RIFLE RANGE BOY

Have I Got Something To Tell You Author: Malachi Edwin Vethamani Listen Do you want to know a secret? Do you promise not to tell? Whoa, oh, oh Closer Let me whisper in your ear Say the words you long to hear I'm in love with you Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh ooh… Not too long ago, that was how it used to be. Now it is 'on your face'. Personal liberty, self-expression, and space availability have led to this. We didn't start the fire; it was always burning… just that it has found mainstream.  Take the movies  South Pacific  and Ben Hur , which were made around the late 1950s. Movie connoisseurs would agree that those films had many not-so-subtle references to homoerotism. Nobody raised a red flag then, even though the American Motion Pictures Production Code (Hays Code) was quite clear about its guidelines regarding romance, gay issues, exposure of flesh and cleavage. The filmmakers tried to make South Pacific  a feel-good war movie. Aside from the lush jungles, sunsets and beaches...

Zindagi inShorts (Hindi, 2020) Netflix This is a collection of seven short stories, just nice for light viewing and those with a short attention span. It covers a myriad of topics, with women empowerment taking centre stage. In the first episode titled 'Pinni', a housewife with exceptional culinary expertise is only appreciated for her cooking skills but not for anything else. She is just viewed as a doormat - it is there to serve a purpose, but there is no need to go fancy about it. She strikes back when her husband got no time to remember her birthday. 'Sleeping partner' narrates how a woman's role is miniaturised in a family. She rebels by expressing her sexual freedom. See how she hits back when her lover starts blackmailing her. The story touches on marital rape. 'Sunnyside Upar' cajoles us to live out the only life given to us to its fullest via the experience of a young doctor in a cancer ward. Bad things happen to good people. Just deal with it. ...

Stories by Rabindranath Tagore Netflix (26 episodes; 2015) Even though Tagore wrote these stories more than a hundred years ago, it remains fresh and relevant to today.  Rabindranath lived at a time when India, as well as the rest of the world, was rapidly changing. His motherland, after missing the bus of the Industrial Revolution, thanks to the British East India Company and the British Empire, was doing catch up. Starting with the First Indian Rebellion @ Sepoy Mutiny in 1857, India had awoken. After being plundered by foreign forces repeatedly, it tried to make social and political changes. Many leaders emerged. Some approached them through political means, others through armed hostility and yet some via passive aggression. Tagore infiltrated the minds with his literary work. This collection of twenty stories in twenty-six episodes cover a range of issues. The stories were authored by Tagore between 1890 and 1941, just before his death. They talk about the mistreatment of young...

Namesake (2006) We all wear coats to hide what we wear inside. Sometimes we are ashamed of what we have underneath and need to cover it all. At other times, it is chilly outside. Occasionally, what we have beneath it is inappropriate. Shame, political incorrectness or social awkwardness are all put aside; the real person under it all is the real us. The act of being someone else that we are not may come back to bite us. Additionally, wearing blinkers and staying adamant about what we have without being receptive to positive external input is self-defeating. Life is a learning experience. We are all eternal students picking up wisdom as we go. Our final destination is one that amalgamates all the wealth, baggage and tradition that we carry inside. In short, we are what we are but should not forget where we came from, but at the same time, learn to adapt and adopt our new environment. We have often heard of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, the famous Russian writer and his work s...

https://kitaab.org/2019/08/31/short-story-oh-deer-my-dear/ Mitali Chakravarty    August 31, 2019   2017 best fiction ,  2019 ,  Asian short stories ,  Immigrants ,  immigration ,  short story Short Story:  Oh  Deer!  My Dear… By Farouk Gulsara Malaysia National Day Special Like the Sword of Damocles, his domestic troubles hung over his head. There was nothing much he could do about it. It had gone on too long, too deep. He just had to live with it and move around it. He could not give up everything. There was a nagging heaviness in his temples. He knew things were going to take a nasty turn and it might get worse. He had created some arbitrary goals to improve his life, but this one had crashed it all. But still, life had to continue. As they say in showbiz, the show must go on. He knew it was a bad idea. With all these problems plaguing him, he thought it was inappropriate for him to participate in this ev...

https://kitaab.org/2019/05/25/short-story-gandom-gandom-by-farouk-gulsara/ Half a decade after the Japanese invasion, Malaya was wising up. Malayans did not believe that their colonial masters were their saviours anymore. Everyone was talking about independence and everyone was laughing a lot these days. People seemed to be in a hurry. Office workers, in long dark baggy trousers and long sleeved starched cotton shirts, wove through pedestrians, scurrying on their shiny new bicycles, ringing their bells. The cyclists appeared to be annoyed by the slow-moving bullock cart with lethargic bulls sauntering along the tarmacadam roads swishing their tails rhythmically in the tropical heat of Penang. Honking in the background on the island’s little street were the Morris Minors and the Austin multi-purpose vehicles, the latest additions to the city landscape. Oblivious to the vexation they were causing, the pullers of the bullock cart batted their lush eyelashes, seemed to mutter somet...