RIFLE RANGE BOY

Severance (Miniseries, S1, E1-9, 2022) Director: Ben Stiller, Aoife McArdle Apple TV First, we were told that our vocation determines us; staying true to fulfilling the goals of our job is equivalent to being close to Divinity. But just see what it let us to - a social classification system that essentially pigeon-holes one's future by birth. Karl Marx then asserted that life is more than mere monetising one's labour. Man has to find balance in maximising time spent on Earth by indulging in things that excite him, maybe hunting, art, music, etcetera. And that led to Lenin extrapolating it to stir the working class to rise against their enslavers. Now we are told that we should find a life-work balance. We should not bring home the stresses of our workplace home and vice-versa. We cannot let our personal dilemmas affect our work performances as well. So what better way to severe these two intertwinings?  This is the premise of this miniseries. Workers of an unspecified company d...

Metamorphosis (Verwandlung; 1915) Author: Frank Kafka A Tamil saying goes like this -  செய்யும் தொழிலே தெய்வம்  - your job is your divinity. Therefore, one is expected to perform his work to perfection as it is as if he is serving God, as it is divinity to serve. It may be his reason for existence.   This is probably what Appa held close to his heart. Without taking a single leave from his bank job, which he worked for 40 years over, the same place of work after leaving school, he must have been an exemplary worker. But, with the ease of mobility and money jingling in his pockets, it must have been the freedom he missed so much in the latter part of his life when his eyesight failed, and body broke down after repeated strokes. After reading Kafka's 'Metamorphosis, I realise that narrating a story is not just telling an event and shocking the readers with bizarre storylines and twisted endings. Instead, it matters that many untold nuances and symbolisms lie buried som...

Mr Dalip Singh Kokra (1922-2020) Yet another story of an immigrant who started with nothing and went on to create a legacy of sorts for himself and his offsprings. I had the pleasure of knowing Uncle Dalip Singh when I entered my wife's family more than thirty years ago and had taken part in many happy and sad events as they came and went. Over the years, I made a composite picture of his life and times starting as a night school guard and gradually rising to be the President of the local temple. As a young man, with scant of education, he arrived in Malaya with hope in his chest, strength in his limbs and resolve on his mind. As a night guard, he had built quite a reputation as a goto man for petty cash. Towards the latter part of the month, it was a common sight to see peons, clerks and even teachers forming a beeline outside his quarters requesting friendly loans (at 'reasonable' interest, of course). He was a leading a thrifty life, appreciating the simpler things of li...

That a look at these two Presidential debates, the first one was in 1960 between JFK and Nixon, whilst the second one happened recently in the year 2020. See the vibes surrounding the two debates. Without a shadow of a doubt, there is much professionalism and decency in the former whereas in the latter we only see crass behaviour and lack of common decency. In our formative years, we were taught that to listen and to let another to speak are common decencies. Only the immature and ill-mannered interferes one's conversation we were told. We also trained to fight facts with facts, to argue it out like gentlemen in decorum, without being personal or hitting below the belt. Somewhere along the way, while we were napping, a lot of things changed. The '90s brought in the internet culture and work ethics of the likes of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Workers were expected to dress down to work. Work time needs to be flexible, they said. Jobs is famously known to walk around bare feet and ...

Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011) Netflix At a time when most people could hardly read, write or count, people like Charles Babbage (1791- 1871) and Ida Lovelace (1815-1852) were working on something totally irrelevant to their time. Babbage is course credited for the general-purpose computer, and Lady Lovelace is said to have written the first computer algorithm. Laypersons would have scorned upon them, thinking that they were weirdos living in their own dream world. Nobody would have thought that an infallible self-calculating machine was even possible, what more writing computer programmes? Like that, many go on doing things in their lives, thinking that the thing that they do is the reason for their existence. But who really knows what is your raison d'être ? Surely there is no laid roadmap given to us upon birth. Things that you do in childhood, the upbringing that you had, the friends that you cross path with and develop bonds all determine the direction of life and the ca...

I grew up in an environment where it was ingrained in us that a man can be a man only if he is productive. He has been sent to Earth on a mission and that purpose is to do his age-appropriate duties. Amma used to remind us to keep a keen eye on the task at hand and not to be swayed by idle banter and purposeless chats. Her favourite Tamil proverb drove home her point - 'A talking dog is no use for hunting'! Appa, being the non-verbal one, asserted his teaching through his actions. In his 42 years' career, he never once called in sick, barring the times our family were stuck in floods when we were stuck in a relative's house when we visited them on a Sunday and the time he was admitted for diabetes. So, these thoughts came to my mind as I was passing through Singapore airport. If one had been to Singapore, he would not fail to notice the high numbers of members of the geriatric population still engaged in economic activities namely the service industry. In a food co...

Bread and Roses (2000) Director: Ken Loach Staying true to what Nietzsche was saying about masters, slaves and master morality, the economic migrants put their lives at stake to get to be like their masters. They (the migrants) yearn to be like the masters; speaking their language, dressing like them and abandoning their age-old traditions. Whatever the masters did was good and their own self-depreciating. They achieve what they want, but they are still not happy. They have a kind of self-realisation. They realise that their back-breaking endeavours are only to make the masters' life comfortable at the expense of their (slave's) health and life. They rebel, demanding appropriate recognition and remunerations. That is when the boat starts to rock. The masters do not like all these melodramas. After all, there are many other newcomers ever-ready to fit into the workers' shoes. The master's continuity of comfort and high-brow lifestyle is of supreme importance. Hence...

I have the urge to laze around all day on a Sunday because I know that my services are not needed. I convince myself that I should reward myself by patting myself at the back and tucking myself to sleep. After all, I have been on my feet all week long. Even God who created the Universe rested on the Sabbath. Fine. I pamper myself on my rest day. My regular activities and clockwork-like demands of duties kind of puts my biorhythms in place. That is, I know I will need to do this and that with the satisfaction that whatever I am doing serves a certain purpose in continuity of life; of my life, my progeny, my lineage, perhaps the next generation and wishfully mankind on the whole. I shudder to think what will happen when I am given the standing orders or 'privilege' to stop doing all these. No more deadlines to meet and no more compulsions to present myself in person to perform my one thing I am given the pleasure of! What happens next? Am I going to slide down the pat...

Over the week, encountered three related incidences... Somebody sent me a newspaper clipping about something that happened in the UK. A high flying executive in her early 30s was devastated to discover that she was 4 months pregnant. This happened in spite of her consumption of the post-coital contraceptive pills. A month after that episode, she had an intrauterine contraceptive device inserted. 2 months later, she was told to be over 2 months pregnant when she presented to her doctor with abdominal pain. Surgical abortion was done only to discover another 2 months later that the surgical procedure failed miserably and she was still pregnant, then at 4months+! As she was not willing to give up her pursuits to greater heights in her career as well as to lose her care-free lifestyle and give up her freedom for just one man, she decided to undergo a second termination all sponsored by the National Health Service. Somebody complained that this type of news would just be treated as a r...

Whatever happened to Tamil mantra 'your job is your God'? Postmen clung on their postman bag even when their vehicle plunged into a ravine. Secret service agents stood steadfast in line of fire to protect the symbol of sovereignty of a country even ignoring their own lives. Humanitarians flock to war torn or epidemic hit zone to care for the needy. Servants rather take abuses than invoke the wrath of their employers. We are talking about a different time zone. Unless you have travelled back in time in a time machine, you would realise that things have changed drastically.  Perhaps some the examples mentioned above are remnants of the feudalistic era or leftovers from the practice of caste system of division of labour based on familial tool of trades. It can also be a figment of what Pol Pot and his revolutionaries were trying to propagate. The ideology that man were made to serve nature and we do not need technology as Mother Nature has it all for us. There used to be a t...

When you are young, you are told to choose the field of study that you like because that is going to be your bread and butter for the rest of your life. You are told to dwell into something that have a passion or aptitude for. Then you have people who are cocksure on what their calling is in life. They would go at all lengths to achieve the desire. They tell themselves that they were send to Earth for that mission. Even if they were not qualified to pursue their dream, they would try to get in through the back door at all cost. They would oft quote Walt Disney on the powers of dreaming and the power of positive thinking. "I think therefore I am"! So, does that mean that if you choose some career path that you so desire, you are set to be loving it all through your life come what may. The ups and downs of the profession is no hindrance and all can be taken in all its stride? I thought people, by nature, are easily bored. Today fashion is tomorrow's junk, what is lo...

I do come across people who complain that the work that they do is much too difficult to do and they need to take rest off work. Over the years I have been desensitized by these moans that I just tell myself, “You think my job is easy?” – talking to sluggards like you!When I was working in Klang, I encountered many plantation workers negotiating with the Medical Officers to squeeze out as many days of medical leave as possible. Initially, I thought that these people were plain lazy. I found later that it was not so straight forward. After working many long weary hours, they were paid ‘peanuts’.   A rainy day means no work and no pay. If they fell ill, they have to take a long bus trip to town – Awake at 4am –preparing house chores to catch the 5.30am bus to reach town to collect a number to see a medical officer who starts work at 8am; they will depart from the hospital close to 12noon. By then, they could not go back to work and they lose a day’s pay. If the worker managed to p...