi' (Glorious Light) when MGR, a schoolmaster, is running from the law after being falsely accused of murder. Just as he is about to give up hope on proving his innocence, his inner consciousness reassures him there is God. His idea of God gives him the confidence to stand steadfast and persevere to clear his name and marry his beau at the end of the day. 

The nuances of the lyrics will surely carry a veiled reference to specific people close to Kanadasan, as narrated by late musician MSV. Many of his messages are cryptic. Just like the song in Paava Mannippu (1961), where a Hindu child adopted by a Muslim family and grows up as a Muslim belts out a devotional song during Prophet Mohammad's birthday. The exciting feature of the song, which was revealed much later after his death, is that every verse of the song ended with words that rhymed with the suffix 'Om'. Kannadasan was quoted to have said that one cannot take the Hinduness out of anyone born a Hindu. Subconsciously, he still thinks as a Hindu. 

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Everything cancels out in the end!

The 4th Beatle? Paul is dead? 🐕

A successful Bollywood star was once interviewed for a podcast. The star had apparently struggled to climb the ladder of success without any connections or dynastic lineage to boost. He delved deep into his humble beginnings as he cosied up to the interviewer. Soon the whole conversation became up, close and personal. The Tinseltown star started reminiscing the times he grew up pathetically poor.

The family lived on the poorer side of town. Five family members, parents and three siblings squeezed into a tiny bedroom. A slight cough, hiccup or even sigh would alert the others to inquire whether things are alright. Besides pacifying each other, they would prepare some kind of concoction. Whether the home remedy worked or not, the love shared obviously did the trick. They were closely knit.

Jackie Shroff

Lady luck dropped in, and stars sparked brightly. With fame and fortune came a big mansion. Each family member had a private bedroom and attached fittings. The star was happy to 'pay' back to the family for standing by him through thick and thin. 

As cyclical as life is, life had its unexpected turn of events. Early one morning, the mother was found dead. Later, she had a massive coronary event the night before and succumbed to her condition.

The star then became philosophical. If only they had stayed together like before, when they were poor, one would have looked out for the other. The mother would have been rushed to the nearest medical facility, and appropriate treatment would have been instituted. 

But then, life is more complex. With minimal savings or medical insurance, expensive cardiac interventions remain a piped dream. With affluence, morbid conditions may be detected earlier and treated accordingly. To what extent should one give up the joy of living to worry incessantly with fear of dying? As Murphy's Law dictates, anything that can go wrong will go wrong if it is meant to. And Sigmund Freud chided Carl Jung for proposing something like 'Synchronicity'.

When we were young, we yearned for that plate of fat-laden juicy mutton varuval; we just could not afford it. Now, when possible, our cholesterol levels give a disapproving head shake. As the Tamil proverb goes, 'When there is a dog (and you need a stone), there are no stones; when you have stones, there is no dog in sight!'

Like the Epicureans, we have to rejoice in our wheat and water. And the Stoics, King Rama being the great example, troubles will pop up in torrents; we should face them valiantly and do the right thing to the best of our ability. 

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The pressure cooker life?

Beef (Miniseries, S1E1-E10; 2023)

Netflix

This convoluted drama reveals the whole message behind its story only in the last two episodes of the season. Suddenly everything made sense. It tries to show how fragile we are as a society, to maintain peace and to fit in. We pull up a front to portray an image of Zen to the outside world, but deep inside, we hate the person beside us. We wish we could just wring their necks. Unfortunately, civil society does allow this. So we suppress that urge. As we did in our cavemen days, we yearn to be part of the pack to hunt together. Our strengths lie in our numbers.

We exhibit specific behaviours in front of people but let our hair down and show our true inner demons under the cloak of anonymity. In public, we are expected to utter certain pre-ordained niceties. When somebody mentions death, the automatic response is, "I am sorry!" irrespective of whether he died as a national hero or OD'ed. We are expected to put a smiley face in public, no matter how low morale or bad our day has been. We may have had a shitty day at the office, or a Damocles sword could be hanging over our necks over a misadventure. Our professional reputation may be at stake over a misjudgement.

In this cut-throat world where everybody is trying to make a cut for himself, the stresses of the job bring out the worst in us. Yet we are expected to wear an Odin mask but with a perpetual grin.

In a world where siblings care for each other, sometimes love smothers. Instead of stirring interests, it muffles them. In the name of doing the best, it is quite the opposite.

Many things are expected of us in this lifetime - to leave our mark, succeed in life, acquire wealth, continue our progeny, exhibit filial piety, conform to societal expectations, and so on. Go marry and be merry, but can you?

This film shows two characters who are actually on the same life journey with similar life ambitions but end up on opposing sides of society. They kept bottling up the anger of their unfulfilled dreams and the pressures of wanting to mould themselves into doing the 'correct' thing. It reached a point of no return when these two characters honked at each other at a supermarket car park.

Danny, a Korean American handyman, was in the USA with his brother Paul. Danny's sole ambition is to make it big in his business with his brother, build a house and bring his parents from Korea. Somehow all his endeavours proved unfruitful. On the other hand, Paul is just loafing around, just playing computer games. Danny feels he is a failure and wants to kill himself. He was at the supermarket returning the wrong burner that he had bought. He had tried to gas himself dead.

The other character is Amy. She is an example of a rags-to-riches success story. She was born Vietnamese and made it big, selling boutique potted plants. He has a husband and a young daughter. She is planning to lure a wealthy lady into investing in her company. Deep inside, she is still unhappy, undergoing an existential crisis, and finding no purpose in it all. She has many unresolved long-standing issues with her parents growing up.

The near hit at the car park was the straw that broke the camel's back. It spiralled into road rage, a tit-for-tat, social media trolling, and sabotaging, which climaxed to each other going for the jugular.

In the last two episodes, we see them stranded in the woods and fighting for survival. They have to depend on each other to stay alive. A good watch which showcases the Maya of what we see. The world is a big show, and we are acting our roles, reading the script. We are to follow the scripts carefully or risk expulsion. Just maybe, if we alter the words slightly, the final product may shine brighter. Is it worth the try?

PS Sometimes Easterners go with a chip on their shoulders, thinking that their way of living is superior to the Western philosophy, which they believe to be so individualistic and self-centred. At the end of the day, they would soon realise that either way of thinking has its shortcomings.

Quotable Quotes from the Miniseries


    'You ever notice how people who have money think that money isn't important?'

    'Jesus did all those nice things, and look at what they did to him.'

    'Western therapy doesn't work on Eastern minds.'

    'God's just trying not to feel alone in nothingness.'

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A minute's pleasure, a burden to Mother Nature?

Nature does not give favours. It just spins on its wheel as the Universe goes on moving forward and expanding outwards. It does not care for the weak, the rich or the powerful. It whitewashed the nation in one swing, denuding the land and flattening enormous erections.

A pup is born in a freak accident of Nature, combined with the estrus cycle of an ovulating bitch and the mating season. It is not a season of joy but a mere duty ingrained in the female canines to care for the pup. The Nature that brought the puppy is playing its tricks again. Nature unleashes its vigour yet again. At every level, elements strike him. The pup grows because of and despite the forces of Nature. In a way, Nature is strengthening and preparing the dog as it meets the hurdles that will befall it in its future. The weaklings will be cancelled. Its presence would not be missed or recorded in the annals of dog history. Sometimes you wonder what the purpose of all these is? The same force that creates also destroys. All these strengthening of species for what; a breed of super dogs?

You should ponder the next time you see a neglected puppy by the roadside. Should you go out and save the poor soul from the elements or let it go through the process of Nature that it was supposed to go through? 

One minute's pleasure, a burden to Mother Nature? Where does karma come into the picture?

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Cannot have the cake and eat it?

Now that I am getting older, naturally, people think that the School of Hard Knocks would have knocked some wisdom in the thick skull of mine, and they approach me for advice.

One of the questions asked to him in my capacity as 'Dear Thelma' or 'Auntie Agony' is about an interpersonal relationship. Why is it difficult to achieve life ambitions? I have so many things that I want to attain in my lifetime, but family life is pulling me down. My partner does not share the same fire that I breathe. The offsprings wear me down, dragging me together into a cesspool of hopelessness. Is there no relief from all these, they ask me. 

I am no self-help guru by any imagination, so I try to dodge the question. "You know that is a very profound question. Philosophers for aeons have been trying to find that answer." 

In fact, during Adi Sankara's travels from Kerala to the four corners of India, he had various debates with sages of other schools of philosophy. Adi Shankara, who hails from the School of Non-Dualism (Advaitha Vedantha), liked to engage in intellectual discourses wherever he went. In one such travel, he had the privilege of debating with Vandana Mishra, a proponent of the ritualistic part of Veda (Purva Mimamsa School of Hindu Philosophy, and his wife, Ubhaya Bharathi in Mahismati, Bihar or maybe Madhya Pradesh. 

They had protracted month-long discussions about the superiority of knowledge over rituals in gaining an understanding of life. Shankara also believed that to understand life and attain liberation, one must be celibate, whereas Mandana and Ubhaya felt householder duties (i.e. conjugal obligations) needed to be also performed. Rituals can bring forth bliss.

Six Systems of Indian Philosophy 

Ubhaya was the Sankara's choice of the umpire in their debates. When her husband was defeated, she continued debating. Even though she started asking about sensual pleasure sensations and emotional intimacies, the brahmachari still managed to reply via his yogic powers. Both Mandana and Ubhaya became Shankara's followers.

It was agreed not everyone can attain moksha by leading a hermit's life. It only works for some. The others have to go through the whole gamut of trappings of life, its up and down, and to set motion the circle of life.

See around us. Some sacrifice certain pleasures to achieve other ambitions. As Peter's Principle dictates, we can scale only as high as our incompetence. We should know our limits. We cannot eat the cake and still enjoy staring at it.

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The future is bleak!

Love, Death & Robot ❤️☠️🤖  (Adult Scifi Animation; 2019)
Season 1-2 (2019-2021)

It used to be that animation (called cartoons back in the days) were for children. It was an outlet for mindless personification of cute animals doing impossible stunts in gravity-defying postures. It was quite acceptable if a bomb explodes right in front of the character's face. It would just get off with a bandaid on its forehead. Or it could be thrown off into a mile-long deep ravine just to would crawl back up to fight in another snippet. That was entertainment back then.

Those days are over. Now animation productions are of big budgets and delve into difficult life questions. No, adult content is left to manga series for the Japanese to deal with their men's fixations in wanting their sexual partners or dolls to have round big blue eyes like their favourite manga heroines. We are talking philosophy, the future of mankind and armageddon. Since much of the presentation is animated, the storyteller and digital artists took the liberty to expose more skin than being allowed when real actors acted. Herein lies the confusion. The animation styles are varied; some are simple 2D drawings with disproportionate body parts, some use fantastic graphic designs that viewers are confused about. We are left to wonder whether the characters are played by real actors whose appearance is pixelated to appear sci-fi.

On average, the 26 short episodes, on average lasting 20 minutes, narrate a plethora of topics that carry multiple veiled messages. 

Some of the teachings that seem apparent to me, I have tried to enlist.

If consciousness and memory can be decoded and digitalised, they can theoretically be transferred. Hence, personal desires and ambitions can continue indefinitely just by changing body parts. We do not have to leave behind a legacy or need our offspring to continue our struggle. We can become bio-engineered gladiator beasts with infinite power for infinity. 

We can see that humans show more compassion to their pets than the neighbour next door. They buy the best for their pet animals and care for them as they would their child. So, it is not outlandish if they would genetically modify their cats. In one episode, the human penchant for nuking each other left a desolate world populated with cats with opposing thumbs (genetically modified so that they could sit at dinner with my masters, I suppose), menacing three robot visitors.

History has the nasty habit of trying to repeat itself. If a particular event is twisted, the sequence of events may vary, but the endpoint will be the same, albeit within a different timeframe. One episode asks, "What if Hitler was killed not in 1945, but in 1908 when his application to Vienna Academy of Art was rejected. The Hindu concept of time moving in a cyclical manner, rather than a linear fashion, is evident in the History of Man. Man becomes an aggressor at one time, and the same person becomes the victim. The aggressor becomes the aggressed and vice versa, indefinitely, in an episode titled 'Witness'.

We like to think that we are the legitimate inhabitants of Earth by default. The planet was made for us. Well, I got news for us. We just may be the invaders upsetting the equilibrium set by others who prevailed long before us.

Ever wondered why the mammoth structures that occupy this planet exist. We are awed how the Pyramids, Easter Island statues and Stonehenge came to be. And we still do not understand their functions. Well, the episode 'When yoghurt took over' may have explained all these. A mutated yoghurt solves all of the world's problems and leaves Earthlings with all their great inventions. This must ring a bell with fans of 'Ancient Alien', which posits that we were visited by aliens who try to impart wisdom, gave up on us and went off.

A subtle message goes out to sympathisers of immigrants in the episode 'The Dump'. Local council officers after officers who go to the illegal dumpster to repossess it for development goes missing. Apparently, all the long-standing rubbish has developed a brain of their own to claim their place. Settlers who had entered our country illegally will soon have their whole life earnings and memories invested here. Their base would grow roots so deep that uprooting will be a Herculean task. 

We talk about preserving nature but not giving two hoots to people living in constant fear of wildlife. We glamourise a time when animals roamed free. Yes, in a flick of a moment, we can be snacks to predators. The wild is not kind. (Episode: Fish Night) 

Like the message from 'Citizen Kane', the character in 'Zima Blue' realises the hard way, after working all his life to unattainable heights, that the things that really matter at the end of the day are the simple things in life.

We are all so dependent on our digital devices and sometimes feel paralysed without them. Every so often, we have been locked out of possessions. With so many safety protective features added to our machines, it is not unthinkable that there will come a day that the AI inserted in them that will treat us as the perpetrator. We may be hunted down like dogs.

With the advancement in our medical treatment modalities and fixation with healthy living, immortality is theoretically possible. If no one dies anymore, overpopulation would be a problem. In one episode, having children is illegal, and there is a special police squad to hunt and shoot down children.

In one of the last episodes, like a scene from 'Gulliver travels', a giant has swept ashore. People get all excited about this new find. As expected, the curious probe, prod, pose and want a piece of momento of the beached body. Their interest wane with time as nature takes its course. The body decomposes and slowly is swept away. The only thing that is left is memory.

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