Who is a good man?

The Affair (Miniseries); 2014-19.
Season 1-5 (53 episodes)

Some men justify their polyamorous activities by saying that it is the norm. They assert that monogamy is an artificial construct that society conjures to determine ownership, responsibility and financial commitments in exchange for pleasures and the encumbrances emanating.

Society has constructed a cookbook recipe of how society should be lived - a monogamous one, sex within the confines of marriage and condemnation of fornication.

In defence, Casanovas insist their actions be in sync with the demands of Nature. The male seedlings are produced in abundance with the sole purpose of choosing the best of the offspring. Hence, they are just helping Nature sow their seed far and wide, aiding the production of the best species to flourish. There must be a reason why oestrus cycles are glaringly absent in our species. With such effective health awareness, screening, treatment and contraception at their disposal, they look at unplanned, unwanted outcomes as the risks of doing business. Anyway, societies have ways to ensure any baby is cared for, and there are many ways to sort out problems that arise.

But they all forget the psychological component associated with this seemingly transactional union. What started as a thrill to venture into tasting the forbidden fruit will turn into a compulsion and addiction and a habit hard to break. It soon becomes an indulgence that demands time, money and sacrifices. The forbidden fruit has its way of tying one down.

God forbid, by omission or commission, the union would bear fruit or the emotional entanglements that can go as far as bringing down kingdoms. It is said that there is always behind any man's success and the corresponding 'other' woman behind his fall. An affair is usually found there rearing its head!

As the miniseries went over 50 hours of storyline, it had to cover a plethora of topics, including friendship, infidelity, the challenging world of parenting and teaching, gender dysphoria, the diabolical difference in the education systems between the East and West coasts of the USA and more. The unnecessary exposure of flesh and bed scenes is slotted between scenes to pique viewers' interests.

Another novel theory suggested in the storyline is about transgenerational trauma. All the characters in the drama are miserable. They either made wrong life choices or had such low self-restraint that they repeatedly found themselves in trouble. Instead of taking the blame for all their follies, they take the path where they can blame their genes. Apparently, because of the trauma inflicted upon them by their parents or life itself, these epigenetic factors somehow altered their genetic material to make them feel miserable and indulge in destructive habits and even suicide.

Using the metaphor of the California forest fires where people were told to move to escape to safety, the story tells us we all have to move. Do we have to move in order to live, from affairs to affairs, to have a full life?

P.S. There used to be a senior colleague who was forever with the different drop-dead gorgeous women. He was brazen about his whole affairs, displaying his 'trophy collection' in full view of colleagues, friends and relatives without considering its consequences. 

Puritans would look with an air of disapproval behind him, of course, admonishing his theatrics, what's more with a pubescent kid at home. Secretly, many of them would cringe in agony thinking, if only they had the testicular fortitude to do the same without giving a minute's thought to others' thoughts of the whole exercise. But then, the meekness in them makes them all shrivel up.  

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Longevity, a boon or a curse?

This newspaper cutting has been making its rounds in many social media groups, especially amongst the senior section of our society. Understandably they embrace the silver hair stage of their lives with much trepidation. It is anybody’s guess what the future holds for each of us. We try, however, to patch up all possibilities and pave all roads for a smooth transition to the other side. As mischievous as it always is, Nature will inevitably come up with some loophole that we never expected and, thus, are ill-prepared.

The generation before us, facing an uncertain future, seeing a world war and migrating for survival, saw education and wealth as a foolproof way to prosperity. Having hardly seen anyone pass their sixth decade of life, everything was done in a hurry. They needed to educate their kids, make a territory their legacy, and save for rainy days as they slowly rode into the sunset after having the pleasure of seeing their offsprings produce offspring.

However, they should have considered the push-pull factor from their Newfoundland and their newfound longevity.

Benefiting by leaps and bounds from the stride in medical development, baby boomers are now living to years thought impossible by their parents. Unlike their parent’s world, the world had grown smaller. The world is at their feet for the millennial to step out into. As per taught to them by their parents, migration to a more prosperous land and the validation of their qualification by a white man as success, they naturally migrate overseas, leaving the old people behind.

Unfortunately, we are creatures of habit. The oldies are left behind, not because of inconvenience but for comfort. The oldies feel safe at havens familiar to them. Hence, they stayed back. Sadly the mind ages slower than the body. This spurs many sad thoughts and needs to endure the maladies of loneliness and physical pain.

Humans are the only species on Earth that nurtures their young for such a long time, and conventionally the oldies are cared for in their twilight years. This turn of events is tricky when the old live long lives at a time when the young are struggling to put their mark on their lives. Care homes and assisted living to fill the gap but can only do so much.

Should we complain about living long lives or being uncared for in our geriatric age group? Money can buy love and medical assistance; that is about it.

The mighty Hang Tuah and even the Pandavas, after they felt unwanted after achieving unsurmountable tasks in their lives, decided to wander off into the wilderness of Gunung Ledang and Meru Hills, respectively, to be one with Nature. Just saying….

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Wake up to a living nightmare!

Professor Thomas Sowell, the 90-year-old veteran economist and social theorist from Hoover Institute of Stanford University, is still active on social media. He is quick to give his opinion, backed by statistics and historical events, to run down ongoing national policies. He is an opinionated person and at one time was drawn to the idea of communism. His rationalisation for gravitating toward the left is that it is just human nature. He wants to share when one has nothing; conversely, he does not share when he tends to lose his 'hard-earned' possession. Sowell hails from Harlem, working as a postal worker as a young man and pulling himself up by his bootstrap to his current stature.

He often campaigns against affirmative action and minimum wage. He asserts that the Black American community had a better quality of life when the aforementioned policies were pinned upon them. Another recurrent theme in his rhetorics is the importance of the family unit in the upliftment of society. He does not justify the 'Black Life Matters' movement. Instead of blaming mistreatment of the blacks in the hands of a white-centred government, he puts the blame of disparity of the community on the 67% black families that have a single parent to manage their home. Between making ends meet and fulfilling personal needs, the parent has no choice but to leave their kids to the unsupervised influence of members of the neighbourhood. 

On the future of America, he sees a very bleak future. He pinpoints a decline in values like honesty and a sense of entitlement towards this end. To illustrate his point, he compared the black-outs in New York in 1965 and 1977.

During the 1965 power outage,  the incidence of crime was the lowest, whereas, in 1977, it saw plenty of looting and arson. Sowell posits that the 1965 society was one that saw the destruction of WW2 and the hard times that followed. Hence, they had some common decency to protect property and practised traditional morality. The later generation feels that by their existence, they feel entitled. Everybody owes them a living. If they fail, they quickly recoil to blame history, ancestry, and how the earlier society had oppressed them and continue to do so.

That is the mantra of the woke generation - every moment awake is a living nightmare.

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To tell or not to tell?

The Farewell (2019)

I first heard this story as being narrated by Lulu Wang in the podcast 'American Life'. It tells Lulu's story of how her family dealt with the news of her paternal grandmother's diagnosis of terminal lung cancer. It describes how Lulu's parents, together with her uncle's (father's brother) family in Japan, gathered in China, where the grandmother lives, to bid her farewell. The twist is that the whole family decided not to tell the patient, Nai Nai as she is affectionately referred to. The family, from three countries, descended upon Nai Nai's house under the pretext of celebrating Lulu's Japanese cousin's wedding.

Lulu's role is portrayed as an early 30s Chinese American student who goes to China in a soul-searching journey to rediscover her Chinese identity. She learns to appreciate the traditional family values. As their old values dictate that the happy mind would give a healthy body, the family thought that not telling Nai Nai of her disease and its grave prognosis. Still, instead of keeping her happy in the company of the people loves, it would go a long way in prolonging her life.

The trick seems to have worked in the case of Nai Nai. Even though she was given only three months to live by her Chinese physicians (and the diagnosis was agreed by American doctors), she went on to live another six years.

The traditional wisdom in modern medicine is that the patient has the right to know his or her disease. By understanding the extent of his illness, he is in a position to go all out to combat his ailment, especially which is chronic. This is especially so in cases where the prognosis is uncertain, like in cancers. A patient's attitude and resolve towards fighting the sickness and one-mindedness in battling cancer may actually alter the final outcome.

A person in the terminal stage of her infirmity may want to step up his preparations for the ethereal world. He may want to tick off the items in his bucket list (pun unintended). The content of his will may need alterations and many more.

In many Indian families too, I have noticed that the family would collectively decide that bad news, especially of the medical kind, would not be made known to the elder members. Are the family members worried that breaking bad news may trigger a cardiovascular and emotional meltdown that would be more devastating?

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Nobody can be so headstrong!

Bhuvana Oru Kelvikuri (Tamil, Bhuvana is a question mark; 1977)

The question mark in this movie, starred by two powerhouses of the Tamil cinema, is whether a lady should stay chaste to one man even though he had wronged her willingly? The title suggests that Bhuvana would play a pivotal role in the story, surprisingly she only appears in the second half of the show.

Rajnikanth acts in one of his first roles in the positive light as before this, he was usually cast as a villain. Sivakumar, for a change, assumes a negative role. This film must have interested directors to put Rajni as their hero after this film. His unique mannerism and stylish stunts must have started here.

Rajnikanth (Sambath) and Sivakumar (Nagaraj) are street pedlars selling garments. Even though they are close friends, there are like different like night and day. Nagaraj is a sweet-talking businessman who works hard with a strong ambition for the future. He is also a womaniser who lives for the pleasure of the moment. Sambath, on the other hand, works only to get enough money for his daily fix of alcohol. He is a one-woman man. Tragedy hits Sambath when his girlfriend falls into a well and drowns.

Sambath and Nagaraj's friendship strengthens during tumultuous times when the Nagaraj saves the depressed Sambath from a suicide attempt. Their fate changes on a trip to Chennai when a man in the compartment they were travelling, carrying a load of money, dies of heart attack and they decide to keep the stash!  This is where Bhuvana comes to the picture. She is the dead man sister and the money was actually temple's money.

Nagaraj befriends Bhuvana to keep her silence, just in case, their trickery is discovered. Things become complicated when she gets pregnant whilst Nagaraj is more interested in marrying a rich merchant's daughter and Bhuvana refuses to undergo a termination of pregnancy. Sambath moves in to save her honour!

That is when the real drama starts. Bhuvana refuses to have conjugal relationships with her fire-ceremonial sanctioned husband but wants to stay faithful to one man whom she had given her heart to. A lot of things happen along the way and finally, Sambath dies. Now, Bhuvana dons a widow's attire of white saree and the accompaniments.

So, what the storyteller seems to be telling is that all the external appearances are all facades of the society. We do things just to pacify society and live within its ambits. What goes within the heart or mind is anybody's guess. But are people so steadfast in their beliefs anymore? Times are changing and peoples' outlook on life and their values alter with the time.

No, thank you!

Maybe I am becoming a grouchy old man looking at negativity rather than the brighter side of things. Perhaps I have a sour puss face face with a perpetual frown that turns people off. Could it be that I am a nag? Or maybe my appearance and demeanour do not warrant salutations.
You do your transactions, you pay your bills and what do you get? Silence. You end up thanking them for fleecing you off your hard earned money. You pay them and thank them. How did it come to this? Whatever happened to mutual respect and social etiquette?
You may wonder why do I keep on going to this same outlet in spite of their lethargic treatment of customers. I should just take their business elsewhere. It is not that their spread and splendour of their delicacies outweigh any shortcomings on their part. Neither am I performing a social experiment to determine the number of visits they need to reciprocate wishes. It is by mere convenience that I often land up grabbing a bite or two when I am on the go.
This is what happens when our people refuse to break their back but instead sublet their business to foreigners who bring their style of communications, hygiene and standards to our land. Some countries bring in helping hands to help around but set the standards that they want from the outset.
Here, nothing like that happens. Everything happens on autopilot. Instead of bring the country one notch higher than the backwaters that our ancestors who found this place, we seem to be content seeing our country spiral back to the standards left by people from the lands of volcano spirit, shamans and have more passports with their photos than they can count. Each passport has a different name so much so that they cannot remember their parents' given name anymore.
We are still waiting for that someone to whip everything back to its place. Superman, where are you when we need for you. What we have are many Suparmans only!