eat, live, philosophise!

We had a bad gene pool. On the maternal side, our grandfather single handedly in a single generation, brought his family to the streets through his liking for culinary excellence. He pawned and leased to his last piece of property to hold feasts to commemorate the flimsiest of occasion. He enjoyed being doused in merriment without a care in the world, living only for the day like there is no tomorrow. He lived to eat. His antics and penchant for gustatory gratification literally brought down a reputable and respectable upper middle class family to its knees spiralling the ladder of social class all within a decade of the demise of his old man.
On the paternal side, the extremely large family with 16 over offspring (give and take, that is excluding many stillbirths and children given up for adoption), food (lack of) was always an issue. They always seem to be drooling for food.
With this background, my mother took it upon herself to put things in perspective as far as her children were concern. Living in trying times, making ends meet with limited wages, she tried to save for a rainy day by inculcating upon us that food was for survival, not something to die for! Food never took centre stage in our day to day living. Mother's favourite quote was, "When you go for a job interview, the interviewer would be asking about your paper qualification, not about what luxurious food you had consumed."
We must have left an unenviable reputation amongst our relatives. In the later years into our childhood, we were sometimes feted to feasts by relatives whom we thought were telling us to enjoy the dishes like we had never enjoyed before! Was that a tongue-in-the cheek statement, we wondered!

We can never be equal?

Inequality for All (2013)
This documentary is said to be the economy equivalent of what the 'Inconvenient Truth' is to the environment.
It is told through the viewpoint of Former Secretary of Labour under the Clinton administration. He is said to have to left the Government after his call for economic reforms were repeatedly denied. He is now lecturing at Berkeley.
He suffers from multiple epiphyseal dyplasia and stands at 4'10". He was a Rhodes scholar who studied in Oxford with Bill and Hillary Clinton..
For a start, inequality is good and it is inevitable. The fact that there is inequality amongst us is a fertile ground  for people to be motivated and inventive. There is a desire for those in lower rung of equation to strive to come out of their comfort zone. The problem is when this gap becomes too wide a divide that it creates a big unattainable rift between the two.
For every economy to be stable, the middle class spending is of paramount importance since they constitute the bulk of the population. The rich 1% anyway do not spend enough.
The 1% are appreciated for their role in creating jobs for the masses, hoping that the trickle down economics will help stimulate the nation's economics.
After the second world war, the economy, wages and productivity started going on an upward trend all the way to the 70s when it stagnated. With better opportunity for education, the income gap declined and a virtuous cycle prosperity was created.
In the 70s, something happened. Globalisation and technology pulled away work from US. Private sector union also became less active silencing the voice of the middle income wage earners. Women had to enter the working force. In spite of the double income, disposable income became less. Wages (adjusted for inflation) became less. Big companies who were gulping up mum-n-pop type of shops employed less people.
People had to work longer hours. When that was inadequate, they started living on credit.
There was only so much the coping mechanism could take. The bubble soon burst.
The author shows the parallel comparison between the wide income gap in the years surrounding the Great Depression at the end of the 1920s and around 2008. The events surrounding the two eras are eerily similar - the collapse of the market, the euphoria before the fall, the wide income gap and the demonstration after which.

The widening of income gap this time around make it more difficult for the middle class to climb out of their cocoon. Education becomes more expensive and unattainable. The super-rich, despite of their high earnings, are taxed proportionately much less than the middle class. Inequality creates political polarisation. People retaliate. Their easiest scapegoat at the present time seem to be the Muslim and other minorities.
Billionaires, now with a large stash of cash at their disposal (400 richest Americans own more than the income of the lowest 150 million earners combined), even have politicians at their knees and have much to say about running the country and in their favour too.
There is no single magic bullet to save the underprivileged without their voice being heard.

We are all deranged in our own ways.

Raj and The End Of Tragedy
Instant Cafe Theatre Company Presentation

In conjunction with their 25th anniversary, this was their offering. A modern drama with 5 actors, it narrates essentially the restless hearts of the two main characters of the show, Raj and Uncle Lingam, who are paired to travel to America. The story tells us of their background, their journey there and the people whom they meet along the way.
It is not a conventional drama with change of sets and costumes but rather a modern one with minimal improvisation of props. Story is told by a narrator who is also part of ensemble of actors through a set of dances and facial expressions. It went on for 1h45m without intermission.
Jo Kukathas and her crew of 4 other talented actors gave quite an intense performance which brought the audience over to the dark side of human life.
To my understanding, it showcases that everyone of us have some unfulfilled madness within us. Some decide to externalise it much to chagrin of people around them, sending them off to be institutionalised. Collection of people of same mindedness perhaps is not the best option as they may fall deeper into quicksand. Others decide to combat their problem by running away from it all but maintain their sanity. In the end, we are all mad in our own ways.
It starts with the character Uncle Lingam, quite a character, a man of the world, a bigoted Ceylonese Malaysian who is looking for a companion to go back to America to re-live his good times. Leaving with no choice, he is left with the company of Raj to be his aide.
The story later tell about the mental state of Raj who is a frequent inmate of Tg Rambutan Mental Asylum. The actors reenact the scenario in the asylum. They also tell of the sad tale of an old Chinese man who was discarded by his family to rot in the asylum after the family had snitched his secret recipe of making chicken biscuit.
Raj grew up mentally deranged after being neglected by his parents who actually got him a wee bit too fast, before the matrimonial night, at a time when they were more interested in having fun. Raj, a TV addict as he grew up with the company of TV in place of his parents, yearn to be amongst the heroes that he had seen all his life on the telly - Rawhide, Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas et al.
En route to America, the saga of two Malay civil servant couple is revealed. The first couple, quite mismatched, live to pacify the society in their daily life. The husband has actually plans to come out of the closet and live his life to the fullest in New York. The wife, a sexually deprived one, fantasises sexual fantasies with random men.
The wife of the second couple is made to live the life that she does not want. Forced to live the high life, she is actually feels quite at home in her quite simple quiet country home in her kampong.

In transit at Dubai, Raj realizes that there are people worse off than him but they soldier on. Pakistani workers who were worked to pulp with no regards to humanity brinking on human trafficking. The sad tale of workers' exploitation, sufferings, the will to survive whilst losers commit suicide is told in a masterly manner.
Raj and Uncle Lingam finally reach the land of their dreams, New York, New York.
Here the storyteller brings us to the life of an Ethopian cab driver of the predicaments that he went through his life, of growing up under the patronage of the mythical St George who slayed the dragon, in a black land even though St George never went anyway beyond the Gaellic lands. Life was easy back home with the tutelage of the clergymen, playing table tennis with no balls! Misery came in the form of civil war which drew him to Big Apple. But he maintained his sanity. 

For Raj... his lifelong ambition proved to be his tragedy. The land that he clamoured so much proved not quite he had expected. Even before the ecstasy of reaching the land that he fantasised so much sinked in, a stray bullet from a shootout proved to be his coup de grace.
I do not claim to be a connoisseur of arts to be able to pass judgement on the quality of a production. In my limited experience in appreciating the finer things in life, I find this presentation quite absorbing. In spite being told in a different mode of story telling, the flow is crystal clear in our minds like the many films that I had watched where the story goes from present time to flashbacks with ease without confusing its viewers. The talented Jo did a fantastic job of being to gasp the attention of the audience for a good 1h45m with her gripping but sometimes witty dialogue.

The cast of Raj and the End of Tragedy: (from left) Ghafir Akbar, Jo Kukathas, Suhaili Micheline, Anne James, and Doppo Narita (seated on floor).

Stay young, enter a worm hole!

Interstellar (2014)

Looks like science fiction movies these days dwell on philosophical topics rather than display wizardry of pyrotechnic prowess and special effects. They tend to question the meaning of life and begs to find the question of what is life and what we are we doing here!

As in most futuristic movies, Earth is depicted as a depressing place mutilated by man's own activities. With no future to carry on, in the film, people are mainly farmers trying to feed themselves in hostile weather. Even though Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is a retired NASA pilot, his children are taught in school that the whole space expedition was a hoax and that it was a ploy to bankrupt the Russians who were making headway in the field during space chasing era.

Cooper lives his father-in-law and two kids. As a single parent, he is finding it tight with the lousy sand storm and the kids who are under-performing in school. His daughter is also perturbed by the presence of poltergeist in their home.

One day, father and daughter interpreted a sand storm pattern as a bar code which understood to coordinates to a location. The location turned out to be a secret hideout for scientist Prof Brand (Michael Caine) who is hellbent on finding a new place for mankind. He had found a wormhole near Saturn which would open up to another world. If that plan failed and they failed to return, there was Plan B where the spaceship carried embryos to start civilisation elsewhere all over again!
Cooper is chosen to lead the mission with Prof Brand's daughter, a scientist, Amelia (Anne Hathaway) and 2 others. Two blocks like robots were also in the crew to complement the marvel of special effects in the movie.

The daughter takes Cooper's departure badly as he was meant to go for years. As he was going to travel at the speed of light, when he returned to Earth, he would be of about the same age as his young children.

In the course of his trip, Cooper communicates regularly with his kids via delayed messaging. He can see that his kids are quickly maturing physically whilst he remains the same.

Cooper's mission includes finding data of previous spaceships which had made the trip via the wormhole to study 3 planets there. The first planet, Miller, proved inhospitable with tidal waves and shallow oceans. Time moves extremely fast there. As they were to return, they were caught in a mishap that the life of one crew member. They made it out anyway.

The second planet, Mann, saw the astronaut surveying there still alive. He had falsified his data just so that Earth control would send somebody to rescue him. He tried to sabotage Cooper and gang but failed. Mann is killed.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Cooper's daughter, Murphy, is now a scientist under the tutelage of Prof Brand. The dying Prof confesses that his whole gargantuan plan for repatriation on another planet was all falsified. He actually just wanted to pursue Plan B - i.e. start life anew with human embryos in a new planet!
Amelia is catapulted to the third planet while Cooper and his robot return to Earth through a black hole. This black hole was man made in the future. Back at home on Earth, however, Cooper, finds himself to be trapped in another dimension (the fifth). He can see his young daughter, Murphy, but is unable to communicate with her.

He discovers that the only common denominator between the third and fifth dimension is gravity. Hence, he connects with his daughter via sand patterns on the floor transmitted in Morse Code through his watch, which he had earlier presented to his daughter during his departure.
Now, it all makes sense. The 'ghost' or poltergeist interference was actually Cooper trying to communicate with his kid and telling how to save the rest of mankind.

Fast forward, Cooper is in a space station somewhere named after his daughter who had helped to change the course of mankind with his help! An old ageing Murphy visits Cooper.
In the next scene, Cooper leaves for planet Edmund to join Amelia...

This offering is said to be true to principles of quantum physics. A scientist was consulted to edit the story to keep real and sensible from the point of science. It may not draw interest from the audience who look for visual gratifications as the subject matter is very cerebral, and plenty of dialogue is involved with a tinge of philosophical punchline thrown in for good measure. From a storytelling perspective, the storyline itself is entirely predictable and does not surprise its viewers in the awe department. The only new idea seems to be the sand pattern and the suggestion that poltergeist is actually attempted by people from another dimension communicating with the living!

A 9GAG diagrammatic representation of turn of event in the movie. 

An English gem

Rumpole of the Bailey (1978-1992)
I do not remember this show to be shown over the Malaysian airwaves when I was young. Perhaps, it was too cerebral to my liking then. With all the witty tongue in the cheek cynic speak and verbosity, I do not think any normal youngster from the Malaysian schooling system eating rice and sambar from the culturally challenged neighbourhood of Rifle Range Flats would appreciate this kind of English court drama.
After reading John Mortimer's biography, I decided to give his creation a try.
'Rumpole of The Bailey' kind of of British presentation is the reason why the British TV shows used to be something of a hit amongst the literate circles of the yesteryear.
Now, with age and the intelligence to appreciate the finer nuances of the language, I find this offering totally absorbing. It tells the courtroom escapades of an eccentric aged barrister, Horace Rumple who works in courts, The Bailey as it is referred to (after the street it is located).
Not only is he set in his ways, he is also a kind of self centred chauvinist who stands dearly to what he believes in and would not budge despite the trouble he may get into.
Despite his experience and age, he is contented with his position as a barrister. Calling  a spade a spade and kowtowing to the people of authority, his place at the judge's bench remains elusive! He is the butt of joke for many of his more junior lawyers who take a swipe at his dressing and accessories.
He may not be the poster boy for healthy living. He smokes cheap cigar most of the time even in his office. He overindulges in cheap wines and drools for rich unhealthy food which may not be the best for his already wide waist line!
His wife is a pity case. She stays all alone keeping the home spick and span putting up with all of Rumpole's antics silently. Rumpole affectionately refers to her as 'one who must be obeyed' in his soliloquy even though she is a meek old lady minding her own business and keeping mum to all to all her husband's idiosyncrasies. That is the other thing. His mumblings under his breath of how he feels about his daily happenings in life and court proceedings would put its viewers into stitches. The frequent ranting of poetry of English poets by Rumpole never sound better.
The cases usually end in not a straight forward manner. Sometimes he wins and he loses but without leaving his mark at the Old Bailey!

A legal satire

Trial and Error (a.k.a. The Dock Brief, 1962)

Just because one had toiled many hours in a particular field and has the academic papers to show it, it does not mean that he is a master in that field. He cannot demand due respect just because of that. Respect needs to be earned.
This is another film made from John Mortimer's play. It showcases two of Britain's greatest offering to showbiz - Peter Sellers and Richard Attenborough. It mainly takes place in a prison cell and an imaginary court room.
A pessimistic prisoner, Herbert Fowle (Attenborough), stand accused of murdering his wife. He admits killing his wife, all because she is full of laughter. Her laughing stitch had reached an unacceptable point of annoyance that he could not stand it any further.
Wilfred Morganhall, a down and out lawyer who is hardly seeked upon for legal representation is assigned by the courts to defend Fowle. He instructs his client to plead innocence.
The sequence of events is narrated in flashback. A low morale Fowle comes home daily to his wife who is full of spirit. She laughs incessantly to practical jokes and anything funny. Fowle labours through it all. He later takes in a lodger. What do you know? The lodger is also a practical joker.
Now, Mrs Fowle and the lodger has plenty to share.
Fowle is hoping that his wife and the lodger would decide to elope together and let him some peace. That, however, never happens. One day, she kicks the tenant out of the house instead! With no choice, Fowle kills her!
Wilfred tries to tell his client of his grandiose plans of saving his client. On the actual day of the trial, he fumbles big time making himself a laughing stock at the courts. Needless to say, he loses his case.
A downtrodden Wilfred later pays a visit to his client in prison. His client is elated. Because he was badly represented in the court by a lawyer appointed by the courts, the Home Ministry decided to set Fowle free.
Instead of mocking his lawyer, the client thanked him. If not for his lawyer, he would be a free man!
As you can see, it is an all out satire and nudge at the legal system. Quite an entertaining one too.

Sometimes, some people...

There have been many of so-called 'trial of media' of late. Somebody would commit a crime. He would be caught on tape doing it or after the fact. The widespread use of CCTV and dashboard cameras makes every action digitalised whether we like it or not. Then the uploading to social media and hence the floodgates would open. Every netizen who cannot even string a straight sentence would suddenly metamorphose into a law savvy opinionated caring human who cares for humanity and would go all out to ensure that justice is meted out.

If only the truth can be whipped out so easily!

MGR whipping the villain MN Nambiar into

submission as the missing twin emerges from

oblivion to reclaim his share of the estate from his 

conniving deceptive relatives in 1967 blockbuster

'Engal Veetu Pillai' (see pic below too).

The vilification and character assassination would ensue. Details of his employment, home address and even information deemed private, like vehicle ownership and type of business will be out in the open.

With the hype of the recent cases of road bullies and the brisk manner in which justice was seen to have been carried out, I started to wonder whether we are threading the dangerous path of accepting the loudest as the honest and endorsing lies which appear repeatedly as the truth.

In one case, the offender, after found guilty by was vouched by his friends to be a great human, a philanthropist and even an animal lover.

That is the trouble with the world is that on one hand we say there is goodness in everyone of us but on the other we are taught to believe in duality of things. Things are either good or bad; right or wrong; black or white; heaven or hell! Even our scriptures has defined to us of what is right and what is wrong. There is no two ways about it. There must, however, be a middle ground.

A saying in Tamil, or rather the title of a novel which was made into a movie later, goes.. சில நேரங்ககிளில் சில மனிதர்கள் (Sometimes some people). Sometimes some people do the darkest of things at their weakest moments in life. Generally they could be good people as good parents, good leaders and good citizens but with a little mood altering life situation or pharmacological influence, the devil inside may surface.

I am in no way condoning any of their actions but to remind ourselves that it could happen to you or me. We cannot wait for God's justice to prevail as it takes too long. Hence, mankind takes it upon itself to punish its kind and give a sense of satisfaction to its victim as well as send a clear message to possibly hinder future offenders. Really?

MN Nambiar, stereocast as a villain in umpteenth Tamil movies. He is portrayed as the epitome of evil out to ruin every of the hero's attempt to win the heroine's heart and as a cruel zemindar would oppress the peasants in every conceivable manner. In real life, however, he is a pious vegetarian and teetotaller. And a philanthropist, too.