RIFLE RANGE BOY

Baby Reindeer (Miniseries, E1-7; 2024) Director:  Weronika Tofilska & Josephine Bornebusch (Based on the autobiography of Richard Ladd)  I learned a new term today: main character syndrome. In a world where only I, me and myself, which people really care about, it is logical for people to think that they are indeed at the centre of the Universe. The sun and all the planets revolve around them. They naturally become the main characters in a story they narrate. Even though the story is their point of view, it looks like the other characters are just there to fill up space without giving any substance to the story. This is what the other characters in this true story are saying. This story is about a shy Scottish lad, Donny, who wants to be a comedian. It is an autobiography, actually. To sustain himself, he works as a bartender. In the course of his work, he meets a friendly lawyer whom he finds interesting. He is not much of a comedian, really. He is not funny. Nobody ...

Indian Predator: Murder in a Courtroom (2022) Documentary; Netflix Humans thought living in big numbers protected them from the elements, predators and even enemies. Security concerns were taken care of by the individual community itself. It was jungle justice with no higher justice to recourse. Might decided what was right! As communities coalesced into country-states, the job of security and protection was outsourced to the State. Suddenly there was no reason for the average citizen to hold powerful weapons. The duty to apprehend and punish wrongdoers was outsourced to State-owned agencies. These agencies were supposed to protect all levels of society, the powerful and powerless alike. It looks all nice on paper, but in reality, the mission statements of these agents are mere rhetorics to pacify the vote bank. The minorities and the weak can only cry foul, fill up the newspapers and breaking news segments and spit on the system. People will bear with the imperfections of the system. ...

Gargi (கார்கி, Tamil; 2022) Direction: Gautham Ramachandran SonyLiv This Tamil movie, which was simultaneously dubbed in many Indian languages at its release, is creating waves and boasts of being one of recent most interesting legal dramas. It has a gripping story, a believable storyline with down-to-earth court scenes, excellent acting and veiled social messages to match. When someone close to us gets entangled with the wrong end of the law, we tend to side with our loved ones. At no time would we waver from our stance but to stand behind them and assert that they have been wronged. Our blinkers refuse to make us see beyond what we want to see. We know what we want to believe. We refuse to see the bigger picture. Just how far would we go with that? A case in point that comes to mind is repeated negative messages from a particular convicted ex-PM's daughter's social media handles. A love-smitten primary school teacher, Gargi, is full of smiles. Her life is set. Her beau is so ...

Anatomy of a Scandal (2022) Netflix, Miniseries. There are essentially three types of truths (or secrets if the situation arises). The first is the one which is common knowledge that is no secret. It is the one you do not mind sharing with the rest of the world. Information on your background, ethnicity, place of childhood and education background will encompass this category. With the easy availability of personal data online, the demarcation between private information and the public domain becomes increasingly blurred. In the second category, it could include something done not at the proudest moment. This truth may be only shared amongst individuals who would not spill the beans no matter what. There is some kind of unwritten rule - bro code, tribal honour, mafia or gang loyalty and business secret - which will fall into the category. God forbid, access to these truths by individuals with ill-intent would be disastrous and make someone fall from grace. However, every type of secret...

Unbelievable (Miniseries, Season 1. Netflix, 2019) The epilogue in a Twilight Zone episode in its first season titled 'The Monsters are Due in Maple Street' goes like this... The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices – to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill – and suspicion can destroy – and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own – for the children – and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is – that these things cannot be confined – to the Twilight Zone. It tells of a Martian experiment where a junior alien officer explains a scheme to create chaos on Earth to his superior. He suggests planting the seed of doubt to weaken and win over Earthlings. Planting a seed of doubt is a dangerous thing. This uncertainty breeds suspicion of conspiracy. Putting two and two unrelated events suddenl...

The word 'consent' is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, there are 'implied consent' and 'silence is consent', then on the other spectrum, are the murky waters of 'informed consent', as if consents are sometimes uninformed or imposed. We have also heard of 'consent under duress' which is by no means consent. In surgical practice, failure to divulge certain rare but real complications of an operation denotes carelessness and possibly negligence of the attending surgeon. As if the patient was not informed that surgery was a risky business. Recently I heard a podcast of consent of a different kind. In fact, this edition came around way before cry babies started screaming #MeToo! The latest version of approval is 'I agreed to this but not to that..."  A few years previously, in fact, a good full decade after a young lady (A) went separate ways with her best male friend (B), she decided to revisit the event that made them part ways....

Pink (Hindi, 2016) That is the reality. On one side, we have the fairer sex fairing better by leaps and bounds in all areas; equality, education, knowledge, even in games that require endurance, as leaders in society and assertiveness. We concede that we are modern and do not impose the chains of control over them. On the other hand, we are still feudalistic in our mindset. We still look at them as lesser beings. We expect them to behave in a particular manner and wait for them to curl up to meet our primal, animalistic needs. We make our own impressions about their needs. We assume their seeming ordinary acts of culture, intelligent behaviour as an invitation to casual sex. We say they asked for it. Their way of dressing, friendly demure and friendly gestures are misconstrued. The society has the view that when she says 'no', she means 'yes'. We have different rules for different genders. Men are not ready to lose their patriarchal role to give the female gender eq...

BBC releases India’s Daughter on YouTube! After much speculation, the highly controversial documentary,  India’s Daughter , makes its way to the  World Wide Web . Banned in  India , the documentary focuses on the rape case of  Jyoti Singh  who was brutally beaten and raped in  Delhi  in 2012. The documentary highlights the aftermath of the event as well as a one on one interview with assailant  Mukesh Singh . While  BBC  was in high hopes of releasing the video on television for  Women’s Day  (March 8th), heavy protests against  Mukesh Singh’s  lack of remorse and despicable comments lead the the ban of the documentary in  India . Directed by  Leslee Udwin , the film has now been made available on  YouTube. india's daughter bbc documentary http://urbanasian.com/whats-happenin/2015/03/bbc-releases-indias-daughter-on-youtube/

From one corner of the world, people are justifying gang rapes to teach the victim a lesson and to put her in her place. In some places, the complaint of rape is thrown out of the courts as she invariably cannot produce 4 able-bodied men to vouch to have witnessed the rape (as if they would stand idle and watch the whole fiasco, or maybe in the digital world reach for smartphones to record the melee). So, in the developed nations (or at least in places which try to or claim to be one), the last thing you would expect is to blame rapes squarely on ladies and the way they dress as if they were begging to be violated. The scene below are comments of netizen of the way some young girls were dressed on the city mass transit trains in Singapore. Now, that the girls know what the generally thinking of an average Singapore is, what are they going to do about it? Are they going to say it is all null and void as the comments were written under the cloak of anonymity? Are they going to say th...

So it finally happened. The guests on a radio talk show today went on a rampage bashing the legal eagles who were instrumental in the settlement of the case of a statutory rape of a 13 year old girl by a 40 year old married man with 4 children, 1 younger than the victim. The assailant was not even given a slap on the wrist. As he had made her his second wife, and both were in love each other, the case was made to rest. We have moved away from the time when we really respected the people of the bench and those in power. Gone are the days, when judges and leaders were respected for the wisdom and virtues. With easy accessibility of information and perhaps because of our educational improvement, we are able to make our own assessments and judgements on situations. Anyway part of the reason of the decline of respect to them is general decline in the standards in every field in this country. http://www.trust.org/item/20130521123932-o09qu

So no private lawyer in the whole of India want to defend the six who stand accused in the recent infamous rape and murder of a physiotherapy student, Jyoti Pandey, ( christened as   “Nirbhaya” @ Braveheart )  in the capital city. Probably they are fearful of the public backlash on their career. The public response towards the sad incident has been anything but civil. Rape which used to be accepted as part of life in many remote areas of the sub-continent with no recourse, is not going to taken lightly any more after the recent turn of events. Gone are the days where the hassle of complain and judgemental attitude of those in power were a deterrent. The new change in social outlook is going to expose the 9/10 of the base of the iceberg (actually 1/6 of iceberg is visible) which had been hidden all this while. A social revolution is set to happen in a country where ladies all this while have been only placed on a pedestal in the temple altars and their mythol...