RIFLE RANGE BOY

I can hear her words still reverberating in my ears like she said it yesterday. To catch a  big fish, always put a small fry on the hook. All through my childhood, this is the mantra that Amma preached upon us. She was unapologetic about her views about the nuns in the convent school that my sisters went to. Even though she was the one who insisted that my sisters should go to a missionary school, she was always sceptical about their true intentions. She told my sisters to learn what the teachers taught but not what the nuns preached. She was clear about that. In her mind, the school gave good education, for the other stuff, thank you very much. Whenever someone offers you a handout, be wary. Amma would always remind us that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Everything carries a piece of baggage. In simple terms, we grew up distrusting altruistic intention, minding only for ourselves. Maybe, these teachings helped us to pull ourselves by our bootstraps to greater heights. As ...

FOR GENERAL INFORMATION • Farish A. Noor is Associate Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University. Muslim missionary movement Tablighi Jama'at encourages followers to move out of their comfort zones - literally. It also emphasises social welfare. Appealing to the latter and engaging followers positively will get them to self-regulate their movements, and help to contain the virus pandemic. By now alarm has been raised about the numbers of people who have been infected with the coronavirus after attending a large gathering of the Tablighi Jama'at religious movement at the Sri Petaling mosque complex in Malaysia. The gathering, held on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur from Feb 27 to March 1, reportedly involved about 16,000 people from several countries who are devotees of the Tablighi Jama'at movement. The Ministry of Health is tracing the contacts of about 90 Singaporeans who attended the gathering after five wer...

Swans in Venetian Canal  Credit @filterjm Probably for the first time since Man started giving salutations to the feared forces around him, he has been asked to stop all kinds of religious congregations in big groups. For aeons, Man believed that maladies take place because the Divine forces have been angered. In their simple understanding, the only avenue left for them to correct the tragedy is to appease the Divinity by glorifying it to high heavens; hoping that He would throw us His Grace. Hence, despite appeals by the authorities, practitioners of various faiths continue to put their trusts in the forces above, not in rational thinking and the sciences. They feel that people have been misled for far too long. The way the human race appears to be heading does not assure them of a happy ending. Too many have placed self-interest above salvation to expect altruism to prevail. There are groups of people who are hellbent in finding scapegoats. In their minds, many if not mos...

COVID-19? jumping species or wannabe predator?? Is it funny that every time Man thinks that he has it all figured out, Nature (or fate if you like to call it) just jolts him back to reality? Like Will E Coyote and his spanking new latest invention from ACME Corporation, it just falls flat and blows right on his face again and again, and Roadrunner always goes scot-free, scooting off yet again, screeching "beep..beeep!"  The latest viral scare of COVID-19 ( Co rona vi rus D isease 20 19 ) just opens up our vulnerability. All the so-called foolproof systems that we had installed are just scribblings on the sand - they cannot withstand the test of time. And they are so porous. We thought we had all the arsenal that could not only not annihilate our enemies but ourselves in the process too. All these are useless in combating our electron-microscopic size enemy. We are literally crippled by an unseen offending foe. All the King's horses and the King's men cannot p...

My mother was dead sure 55 years ago that her predicament was induced by poverty. She blamed her father for not ensuring that education was given importance to the girls of the family.  In his case, he generally thought that school was quite a waste of time when precious time could be used in the workforce and the continuity of survival. She was crossed that her husband did not have the means to give her pleasure of sitting haughtily cross-legged on her throne as the mistress of her own home but instead had to be contended to make other people's home tidy and clean. She cursed the stars that she was born under that cast a spell that it was necessary to bring in a second source of income to her young family.  And then that happened. It was a series of maladies that were destined to happen as she ventured into her family life. After nine months of carrying an apparently normal baby boy, she delivered a stillbirth! Scrutinising the lifeless stillborn chi...