So much for humanity!

 

It is heartbreaking to see a helpless grown man being beaten up and hosed down with water against his will. Things are different during Holi when people wilfully want to get wet and be sprinkled with coloured powder in the name of merriment.

This incident reminded me of a scene in the first instalment of Sylvester Stallone's 'First Blood', where John Rambo gets hosed with a powerful jet of water for being a nuisance.  

Here, as seen in the movie, a few days ago, a homeless man was shooed, chased and kicked about for sleeping in the footpath outside a commercial bank. A lady security guard was hosing him away while a cobbler who had his corner nearby started kicking him as he lay on the ground, pathetic. A passerby, who thought that rather than confronting the perpetrators and incurring their wrath, he recorded the incident and viralled it. Without missing a beat, within minutes, the internet was buzzing in a mad pitch. 

The bank acknowledged that the incident occurred outside its premises. It, however, refuted any involvement in the violence. Security was outsourced to a third party, and the bank washed its hands of it. 

Within the hour, a kind soul who made it his life's goal to help the homeless arrived at the scene and took the homeless man to a sanctuary he ran. Everyone was happy that the problem was solved. The homeless man has a place to rest his weary body and a roof over his head. Is the problem really solved?

The reason for the man's homelessness remains unknown. Where is his family? He did not look too unkempt, so his problem could be new. Does he have a medical condition? So far, we know his name. Safiudeen Pakkeer Mohamed from Tamil Nadu. 

We can give a tap on our shoulders for sorting out his problem, at least for the time being. But the way the two individuals handled the situation was quite appalling. They later, maybe as an afterthought, were heard telling reporters that they were merely cleaning him as the area reeked of excrement. 

Here, we are living in a country which cries for people wronged thousands of miles away who do not look anything like us. And we spent supplies on them as they lay stranded in a war zone. If that is not enough, we even send our planes to fetch their wounded to provide medical aid. 

Are we all guilty of exhibiting our prejudices to people beneath us? For those poorer than us, of darker complexion than us and of different appearances than us. We Malaysians are good at hosting foreigners and making them feel at home. When it comes to our own citizens who helped to build our country, we become suspicious. Suspicious that they would take a piece of the pie meant for us. Suspicious that the role would reverse. 

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=410521716239827

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When you are down...

The Yellow Bird (Singapore, 2016)
Director: K Rajendran

How does one make a genuinely Singaporean (or Malaysian) movie? What language does he use to make it look authentic? Just look at the ground level. Stand in the marketplace in the heart of town and listen to the murmur. One hears a potpourri of languages spoken by different tongues and in different accents. It must be a treasure trove for a person like Professor Higgins (of 'My Fair Lady') to do his fieldwork. Hence, quite rightly so, the filmmakers decided to utilise a hodgepodge of common languages spoken amongst the characters in the film to make it look believable.

One can say this is a Singaporean Tamil film as the protagonist is Tamil-speaking. Still, otherwise, there are Mandarin, English, Singlish and Hokkien spoken laced with a liberal dose of profanity in keeping with the company of the crowd that the main character is associating.

When Singapore is shown in any setting, the views that often pop up are the Merlion statue with the spraying of water from its mouth or the infinity pool atop Marina Bay Sands. Here, we have the chance to see the dimly-lit back lanes, shady characters and not the usual spick and span fare of Singapore that we are accustomed to.

The extremely slow-moving story may be a turn-off to those who find the prolonged pause between dialogues irritating and a stern expressionless facies of the main character a put-off. Still, many feel that these slow drags are essential to set the tone and emphasise the helpless situations that everyone is in. 

Siva, a newly released convict for smuggling, is trying to reconnect with his estranged wife. His mother does not want to talk to him. She had rented out his room to Chinese immigrants. None of his friends wants to help him. Siva supports himself by playing the drums at a funeral band and as a helper in a coffee shop. He befriends an illegal Chinese immigrant who also works with the band. She is always short of cash as everyone seems to have cheated of her hard-earned money. So, she hires Siva as her bodyguard to venture out as a call girl. Even though not able to speak each other's language, the two build a relationship as Siva continues looking for his wife. 

It is interesting to see that when the lower one spirals down the economic ladder, the more he has to scavenge it out with the marginalised part of society. The state forgets him, or rather, is shunned as specific societal requirements are not fulfilled. Not only they have to deal with monetary issues, interpersonal frictions, substance abuses and housing facilities all piles up his list of unsolved problems. To top it off, they need to scavenge it out with those fresh off the boat. 

(P.S. Yellow Bird is a symbolism of joy and a positive outlook on life. Sadly, here, a yellow bird dies. Remember the 'Yellow Bird' song by Dicky Lee in the 70s? Now, it makes sense. It is not you think it is! It is actually an old Haitian poem written in 1893 titled 'Chouchone')

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The art of not giving a rat's behind!

Is love enough? Sir (Hindi; 2018)

Netflix

The question is this. What draws two souls together in a romantic bond and possibly in the union of matrimony? Is it physical attraction or the ability to see things through the same lens, have the same madness or perhaps share the same dream of how life ought to be?

There used to be a time, perhaps even now in certain circles, of these types of unions being arranged by elders. There are no unique qualities looked for by the involved parties. There is minimal interaction between involved parties, and the marriage is more of a contract to continue the circle of life. One takes what one gets and tries against all odds to hold the fort against time's uncertainties. Come what may, the union of the Gods stand the test of time; only to revoked by death.

Now, is it necessary for the uniting couple to be compatible? After all, it is a biological union for continuity of species of which Nature can make the natural selection. Society determines every offspring of these unions be accounted for and the responsibility of caring for them is cast in stone. Biology encourages the male species to sow their wild oats but the female to be stringent with gametes' choice in a competitive selection of the fittest. Unlike their counterparts in the animal kingdom, Man is expected to provide for his partner and kind. 

Man has also put in another criterion to be locked in matrimony, compatibility.

The romantics in you want to believe that the highly acclaimed movie characters will have a happy ending. The logical mind, however, drills upon you this association is doomed from the word go. A barely educated young widow from a remote village coming to town to work as domestic help is no compatible match in hand for a US-educated architect/writer who has been cradled in luxury throughout his life. The widow may have a chest full of zest and big dreams to lift herself out of poverty with her bootstraps, in reality, unicorns cannot be pink and invisible at the same time.

Ashwin returns to his apartment, heartbroken, after leaving his bride at the altar after finding to be adulterous. Ratna, his helper, over time, tries to cheer him up by telling her miserable life as a curse with early widowhood and being the breadwinner for her family, even though they look at her as a burden. 

The acting is so nuanced, filled with subtle body languages and unspoken dialogue. Despite being a simple story with an ending which is anybody's guess, it managed to maintain its viewers' attention till the end.

The ghost of one's social past will haunt him until and unless one uproots and starts life afresh away from the encumbrances of the web of societal mores and pressures. Alternatively, one can live a reclusive life, giving two hoots to people around him, come hell or high water!

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“you don’t work for us, you work with us…”

Sorry We Missed You (2019)

During the infancy of my career, many a time, being the most junior of the team, I usually ended up having to see poor patients who just made it to the clinic at closing time. I soon came to know that they were living far from civilisation, deep in rubber or palm oil estate. Coming to the hospital meant getting up at four in the morning, preparing breakfast for the school-going children and being able to get on the first 6 o'clock morning bus to town. Invariably, they would be delayed. The transport out to the main road would not turn up. Perhaps, the feeder bus would break down or the bus that they had to change left earlier.

They would eventually reach the hospital close to noon. After getting an earful for not keeping to their time, they would have to seen by the junior most doctor of the team. The senior ones would have left the clinic for more pressing needs. Unable to make a definitive plan of medical treatment for them, these patients who would require most of the expertise from the medical team ended up discarded by the system. They would be given another appointment; the whole ritual needs to be repeated. On top of all these, as they are daily wage earners, absence from work meant the loss of a day's earning.

I thought all these slave-like working conditions would end as the world changed. With globalisation, workers were promised working conditions and preservation of unassailable rights of the workers. Marx's dream of working for sustenance and having leisure time to enjoy the reason for their existence, they thought, would of fruition with the gig economy. They do a gig when and if they want. The workers would be their own boss. They work for themselves; not for the bosses or company. They do not work for a company but with the company. What the company failed to highlight were the fine prints, the exclusion clauses and the penalty they were to be imposed if specific rules are not followed.

Fast forward, and workers realise that the whole economy is just a scam. The same old economic ideology is just re-packaged. The same plot of scheming the poor to feed the rich is in full force. The workers continue breaking their back until a new horizon emerges. Who knows what else would they promise the next time. Meanwhile, like Sisyphus, the unendowed have the find simple pleasures within their unending cycle of hardship, a flicker of hope, resolution, pain and the curse of repeating it all over again.

Still reeling with debts from the 2008 economic downturn, Ricky thought he found a sure way to end his financial woes. The promise of good returns as an independent despatch services provider, he felt his hard work was the only thing that separated him from economic independence. For that, however, he needed to purchase a pickup van. For its down payment, he had to sell off the family car in which, the wife, Abbie, a home care nurse moved around to meet her patients. 

Soon everyone realises that it is not all hunky-dory. Ricky has to spend long hours at work. Abbie finds it taxing to meet her demanding schedule. Their two teenage children are left to their devices. The parents are unable to meet up to their school and their children's emotional needs. Ricky's woes only accumulate. He has to pay damages for lost items which are not covered by insurance and to work despite his injuries after mugged.  

It looks like the dependence on others will spill over on to the next generation. Their dependency on their digital hand-held devices is not mere addiction. It has become their essential tools to do their school, learning, communication and more. The digital world is another platform that is manipulated by the economic giants to make people fall at the service providers' feet. This is yet another doublespeak and the dehumanising trap of the neoliberal economy. Instead of building an antifragile society that grows stronger with every stress that is hurled upon them, we will be left with a brittle one, needing support at the mere thought of pressure.

Again, our electron microscopic friend, COVID-19 has shown us the fragility of the gig economy. Being locked down for two weeks may be excellent for family time and bonding, but neither bring in the cash nor pays the bills.

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Never strayed from its intentions

Dr Rama Subbiah Scholarship Fund
Golden Jubilee Celebration (1967-2017)

Most of us who studied in the local universities are quite familiar with Dr Rama Subbiah Scholarship Fund which had been a boon to many underprivileged varsity students of Indian descent. Not many of us, however, know much about Dr Rama Subbiah and the genesis of this fund.

Dr Rama Subbiah (1933-1969) is first Malaysian Ph D holder in the field of Linguistics. Working as a lecturer in University Malaya and Chairman of NUPW-PPN Hostel Management Committee, he financed, out of his pocket, accommodation for TAR College Indian students who had to commute long distances on a bus from out of town to study their A-levels. That started in 1967.

From then on, the hostel students contributed their hostel security deposit money to start a scholarship fund. Many individuals later pledged small but regular contributions to this embryonic scholarship endowment which was initially named 'The Indian Students Scholarship Fund'. After the untimely demise of Dr Rama in a tragic motor vehicle accident, it was renamed 'Dr Rama Subbiah Scholarship Fund'.

The help via this fund reached out to many students of humble backgrounds. They, in turn, after reaping the benefit of this endowment, continued the trend. Beneficiaries were required to reimburse what they had received into a revolving fund once they started working. Over the years, the Board which manages this resource has increased their base capital through social fundraising activities.

It recently celebrated its Silver Jubilee, its fifty years of existence.

Poverty, a qualification for success?

Two things that happened recently made my mind go a-wandering, yet again.

Credit: SCMP

#1. A friend, whom I have not met for some time now, appeared in my life during the course of my career. About twelve years previously, he became a widower after his thirty-something wife succumbed to the menace of the crab. Left to care for three young girls, ranging from ages of eight to twelve, he took it upon himself to be the sole provider of maternal and paternal love, all lumped to one. With his meagre income and a lot of helping hand from his extended family members, he forewent female intimacy and sacrificed simple pleasures of life to make parenting his sole purpose of existence. Fast forward twelve years later, the girls have managed to attain academic excellence. Each of them is pursuing careers by their own merit in local institutions respectively in medicine. Law and accountancy. It seems like poverty and melancholy never dragged them but instead propelled them forwards. They whipped fate to change their future.

#2. Another friend whom I had not met for 30-over years manifested himself out of the blues. Starting life in the humblest of circumstances, he had beat destiny to be a globe-trotting consultant of sorts. After realising that there is no place like home, he returned home to Malaysia. 

After a guided tour of the house, he told my son that the study room was as big as his whole house, area wise, the home, he grew up as a child. He reiterated that the young generation does not have worry about the nitty gritty about surviving but instead can channel their energies towards reaching greater heights that were never dreamt by their elders. In their own ways, they had a head start in life.

"Litre of Light" - a simple initiative in the 

Philippines to bring brightness to the poor with

just a plastic bottle filled with water.

More than half a century ago, as one of my uncles was trying to unshackle himself from the clutches of poverty through education, he had to appeal to a school headmaster for his kind office for a placement in his school. Being born to a rolling stone father who rolled from town to town without collecting any moss, he had no certificates of proof of his educational achievements. My uncle tried to plead his case by invoking his debilitated state of his economic affairs. The learned man told him, "Boy, poverty is no qualification but, in you I see the drive to succeed. That, no piece of paper can be a substitute!"

Necessity is the mother of all inventions, they say. True to that adage, the simplest of inventions usually from the most deprived of the society. Look at the ingenious ways things are used beyond their intended inventions by people in economically deprived areas of the world. (See picture).

Conversely, when there is abundance in a society, instead of reaching for greater heights, the denizens are lulled into boredom, lack of innovations and paradoxically melancholia of intangible things that seem ludicrous to their deprived counterparts in the land of barren!

P.S. Then there is another lady friend who grew up so poor that her family bonding time would include copying textbooks. They could not afford to buy textbooks so they would borrow the books from their affluent friends and the whole family would burn the midnight to copy the book in verbatim. Now she looks at those times and appreciates her family better.

Wrong decisions based on wrong compositions?

A NASA telescope called NuSTAR for short,

which is roaming around approximately 

324 million light-years from Earth, 

happened to be in the perfect position 

to see a black hole's powerful gravity

tugging on X-ray light emitted from a 

nearby Corona.

The discourse started over an article about a poor Hindu man who tried to advise a Muslim man against urinating in the open in a public space. The ego-dented Muslim called his friends to give the Hindu a nice bashing that he would never forget. Well, he never had the chance to remember. He was beaten up in the plain view of the public who, sadly, not one person came to his help or did call the police. The poor man succumbed to his injuries.

The incident escalated to a racial clash when the real issue is public apathy and the curse of being born poor.

From that angle, the debate went on to whether being poor is one's own fault or it is due to a composite of factors. My friend insists that it is self-made. Everybody is given equal opportunities in life. People make wrong decisions again and again, and the end result is being stuck in the lowest rung of society. In this vast world, chances are there for our taking. Nothing happens by chance. We are who we are due to the decisions that we made in life.

That is where I differed, in my opinion. No doubt decisions are ours to make, not everybody is endowed with the wisdom, willpower and intelligence to choose what is indeed best for him in the long run. Some do not have the foresight beyond that of a goldfish. Others are weak to persevere the hardship and throw in the towel easily. The tenacity to withstand a pressure cooker is the sum product of his genetic makeup and environmental factors. Poverty is a rut that traps one in a vicious cycle of malady, hopelessness and melancholia. Lack of parental guidance and supervision, lack of opportunities, lack of role models, lack of push factors and intrinsic desire for instant gratifications just perpetuates one to stay in the status quo. Poverty itself cuts down options. The need to bring the bacon draws both parents on back-breaking money earning spree at the expense of familial bonding and parental supervision. Economic deprivation draws them to less affluent neighbourhoods with less equipped educational facilities. Destitution reduces confidence. A large family demands sacrifices from all its members. In the name of compassion and blood bonding, the skin quivers and siblings have to give up privileges. Then there are social diseases, and the list goes on.

The realisation to break-free usually comes in the form of inner awareness, a kind of Enlightenment from within one's self with a little help from good friends with the same wavelength and family guidance.
Is there a guardian angel who paves the correct path for you or your astronomical coordinates that determine your lifeline?

Raindrops keep falling on my head!

Cathy Come Home (1964)

This is the story of many societies. The urban dwellers, unable to keep up in the rat race, get left behind. Initially occupying the centre of the city, as their earning capacity declines or the opportunity dwindles, they get displaced. Slowly they abandon their urban dwelling to sojourn for something modest at its fringes. With further obstacles, they go further to the suburbs. In the best of times, they form the backbone of the workforce. As the economic pie gets smaller and the profit to the bosses takes a dip, they are replaced by economic migrants who would work for a song.

And the original urban dwellers would show their resentment to the migrants and the system they plunge further into hopelessness. The bourgeoisie blames the poor for taking it easy, for their decadence and not saving for a rainy day. The poor feels that it is their birthright to be cared for, after all, they contributed immensely to the progress of the country. The politicians try to be the nice one to all parties. They need the poors' votes and the wealthy's financial support. Does it all sound too familiar?

This problem was there in the post-WW2 Britain, and it is here in 21st century Malaysia. It is the familiar story of the marginalised.

This 1964 offering appeared as a TV drama on the BBC as a sort of a public service to announce to the general public about the urban poor and their desperate situation being pushed around like herds by the system which was ill-prepared to cater for their housing needs. The portrayal of Cathy by Carol White was so convincing that she was often stopped in the streets to be pushed money in the hand and friendly words of encouragement!

This show was shot and told in a documentary-neorealistic style with mostly outdoor shooting straying away from studio dramas which were norm those days.

A free-spirited easy going girl, Cathy, meets Reg, a crane driver or something of sorts. With the spring of youth and the spirit of optimism, they plunge into matrimony only to discover that life is not a bed of roses. Hardship rears its ugly head in various forms. Reg gets injured and loses his job. People look at children as God's gift to humankind and that there can be nothing more precious than own flesh, bone and DNA. So, Cathy and Reg receive the news of her pregnancy with open arms. She stops working. Then comes another baby and another. What can they do? It is just an act of love and of God through Man.

Their kind landlady dies, and her next of kins demand Cathy's arrears of rent. Soon they join the long list of the homeless. The queue for government housing facility is endless. They are shooed away like flies as they occupy caravans and empty spaces. Their children just grow like wildflowers, without necessary medical attention and educational needs. The relationship between adults is also not exemplary but go on by making the best of what they have and making themselves feeling contented.

Cathy and Reg lose a child in a fire. She eventually gets a temporary shelter for herself and the two kids, but her husband is not welcome. Slowly, the family breaks up. Reg rarely visits his family, Cathy loses her temporary accommodation and also her children to social services when they are forcibly removed from her when she is seen strolling aimlessly at the railway station.

The film created such an impact after its release that the issue of homelessness became a national agenda and was discussed in the Parliament. Sadly, as the director, Ken Loach puts it, it was a storm in a teacup. It was business as usual for the capitalist. Loach went on to direct many social awakening films. His latest offering is the dilemma of a working class man who has to work to support himself due to bureaucratic rulings but against his doctors' advice.

One of the reasons why the Chinese diaspora prosper wherever they go is their outlook towards life. Staying true to Confucius' teachings, education is given paramount importance. The desire to own land and properties is high on their list of things to do. These two traits with the desire to strive hard must the secret of success in life. This must also be the reason the concept of 'Malay Reserve Land' was thought about when the British realised that the Rulers had a real possibility of losing their ancestral land to new economic migrants at the turn of the 20th century.

Without a shelter above their heads and education (and a birth certificate), a Man will be considered a persona-non-grata in this country and has to make way to the next highest bidder. In essence, you are a slave to system.

It is all a charade!

Just the other day, I watched a youtube presentation of a discussion on the affairs of world economics, mainly European economics, between two world icons, Yanis Varoufakis, an academician with a short-lived political stint in Greek Cabinet and Professor Noam Chomsky, the renowned political activist, linguist and philosopher at MIT.

The gist that I gathered from the discussion is that the world is made for the affluent. Nobody gives a damn about social justice, equality, liberty and those standard phrases that go with freedom. It is all a charade. The idea of politics is just to fatten the selected few. The rich get richer, and the poor become poorer as time goes on and the rich squeeze more from the poor.

In a press conference recently in 2014, an executive from a multinational company unabashedly told the pressmen that his firm made medicine for the wealthy Western patients who could afford it, not poor Indians, justifying his company's inflated prices of products. The dream of medical advances being developed for humanity remains only in the compilations of Medical History books. In 1929, George Merck allegedly had said, "We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear. The better we have remembered it, the larger they have been."

Medicine is no more the 'noble' profession that the Catholic nuns and Fathers used to clamour to do. In 1978 when Nestle was sued for causing malnutrition in underdeveloped countries amongst babies whose mothers could not read the instructions on the labels, the company had the cheek to say that they make products for the rich and middle class. They cannot be blamed if the poor wants to mimic the affluent. And they certainly cannot be blamed for the lack of clean water facilities (used to make tainted milk that caused gastroenteritis) and illiteracy (that is the inefficiency of the ruling powers). So the world is the stage for the rich. The poor are there for the numbers and create the market. Nobody gives a rat's ass about the weak. It is all rhetorics to cloud the eyes of the poor to satisfy one's private intent.

http://usuncut.com/class-war/valeant-ceo-shareholder-profit/

A day in the life of..

Happy Days here to stay?

They say it is the latest happening place in town. With the U.S. 1950s rock and roll theme, flashy photos of automobiles of yesteryear and matinee idols of that era plastered on the wall and equally striking paint work, it gave the impression of a bugle call for the hipsters, the young, the nouve riche and the like. Welcome to the love child of capitalism, unabated vulgar consumerism. Sure, they like the calories filled cholesterol laden jumbo sized servings, they also like the personalised wishes that we cheerily call out as they enter or leave the premises. Some say that our frequent breaking into songs and dance routines is annoyance but I do not see anyone complaining! They even seem to swing about, sing along and even dance a step or two with us in tandem.

Given a choice, I would like to have that mandatory dance performance struck off my numerous lists of duties. The old injury that I inherited enroute to the maternity shed back home in Cebu is acting funny again. Yes, I am an immigrant Pinoy worker who left my 2 toddler kids and a drunkard husband behind to try my fortune in this plush land of plenty. Fortune aplenty I did lose trying to pay off the scavenging middlemen and corrupt officials before even before landing here. Just like many new graduates here, I became a pauper and in debt even I started earn anything at all. I am here because nobody here wants to do the job I am doing here. They cannot take the pressure of listening to the whims and fancies of the little Emperors whom I have to entertain on a daily basis. I guess I can and have to take their whining and eat humble pie as they are the haves and I, have not!

Life goes on as they say, in sorrow or in joy. I do look forward to those Sunday mornings when I pay my dues to the Divine for all the little naughty unsanctioned things I do over the weekday. A little dishonesty here and a little there, I am hoping to start a new slate come Monday. New leaf? Maybe later! Morality does not bring the bacon to table!