RIFLE RANGE BOY

At Charles III Coronation @ London BBC is in the limelight again. All for the wrong reasons. When the Bersih movement was on a roll in the streets of Kuala Lumpur and painting the town yellow, BBC was on a rampage screening the sea of yellow flood hourly, painting the idea that the whole country is in tatters. In reality, the following day, it was business as usual for Malaysians. When interest parties protested against the cut in Indian farmer subsidies in Delhi, BBC again had a field day. They were lamenting that the Indian public was prevented from expressing their democratic rights. Even though India's internal politics did not affect the British or the rest of the world one tiny bit, it took itself as the vanguard of the oppressed and the champion of the downtrodden. It did not matter that the protestors were not farmers but middlemen who tended to lose from the Government's move. Bersih Protest @ Kuala Lumpur But now, despite all the austerity measures taken in the UK to ...

The Ipcress File (1965) Director: Sidney J. Furie We always think that violence, espionage, eavesdropping, intelligence archiving, military building and sabotage are events that only happened in the past. We have confined them in the fiction row of our bookshelves and assume it does not occur in real life. We give humans way too much credence. This business of international relations began as early as the time Man picked up a weapon to knock down his neighbour. Just found out recently, of all the people, the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth I and the Ottoman Empire had a good thing going between the two. After being labelled an outcast by the Roman Catholic Church for the shenanigans of King Henry VIII, there was animosity between England and many European superpowers of that time. The Spanish, Italians, French, Russian and Portuguese were all under the thumb of the Vatican. The English naturally found friendship in 'the enemy of the enemy'. In the eyes of the Ottoman, the Angl...

Harry & Meghan (Documentary; 2022) Netflix Watching this 6-episode documentary about the life and times of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during their short stint living as a couple in the royal household reminded me of two things. Firstly of skeets from 'Kumars at No. 42' where they sold the idea that everything in this world was Indian - be it Santa Claus, Jesus, Santa's reindeer and even the British royal family. Father Kumar theorised that the royal family were as Indian as Indians can be. The whole family, including adult children, live with their parents. Everyone is involved in the same family business. Even after marriages, they all lived under the same roof, and the weddings were arranged. These veiled comparisons got its audiences in stitches then.  The second is the good old saying from Indian culture that when one marries another, they also marry the family. The newcomer into the family must immerse into the fabric of the family and act as one of them. The o...