Unconventional Investigative Methods?

Vina - Sebelum 7 Hari. (Indonesian, 2024)
Director: Anggy Umbara

Thanks to Saravanan Decodes, my latest indulgence, for highlighting many solved and unsolved mysteries worldwide. He has 700-over YouTube presentations of some of the most puzzling and heinous murders and tries to decode them.

Two exciting cases piqued my interest. It was in how these seemingly dead-ended cases saw living daylight through unconventional methods.

The first case happened in Cirebon, West Java. A 16-year-old Vina Dewi Arsita, a student, was reported to have died after getting involved in a road traffic accident while travelling with her boyfriend, Edy, in the thick of the night in 2016. The death certificate was released as death due to Motor Vehicle Accident. There were some uncertainties about whether police did not come forward with more information about the ongoing investigations or whether their investigation was shoddy. Her boyfriend, too, perished in the accident. Burial was done.

On the seventh day of her death, Vina's best friend, Linda, was possessed by Vina's spirit, who narrated minute to minute account of what Vina endured before her death. In the local populace, it is believed that a dead person's spirit hovers around their neighbourhood before departing for good. Vina's admirer, Eky, who had made bold advances towards her, was once spat upon and humiliated by Vina. Eky was a member of a motorcycle chain gang. Keeping a grudge against her actions, Eky, with his ten other friends, confronted Edy and Vina, ramped them down, ran their machines over Vina's limbs, gang-raped her and left her to die.

This news soon became viral, and sympathetic netizens launched an awareness campaign. The police had no choice but to re-investigate. New investigative papers were opened. Rape was confirmed, and eight of the eleven perpetrators were apprehended, charged and convicted. They confessed to their crimes. Astonishingly, their account of what happened corresponded precisely to what was told by Vina's spirit. Eky and two others are still at large. A point to note is that Eky's father is a police officer.

Saravanan Decodes

People wonder whether its investigation was manipulated or whether justice can still be served after so many years.

The second bizarre case happened in a village near Agra, India, in 1988. A 4-year-old Toran Singh (@Titu) was born into a poor family of six children. Titu was a precocious child who started speaking at the age of 18 months. By 4, he started talking about his wealthy family, which he was born into, and the roaring electrical business he ran in Agra. And he said his name was Suresh Verma.

Out of curiosity, his elder brother checked out his assertions. It was all true. Titu even recognised his widowed wife of his last birth. Suresh Verma indeed had a radio business and was killed by foes. He was shot in his head. Due to a lack of evidence, the case stalled. Police were called in. 

Titu ( Toran Singh)

Curiously, Titu could narrate all the intimate details of the murder that only the victim could tell and that the police did not reveal for public consumption. Titu identified his shooter, who confessed to the police later. The killer was later charged and sentenced. Titu had a birthmark on his scalp, which corresponded to the area where Suresh Verma was shot.

Toran Singh went on to lead a quiet life away from media scrutiny. He is reportedly an assistant professor of naturopathy and yoga therapy at Benares Hindu University in Varanasi.

Even though the methods employed to investigate these cases will not stand alone if challenged in a court of law, they can nevertheless be helpful as part of the police armamentarium to cow the perpetrator into submission.

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The many roads that converge...

Kanthara (Kannada; 2022)
Director, Writer, and Actor: Rishab Shetty

Through this movie, I learnt about the 1.8 million people from the districts of  Udupi and Dakshina of Karnataka and the Kasaragod region of Kerala who call themselves the Tulu people. These cultural occupants of Tulu Nadu believe that their land was salvaged from the sea by Vishnu's 6th avatar, Parasuraman, the sage warrior. He is said to have yielded his axe to reclaim the land from the sea. To neutralise the land of salt and change it into a lush, fertile land, he employed the venom of Vasuki, the Snake King. The Tuluvas, as a gesture of appreciation to the guardians of the land, the boars, snakes and tigers, have celebrations called Bhuta Kola, an annual ritual performance. This type of their merriment was what Hollywood thought was exotic when it decided to depict eye-ball gobbling Thugee believers in their second instalment of the Indiana Jones franchise. 

I also learned that there is a movement towards the demand for acceptance of the Tulu language as another accepted language of India and a Tulu land.

Since its release, this film has garnered the attention of many moviegoers and even academics. In the current rage of cinema buffs wanting to know many of the long-forgotten cultural beliefs of Indians, this presentation is trying to erase the colonial mindsets that the cultural practices are animistic and pantheistic. A rational explanation is that people are trying to live in a symbiotic relationship with Nature, one of self-respect. Whichever way people show their reverence to the Almighty, it all refers to one distinct entity in different names or avatars, as is known in India. 

Cultural flag of Tulunadu (Wiki)

During the era of the British Raj, in their rapaciousness to reap the wealth from the lands and jungles, they passed a law to make forests restricted areas. The tribal people, who live off the ground, protested. The British vilified a particular group of Thurgeeswari-worshipping freedom fighters as bogeymen. They painted them as members of a secret cult that robs and kills people. They created such fear among the speakers of the English Language that the word 'thug' had been appropriated into the language and is synonymous with violent crimes.

This storyline follows the same vein as what the British did back in the day if one were to analyse it critically. 

In 1847, an unhappy King was looking for the meaning of life. After searching near and far, he realised that happiness was in his backyard. He found solace in a deity worshipped by the tribesmen. He took home the deity to honour and verbally agreed to let the nomads roam freely in the forest owned by him. Such was the arrangement till the new generations of the King, now landowners, no more royalty, wanted to reclaim the forest.

Guliga Daiva, the Protector.

This time, the descendants used the guise of the Government wanting to reclaim the forest to usurp back the land. The Government is painted as bad and the tribes as troublemakers. The movie shows this showdown in many graphic portrayals accompanied by spectacular cinematography and mesmerising music. The shenanigan is exposed with the help of the Protectorates of the jungle, and the symbiotic mutual-respecting way of existence between the tribals, the beasts of the wilderness, and the authority continues. Everyone agrees that God is One, albeit our different pathways to reaching Him.

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A believable myth

Tumbbad (Hindi; 2018)

Interestingly, myths, folklores and scriptures of lands far away carry a similar line of storytelling. As a baby, we find Moses let loose on a waterproofed basket in River Nile to escape the Pharoah's clutches and how he was brought up in another family. Is it a mere coincidence that the cases of Karna whose mother, Kunti, left him in a basket in a river to escape shame and Krishna, whose mother, Devaki, did the same to escape the tyranny of an evil king strike a similar chord? Like that many similar stories are found in the Zoroastrian scriptures and even the Greek myths.

One plausible explanation was given to Moses's comparable tales, Karna and Krishna is the time Jews spend in Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar decimated Jerusalem and its first Holy Temple and took Jews as slaves to Babylon. Cyrus freed them and helped them to build the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Apparently, in the 60 years, the Jews spent time in Babylon they had assimilated some of the Hindu mythology into their own scriptures!

 The exciting thing about this film is the storyline. Given a fictitious tale of a greedy child and his doting mother. The Goddess of Prosperity is said to have mothered 160 million gods. Her first child, in her womb, was a greedy one. He was eyeing for his mother's gold and food. He got the gold, but the other gods managed to stop him before acquiring the mother's food. The goddess made a deal with the other gods that the child, Hastar, would not be worshipped and lost by history. 

Fast forward to 1918, Hastar in the form of an old lady is kept in a dungeon under shackles. She is fed regularly and kept asleep by a mother and her two young sons. One day the routine goes haywire when the younger boy injures himself and has to be taken to another town for medical attention. All goes wrong when the elder son, Vinayak, is tasked to feed the old lady. She becomes violent and almost gobbled him up. The returning mother immediately sends the elder away to another town. The younger boy had died.

 Knowing that there are secrets hidden in the mansion that he lived in Tumbbad, Vinayak returns as an adult full of debts. He finds out about the gold that he has to fight out with the imp, Hastar himself. Vinayak steals a few gold coins from Hastar's loin-cloth as he is busy gobbling food. The story becomes twisted as Vinayak becomes prosperous and that stirs the curiosity of his creditor. As Vinayak gets older and too weak to fight the imp, he coaches his son to take over. 1947 had come, and Tumbbad is appropriated by the government.

An interesting piece of storytelling and has a string of accolades under its belt to prove it. It a symbolic representation of man's greed for material wealth. They fail to realise that what they need in life are simple. They need a stomach to fill and to live life to appreciate the positive things that life has to offer - the joy of seeing a happy family, seeing the children grow and nurturing them for the next generation. People take their family members for granted.

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The Universe does not revolve around you!

 Roh (Soul, Spirit, Malay; 2019)

A few years ago, around Kuala Lumpur, a seasoned trekker went on a solo reconnaissance look around to prepare a route for his friends to walk the following day. He wanted to make a quick recce as he could only start it at 6pm. It was still bright, not too dark but not yet twilight. It was 9pm when the family realised that he was uncontactable. A search was initiated. Many experienced hikers and firemen joined the foray. After failing to locate him that night, they deployed the help of Orang Asli master trekkers who were well-versed with the affairs of the wilderness. Scurrying up and down the path using paper markers that were left behind by the missing trekker, they were puzzled why he could not be traced. Then the Orang Asli trekkers summoned their shamans. The experienced man did some salutations to the guardians of the forest, and before they knew it, the lost trekker was found right under their noses along the very same paths that they were scrutinising all the while. The trekker was too dehydrated or dazed to remember what had happened to him. 

Though everyone was happy that the trekker was finally found, they also puzzled where did he actually go. It was like someone taken him away for a while, and then like a second thought, or cajoling, had put him back again. It sounds much like an alien abduction story, does it not? There are many things that we do not understand about Nature. Out in the wilderness, unprotected, alone and vulnerable, we make our rules as we needle our ways through the unknown. We learn the respect every living thing, and we are no longer the centre of existence. We do not tolerate but merely co-exist.

This film is Malaysia's submission to 2021 to the Academy Awards in the category of Best International Feature Film. So far, over the years, five films had been sent to compete, but sadly none had been nominated. FINAS recently announced that this Malaysian movie was chosen for this purpose. I find it intriguing as FINAS had clear cut guidelines about not approving any film which seem to go against the grain of the nation's official religion, it had endorsed this film which deals with spirituality and the occult.

'Roh' is set in an unspecified time at an isolated jungle location where life is simple, and living means working hard day-to-day depending on the elements of Nature. A mother, living with her two kids, an early teen girl and a pre-teen boy, is greeted with a wandering young girl who was picking up in the woods. Economical with her words, she slashes her neck before warning them the family would all die before the next full moon. Two other characters appear in their otherwise isolated lives asking for the dead girl. The rest of the story is a psychological affair with a lot of combustion and eerie music which would make the audience's hairs stand on end but without the lousy make-up type of gore.

The whole story is based on a verse from the Quran 7:12 & 14, where Satan claims to be superior as compared to humans as He is made of fire whilst humans of clay. And Satan asks God for time, till the day of reckoning, to influence humans!

[P.S. Can be viewed at mubi.com/sinema]

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The man behind the spirit!

One thing I have noticed over the years is that there are some of our activities that reaffirm our propensity towards herd mentality. One is our appreciation of haute culture. Just because a movie star is seen wearing a transparent tunic which does not leave anything to the imagination of lies beneath (her undergarment or therein lack of), everyone wants a piece of the action. 

Some people take great pleasure in their vintage wines and spirits. It has become a fashion statement of sorts amongst the high societies to serve single malt whisky of a particular age which boasts of a specific amount of character and complexity from the cask. Guests would all nod in unison after the first sip. I wonder if they would still be able to discern the difference if the liquor was unceremonious replaced with a younger whisky or for that matter a blended one, after their third or fourth drink.

In 1976, Steven Spurrier, a British merchant who sold only French wine, had a blind wine tasting competition in Paris; involving French and Californian wines. The Californian wine industry was considered a Lilliputian in contrast to their French counterparts. Hence, it was unwelcomed results when the creme de la crème of France's oenophiles turned in the Americans as the winner. The organisers were so embarrassed by the outcome that they suppressed the news from the French public. A lone reporter from the Time magazine leaked out the information to the world of what was later to the 'Judgement of Paris' in reference to the Greek mythology. In the Iliad, Paris was appointed as a judge to a beauty contest involving three Goddesses - Hera, Athena and Aphrodite. The best candidate did not win as Paris was he bribed by Aphrodite.

Rihanna
covered the bare necessities?

Lately, Malaysians were pleasantly surprised to learn that a Malaysian-made blended whiskey had won a silver medal at the 2020 San Francisco World Spirits Competition. Pleasant because we are always trying to find accreditation outside to convince ourselves that we are doing alright. Surprised because no one knew that we were brewing whiskey in this country, with the new wave of religiosity creeping in and all. 

The point to note is that it is spelt 'whiskey' not 'whisky'. Whisky is sort of patented for whiskies brewed in Scotland, much like whiskies from America are bourbon. Elsewhere, it is just whiskey for you.

Timah is here and is selling faster than you can google them. The packaging honours a certain Captain Speedy who had served the British East India Company well. I was perplexed. Even though I cannot claim to know the Malayan history in and out, a famous figure that deserves recognition for a Malaysian product ought to tickle my brain cells, I thought.

A little search and there, I discovered that Tristram Charles Sawyer Speedy a.k.a Captain Speedy was quite a flamboyant character who led an illustrious life. Born in Meerut, India, to a family with army traditions, he was trained as a soldier in England. He returned to India as an Army Officer and went on to serve in the Northern Frontier Province and Ethiopia.  In 1871, he was summoned to Penang as the Superintendant of Police. He must have been quite a character for getting quite a caustic remark from the then Governor of the Straits Settlement.

Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society

Vol. 26, No. 3 (163), Captain Speedy of Larut (Nov 1953, pp 3-103).

Speedy went on to be a mercenary to provide Indian troops to squash the Larut clash between Ghee Hin and Hai San gangs. He went on to become the assistant to JWW Birch, the first British Resident of Perak. He was instrumental in the development of Taiping town.

Later, he and his Mrs went on to explore and live in Sudan. 

                                                         

(P.S. 'Timah' is tin (Stanum, Sn, atomic number 50 on the periodic chart, in the Malay language. Tin brought in Chinese immigration and an excellent opportune for British meddling of Malayan affairs. Chinese immigration also brought in the triad, namely Ghi Hin and Hai San. Originating from different part of China with different dialects, Cantonese and Hakka respectively, each wanted the stronghold of the mining business. Caught in the middle are the local chieftains who also wanted to collect levy (without working!). The chiefs turned to the British for mediation. Speedy, the maverick, who by then had resigned as the Superintendent of Police of Penang, was roped in the squash the disturbance. Speedy brought in Indian soldiers for that purpose and billed the Malay chief handsomely). 

That is Tin (Timah) and Speedy are linked.

The bungalow in Matang lived by Speedy.

The Baobab tree in the Jalan Macalister- Jalan Residensi junction in Penang. 

Planted in 1871 by the then Superintendent of Police of Penang, Captain Speedy. 

It is the oldest planted tree in Malaysia and is still surviving.

Captain Speedy of Larut
John M. Gullick

Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society

Vol. 26, No. 3 (163), Captain Speedy of Larut (November 1953), pp. 3-103 (107 pages)

Published by: Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society

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Do we really know everything?

Usually, I do not give too much importance to things that are spiritual in nature. I just simply join the bandwagon to keep people, especially my loved ones, happy. Like when I, the first born to my father, was summoned to perform certain rights on the first anniversary of his death, I just obliged. I knew it would make my mother happy to see my father 'sent off' to the ethereal world in a proper manner. It does not matter that my parents towards the tail end of his life, could not stand each other but that is another story for another day.

The purpose of the prayers on the day of first death anniversary is to remind the soul of departed that he is not forgotten here on Earth. By invoking the forces of Nature, appeasing the feminine forces and cajoling the spirits of the ancestors, it is hoped that the deceased will keep a cursory eye on the wellbeing of the living.

Do these things really happen or is it just another mumbo jumbo set up to put the element of fear of the unknown? The guilt of not doing certain rituals could literally frustrate one when something does not go his way. Are our ancestors so vengeful that they would harm us if they are not feted? 

As I was faithfully doing the rituals and reciting mantras as directed, I noticed sporadic unprovoked movements of paraphernalia on the dais. At first thought, I attributed it to wind movement or the blowing of air from the air-conditioners.

When all the formalities were over, the priests sat down to give a pep talk to the attendees on the significance and meanings to all the seemingly pointless gestures that were involved during the exercise. Much to everybody's surprise, he asked the audience whether anyone noticed the sudden movements seen around the photograph of the deceased. In unison, everyone nodded in the affirmative. In his experience, he had noticed such unprovoked movements in most of the ceremonies he conducted. In his understanding, it is nothing more than the sign of the soul being in attendance in the ceremony as he was summoned! Really?

Through the rituals, the living hopes the family ancestors of the same bloodline act as the guardian angels who would keep vigil on the downlines. Or maybe just to give a peace of mind to the living, not the dead!

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

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