My word, look at the similarities!

Plato, in the book Republic, suggested that the state should be ruled by philosophers. But he also mentioned about groups of people attuned to different classes to do different duties for the upkeep of the nation. In modern times, these ideas may not be politically correct as it is not good virtues that spins the modern world, but rather, stashes of money. In the 21st century, conformity of the majority to the whims of the 1% goes a long way in keeping order but not peace and definitely not law. Creation of just wars seems to the calling of the century whilst the powerful maintain their stronghold on the hapless majority.

Harimandhir Sahib, was given the golden feel to the pre-existing temple by Maharajah Ranjit Singh. He has the honour of being the only power defeating the Afghanis. He created Punjab, ruled over Kashmir and Afghanistan. His royal regalia included the coveted Koh-i-Noor diamond which was snatched from the Persians who had looted it from Andhra Pradesh. The priceless gem was allegedly 'gifted' to Queen Victoria. The Brtish monarchy since had been shamelessly exhibiting their loot on their crown. The top tier of the temple is of solid gold, the middle tier is gold plated and the bottom is made highest quality marble. ©FG

These were some of the things that went through my mind as I was walking around the holiest shrine of professors of the Sikh faith. What started as a discontent to the discriminatory practices of the Hindus, Guru Nanak and his band of followers went wandering in search of the meaning of life. Through his journeys to the valleys of knowledge and meetings with mystic figures, with the help of poems and music, they attempted to put in words, perhaps how life should be lived. He and the holy men after him strived to find the reason for our existence.

The one-eyed warrior.

Maharajah Ranjit lost the vision of his left eye due to infancy

smallpox. His mother was behind many of his successes. ©FG

For a certain time, things were hunky dory. The invaders of the continent were inclusive in their outlook and engaged in finding commonalities amongst religions rather than exclusivity. Mishap befell this idyllic region. As the national coffers dried up with over-indulgence into extravagance, new taxes reared its ugly head. Division along religious line cracked open. Jiziya was justified on non-believers.

There was a need to protect the Sikh way of life which made a lot of sense to the people who believed in it; simplicity, equality, service, humanity, humility. compassion and servitude to mankind. The majority reeled behind faithfully under the banner of religion. They started identifying each other in an exclusive club which fell on five visible symbols. (5Ks- Kaccha, Kirpan, Kara, Kanga, Kesh).

The full splendour of the grandiosity of the aureum-hued building is visible at night. A sight to behold. The energy of gold and the positive energies of worshippers who throng with the purest of thoughts is set to awe believers and non-believers alike. Sadly, the cleanliness, orderliness and law-abiding spirit stop short within the perimeter of the pantheon. ©FG

The temple which fets the Grant Sahib, the key to the secrets of life floats in a pool of nectar. Legend has it that the wonder of the lake was discovered when many patients with skin diseases, including leprosy, had miraculous recoveries. Another tale tells of Amritsar being the place where one of Lord Rama's twins was injured by Lakshmana's arrows. Nectar (Amrit) was used to nurse him to health, hence the name. ©FG

The word, the knowledge, the wisdom is echoed in many religions as the divine entity called God.

(John 1:1 - In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.)

For a brand new start? Perhaps it unchains the guilt of their past wrong-doings? Is the stain of the soul permanent? ©FG

The guardian of the faith ©FG

No one needs to be hungry! ©FG

No easy feat, the promise of feeding round the clock. ©EsKaySK

Courtesy of the utter of the strong Punjab cows and the fertile plains. ©FG

Humbling service to mankind is the tenet of Sikhism. Whenever malady befalls, langgar (kitchen) is there. Earthquake, fire, tsunami, care of the homeless, you named it. Ironic that Britain, which can be squarely blamed for the many famines and death in India during their heartless rule, has mobile kitchens set up by British citizens of Sikh faith to feed its many homeless citizens. ©Bob Mann

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An evening of friendly fires at Wagah-Attari border!

The Indian side of the border.
A spanking new complex in the pipeline.

It is a daily affair, of public display of brotherly rivalry. The old wound of a state that was curved at will at a stroke of a pen.

As the sun sets, both nations remind themselves they are of one DNA but two divided by politics and religion.

It has become a ritual to irritate and provoke either side with their high flying kicking drills, the heaving of chests at each other and theatrical display of mocked emotions.

Even though similar ceremonies are carried at two other border towns, the one at the trunk road between two sister cities, Amritsar and Lahore take the cake. They share a strong bond. Maharajah Ranjit Singh who united the states in Land of Five Rivers (Punjab) and held the honour of being the only force in the history of mankind to tame the hill tribes of Afghanistan, made Lahore his capital and honoured his guardian religion by building a golden outlook to the Hari Mandhir to see it as the Golden Temple today.

Maharajah Ranjit Singh

The heat builds up under the evening sun on both sides of the fence. The heat on the Indian side, however, is more pronounced as youngsters and even visitors to Bharat Desh frolic in the revelry of forced nationalism and perceived animosity of kins. The blaring sounds of Bollywood music scream for the call of patriotism. On the Pakistani side, the tone is sombre as the nation built on the foundations of moderations of religion struggle to prove their purpose of existence. The Pakistanis commence the ceremony with doa. The scene is set for something akin to a shouting match; with multihued psychedelic, colour donning members of the Indian side of spectators who had thronged from near and far, amongst which many are foreigners anyway versus the green-white monotonous shade on the contralateral side.

Having an enemy serves a purpose.

Indians provoke their bhais with two figures that they do not like to be at the forefront of things. Two majestic looking female Indian Border Security Force (BSF) officers with full regalia march to the other end followed by another two with patrolling dogs. The Pakistani Rangers reply with male marchers. 

The fiesta-like atmosphere goes on with prodding on either side with cries of freedom - Bharat Mata Jai, Hindustan Zindabad and Vande Mataram until it ends with the ceremonial opening of border gates, lowering of flags and re-closure of gates. Understandably the yelling on the Pakistani side is muffled.

Moments before the lowering of flags.

For all you know, the two sides of the team (BSF and Pakistani Rangers) probably discuss their next day’s itinerary over masala chai as both their moves are well coordinated to the tilt.


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Swing at the New Leftist

Fools, Frauds and Firebrands, Thinkers of the New Left
Roger Scruton (2015, reprint)

I was always under the impression that the input from the academics and intellectuals is the one that is propelling the world forward in the right direction; averts hegemony by a certain group and tries to create a sort of utopia where fairness and justice is handed to all. With a single stroke of his pen, the author puts all these thoughts to the bin. He paints them all as troublemakers, who promised utopia but what they offer instead is dystopia, mayhem and destruction.

For a start, he defines the leftist as the group of people traditionally seated to the left to King Louis XVI, the despotic monarch whose reign ended with the 1789 French Revolution. The members of the Estate and Generals usually were placed to the left while the nobelties occupied the right. Of course, it is all perspective which is right or left depending on whether you are an audience in apalace or looking from the monarch's end.

It is a tough book to read. With the many name dropping and verbosity of the writer, he steamrolls most modern thinkers, if not all, as frauds. They speak in unintelligible speeches using meaningless jargon like in Orwell's 1984 Newspeak. They justify their assertions with absurd mathematic formulas.

The author systematically destroys intelligensias from France (Lacan, Deleuze, Badiou, Foucault, Sartre, Camus) Germany (Hegel, Heidegger, Habermas, Althusser), USA (Galbraith, Dworkin), Italy (Gramsci), British (Thompson, the Fabians) and the representatives from the former communist block (Lukás, Žižek). Even though communism has proven to have failed, these people are actually promoting communist ideology in a new approach where capitalism (the burgeious ideology) is portrayed as the bad guy out to destroy man's freedom and liberty. They failed to realise that these are very same idea as the right wingers (read: democratic process) have been trying to do over the centuries - to find law and order in society, to propel the human race to a higher level and the promise of a better future.

He praises the philosophers of the yesteryears, the Greeks thinkers and later  ones like Spinoza and Kant. The conservative side of politics has had something going. Unfortunately many misfortunes happened along the way and Man wanting to look at other ways of doing things have embarked on the leftist agenda. Even though, their economic models have repeatedly shown dismal results, they are hellbent to come out with yet other strategies to put forward their scheme!

A nice perspective of view from the other side.

Excerpt From: Roger Scruton. “Fools, Frauds and Firebrands.” iBooks.

“Whether it be the Palestinian intifada, the IRA, the Venezuelan Chavistas, the French sans-papiers, or the Occupy movement – whatever the radical cause, it is the attack on the ‘System’ that matters. The alternative is ‘unnameable in the language of the system’. Didn’t Paul Cohen prove the point?

As in 1789, as in 1917, as in the Long March of Mao, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, the work of destruction feeds on itself. The Event is ‘the void at the heart of the actual’. Fidelity to the Event means commitment to nothing. The windbaggery of Žižek and the nonsemes of Badiou serve one purpose, which is to turn attention away from the actual world, from real people and from ordinary moral and political reasoning. They exist in order to promote a single and absolute cause, the cause that admits of no criticism and no compromise, and which offers redemption to all who espouse it. And what is that cause? The answer is there on every page of these fatuous writings: Nothing. ”

“Leftist Newspeak is a powerful tool, not only because it wipes away the face of our social world, but also because it describes a supposed reality that underlies the genial appearance and also explains that appearance away as a deception. ”

“That feature of ideology has long been apparent. But exactly the same goal of hiding reality behind inviolable screens of words can be found in the mathemes of Lacan and Badiou, in the litanies of Deleuze and Guattari, and in the rhetorical questions of Žižek as he patrols the world in search of those who still possess the risible belief in the Big Other and who have not yet discovered that they don’t ex-sist.”

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The Best Asian Short Stories 2017 - A Review

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2297442575?type=review#rating_153810108

Madhulika Liddle's Reviews > The Best Asian Short Stories 2017

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The Best Asian Short Stories 2017 
by Monideepa Sahu (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Zafar Anjum (Goodreads Author)(Series Editor) 

Madhulika Liddle's review

Feb 22, 2018

really liked it

Several years back, I was talking to a European journalist who’d travelled fairly extensively across Asia. During our conversation, she said, “One thing that strikes me as a big difference [between Asia and Europe] is the emphasis on family here. Back home, once you grow up and move out of your parents’ home, there’s only occasional contact. Here, family is very important.”

The Best Asian Short Stories echoes that sentiment in many, many stories. In some way or the other, both good and bad. There is the mother visiting her son in Tokyo and slowly beginning to adjust to an alien lifestyle in Geetanjali Shree’s March, Ma and Sakura; there are the horrified parents, trying desperately to break up their son’s ill-advised (to their way of thinking) marriage to an American divorcee in Soniah Kamal’s Jelly Beans. There are mothers: the frighteningly biased and cruel stepmother of Farah Ghuznavi’s Big Mother; the self-sacrificing mother who hides her poverty from her son in Park Chan-Soon’s Ladybugs Fly From the Top; and the unforgettable Samar, fleeing war-torn Aleppo with her ten-year old son in Amir Darwish’s Samar. There is love and affection, but in equal measure (perhaps more) there are the other things that make families: the rifts, the anger, the hatred that festers in us but which is mellowed by the ingrained belief of blood being thicker than water, and family being paramount. There is nostalgia, there are the warnings passed on, born of experience, to the younger generation. There are chilling secrets that stay hidden for years before bursting forth.

Not that family is all the theme there is to these stories. There are others, very different ones: a Brit expat in Thailand, with a trophy wife in tow, discovers he’s accidentally bought himself a yakuza in Mithran Somasundrum’s darkly hilarious The Yakuza Under the Stairs. A poor schoolboy finds himself in a tight spot while trying to smuggle matches in Farouk Gulsara’s Damp Matches. And, in the vivid and almost lyrical Free Fall in a Broken Mirror(Hisham Bustani), a woman expected to stay veiled all her life tries desperately to break out—to let her spirit free.

It is hard to rate an anthology, and that too one with so many stories: some will appeal more to a reader and some less. For me, too, some stories stood out with the sheer brilliance of their storytelling, their language, and their appeal to the heart (these include the ones I’ve mentioned above, though there are others too that I liked a lot). Some stories were a little less appealing. A handful, it seemed, had escaped editing or proofreading and had typos that got in the way of my enjoyment of them. On the whole, though, this was a collection I liked: a varied bunch of stories, in varied styles, and presenting an intriguing picture of the diverse nature of Asia, its cultures and societies and values.

In hindsight...

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

Some will say, "Get over it already!". Others would say, "Put your past behind, there is so much more to look forward to life." Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag (and smile, smile, smile). Perhaps it is the guilt of doing or omitting to do certain things brings shame to the living. Certain unsavoury or inappropriate jokes preceding the event send shivers down the spine every time the deceased's memory resurfaces. Our secret wish maybe, "if only I could re-live that moment!" Sadly, it is just in our dreams can we author our narratives. In an alternative realm, we can re-live every day on a daily basis.

Frances McDormand, whom we saw giving a sterling performance as a straight-thinking pregnant police officer in chilling cold Minnesota in the black comedy 'Fargo' and won an award for that, is seen here in the lead-belt white state of Missouri. She assumes the role of a grieving mother whose teenage daughter was brutally raped and murdered. The events preceding her mishap probably hurt her more. Bringing up two rebellious teenagers as a single parent is no easy task, especially when her abusive estranged husband is very much in the same town with a pretty young thing. When her deceased daughter left her home, the mother and daughter had a tiff when the girl insisted on going for a night-out unaccompanied.

The local police never managed to solve the case. To keep the heat on the law to continue the investigations, the mother rented three billboards at the edge of town to personally attack the police chief on his inefficiency. To be fair, the head had really tried and was inflicted with terminal cancer.

The rest of the story brings out the police brutality, racism, bullying, town politics as well as painting another picture at the other end of the seemingly insensitive police chief. Interesting enough to win many accolades under its belt.

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Lonely at the top!

Becoming Cary Grant (Documentary; 2016)

It is tough being on top of the pecking order. Your every move and omittance are hawkishly scrutinised and publicised. People in the lower end of the food chain, without an iota of a clue of what it is to set the trend for tomorrow's society, sit in their armchair to pass judgements on the appropriateness of their leaders' moves.

For the leader who had spent a lifetime trying to get to the top, he would find it increasingly difficult to perch on the top savouring the fruits of his endeavour. Then he would ask himself the meaning of it all. He would ponder on what he is actually seeking for and when does it all end? Roosting a lonely high up on a pedestal where most of his contemporaries are out-of-league, he explores realms less travelled for answers.

In the 60s, LSDs were in vogue to search the answers to these intriguing questions in the hidden crypts of our gyri and sulci. Correctly or otherwise, this medically sanctioned psychoanalytical psychotherapy dug deep into the repressed memories of a person's past to find answers to the present listlessness and behavioural maladaptations.

This documentary is a product of the findings of actor Cary Grant's weekly LSD therapy with his doctor. Through this and his collection of home-made videos and photographs, we get a composite picture of the actor's early life in Bristol as a boy in a working-class society, of a mother who was institutionalised after his father's recommendation that his mother was 'not right in the head', of a death sibling from a gangrene thumb after his mother accidentally slammed the door against it and his indulgence in a travelling acrobatic troupe.

Living with his paternal grandmother after his father remarried, he started working and landed in America when his troupe performed there in the 1930s. From then on, the lure of the big lights of Broadway and Hollywood drew him to the celluloid screen. Archibald Alec Leach became Cary Grant.

All through the documentary, the director is trying to portray Grant as one who is trying to find his real self. Archibald, not knowing who he really is, seeks to build a persona for himself through a fictitious name with no past in Cary Grant. He is a private man who loves the company of the four walls. Even though it seems far-fetched, the documentary seems to suggest that the various directors that he worked with helped him to discover his true self. Perhaps, Cary Grant was just a good actor who could fit snuggly into any shoe, a suave hero, a cunning conman, a devious agent or a comic.

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On the passing of Sri Devi...

http://www.riflerangeboy.com/2012/07/12-year-old-my-stepmum.html

A 12-year-old, my stepmom? 

Moondru Mudichu (3 Knots, Tamil; 1976)

Before fame and ego took over the best of them, Kamalhasan and Rajnikanth used to act together in many memorable films. Of hand, comes to mind are Avargal, Aval Appadithaan and Apoorva Raagangal.

Sridevi's debut as heroine at the age of 12+
Child abuse or what?

In that vein, Moondru Mudichi showcases sterling performances by this duo and another talented actress from the south, Sridevi, a debutante then as a heroine at the age of 12+ (born 1963).

Kamalhasan and Rajnikanth are soul mates and roommates. Kamalhasan falls in love with a college student Sridevi, but the chain-smoking devious Rajni has both his eyes fixated on the lass and has no qualms expressing his desires to her behind his back.

During a boat outing, Rajni lets Kamal drown after he fell overboard in full view of Sridevi. During police interrogation, he denies knowing to swim although he was a strong swimmer.
Disappointed, she leaves town to work as a nanny to a widower with kids. As fate has it in a typical Tamil movie, Rajni is the eldest son of the widower. Rajni tries to woo Sridevi again. As revenge, Sridevi marries his father and becomes Rajni's stepmother. Rajni gives an outstanding performance as a mean chain smoking villain complete with his trademark cigarette tricks. Tit for tat continues further with the arrival of a girl whom Rajni impregnated and absconded.
Smelling a rat, his father stages a near drowning scenario, and one thing leads to another, and everything is sorted out.

As usual K. Balachander who is known to belt out stories with extraordinary socially awkward themes and he does the same here. Rarely you see a lover turning to be a stepmother! Indeed Rajni came out tops here with his meatier and challenging role. The film was shot in black and white as the director felt it brings out the artistic sense of a story!

An excellent nostalgic flick that brings old memories of RRF as the songs from this movie used to be heard over the airwaves quite so often, no thanks to Iyer of Block D! We also had a radio cartridge player with this song in our family car Austin Mini. We heard this song, again and again, all the way to Kuala Lumpur in 1977.

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