Liberté

BBC Timewatch: The Princess Spy
(2006; Documentary)

Her maternal great-great-great grandfather is Tipu Sultan, the Mysore Ruler who died defending his nation against the marauding British forces on his Motherland. But Tipu Sultan himself is listed by the Hindutva movement as one of the monarchs who was engaged in the systematic destruction of Hindu civilisation. (But that is another story for another day!) Her father, Hazrat Inayat Khan, is a Sufi Master, a musician and a pacifist. Her mother is an American, Ora Ray Baker @ Pirani Ameena Begum, was a poet and a musician. She, Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan, was born in Russian, grew up in France and had to flee the Nazi invasion.


If her great ancestors fought the tyranny of the British, Nisa Inayat Khan @ Nora Baker @Madeline @ Nurse @ Jeanne-Marie Renier, worked on the side of the British against another savaging army of the time, the Nazis. She was an established writer, musician and a child psychologist. During the war, she served as an undercover British secret agent, masquerading as a wireless operator. She was parachuted into France to send in invaluable coded messages back to the UK. She was, however, captured by the Germans and executed in a concentration camp with a shot at the back of her head. She maintained her silence throughout the enemy interrogations, and her last spoken word was 'Liberté' (freedom). After the war, she was honoured posthumously with the George Cross, the highest award for bravery displayed away from a battlefield.

The story of Nisa Inayat Khan @Nora Baker is the story of a Muslim fighting on the side of the Allied Forces. She is also one amongst the millions of victims, like many Jews, who perished in the Holocaust that some people still deny having existed.

Never strayed from its intentions

Dr Rama Subbiah Scholarship Fund
Golden Jubilee Celebration (1967-2017)

Most of us who studied in the local universities are quite familiar with Dr Rama Subbiah Scholarship Fund which had been a boon to many underprivileged varsity students of Indian descent. Not many of us, however, know much about Dr Rama Subbiah and the genesis of this fund.

Dr Rama Subbiah (1933-1969) is first Malaysian Ph D holder in the field of Linguistics. Working as a lecturer in University Malaya and Chairman of NUPW-PPN Hostel Management Committee, he financed, out of his pocket, accommodation for TAR College Indian students who had to commute long distances on a bus from out of town to study their A-levels. That started in 1967.

From then on, the hostel students contributed their hostel security deposit money to start a scholarship fund. Many individuals later pledged small but regular contributions to this embryonic scholarship endowment which was initially named 'The Indian Students Scholarship Fund'. After the untimely demise of Dr Rama in a tragic motor vehicle accident, it was renamed 'Dr Rama Subbiah Scholarship Fund'.

The help via this fund reached out to many students of humble backgrounds. They, in turn, after reaping the benefit of this endowment, continued the trend. Beneficiaries were required to reimburse what they had received into a revolving fund once they started working. Over the years, the Board which manages this resource has increased their base capital through social fundraising activities.

It recently celebrated its Silver Jubilee, its fifty years of existence.

The hand that whacks, embraces too?

@AryamanBodh

One of the regular feature during my childhood days was the visits by lonely housewives to engage in a prolonged banter with my mother.

In RRF, my childhood home, a new neighbour had just moved to our oft-emptied next door flat. In came a seemingly perfect family, the head of the family, a tall, lean man donning dark glasses in the midst of the dimly lit corridors of the neighbourhood. He would walk as if he had a severe case of cervical spondylosis, straight-backed, walking straight ahead without tilting his heads even for a moment as if he had a mission in life like a racing horse prancing on with blinkers. The wife, a slim lady with long wavy hair and polyester floral sari with a faced stained in turmeric powder, an Indian natural skin whitener and scar-blemisher, would follow suit, well aware of the roving eyes around her. To complement this seemingly perfect couple was a pair of children of every dream of a middle-class family of the 70s - a daughter and a son. Then some distant back trotted in a middle-aged lady, all dressed in white widow's saree and a matching short white blouse, and a chubby man in his thirties with eyes protruding out like a frog's and appearing not quite right in the head!

They went on their lives just as we did ours. There was not much communication between both families. Most of the time, they were left to their own devices.

Three months or so into their move into their flat, we would occasionally hear shouts, yelling, sounds of punches on raw skin and crying, sometimes interspersed with groans. Like what kind neighbours would do, my family would just mind our businesses and carried on life as if nothing happened.

One morning, after a night of yelling and screaming, the lady of the house made an appearance at the corner of our kitchen window. Like a drug peddler looking for clients, she whispered her problems to Amma. Occasionally, she would turn around and look sideways just to make easily volatile husband would suddenly reappear to make minced meat out of her. It would be a regular feature for the rest of stay in RRF.

Through inadvertent eaves-dropping, I managed to gather the going-on. She had a victim of abuse by her husband and her mother-in-law. Periodically, she would show her wounds and her racoon-eyed face like her badge of honour. Amma, in her own feministic stance, would suggest ways to set her life in order - how to go about making a police report, to get a medical report on her wounds.

Credit: Andy Capp

Like a broken record in the typical fashion of a battered wife, her actions are always predictable. She would be so gung-ho about 'letting it all behind', in 'starting it all over' and putting 'a full stop to all these' on the day after the whacking. And a few days later, it would be status quo. 'He is actually kind-hearted when he is sober', 'it is my fault, actually', 'I irritate him', 'I have to take it for children' were the usual replies.

In my naive mind, I could not understand why was it is so difficult for my stupid neighbour to make up her mind. When somebody is hostile to you, you retaliate!

Nothing much really happened. She continued her mid-morning rendezvous at the corner of the kitchen window, telling her inner feelings and inner ramblings whilst Amma would go on with her stirring of her meals on the stove. It would all come to an abrupt when either Amma finishes her cooking, or the neighbour's husband comes marching back during his lunch break.

A taboo subject...

The Jew is not my Enemy

(Unveiling the Myths that Fuel Muslim Anti-Semitism)

Tarek Fatah (2010)

Warning: Only for Mature Readers

It is often said it is good to forgive and forget. People also say that to err is human and to excuse is divine. We have seen nations fight in one generation, only to be allies in the next. But somehow, the Muslim-Jewish animosity seems to have last centuries.

The earliest record of Jewish betrayal happened during the Battle of Badr (Trench War) when Meccan pagans ambushed Prophet Mohamed's army in Medina. A group of Jews who were chased from Medina for breaking certain treaties joined forces with the Meccans. As the going was tough, and the mighty Meccan army could not infiltrate the Medinians, the renegade Jews tried to coax the Medinaian Jews to double cross. Here, the story turns cloudy. After the win, Mohamed is supposed to have personally killed about 900 Jews to be buried in trenches. The authenticity of such an event has been argued for ages now. On the one hand, opposers to this narration claim such an event is not even mentioned in the Quran. It is also not in keeping with His previous teachings of not punishing others for the crime of someone else and the Islamic law on the treatment of women and children.

There was also a time when Jews and Muslims had apparently lived in harmony, in Andalusia, for example. Under Islamic rule, many Jewish thinkers including Maimonides prospered.

The problem of justification of Jew bashing had started with the writing of Ibn Ishaq, in the 14th century, of the biography of Prophet Mohamad. In his writings, he described the killing of Jews by the Prophet. Somehow, this made its way to the Hadiths and newer prints of the Holy Book. Extremists groups, with leaders like Banna, Qutb and Maududi, were more than happy to continue the Prophet's unfinished work.

In the modern era, every malady faced by humankind is often pinpointed at the Jews and their secret agenda. Let there an earthquake, a flu epidemic, the communist insurgency, tsunami or even Sunni-Shia divide; the Jews are almost always blamed. What started as a secret meeting in 1895 to decide the fate of the displaced Jews culminate to Balfour declaration and eventually the creation of the state of Israel. This formation invoked the ire of the jihadists for losing part of their land, as the second most sacred mosque where the Prophet is said to have ascended to heaven is situated. What the jihadists fail to realise is that the Ottoman Empire and the Grand Mufti were supporting the losing side of the World Wars, Germany and Hitler respectively.

Paradoxically, the Quran does not condemn the non-believers. If at all, it is the Hadith that does. In one verse, it is said that Judgement Day would only come after the last Jew is slain!

The author goes on to condemn the Muslims themselves for fighting amongst themselves and practising race politics where Arabs perch on the highest branch. Many Muslims societies, long ago, used to live in harmony with other communities. Now, with the new brand of militant Islam practised by believers gives the impression the religion is a hostile one. Many non-Islamic countries who obtained Independence around their Islamic counterparts have reached great heights in term of economic, scientific, social and living standards. Sadly, the Muslim countries still struggle to get their act together. They dream of turning back the clock to Golden Era of Islamic Civilisation.

In the concluding chapter, Fatah takes a swipe at Holocaust deniers. He reiterates that many Muslim fighters too died fighting against the cruel Nazi regime. This includes the Turkestan Army, the many Muslim soldiers buried in Majdanek, Poland, just outskirts of Auschwitz, the Muslim soldiers of the British Empire and Princess Nor Inayat Khan @ Nora Baker who was a British secret agent who died in a concentration camp. Interestingly, the Princess is the great-granddaughter of Tipu Sultan of India who fought to defend his land against the British. She gave her life protecting for the course of the British, fighting tyranny.

Author with Holocaust survivor Max Eisen
Auschwitz, March 2010 

The dark shadows beneath

Ozark (Miniseries, 2017)

The art of storytelling is the primary skill that keeps our human race going ahead with the passing of time. With narration, we are able to impart values and messages that help to carry through hardship. This skill also helps the leaders keep his flock together. When the herd is convinced with a precise narrative, its members would willingly crane their neck to the slaughter when the time is ripe. Traditionally, stories are laced with ethical values, and poetic justice would always prevail.

Over time, this type of set-up, somehow, seem not to excite the general public anymore. They thought they heard it all. They wanted more.

That is where our current stories seem to head. The main character of our tales are no more heroes but rather anti-heroes. They come with a dark past, involved in a subversive activity, and the whole premise of the storyline is get away scot-free from whatever crime that the protagonist is up to. The excitement is all about evading apprehension.

Purists may say that these guilty pleasures are actually stirrings of our primal desires that we have suppressed so long. For most of the time in our lives, we were expected to live our lives to the moral codes set by the society. Our every action was supposed to be exemplary for the generation next to emulate. Every member of the community had the sovereign right to criticise each others' seemingly wayward action. Now, every man is for himself. In the century of self, it all about self-gratification, self-exploration, self-discovery and self-development. Nobody lives for anybody else anymore. We are talking about individual rights, not doing the 'right' thing. In this post-truth era, there is more the 'right' thing to do. For every action which looks noble, we can just come up with a thousand and one reasons, why it can be damaging instead.

'Ozark' is a miniseries which just triggers these thoughts in its viewers. Marty Byrde, a financial advisor, has to sanitise a Mexican drug lord's laundered money in a record time to avoid repercussions. The excitement of seeing Marty using his wit, quick thinking and rhetorics to save his life and his family. Also hot on his trail are FBI agents who can sense that he is up to something no good.

Some sacrifices are mandatory?

Tokyo Twilight (Tōkyō Boshoku, Japanese; 1957)
Written and Directed by Yasujirō Ozu.


Parents usually try to sugar-coat the family environment and cushion their every fall so as not to ensure their childhood era is normal. They try to shield them from bad news and hide unsavoury situations from their views.

The children still find out, and if they do not perform well, they blame it all on their far-from-perfect childhood. Sometimes the single parent tries to fulfil the missing parent's role and mostly fail miserably.

Perhaps for the sake of the children, most parents bite the bullet, try the sort out their differences and make their family stay intact.

Yasujirō Ozu is widely touted as the most Japanese of Japanese film directors of his era. In this flick, he tells the story of a middle-aged bank officer and his two daughters (Takako and Akiko). The mother is not in the picture, whom we later discover had eloped with her lover. She left with the father three children, the son was killed in a hiking accident. The elder daughter, Takako, with her daughter, had left her alcoholic husband. The younger sister, Akiko, grows up a troubled girl, described by the town folks as a wild girl. Akiko is stuck with an unwanted pregnancy and an uncommitted boyfriend and no one to share her predicament.

The pleasant-faced Setsuko Hara who
had appeared in many of Ozu's films.

Along the way, the two girls discover that their estranged mother had somehow landed in the same town. Akiko was only three when her mother left. Hence, she has no recollection of her mother. Both the girls are sore with their mother for abandoning them to grow up alone. The father, on his part, had tried to play his role by being an adequate provider and a disciplinarian.

Akiko goes for a termination of pregnancy. After a row with her mother and her aloof boyfriend, she storms out of a shop to be hit by a moving train either accidentally or in an apparent bid to suicide. She succumbs to her injuries.

After seeing how Akiko turned out as a troubled growing without a parent, Takako takes the bold step to go back to her husband to give their marriage another chance for the sake of her daughter.

Despite the differences the adults may face, perhaps for the sake of the children, some parents sacrifice the worldly pleasures of their youth for the sake of their young. They tell themselves that it is their God-given duty to ensure only the best for their offspring. Just like how the world only favours the young!

At the end, there is only love...

Odd Man Out (1947)
Produced and Directed: Carol Reed

This film, the first of Carol Reed's trilogy (the other two being 'The Fallen Idol' of 1948 and 'The Third Man' of 1949), is described by Roman Polanski as being his favourite film of all time, even better than 'The Third Man'.

This movie has been praised to high heavens for many reasons, mainly for its cinematography and narration. I thought its story was highly symbolic of life itself. That, people come and go in our lives, some join in merriment,  some to achieve some kind of endeavour and some motivate. There would be people who would promise to stay through thick and thin but scoot off at first sight of trouble. There would be some who would betray or make a buck or two out of you. At the end of the day, only a couple of people would be with you until the end. In this flick, the loyal souls who stay till the end seem the love of the protagonist's life and the man of God.

Set in Northern Ireland and at a time of civil unrest, Johnny McQueen (James Mason) robs a bank to support his political party activities. As Johnny had been completely homebound six months before this event, the excitement of the whole exercise and the outdoors made him lose balance. In the scuffle after the robbery, he shoots a man, gets shot himself and falls off the escape vehicle. The rest of the story deals with his escape on foot around town as the police are hot on his trail. There are complete strangers who would go all out to help him whilst there are others who would rather keep clear at the sight of his gunshot wound. Johnny drags himself around town to safety; his fellow accomplices abandon him, strangers are after him for the reward, a mad painter wants to capture the look of a dying man on canvas and so on. A pastor wants to pray with him for salvation, and his girlfriend wants to start a new life together away from all the fiasco. If only life could be so simple.

Interestingly, the film was given an adult rating by the British censors for its violent ending which was just suggested, not shown. It is surprising that even the gunshot wound is not shown and neither is the brutal end.