Sin all the way?

That particular holiday, I decided to go for a run. Just as I was completing my 10km, coming around a corner, my eyes locked on two kittens. They huddled together, appearing scared, looking at all the things swiftly passing them. They were not shivering; the sun was warming up the morning. Their eyes reminded me of many cartoons that portray little Tom as a pathetic-looking cat pleading for attention from his masters.

I asked myself what would happen to them and how they landed in a world so hostile. It is no fault of theirs. They, or even we, did not ask to be born on Earth. As I do not remember asking. Just because some cat decided to be horny, again through no fault of daddy cat, the two kittens came to be. Daddy cat was programmed by Nature that it was mating season. Mommy cat was coerced to give in, for it was her oestrus cycle.

If the pitiful state of the kittens' existence was totally unnecessary and could have been prevented by Nature, instead of subjecting them defenceless to the elements, were the forces that created them a mistake? Was copulation and all the forces that paved the way for the sexual act to happen culpable of wrongdoings? The force that made all of us a wrong act, a sin? Our existence as human beings must be a mistake, all products of the Original Sin. We should not exist in the first place.

In Dicken's England, this must have been the scene. Many children must have been left in orphanages or on the streets. For no fault of theirs, they came to be. With the loosening of moral fibre in society, maybe perpetuated by increasing social divide, with the rich able to buy sex and the poor willing to lose anything for a dime, and ignorance about contraception, orphans started roaming the streets of fog-filled Victorian London. Seeing them singing for their supper and being shoved around, in my mind, they must have been no different from the cats I stumbled upon that morning.

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Between the prince and the pauper!

Saltburn (2023)
Written & Directed: Emerald Fennel

Growing up, we were engrained into our psyche as if being rich was sinful. The bedtime stories and the fables that were fed to us always put the rich guys as the bad ones. The poor guy will always come out tops with their ‘good virtues’. Stories will invariably end with the rich guys repenting or giving all their wealth to charity, which will put them on a pedestal.

The miser is a villain. The King who gives all his wealth is good, and the one who is a spendthrift is bad. The vagabond who gets thrashed around will have a good life. The underdog will prevail in the end.

We were taught that being poor is favourable and being ambitious is not favourable. We should have a humble and simple life. Wealth is meant to be divided. An individual should not keep too much wealth. Hey, does this not smell of communism?

Now, in its own quite bizarre way, this film is telling us what we were taught is all bunkum. Of course, we knew it all the while. Rich people are not trustworthy just as much as poor people are not. There are good people and bad people in both arms of the economic spectrum. The simplistic view that people of humble backgrounds are more trustworthy is simply wrong.

The film is in England at Oxford University, where Olie, an awkward but intelligent from a humble background, starts his stories with a scholarship. He meets an aristocratic boy, Felix, who is such a star that all the cool kids want to be around him.

The apparently shy Olie is seen slowly transforming into a conniving planner and provocateur into slowly befriending Felix. His sob stories (like the one about his dysfunctional family and his death) melt Felix’s heart. Olie is invited to spend the summer in Felix’s family estate, Saltburn. There, through his scandalous methods, he eventually comes to eliminate each of Felix’s family.

In our day-to-day living, many tell white lies to shorten conversations or to prevent personal embarrassment. Most of us will take what people say at face value and not dwell too much on its truth. They are mere fillers in our daily dealings.

We only realise that we have been taken for a spin after the effect. But then, we would just move on. Life is too complex to carry all that suspicion over people. We would turn up like a Scrooge, just persistently grouchy, carrying a frown and generally fed up with the world, making life a living hell for ourselves and others. We cannot be overcautious, neither can we let our shields be consistently down and vulnerable.

How often have we found ourselves in situations like these - where we, after reaching a certain place of comfort in life, want to pay back to society. Call it altruism or call it ‘rag to riches’ guilt for leaving others behind, we have gone out our ways to reach out to the less fortunate. Instead of receiving tokens of appreciation, we received a lesson in how not to be so naive. Scores of stories can be told of deceit, lies and double-crosses. It may be their way of leaping forward to greater heights by feeding on others’ gullibility. We are their ticket to their glitz.

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Not an all-or-none rule!

Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi Hai 

(a.k.a. Bandaa; A Common Man, Hindi; 2023)
Director: Apoorv Singh Karki

It is not about being religious or anti-religious, especially when it comes to a crime committed by a godman. Just because one utters something in favour of the accused does not mean he condones the accused's actions. Conversely, saying something against the victim does not indicate victim-blaming. 

This point becomes very relevant in the present-day context when we discuss the Hamas versus Israeli issue. Many join the increasing bandwagon and assert that if one does not condemn the Israeli retaliation (defence), one does not empathise with the Palestinian course but supports the Israeli killing of civilians and children. Never mind that Hamas is a terrorist group; they drew first blood (this time around) and used civilian human shields to defend themselves. Never mind that Israelites have to protect themselves, too. Life is not straightforward.

The film is based on a true event. A revered holy man is accused of rape by a minor. Whilst the public sentiments are that such a man of high esteem would not stoop so low as to commit such heinous crimes, his supporters are quick to employ scare tactics to threaten and even harm the prosecutor's witnesses.  

Getting the case off the ground proved to be a Herculean task. The parents of the victim soon discover that the assigned prosecutor was trying to sell his case. That is how P.C. Solanki, the effable Jodhpur lawyer, comes to the picture on a pro-bono basis.

The case gets dilly-dallied over five years. The accused attempted and failed repeatedly to get bail and spent the whole duration under custody. Solanki came face-to-face with many famous men of law in the courts of Jodhpur and Delhi. Somewhere along the way, even the flamboyant Dr Subramaniam Swamy had to eat humble pie when his attempts at getting the holy man out on bail failed on technicalities. Before this episode, Swamy had boasted of not losing any bail cases.

While the filmmakers managed to grasp the viewers' attention through creative storytelling and excellent acting, the clincher came when the prosecution made his closing statement. He tries to justify his hounding of the man of God through the Hindu scriptures itself. This is akin to fighting fire with fire. Not that Solanki was a non-believer. He was regular with his salutations to Lord Shiva. 

Solanki invoked Ravana's antic of impersonating a sage to abduct Sita as an unforgivable sin. Preying on helpless people's trust for self-interest is unforgivable. 

In his understanding, in a conversation that happened between Parvathi and Shiva, Parvathi asked why Shiva refused to forgive Ravana. After all, Ravana had been his ardent baktha (worshipper). In defence, Lord Shiva allegedly reiterated, “There are three types of sons. One which is made inadvertently and can be forgiven. Next, there will be atrocities, which, some punishment, things resolve. Then, there is a category of unforgivable sin, where a person assumes a place to trust and the trust is used to wrong the person who trusts him!”

In my opinion, this edict can be exploited in our contemporary living as such. The society puts so much trust in people in certain positions. They go to meet them to solve their problems when society sanctions them to do so. A teacher, a doctor, a leader, and a priest are all people who hold certain esteemed positions in our hearts. When these professionals cross the Rubicon by misusing their position, their punishment must be harsh. 

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Sins of my Father?

The Batman (2022)

Director: Matt Reeves

Long ago, easily more than 30 years ago, when we were a newly married couple, I had the privilege of living a few doors away from a retired postmaster. Looking at us, just married and waiting to embrace life with all its vigour, he felt compelled to dispense his dose of unsolicited wisdom to us, to me especially, like to son he never had.

I remember him telling me that I should evaluate everything I did in life very carefully as its repercussions may reverberate not only during my lifetime but that of my wife, children and my next birth! In other words, my deeds spiralled to catch on to my linkages. I kept it stored in my biological memory bank for future reference.

Some years later, I heard of someone who had her past life analysed by a holy man in Tamil Nadu. She approached someone in this town which is reputed to have storage of palm-leaf inscriptions (olai) of all humans, Indians or otherwise. She wanted to know the reason for her stormy relationship with her beau. It was not too long later that her inscription was found. She was told it was a miracle they found hers quite so soon. (sure!) In her previous life, she and her partner were illicit lovers who had masterminded her then-husband’s murder and eloped to live apparently not-so-happily ever after. Hence, they have to endure punishment in this birth to repay back payments!

Batman these day are no more the comedic

slapstick kind of the 60's TV series. These days,

Batman movies are dark and deeply philosophical.

In a single stroke, that could be the answer to all the incomprehensible life dilemmas - why bad things happen to good people and vice versa, why children get cancer and babies get congenital syphilis! How is anyone going to repute something intangible as that? The buck stops there. There is no point in arguing further on something that cannot be disproved (or proved).

Over time I have realised that I cannot be responsible for all the wrongdoings of those dear to me. I cannot be held accountable if my adult child decides to rob a bank or misbehaves with the opposite gender. Likewise, do I have to pay for the karmic sins of my father?

Increasingly people are leading separate lives. They do not work or behave for the well-being of the collective. This is the century of self, where self-interest supersedes everything else. It is I that solely matter. Hence, no one will take in another fatherly or teacherly advice. “Just leave me alone. Just do your part in my life and get off my back. Like Frankie said, it did it my way; I want to live while I am alive. It’s my life!"

The question of the sins of Bruce Wayne's father comes to the fore in this bleak Batman offering. The Riddler, moving with the times, is now siding with the Occupy Wall Street movement and is going Batman's jugular. Thomas Wayne had made some unfulfilled promises. And Bruce has to pay for his father's sins.

Robert Pattison gives a stellar performance as the reclusive, brooding superhero who is finding answers for things that happened in his life, much like a handsome Dracula trapped in his blood-sucking ways.

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Are you happy?

The Bridges of Madison County (1995)
Director: Clint Eastwood

With all the hype surrounding finding the perfect love and that love is forever with persuasions like 'listen to your heart' and 'you'll know when the right one comes along', this one is a wet blanket.

This film may be one of the best love stories ever made, not because it was directed by one of Hollywood's best directors but because it deals with a mature theme. Is the whole idea of marriage to complete the cycle of childbearing and childrearing as well as dotting the 'i's and crossing the 't's to ensure the institution of marriage continues unhinged, to pass the baton to generations next or is it to savour all the senses that complete a human being?

Is sex a privilege accorded only between a society-sanctioned couple and not with anybody else? Is it true that some people are just not wired to stay monogamous, or is it just an excuse to play truant, to savour the forbidden fruit?

Did society criminalise extramarital sex to give a face to paternity before a time when paternity testing was mainstream? At a time when most sexually transmitted infections were viewed as God's wrath on fornicators and adulterers and antibiotics were not discussed, it does not make sense for little children to run around without their mothers. What contraception? Coitus is a divine act sanctioned for procreation and nothing else, say the Judeo-Christian traditions. Now that our contraceptive options have improved, is this still applicable? 

Detractors of the above will cite the emotional (or lack of) reasons for keeping everything within the family unit, the good, bad, warts and all. Sex is just one component of married life. There are more experiences to achieve in this union called matrimony. 

This film gently deals with this touchy topic without condescending thoughts or resolution. It is what it is. We just have to deal with it.

Two siblings return to their farmhouse to have their mother's will read. They are shocked that her mother wants her remains to be cremated and ashes scattered over a bridge nearby. The children are puzzled as the family already has a cemetery plot. Looking through her journals, the children get access to the mother's well-kept secret. The mother, Francesca, was a war bride when she met her love in Italy at the tail end of WW2. Excited about the idea of marrying an America and migrating to the USA, her hopes are dashed when she is stuck in Iowa, on a farm where nothing happened - no neon lights, no Disneyland. In the summer of 1965, when Francesca's husband and her two teenage kids were away attending a fair over four days, she had a brief affair with a National Geographic photographer. Francesca lived the rest of her married life in memory of those four days, still performing her motherly and wifely duties.

In the spring of youth, with raging hormones, we plunge into relationships. Soon the magic died out. The ember of passion fizzles out. We reach a crossroads - to cave in to bodily needs or to look at the whole exercise as a higher calling and persevere.

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Follo

A shortsighted populist policy!

Starting 1st January 2023, the State of Kedah in Malaysia closed all their gaming outlets. Nobody in the state could place their bets on their lucky numbers in 4D, Toto, or DaMaiCai or buy lottery tickets anymore.

What they need to comprehend is that Man is very innovative when it comes to beating the system. I remember a neighbour during my childhood who ran a clandestine betting business. After taking all the bets for the day, he would sneak the counterfoils above the electricity switchboard that served the whole floor of the flat. If he gets caught, the police cannot put his involvement in it.

Again during my childhood, as the European-run estates came to a grinding halt, the estate-managed spirit shops also closed. Labourers, who by then were addicted to the bottle, got their fix from bootleg booze. They had to settle for locally brewed concoctions because they were out of jobs, and legal liquor cost too much. Methanol poisoning caused blindness to many and cost their lives to some.

Lessons from the American 1920s Prohibition Law are worth revisiting. During the roaring 20s, easy access to alcohol was determined to be the root of most social ills. The frequent wild parties that led to deaths, the increase in alcoholism and the frequent absence from work as mass production was in high gear were blamed on booze.

The Churches, Women Empowerment groups and even Ku Klax Klan were all for the Volstead Law, which prohibited the production, transportation, sales and importation of alcoholic beverages except for ceremonial wines and liquor for private (the affluent) consumption.

As days went on, supporters of Prohibition decreased as they were unhappy with what they saw. There was widespread thuggery, shootings and racketeering. The police force had never seen such amounts of bribery. The number of outlets, called speakeasies, illegal, of course, paradoxically increased during Prohibition. The noble intention to curb access to alcohol actually backfired, with the government of the day getting no revenue from its sales.

Entrepreneurs became creative. The so-called ‘bathtub gin’ became a thing when water from the bathtub tap was added to the premixed powder to produce gin. Cakes with fermented grapes were sold past the expiry date to achieve the desired effect. And methanol poisoning reared its ugly head too.

Rather than banning something outright, the more sensible thing is legislating all these so-called sinful activities, booze, cigarettes, gambling and even the flesh trade. Outlawing them is akin to burying one’s head under the sand. The rest of the world will just go on, business as usual. At least you can go on with life, convincing yourselves that, at least in the afterlife, all will be hunky dory to eternity.

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Pay for the sins of their fathers?

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia 

(Turkish, Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da; 2011)

Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Imagine standing out on a hill in the wild on a dark moonless night. You notice a row of moving lights. From its movement, you can guess that it is a moving train. You cannot imagine where it came from and where it is going. Soon you get a complete cacophony of sounds, the chugging of its engine, the bellowing of its high-pitched whistle that pierces the silence of the night and its belching of smoke. When it is nearer, you watch it intently, swerving and crawling. All your pleasant memories of your train travel flash right before you. As the train rapidly manifests, the stream of trains disappears behind the mountains equally swiftly right under your watch. You are left wondering what happened to the passengers, staff and the train itself. What baggage does each of them carry? What bitter-sweet experiences did each of them live to tell?

This one exciting movie defines what cinematography is all about. The creative use of light and darkness, long shorts and tight shorts and whatever it takes to give a memorable, long-lasting impression of the movie. Even a blurred view from a frosted glass appears so poetic.

The story is phenomenal. It is a simple story with no heroes. Everybody is a nobody with only one mission in their mind. Everybody is in a hurry to finish their work and return to their respective lives, which may not be hunky-dory. It is their responsibility to do what they have to do as how their fathers did in their jobs and family lives. Sometimes in their careers, they ask themselves what they are actually doing in their day to day, their actions and inactions in a rather philosophical way. 

Three cars are seen moving in the cloak of darkness at the edge of a district in Anatolia. It is the wild country where might speaks louder than compassion and logic. Animals and even people fight to survive. Violence is expressed to prove a point. The cars carry some police personnel, a doctor, a prosecutor, a couple of general workers, an army man and a pair of brothers who confessed to a murder. The team is out there to retrieve the dead body.

The elder of the two brothers cannot pinpoint exactly where he dumped his victim as he was inebriated during the crime. They go on a wild goose chase, to which the overworked policemen put their frustrations on the convicts by giving them a good beating.

Slowly, the background of the characters comes to the fore. 

The investigating police officer must juggle between his never-ending job and managing his chronically ill son.

The doctor is a divorcee after 2 years of marriage. Obviously, he still misses her. The reason for their break-up is not revealed. Though he is a pacifist, he is caught with the band of the rough company at work. 

The only person who can keep all the men under control is the prosecutor. He uses his charm and experience dealing with criminals to rein them in. His intellect makes him able to converse with the doctor.

The prosecutor tells of a peculiar case where a lady predicted her exact date of death; five months after her delivery. It turns out to be his wife, we are told later. She was assumed to have had a heart attack, and that was it - an unprecedented unexplainable power to predict her own's death. When the doctor prodded further to suggest whether suicide was ever considered a possibility, the prosecutor laughed it off. Then it dawned upon him. The prosecutor was engaged in a short fling when his wife was pregnant. It was discovered by his wife, and the doctor proposed that she could have taken her own life after delivering at the same time punishing her husband. It all made sense to the prosecutor as digoxin was available in their household. Her father took digoxin for a heart ailment. 

The entourage stops for a rest at a local mayor's bungalow. Here, we are told that the mayor's biggest problem is not having a morgue to store dead bodies so that the deceased's family from overseas can visit before the burial. Talk about priority when frequent blackouts are not a big problem. How can maintain a mortuary without electricity?

In one scene, the mayor's angelic-looking daughter brings in tea. She mesmerises everyone with her beauty. The agitated men with only one thing on their minds suddenly swayed away. Are the storytellers suggesting that the presence of females is distracting men from their purposes in their lives?

The doctor faces a dilemma when the body is eventually found, and the postmortem is completed. The body was probably buried alive - earth was found in the trachea, not killed before concealing the body. If the cause of death was written as asphyxia, not a fractured skull, as was also found, it would just prolong the anger. The victim's son would avenge his father's death. The doctor thought we should bury the truth. Was he doing the right thing or doing a disservice? We are left to wonder?

The final take-home message must surely be this. We are the by-products of our father's actions. Subsequently, our progenies prosper or suffer because of our actions or inactions. Now, the question is, who is out there keeping count of our merits and demerit points and executing what is due to us?

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We built this city!

Once upon a time in Calcutta (2021)
Director: Aditya Vikram Sengupta

Like Mother Nature @ Bhoomadevi, who has seen it all, like the dinosaurs' passing, and various primates and species morphing into Homosapiens, great cities have seen it all too.

Admittedly all cities expanded and developed to their present glorious states, not via virtuous paths but through acts of sin. Show me one still-standing city that did not benefit from actions considered unholy transactions. They all benefitted from shady nightlife activities, brothels, alcohol, smuggling, racketeering, and robbing, you name it. 

Still, life goes on. Umpteen people migrate to cities daily with a chest full of hope. Many manage to improve their lives, breaking their backs, sleepless but with a restless dream with the sole intention of climbing the ladder of success. Some falter, crushed by their enormous goals, obviously too big for the shoulders to carry. The city has seen the successes, the decadence, the swindling and the ploys. Its duty is not to punish. It merely records to play for anyone willing to hear the lessons of what lurks behind the bright city lights.

As far as nostalgia is concerned, Calcutta must surely be a city that has many tales to tell. After functioning as the capital of the British Empire and later as the site of many bloody turmoils following Partition, its past must be painted in blood, sweat and tears. Now, in 21st-century independent India, it morphs yet again. Buildings and statues that were grand then have become eyesores and need to be deconstructed.

Against this background is where this movie is set.

Ela is an ageing actress who has many things on her plate. Her young daughter's death has drawn her to the bottle and destroyed her relationship with her husband. They live under the same roof but lead separate lives. Ela is trying to get a loan to buy a house to move out, but she has no money. She had spent all her savings on her daughter's illness.

Ela may jointly own her late father's old and run-down family house. The problem is that Ela's late mother was a cabaret dancer and her father's mistress. Ela's half-brother, Bubu, blames the mistress for his own mother's suicide and refuses to give Ela any access to the property.

Bubu gets increasingly paranoid about his servants. The almost single Ela has suitors of her own. She reconnects with her old flame, and a proprietor of a Ponzi scheme showers her with gifts. The ugly side of the whole city network soon comes to the surface. The Ponzi scheme collapses, and Ela's old flame's new highway collapses. 

It appears that city is a scavenger and is hungry for more and more, but remember that people make cities.

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