The ever complex Rubik's cube of life?

Recently, I caught an obituary announcement on social media. An old working senior had passed on. Even though my interaction with that person was short, it left an unpleasant aftertaste. From his demeanour, I learnt how not to disrespect my subordinates. This person was so vile in his comments during high-level meetings that my boss would ask me or one of my colleagues to accompany him for moral support. His scoldings were so personal that they bordered on testing my department's competence and even intelligence.

Everyone let out an air of relief when he was transferred for a promotion. Why a person of such arrogance should be rewarded was the million-dollar question. But then, we were glad that our problem was somebody else's. That was the last I heard of him until the fateful announcement.

There it was, the photograph of him with a toothful smile on his face, innocence oozing down his face, and religious symbols below it. It was his obituary announcement. Under that, a long list of his friends and relatives left touching comments. The impression that I got was that he must have left such an indelible mark in their lives. Then there were comments about how good a father, an uncle and a resource person he had been.

We tend to forget that doctors, engineers, shopkeepers, labourers, and security guards are not defined by the uniform or outfit they don. Outside their regular working hours, they are expected to assume other roles—a parent, a comedian, a musician, or a marathon runner. They may suck at their daytime job, but that does not render them beyond reprieve. There is an alternate universe for them.

That incident reminded me of the life and times of Babur, the brutal founder of the Mughal dynasty. A great conqueror he was, he never liked India. He thought that Indians were uncultured and their land was unimpressive compared to Afghanistan. He wanted their wealth, though.

In 1530, his Humayun fell hopelessly sick. The royal physicians gave up. Babur summoned the Sufi priests. They suggested that Babur should sacrifice something very dear to him. Somebody suggested that the Kohinoor (or some other precious stones, unclear) be given away. The trouble is the diamond belonged to Humayun, not Babur. So it was not his to give away. Instead, Babur circumambulated Humayun's bed three times, recited a prayer to Allah to take his life in exchange for his son's, cried out and fell sick to die three months later.*

There are these multifaceted views of an individual. What we see are representations of part of the picture.

*https://www.srichinmoylibrary.com/me-8

Sri Chinmoy, The Moghul Emperors, Agni Press, 2001

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Always the second fiddle!

Daddio (2024)
Director & Screenplay: Christy Hall

This movie would not have hit my radar if Qantas had not apologised to its passengers on a flight to Tokyo for a mistaken screening. A glitch in the system made only this movie being screened in all in-flight entertainment for a whole hour. Qantas specifically apologised to the children for the mistake. The apology must have been because it must have been boring as hell for them. And also perhaps because of two ‘unholy’ sexting images of an erect phallus and a full display of a pair of mammary glands in their full glory. 

Not that I am complaining. It is a well-made drama that discusses a very mature subject- what either gender expects in a relationship. This conversation occurs during a cab journey from JFK airport to Manhattan between a twice-married cab driver and his passenger, a 30-something confident lady who is a mistress to a married man with kids. That is it. It starts with the lady (Dakota Johnson) entering Sean Penn's yellow taxi and ends when they reach their destination. It is all conversation and text messages. Now we know why Qantas had to apologise to the kids! - for kids telling their parents, “I am bored!" and parents unable to give them an alternative. Returning from her hometown after a visit to her sister's, Dakota is travelling to her apartment. A kind of nosey cab driver, Penn, starts to strike up a conversation with Dakota.  

After a few cursory topics, they open up about each other's private lives. The highlight of their chat is what each other expected or had expected in their lives. Pretty soon both become all so philosophical, especially Penn. At one moment, Dakota was reevaluating her whole imbroglio with a married man and its repercussions. A married man with an affair is in it just for sex. He will never give up his family so that his mistress can have a fairytale-like, happy ending forever and ever. Period. A confident, self-sustaining female may have her dreams and targets in life, but having her lover all to herself will not be successful. She will always have to play second fiddle and the scorned home wrecker. An interesting watch. 4/5.

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No such thing as a free lunch?

Salakab (Fish Trap, Tagalog; 2023)
Director: Roman Perez Jr.

Do we help others because it is just the most human thing to do? Or do we do it because we may need their help someday? Just because somebody had helped us at one point in time, are we duty-bound to return the favour as and when our help is needed? Should this be done even if it means it would crush our plans to succeed? When we are in a slightly comfortable zone, are we considered ungrateful when we do not reciprocate their request? Do we deserve all the curses hurled at us for being an unappreciative dog? Society has many names for these types of 'traitors'.

On the side of the one who helps others, do all the great deeds performed become a fixed deposit that can be broken on a rainy day? Do parents care for their young in anticipation of care in their twilight years? Is the spouse (partner) duty-bound to pay back for services?

The film asks the same question in a graphically explicit, eye-pleasing presentation that leaves nothing to the imagination. The answer is, of course, more complex. 

Set in a fishing village on one of many of the Philippines' tiny islands, it tells the tale of a vivacious young girl who got admission into Manila University with a scholarship. With a heavy heart, she leaves her dear boyfriend behind to the glitz of the city lights. She promised to keep in touch, while her boyfriend assured her he would cover her expenses as the scholarship funds were small. The plan is for the boyfriend to do his studies after the girlfriend completes hers.

She loses her scholarship as her performances are not up to mark, but the boyfriend pledges more money for her. Besides his fishing job, he moonshines as a guide and even as a gigolo to make ends meet.

So, the boyfriend is devastated when the girlfriend rejects his marriage proposal upon her return after graduation. To rub salt in his wound, a stranger appears on the island, claiming to be her fiance, informing everyone that the girl has gone missing.

This production, by no means, will receive any standing ovation anywhere or be nominated to be screened in any film festival; it serves its purpose - mere spinal-level entertainment bypassing the cerebral cortex unless you are like me. 

Do we need to balance all life dealings? A tit for tat, an eye for eye and blood for blood. Like what a bookkeeper would do, do all transactions need to be balanced, one entry to a credit account and another in debit so that it evens out at the end? Do we have to take it upon ourselves to tip the balance, or should we leave it to Nature to take its course? When something terrible happens to someone else, we call it karma. When it is our turn to receive something bad, we call it bad luck. 

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Can you handle the digital truth?

Love Today (Tamil; 2022)
Writer, Director, Actor: Pradeep Ranganathan

It is said that the amount of data carried by a mobile phone is equivalent to the amount needed to launch the spaceship Apollo 11. Having that much data, like an appendage attached to our body, cannot be without liabilities. People store way too much muck in there that, at any time, anyone can use it to paint an individual how they want him to be painted. With the same brush, they can be either portrayed as a saint or a devil re-incarnated from the raw data.

People, like salivating dogs to a bone, will volunteer their personal information to be used and misused at the sight of dangling freebies. All the promise of privacy is a fallacy. With a few tweaks here and there, the digital trail is at your disposal.

This innovative movie highlights this exact problem. Two lovebirds fall helplessly in love with each other. When the boy approaches her father for her hand, the father, a strict disciplinarian, puts the couple to the test. He thinks the couple should know each other before plunging head-on into tying the matrimonial knot.

The couple was told to swap phones for 24 hours before committing to each other. That is when the fun starts. Even though each initially resists the temptations to pry into the other's private lives, curiosity sets in. Compounded with suggestions by people around them and wanting to delete particular unsavoury messages that may be construed as offensive or suspicious, the boy scrambles to delete them cryptically. Paradoxically, it just increases each other's suspicion. The couple ends up hating each other.

On the other hand, the lover boy's sister is getting married soon. She is curious why her soon-to-be-groom is so secretive about anyone else accessing his mobile phone. She wonders if he is hiding something. That starts another tussle to lay a hand on the coveted husband-to-be.

The final take-home message is that sometimes it is worthwhile not knowing everything. Some things are left unknown. Some stones are better left unturned. 

Do we want to know the truth, the whole truth and everything about the truth, really?

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A makeover?

The War of the Roses(1989)
Directed by: Danny DeVito

Watching this movie again after 30 years gives a different perspective to this movie altogether. In the first viewing, the message I remember taking back was that divorces are nasty affairs. Period. Now, it opens a different perspective of what is going through the minds of each of the involved parties as they execute each move to prosecute and subsequently persecute their significant other. 

For those in the dark about this movie, it came about at a time when the trio of Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito was riding high after their super-duper blockbusters' Romancing the Stone' and its sequel' Jewel of the Nile'.

The original 'War of the Roses' refers to the feud between factions of English Nobel houses which were eyeing the English throne in the Middle Ages. In this film, however, the war is between the Man and Wife of the Rose family.

It starts with a law student, Oliver, meeting Barbara, a gymnast, at an auction site. It was love at first sight, and they hooked up. They marry, have two kids and prosper together as Oliver's career goes from strength to strength. Over the years, Oliver had become a hotshot lawyer, and Barbara manages the kids and the home. Life was blissful when in melodious lyrics of 'Obladi Oblada' Progressively, Barbara starts feeling that she is just playing second fiddle to the whole set-up. Oliver seems to be doing all the intelligent, correct, and appropriate things whilst she remains socially awkward and not-so-intelligent. Rift builds up.

All the while, Oliver left all the managing of the domestic front to his wife while he concentrated on his role as the provider. He brought the cash, and she managed diligently. He thought everybody cared for each other playing their respective roles for the betterment of everyone in the Rose family. So, sixteen years of his marriage, when he was admitted for a suspected myocardial infarct, he was flabbergasted. Oliver thought he was going to die, but Barbara did not even show concern. She was more engrossed in her newly-found interest in catering. The children were already gone to college. One thing led to another, and Barbara finally admits that the loving feeling is gone. She wants a divorce. In comes the negotiations and the legal wrangle over the possession of the family home. Both parties feel they had invested too much in the house to just give it up just like that. The fight to own the house becomes so explosive and personal until they end up hanging on the chandelier in the phenomenal final scene of the movie, both refusing to give up ownership.

Till death do you apart?
Not stopping just at the kitchen sink. 

How did it end up like this? Snap out of it. This is reality. Eternal love and till death brings us apart only happens in the dreamer's make-believe world. Fairy tales do not tell what happens after the last page that says, "...and they lived happily forever and ever!' Biochemical excitations that spark at the spring of youth fizzles with advancing age in declining virility and altered life priorities. These changes differ between individuals. Rift occurs, and existential crisis may ensue.

Perhaps in man, this midlife crisis may manifest in acts of flamboyance- buying a flashy sports car, renewed interests in new hobbies or even seeking a trophy wife or mistress are sure give away tell-tale signs. In others, maybe, it is an existential crisis- a validation of sorts of their existence. They may re-evaluate all they had done in their life and realise that they had sacrificed too much for others' well-being and forgot their own in the process. They would have found solace in helicoptering their children. But they had overgrown their nest and want to fly solo. Again they feel disposed. They may delve into spirituality to improve their standings in Life 2.0 or dive head-on into something new, away from all their previous commitments. A revolution or just for the kick of it? What the heck. 

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Of family politics...

Ramprasad Ki Tehrvi (Ramprasad's Final Rites, Hindi; 2019)
Written and Directed by Seema Pahwa

All families will have their own internal politics. Over property, money or ego, family members may squabble and refuse to descend from their high horses. They refuse to see common ground. Nature sometimes play games to remind everybody of how fragile each of us is and tries to put us in our respective place. The easiest way Nature does this is to invoke death within the family. 

The scurrying of family members gives an opportune time to meant fences. The warring factions may rescind, albeit for a short time, only to return to their old ways once the mourning period is over. 

Human relationships are so fragile. More often than not, we do not say what we mean and mean what we say. Everything is sugarcoated to maintain harmony on the surface, but beneath it all, resentment brews. Everyone is concerned with their own survival. Family dynamics have evolved over the generations, and the extended family concept is so yesterday. Migration to towns and immersion in post-Industrial revolution age type of pigeon-holed urban housing makes nuclear families the norm. Filial piety takes a backseat after marriage, and afterwards, honouring the elders is only confined to weddings and funerals.

The film tells about the death of an elderly music teacher, Ramprasad. His children and close relatives congregate in his house to pacify and fulfil the final rites (Tehrvi). Soon, the family politics come out one by one. The sisters-in-law bitch about the youngest of them, who is an actor. The sons complain about their father. Old wounds start festering. It reached a crescendo when it is discovered that the deceased has a big unpaid mortgage on their family property. Nobody is in a position to chip in to save it. In fact, the father had taken loans to finance each and one of the offspring.

The grieving mother sees the family members like they are there for an extended vacation, catching up on all stories, snapping photographs and the sons having drinking sessions most nights. Nobody seems to be grieving. She thinks that maybe she and her husband had failed in their duties to instil hardship on their children. By just shielding them from life challenges and pad them at every fall, maybe they had made them weak. She also realises that all her kids had their own challenges to meet within their family.

The mandatory thirteen days of mourning ends. The children return to their own lives, letting the mother alone to fend for herself. Life moves on. She continues the music school for children.  

A slow-moving movie that peels the layers of unsaid and unspoken politics in every typical Indian family.

(P.S. The story and settings of this film almost parallel that of another of Netflix's offerings, Pagglait. It is also about family politics and funeral, but from the POV of a grieving widow.)

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Match made in heaven!

As part of the ritual after marriage, newlywed Brahmin couples are told to search for Arundathi-Vasishta pair of stars (Alcor-Mizar). These double stars make part of the Great Bear constellation and named after a great sage, Vasishta, and his philosopher wife, Arundathi. They were an exemplary couple that complemented each other, without one dominating over the other. 

Unlike most double stars where one star would be revolving around the other, the Arundathi-Vaisishta pair orbits around each other. The Hindu traditions believe that that is how a husband-wife pair should be - the couple should work together; not one exerting dominance over the other!

Varaha

It is beyond comprehension how ancient Indians knew so much about astronomy. These traditions have a long history that predates Corpenicus and Gallilee. At a time when the world was arguing about flat Earth and imprisonment of scientists whose discoveries clashed with the Church, the Indians knew that Earth was a sphere. Varaha, Vishnu's boar avatar, tried to save a spherical Earth from the major floods on his snout. (Not a disc)

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Laws are made for others

Breathe ( Amazon Prime, Hindi; 2019)
Miniseries (8 episodes)

Humankind is quick to determine what is right and what is not for its kind. All rules and regulations are cast in stone for others to religiously adhere to and live by. Most of these 'prophecies' had been self-thought when Man was at an altered state of consciousness. To lay credence to these rules, the name of God was invoked. To go against this grain would incur the wrath of the Divine Forces, they would say. 

This sort of arrangement would work just alright most of the time when the general populace is ignorant and obliging. Trouble starts when people start thinking, or the ones in power believe that the laws do not apply to them.  

Many external factors make people assume that the rules should not apply to them. The selfish gene, in wanting to care for its progeny and to maintain continuity of species, tries in whatever way to protect its offspring. If the law states that it is criminal to murder someone, the parental instinct will ensure the safety of its kind. Kill to save if it has to.

In the same vein, man-made laws are flaunted so quickly when it comes to defending one's beliefs. Killing, harming, and looting becomes legitimate under the guise of protecting the sanctity his faith. In the history of Mankind, more lives were lost under the umbrella of religion and politics than all other natural calamities and diseases combined. Man does not harbour any remorse when the wrongdoing is in the name of defending one's faith. 

Writers are becoming more creative. They keep on churning out new ideas. I wonder what they would come out with next.

Danny (R Madhavan), a widower, has a young son who is chronically ill with cystic fibrosis. His condition is quite severe and needs an urgent lung donor for survival. Due to compatibility issues, the son's lung donors are hard to come by. Believe it or not, Danny gets the information, after breaking into the doctor's office, that his son is fourth on the list of recipients. With the list of potentially suitable donors for son, he deviously plans ingenious ways to hasten the death of donors as his son slips further into hopelessness. Even though initially everything goes well as expected, a grieving policeman gets hot on his trail.

The police officer is still reeling over the death of his young daughter, who accidentally shot herself with his service revolver. His wife left him because of this. His sorrows draw him to the bottle.

The story is a narration of one man willing to commit crimes to save his son. Even though in real life he is a law-abiding and caring human who is also an animal lover, his books of normality include doing everything in his capacity to give life to his offspring, at all cost. This is in contrast to another who find busting crime as a way to justify that his daughter's death was not worthless. The mishap from the gun that his daughter's life is countered by the use to save others' lives.

A gripping 8-episode miniseries with a few 'too-coincidental to be true' scenarios but attention-grabbing, nevertheless. 

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Life in the fast lane, not easy!

Did you forget to reflect?
shuttershock.com

Living in the fast lane is not for the faint-hearted. After the recent Weinstein-type of exposé in a hospital in Malaysia, my thoughts were drawn to an event that happened more than some 30 years ago. 

As the Weinstein effect goes on hyperdrive, one cannot help but wonder whether how the perpetrators did what they did. It baffles how they got away with it. Did they not realise that it was morally wrong what they were doing? Are they too engrossed into it that they find it difficult to untangle? Was it an addiction? Was the power trip too compelling? Did they think that it was mutually agreed upon; hence it was entirely legitimate?

I remember a varsity friend, who, with his new found freedom away from the prying eyes of his parents and having almost securing himself of a degree, wanted to live to savour the forbidden fruits of life. With his self-perceived appreciation of his physique, he ventured into the business of swinging. Justifying nature's design of random spewing of the male's seed in search of the best chalice, he was on a prowl; in search of companions but not for long-term but for 'hit and run.'

These are some of his life experiences that he was willing to impart even without my prodding. Adultery, fornication or whatever you may name it, is no child's game. It is not for the individuals who have more to lose than a bruised ego and a negative public perception. He must have a hide thicker than an elephant's. He must be immune to the ignores, the non-approval looks of the intended target and must have quick enough to duck when the flying missile or even shoes go airborne. It is an art to pick his choice but even the hardcore in the game sometimes flounder. He must be shameless in showing up in the most unexpected places to create the element of surprise to market himself as interestingly unpredictable enough to pluck the string of the hearts of the heart he intends to pierce. He must be so self-assured of himself that nothing can crack his nut. A lot of precious time need to be sacrificed towards this end. 


Of course, the whole excitement is a passionate one, but emotion has to be kept at bay. One does not want to carry a piece of baggage so heavy when all this is over that it would come haunting during the next hunt. The separation, when it eventually happens, it has to go as that is the plan, should be amicable. Both parties must go on agreeable terms, leaving only with good memories and no resentment. There is also an unwritten 'bro code' where everyone is gentlemanly enough not to come in the way of their next stealth.  No trails should be left.
The post breaks up meets must be cordial if the parties ever run into each other paths.

So, you see, the whole affair of spreading the web is hard work. It is not for sluggards who cannot stomach disappointments, rejections, and perseverance. 

What happened to the varsity friend character, you may wonder? Well, after about a decade of smooching around landing on nectar after nectar, he called it quits. Decades after chasing skirts (or attempting to remove them), he settled for an arranged match from a God-forsaken place. The last time I saw him, he described himself to be blessed in a union made in heaven. Things could not be better. He could not ask for anything more. He sometimes asks himself whether he deserved such a boon!

He also reiterated that his old ways are history and do not excite him anymore but one always wonders the truth is such statements...

 https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

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