RIFLE RANGE BOY

Lucky Baskhar (Telugu; 2024) Director:  Venky Atluri There are different rules for other players. The rich have it good. The system ensures that they stay wealthy. Money begets money. The law provides that the bulk of wealth remains within the confines of those with them. There are different rules for other players. The rich have it good. The system ensures that they stay wealthy. Money begets money. The law provides that the bulk of wealth remains within the confines of those who possess it. T he legal system makes justice swifter for all the money that can be bought. The middle class stays put in a self-imposed restrictive loop. The middle class is trapped in a cocoon by concocting rules of morality as well as divine and social justice. Grabbing an obscene wealth escapes them and can only be an unattainable dream.  The middle class is often used as a scapegoat to show society that the system is fair. By periodically using them as sacrificial lambs, society sets an example t...

While scavenging around for the next topic to ponder, I came across a conundrum a friend of a friend was going through. Not many would find it a big problem. Many would not mind inheriting that problem. Others would say, "What problem?" After working all their lives engaging with various businesses to pull themselves out of the shackles of poverty, they can say they have arrived. No, thanks to the governmental racially discriminatory policies, and despite this, they had managed to give their three children an overseas education. Again, the children had opted to settle overseas because of the national social re-engineering policies. The roots are so deeply embedded elsewhere that they find it pointless to return to the roost. Their occasional summer vacation and digital connections would suffice for family bonding. The couples are left to fend for the coop and the empty nest. To complement that, there are multiple landed properties, real estate assets, various incomes, and a s...

Chief Justices Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat, Chief Judge of  Sabah  and  Sarawak Abang Iskandar Abang Hashim,  and apex court judges  Nallini Pathmanathan,  Mary Lim and Mohamad Zabidin Diah. The naive, straight-thinking, law-abiding me with no background in the legal field used to think that the buck stopped at the Court Of Appeal. If one fails at the Appellate Court, it was pretty much that. One goes to jail to complete a sentence or meets his maker as he hits the gallows.  Now we know there is life after the appeal. One can seek justice by pleading at the Federal Court. If the results there are not to his liking, he further argues to have a judicial review of the panel of judges that meted his sentence. Even the Federal Court can be held at ransom. This is called justice in the world of the high-heeled. Everyone deserves adequate legal representation, and it is his human right. Of course, it becomes mandatory if the client can afford the obscene amou...

Inventing Anna (Miniseries, 2021) Netflix Believe it or not, this miniseries is based on actual events. Between 2013 and 2017, a young German heiress of Russian descent by the name of Anna Delvey was seen in the social circles of New York. She was moving around the company of who's who in the art scene and the rich and famous. Everybody was excited about her ambitious plan to create an ultra-exclusive club where the exceptionally wealthy clientele could partake. Soon every banker, lawyer, designer and leeches was dying to be in her company. The only perennial problem is that his apparently flamboyant young lady has problems mobilising her money from Germany. Her strict father is insistent that Anna earns her every single penny herself.  People soon realise that Anna was spending way too much than she actually managed to show. Not wanting to be embarrassed, her many famous socialites and supporters of Anna's plan to build a foundation instead stay anonymous and would not like to...

House of Gucci (2021) Director: Ridley Scott They say wealth within a family only lasts only for three generations. This adage is applicable for immigrant populations and also for family businesses. The maverick from the first generation with fire in his belly, zest in his heart and vision in his mind, would venture out to dream the impossible. He would not sleep till his vision of the future materialised. With his affluence, he would not want his offspring to be deprived of what he did not have.   Opportunities would just roll in like a fountain for the offspring, i.e. the second generation. They do not have to struggle to get their chances. To them, it is all a given thing, a no-brainer. "These things are human rights, no big deal!' They start to explore the finer things in life and the ember in the belly is slowly fizzling out.  The generation next would have easier growing up. Shielded from cruelties of life, street smartness would be something quite alien, unlike the...

Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Documentary; 2019)    Based on the book written by Thomas Piketty . We started in the pre-Industrial Revolution with a significant disparity between the haves and have nots. Under the feudal system, there were the extremely wealthy landowners and the dirt poor peasants. The inequality between the two was phenomenal. The poor simply cannot work their way to become rich. It is humanly impossible. One has to be born with a silver spoon to own capital. Alternatively, one has to be married into one, like in the many fairytales and novels of the yesteryears. 1% of the world population owned 70% of the world's wealth. The divide between the affluent and the impoverished became more apparent. This triggered the exodus of people from Europe to newer lands like Australia and the USA and took them over. The emigrants replicated their master's strategy of wealth acquisition. They used slaves, a form of movable property, as collateral and capital to gen...

Bad Boy Billionaires: India (Documentary, 2020; Netflix) This is another one of Netflix's productions that hit a snag in India, this time it spurned court cases demanding against its release. Three out of the four episodes in the series were released recently. The fourth episode, a documentary narrating the rise and fall of Ramalinga Raju of Satyam Computers, was successfully stopped at the courts for its damaging portrayal of the man.   The remaining episodes tell about the escapades of the three Indian icons. Vijay Mallya, a fugitive currently residing in the UK, is also known as the King of Good Times. Born to a beer brewer father, despite the Prohibition of liquor in many states of India, managed to glamourise beer drinking during the dot com bubble heydays of the '90s. From there he went on to the world centre stage through his involvement in the 'no frills' airline business and the F1 races. He made a few shady loans, and soon he was hot on the heels of the author...