Time and place for everything?

Decision to leave (Korean; 2022)
Director: Park Chan-wook

The ageing brain finds it difficult to learn new tricks. Hence, it compensates for its deficiencies by filling them with old remote thoughts. Whilst watching this Korean thriller noir, a conversation with an old friend, 20 years previously, resurfaced.

P was an ambitious young man when he was posted as a secondary school teacher in a remote part of the country. His rumbling young heart knew then that he was made for bigger things in life, but teaching a bunch of uninitiated young kids in the periphery was a start.

Being well versed in the Malay Language, he was quite a hit amongst the locals, particularly his young lady colleagues. These young lassies were all over him, eating out of his hand and at his beck and call. Bending over backwards to be in his company, there were unabashed invitations for intimacy.

Such good chemistry, sensual without being sexual

On further prodding by his nosey on more juicy details, P told them there was nothing more to say. Nothing happened. With a blank face, he said something to the effect of, "one should defecate where he eats!"

P went on to spend his free time preparing for his law degree. Soon enough, he resigned from his teaching stint and is now a flying legal eagle.

In every profession, situations may arise where one can obtain personal favours. He may be lured to use his positions to curry flavours to fulfil self-interests. For that reason, to be professional in a particular job would mean to put the emotional aspect into makings job-related decisions, but to decide with the head and not the heart. But then, when Adolf Eichmann made similar decisions, the world accused him of treating an act of evil as the banalest thing to do.

The protagonist of this Korean thriller noir, Hae-joon, probably did not have a friend like P to advise him on how to act professionally. Married but a weekend husband only as he is stationed as a police detective in another town, he is assigned to investigate a hiker who is found dead. During the course of his investigation, ruling out the hiker's sensual wife, Seo-rae, as a possible suspect, he is drawn closer to her. A Chinese immigrant, a caretaker of the elderly with a clear alibi of innocence, she is off the hook. But there seems more than meets the eye as Seo-rae is seen six months later with another husband who just happens to die soon after their meet!

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

The rest, all side show.

 Thithi (ತಿಥಿ, Lunar day, Kannada; 2015)

Our wants and needs vary as we grow older (and hopefully wiser). In the spring of our youth, we are brimming with raging hormones. Our biological needs somehow shut off our cognitive powers. The pudendal nerve and illusive higher centres control the more rational neuronal connexions. Unfortunately, the seeds and the ghosts of our action persist in haunting us in the later phase of our lives.

Supposing we pass through youth unscathed, in the next phase of our lives, stuck with baggage of our past, we are expected to provide for our kin. Social hierarchy dictates we are responsible for the seeds that we sow. The emphasis of life is to provide for the living and to accumulate material wealth for an uncertain future. If we are 'cursed' with a long but unproductive life, we have to fend for ourselves. Conversely, a short affluent one will only benefit the dependants.

After completing the deeds that we are assigned to do, to fulfil our karma, we finally understand everything. The dents and blows of the Hard Knock School of Life open our eyes to reality. The heartaches and betrayals lay bare the illusory nature of life. We become pessimistic. Somehow, all our prior chase for material and bodily gratifications do not matter anymore. That is when others think we are fools.

This simple neo-realistic movie using non-professional actors utilising natural backdrops and naked sounds of nature is a multiple-award-winning offering from the Kannada cinema, often labelled as Sandalwood. It tells the tales of a centenarian, Century Gowda, who dies suddenly. Gowda had been a hunk in his heydays, and that created a rift between him and his son, Gaddappa. Gaddappa is disillusioned with material things and prepare to live as an ascetic (or vagabond, pick your choose). Gaddappa's son, Tamanna, is a householder who is striving to keep his family intact minding his sugar cane plantation and erratic water supply. Tamanna's son, Abhi, a loafer who gets on by doing odd jobs and surfing porn on his mobile phone, and has both his eyes hooked on a pretty goat shepherd girl.

The rest of the tale tells about Tamanna, fed up with his father, Gadappa's, lackadaisical attitude with life wanting to sell off his grandfather's land to support his family. Unfortunately, Gadappa does not want to write off the plot of land to his son. Tamanna then plots a convoluted plan to create a fake death certificate of his father whilst sending him off on an extended vacation towards this end. 

The story shows us how these members of the three generations are embroiled in their own shenanigans as each of them pursues their own purpose in life. It all ends up in a twisted comedy of errors. The rest of the villagers are there to enjoy the party; the party being the final funeral rites of Century Gowda. Here, they celebrate his full life by feasting on the family's mutton meal and the stage show that was arranged. The rest is all sideshow for them.

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

This is what is left when you think you are right?

Universiti Kedua (Kassim Ahmad; 2010)

At a time when the government propaganda machinery managed to brainwash youngsters like myself to think that right is right and left is wrong, a man stood steadfast on his socialist belief. He was detained under the notorious Internal Security Act (ISA). Despite the agony of being away from his young family, deprived of seeing his children grow, especially at a crucial age and the constant torture in a cell, he stood his ground. He refused to give a 'false' confession to his captors. Despite his reluctance to be 'reformed', he was given an unconditional release after 5 years of spending time in Kamunting. This memoir narrates his experience of being arrested in the fateful early hours of 3rd November 1976 to his release on Hari Raya Day, 30th June 1981. It is a slow-moving write-up, as life in the prison is, narrating the frustrating time in Kamunting as the clock ticks on by. His interrogations go on till unearthly hours, trying to break him psychologically.

 
He spent most of his time writing and thinking about life and religion. He read the Quran over and over again. He tried to relate the world's happenings to his scriptures and try to make sense of things. He even managed to send out manuscripts and got his book published. He was even accepted to do his Ph. D. in UKM but expectedly was denied by the Government.

He had a bout of shingles and was hospitalised later after a fellow inmate punch him in his face over some argument, fracturing his temporomandibular joint.

His fellow inmates were people include Abdullah Ahmad and Syed Husin Ali. Some of the people in Kamunting were actually ruling Government people who were the victims of internal political wrangling.

It is incredible how much a person can hold on to his beliefs and never crack under pressure. This 81-year-old man is recently entangled with the wrong of the law, questioning the validity of Hadis in Islamic religion and accusing the keepers of the faith as elitists.

Priority! Priority!

Loan shark ad at the back of cab

The priorities of a society can be determined from the daily activities of its members. Jog through your memory of two telephone booths - one in KL and another in London. The one in KL would have been vandalized, the receiver would be missing or would be detached like a doll without an arm or you could be at the mercy of the machine which would be happy to gobble up all your money for nothing. But that is another story - you would also notice plastered all around the booth are numbers of generous people who are out there to finance your never-ending financial woes that have plaguing you at this while at practically a cost of a phone call.
In contrast, in a similar setting in London, the booth would be decorated with multi-coloured 'stick-em-on' papers advertising a plethora of social services (escort, the companionship of sexual nature, of different ethnicity, age, gender, techniques or anything you fancy!)

A typical scene at a London phone booth

Now you know where each society's emphasis is. Asians, as all of us are aware, give importance to wealth to climb the strata of society. The rich are worshipped as one with lots of money can do no wrong and money can buy you love, health, sleep, friends, relatives and everything in between. As the Tamil proverb goes, 'At the sight of money, even a corpse would open its mouth!' I suppose in London, its citizens have reached a certain level of comfort in their lives that they can now look into finer things to enjoy life rather than be worried about their daily bread and butter issues as it is their Government of the day's job to do that! [I wonder if it (the booth) is the same in Kansas City- where Superman lives - he looks for a phone booth to change and come out in a jiffy with his underwear on the outside! I just wondered.]
Every now and then, our mainstream media is fluff with tear-jerking stories of how families get torn apart and how victims succumb to the shame and the threat of the creditors and decide to take their own lives and spare everybody else of the torment!
Now, since the loan shark issue is a sticky one, what are the authorities doing about it? So far all their endeavours have been in vain. First, they said that all mobile phones (pre-paid and post-paid accounts) need to be registered so that loan sharks who normally display cell phone numbers can be traced. The menace continues, however.

Sharks and (Red) Devil in same boat?

Now, the powers that be are saying that the numbers go unanswered when the enforcement officers called them. I find this difficult to believe - advertisers not answering calls advertised? It is, therefore, the status quo as it is. To add salt to injury, taxpayers now have to fork out money to clean up the mess of garbage contributed by the bills. From January 2011, the City Council of Johore Bahru removed over 31,000 sheets of loan shark advertisement bills there. In Penang, the contractors assigned to perform the same job has stopped doing so as the thousands of ringgit allocated from them is insufficient for the load of rubbish they have to gather!

In the meantime, the sharks are still swimming in a carefree manner in a sea filled with ill-gotten stash of moolah...