Desires last 60 days; lust 30.

Bangalore Days (Malayalam, 2014)

The stories of the silver screen and fairy tales make us believe that it is worthwhile to grasp that one chance at love. They convince us that it the single most crucial fight that one has to win. Overcoming that would translate to eternal bliss. It is happiness afterwards, forever and ever. Err... wrong answer.

In a very entertaining way, combining the scenic backgrounds of Kerala and Bangaluru, as well as the pleasing youthful features of the good looking actors, the story tries to tell us in a subtle way that it is not all hunky-dory when and especially after one finds love. It is an eternal struggle to keep the flames alive. Even if the ember stays aglow, there are too many interferences that threatened its harmony. In modern living, with the relaxation of rigid social restrictions that used to prevail and the scream of empowerment, no one can be pinned down anymore. Everybody is free to do what he (or she) wants. Is that daring to be different, to empower oneself, defiance to status or plain lazy to uphold the age-old agreed norms that rock the whole fabric of marital bliss? Or is it that the desire to defend the holy institution of marriage that makes one overlook or tolerate the many imperfections of the other?

Prince Charming turned out to be a loafer?
Like the Tamil proverb goes
'Desires are for 60 days, and lust is for 30 days'.
ஆசை 60 நாள் மோகம் 30 நாள் 

The story revolves around three cousins (Kuttan, Arjun and Divya) who are close as thick as thieves sharing an unforgettable childhood and the same sense of humour. 

Arjun, a son of an army man, went wayward after his parents divorced. We get the sense that he attributes his failure in life to his parents' separation. From a top student, he ended up being a dirt-bike racer and an occasional mechanic. His love interest turns out to be wheelchair-bound paraplegic. The positive thing about the film is the paraplegic character actually had a positive. Unlike a typical India movie where a far from 'perfect' person will usually sacrifice her life, here she is paved the way for a possible happy experience. 

Happy forever and ever?

Kuttan is a goody-two-shoes who followed all the pointers given by his parents and is a software engineer. One day, Kuttan's father disappeared from their home. He left a note citing his desire to find peace and purpose in life. A subsequent letter clarifies that he actually must be enjoying himself in the laid back beaches of Goa, away from the smothering of his wife, Kuttan's mother. Kuttan also realises that his mother, though meaning well, could be quite a pain in the neck when she moved in with him.
Meanwhile, Kuttan is also finding love, naively thinking that a nice traditional Kerala girl would be ideal. His first love, a stewardess, proved disappointing. She used him to get back to her ex-boyfriend!

Paris Laxmi
A French Malayalee
started dancing
Bharat Natyam at 3.

Divya, the only female of the trio, undergoes an arranged marriage to Shiva. After the wedding, Shiva and Divya move to Bangalore. By a twist of fate, her cousins land up in Bangalore. Divya soon discovers that her husband is far from intimate. Their marriage goes through a tailspin. Soon it is found that Shiva keeps a dark secret from his past.

The rest of the story is in trying to tie up everybody's life to a resolution and a happy ending. Inserted subtly into scenes are cryptic messages which tend to answer itself. One visible message is how Indians tend to parrot Western's way of dressing and embracing their culture while the Westerners look highly at the Indian way of living and cannot wait to immerse into them. 

At the end of the film, Kuttan, who was looking out for a typical Bharat Natyam dancing Malayalee with long pleats for matrimony, found one in Michelle, a Caucasian girl fitting the above description!

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Are you vexed?

Vaxxed - From Cover-up to Catastrophe (2016)
Vaxxed II - The People's Truth (2019)

It must be difficult being educated in the 21st century. With the plethora of information at our fingertips, we are left not more well versed but on the contrary, more confused and unsure about almost everything. The more knowledge we seem to acquire, the more we seem to be wanting. The influence of visual media and the persuasive power of raw human emotions make us buy any story and rethink that perhaps conventional wisdom perhaps needs reassessment.

For aeons, people succumbed to communicable diseases. Entire civilisations have disappeared in our not so distant past. The advanced Aztec and Mayan cultures were probably wiped out by the smallpox viruses brought in by looting Spanish sailors. Barring some viruses kept in laboratories for bio-weapons, we have managed to eradicate smallpox from our list of the leading causes of mortality. Vaccination used to be hailed as one of the fifty of mankind's most significant discoveries. Now, people stand proud thumping their chests boasting of their statuses of not being inoculated against communicable diseases. In fact, it appears as if they have lost all confidence in the medical profession.

No, it is not true that medical professionals are not trained in administering vaccinations. Contrary to what is wrongly alleged in this documentaries, medical students spend many hours studying immunology and rationale of immunisation. True, adverse reactions to vaccines are known, but it is a numbers' game. We are talking about extremely rare serious debilitating long-term neurological side effects, in the range of 1 in 100,000 for triple antigens. The disgraced British Gastroenterologist, Dr Andrew Wakefield, in his seminal 1998 BMJ paper suggested that the combination Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine probably carried many contaminants that could be linked to autism. He suggested MMR administration be reassessed and be given as separate preparations. 

Japan, after its 1960s experience with unexplained subacute myelo-optic neuropathy (SMON) which was linked to polio vaccine and threatened to put a stop to the 1960s Tokyo Olympics, is very wary of introducing vaccines to the country. For the record, many years later, a popular dysentery medication Clioquinol (CQL), was singled out as the probable culprit. The manufacturers of the anti-HPV vaccine against cervical cancer, Gardasil, have been trying very hard to penetrate into the Japanese market with no success.

The documentaries managed to pluck the melancholic strings of many of its sentimental viewers. The pictures and video clippings of before and after images of patients with vaccine-injury can move mountains. Imagine a bubbly and smiling infant learning to walk before the MMR vaccination turning into a fretful, floppy child with no eye contact. And yet in another instance, a dirt-bike racing teenager boy becomes quadriplegic with spinal meningitis after Gardasil. An active cheerleader with a bright future has her personality all altered after the anti-HPV jab. 

Statistics do not matter to the victims of vaccine-injury. The question is whether the subsequent morbidity experienced by the patient was indeed caused by the act of vaccination. Was it a mere coincidence or a manifestation of an unrelated disease that was deemed to surface anyway? Are the symptoms related to the contaminants in the preparation of vaccines? It is known that aluminium, nickel and mercury which carry the antigen are linked to ill effects. Does the multiplication of deactivated viruses or antigens in animal cultures bring with it zoonotic diseases related to attached retroviruses? Perhaps the human body has not been given time to adapt to the high load of animal inoculations.

The democratisation of information does not liberate its consumers. It merely pushes all the information to the end-users, to empower them to make choices. The product insert lists all the known and obscure adverse complications related to the vaccines, hence, absolving the manufacturers of possible litigations.

The presence of a special vaccine court in the US where vaccines cannot be sued but the possible victims of vaccine-injury may be compensated by a professional body raises suspicion whether Big Pharmas have some kind of a stronghold to reap benefit from an unsuspecting society. Is there more than meets the eye in the story of immunisation?

From a movement that demanded a reassessment of combination vaccines, it has now morphed into one that opposed all kind of vaccinations. In my opinion, it is a kind of overkill. Some of the later scenes in the second documentary borders on ludicrousness, though. Clips of proud parents from the Bible Belt region flaunting their seemingly healthy and smart children is no testimony of perfect health.

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If you love someone let him go!

K.D. @ Karuppu Dorai (2109, Tamil; கேடி என்ற கருப்புதுரை)

This story reminds me of the many stories that I discussed with my fellow partner-in-crime in the not so distant past. Quite many a time, seriously ill patients with advancing age with the myriad of medical illnesses that complements the geriatric population often gets admitted to his unit. Invariably, the patient's children would insist that their moribundly ill elders get all the best treatment that money can buy. The oft-repeated dialogue would be, "money is not a problem". My friend knows it is no use flogging a dead horse but like a good servant he is, he obliges, every time. 

The tide would be going against the acutely ill patient. The next of kins would, however, stay hopeful. The life is literally hanging on a thread, living on a prayer. But hope lies eternal in the human heart. 

Days move ever so slowly but the patient's condition doe not improve. Slowly, the number of visitors hanging around the visitors' lounge becomes thin. People have to go back to their daily routine. One has to live for the living. Occasionally, the nurses can hear arguments amongst siblings. One busybody nurse overheard one relative threatening to stop contributing to the family coffers. Then another would butt in to say that the treatment is the least the family offer to the patient. And yet another would throw in the towel citing economic reasons. Collectively they all would agree that the successful one amongst them take the tab. 

Soon it would be a single relative hanging around to get daily updates on the patient's progress. Then the Universe will speak and lead to an amicable curtain call so as to give a suitable closure to the whole brouhaha. Nobody gives what the patient wants. The living decides what is best for the dying. 

Everyone says that there is an absence of sufferings on the other side. One can enjoy of all kinds, eternally satiating all the senses at a divine but first, one has to die. That is the problem. Nobody wants to die no matter how much one is convinced of life after death.


This offbeat but entertaining drama tells of an unconventional bond between an 80-year-old man, KD, and young orphan boy, Kutty. This octagenarian was in a coma for three months. Lying in his daughter's home, given up by doctors, he holds on his life. Refusing to die, he becomes a burden to his 5 kids. They just want to go on with their lives. One sibling wants to marry off her daughter. Another is waiting for his inference to settle his debt. The youngest child, however, does not like the idea but relents anyway when collectively the family members decide to terminate the old man miseries by performing euthanasia using traditional village methods. By a twist of fate, the 80-year-old came around at the precise moment, overheard the conversation, and scooted off the scene on a local bus. He paid the fare for the last stop but the bus broke down in the middle of nowhere. KD decided to hang around a small temple, help around the temple, and make acquaintance with Kutty.

His friendship with Kutty gives KD a new lease of life. Kutty, an orphan, a street smart boy, was left at the doorstep of the temple at infancy. For the first time in his life, Kutty found love in an adult. Kutty made KD's bucket list and together they try to fulfil the list. The family, upon realising KD's disappearance, assigns a private investigator who is hot on the old man's trail. 

Another entertaining story with a picturesque spread of the Indian countryside. It has its fair share of quirky moments as two members of different generations try to find commonality. 

A lesson to learn: Do not let your family members decide the fate of your life. When your faculties are no longer yours to make a decision, they will make decisions that suit them or what is expected of them by society. Your suffering will be their bargaining chip. Write a legally binding declaration of refusing resuscitation when the situation arises. Have a difficult but necessary discussion of opting to turn off the plug when things do not look promising. Let people remember you as the ambulant and cheery person you are; not as the pain with tubes that drained half of the family heirloom, if there is any left.

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When we go up...

The Lift Boy (Hindi, 2019)
Netflix

The slave sees how comfortable the life of his master is and vow that no one in his lineage should ever be clutched by the curse of the serfdom. The slave is willing to break his back to ensure that his offsprings do not experience that bitterness of having to crack his head to put the next meal on the table. He works through the humiliation, the ill-health, the injustices to appease his bosses. In his mind, his job is his divine duty; his career gives his dependents food, covered their modesty and put a roof on their heads.

The slave paves the way for his offspring to change the family's fate. His hope is that his family would be the exemplary model of a rags-to-riches saga. The offspring, on the other hand, thinks that it is his birthright to be served. He knows his parents have put heavy burdens on him. His parents made sure that their golden goose is pampered to lay the best eggs. The offspring thinks he is too good for his family. He wants out and feels his parents are an embarrassment.

Then, right smack on the face, fate plays a cruel game. 

In this simple movie, an 'almost an engineer' student, Raju, who keeps failing his examinations has to replace his father at work, as a lift attendant, after he has a heart attack. As it is Raju's term holidays, he reluctantly agrees. In a real sense, it is not holidays as he has to sit for remedial examinations. It turned to be an eye-opener and a game-changing event for him. Raju initially thought that doing his father's job was way below his 'qualification'. His short tenure and interaction with the occupants of the building that he worked, became a coming-of-age experience for him. 

The lift is a metaphorical representation of our desires to elevate ourselves in life. People who worked hard to own a space up there stays longer, but eventually, we all have come down. Also, a point to remember, the uniform that is given to us reinforces upon us our servitude to the profession entrusted with it. With a surgeon's scrub suit, he makes the bold life-saving decision at the nick of time. A person at the check-out counter is supposed to do just that; help in the check-out and tolerate whatever annoyances that comes with it.

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The destructive forces of a revolution?

Karwaan (Hindi, Caravan, 2018)


Just to recapitulate what Jordan Peterson mentioned in his book 'The 12 Rules of Life', we tend to assume all social ailments or individual problems that one faces in the process of growing up must be solved with a radical restructuring of one's culture. The call for social revolution is heard loud and clear amongst the young chicklings in every generation. The oft-quoted complain among the youth is that adults are not in tune with reality or are living in the past. Names like fossils and dinosaurs have been heard. On the part of the elders, it is pejorative as well. Their offsprings have been referred to as the generation that would bring down civilisation.

What we often forget is that revolution by nature is destructive. Look back at history. Revolutions have always been of chaos, destruction and re-setting or jump-starting a failing system. If every generation feels that the generation before them had wronged them, there must be something wrong somewhere. Aeons of living together as a community, and we are still struggling to pave the best way from childhood to adulthood. Surely this cannot be true. The parents cannot be wishing ill of their downlines. This is contradictory to the theory of the selfish gene and maternal reflex of walking into a hopelessly burning building to save her young. Logically, after going through various challenges over the centuries, the human race would have surely come up with a blueprint on how to tackle teenage and growing pain issues. But then childhood, adolescence and teenage is a new construct of the 20th century. Before that, children were just little adults, beaming with desires to grow up and fill into the shoes of the adults. The priority was the community, not personal liberty.

Time is an excellent teacher. Hopefully, before the young gets all her life muddled up, they would realise that all the ranting and whining were indeed well-intended.

So, it was told...
A 5-year-old child would think that his father was the strongest, bravest or the fastest than any of his mate's father. At 10, he would not think too much of him. At 15, he cannot see eye-to-eye with him. At 20, he likes to avoid his father altogether. He only communicates with his mother (to pass the message). Then life goes on. At 40, now with children of his own, he understands that it is a Herculean task to be a parent. At 50, he appreciates his father's deeds. At 60, with his father dead and gone, it is all full circle again - his father is the strongest, smartest and most patient man.

This movie tells the story of three people who go on a journey of self-discovery when one of the protagonist's parent's remains was accidentally couriered to the wrong address. Avinash is living in daze working in an unsatisfying job, forever regretting of not pursuing his passion for photography. He has a bone to pick with his father, who had died recently during his pilgrimage, for making his childhood a living hell. His father had unilaterally decided what was best for his future.

When Avinash received his father's coffin, he realised that the sender had mixed up the package. He had to send the box to the rightful owner and reclaim his father's body. He got the help of a friend, Shaukat, with his van to travel from Bengaluru to Kochi. On the way, they had to pick a young girl, Tanya, the granddaughter of the other deceased.

The three characters all have 'daddy issues'. Avinash had a father who objected to his choice of carrier. Shaukat had a drunkard and abusive father. What puzzled him was why his mother took all the abuses and chased Shaukat out of the house instead when he raised up to question his father. Tanya grew up without a father from the age of eight. He had succumbed to cancer. Looking at Tanya's rebellious behaviour opposing all the values that Avinash holds dear to his heart, he realises that that was how his father would have felt. With the benefit of being grilled in the School of Hard Knocks of Life, Avinash can see more things than what the young Tanya just simply fail to realise.

The cinematography is quite breathtaking as the characters drive through the country road to God's own country. Watching the film just reignited our cycling team's earlier plan to cycle in India. Before the COVID pandemic brought all travels to a grinding halt, we were interested in a 950+ kilometres cycling tour through Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. 

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How far would you go?

The Pathological Optimist (2017)

Sometimes people tell me that I have to wise up, that I have to be a man. When I don't budge, they add that I have a moral responsibility to re-act. I owe it to society to voice out. If a person of my standing did not, who would? Doing the right thing is not always about doing the likeable stuff. One needs to create chaos to maintain order. The serpentine opposing forces of yin and yang, of male and female, are not mutually exclusive but complementary! Chaos and order make up the eternal, harmony of the Eden of life.

I claim to love my country so much, but I do not think I would be willing to don jungle fatigues, drag around a rifle in the discomfort of the outdoors and deafening sounds of exploding gunshots. Probably not in this lifetime.

Would anyone go through great lengths to defend what he thinks is right; at the expense of peace of mind, creating a turmoil within his family, being treating a pariah by people by people beneath them who obviously do not know what they are talking about. All the things that he considered his reason for living, his raison d'être, ridiculed like he is a lunatic.  Just how far would he hold on to his conviction?

Andrew Wakefield, a Consultant Paediatric Gastroenterologist at Free Hospital in the UK, was having a comfortable life doing what he wanted to do all his life - to treat patients. The study he co-authored which implicated MMR vaccination to gastrointestinal dysfunction and neurological regression which appeared in a 1998 publication of Lancet changed all this. Even though ten out of the 13 contributors agreed to retract the said article, Wakefield stood steadfast. He reiterated that there was an association between the combined MMR vaccine and severe neurological symptoms. He suggests further testing and advocated single vaccines.

Brian Deere's investigative journalism work in the Sunday Times accused Wakefield of undeclared conflict of interest and manipulation of results. After a long process, Wakefield was struck off from the British Medical Register. He migrated to Austin, Texas. The topic of autism and its association with MMR as well as the increase in the activities of the anti-vaxxers' movement. Correspondingly, Wakefield's name gets mentioned every now and then in documentaries as well as in the mainstream media. It led on to multiple court cases against Deer and the BMJ to clear his name. Unfortunately, he kept losing all his legal battles and ended up paying the legal costs for the opponents. The many groups supporting those injured by vaccines keep on supporting him. 

Despite all the difficulties that Wakefield, his wife Carmel and their four kids have gone through, he is adamant about defending his research, denies monetary intentions or fraud and works with non-profit organisations related to autism. The periodic spike in incidences of measles is blamed on his movements.

This documentary, done in a very personal way, following Wakefield into his yoga class and his home, takes us to a time between 2011 and 2016 when he had to slug it out with the Texan court in a suit against the BMJ. The viewers can see a weary man fight with all he has for what he calls a 'moral issue'.

P.S. So much for love will keep them together fighting a good fight. 32 years of marriage of Andrew and Carmel Wakefield came to an end. Andrew Wakefield is now dating ex-swimsuit model of Sports Illustrated, Elle MacPherson, 54.

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Love is a four-letter word?

C/O Kancharapalem (2018, Telugu)

In Nature, the union of sexes exists solely for procreation. It has its check and balances to ensure continuity of progeny and survival is only of the fittest. It does try to prevent chimaera monsters by minimising extra-species exchanges of the seeds of life. Invariably, the union across species tend to be infertile and slow to respond to environmental changes, thus resulting in self-destruction. Mules, the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse, are mostly sterile. So is a zorse or a zebra-horse hybrid.

Even within species, through innately developed hierarchical dominance, Nature tries to ensure that over generations, the young will be hardy to face challenges of the environment. The strongest of the males get to mate the healthiest of the female to this purpose. The weak male has to do with the weakest or the deformed female, which would result in failed descendants. It appears like Nature is inherently nihilistic in its outlook of the future. 

Now, homo sapiens are all supposed to be of a single race and species. Barring a few subtle insignificant differences, DNA analyses reveal that we are all the same- black, yellow, brown or white. Even though humans proclaim to be all one and the same, calling each other 'brothers' and 'sisters'. The fact that they are calling each other siblings only means that there are restrictions on their choice of mating partners. They are divided by race, sub-races, locales or religions, they have devised various impositions on such unions. We have social mores and regulations to ensure that the young are taken care of. 

This low budget Telugu film is a refreshing offering with multiple international accolades under its belt. It takes its viewers on a rollercoaster ride which will all make sense in the end. Extraordinary things happen to ordinary people, but we are hoodwinked about its timeline; maybe because the backdrop of a typical Indian village had hardly changed over the years.

When young tweens explore their sexuality, it is considered a taboo. The society says, "there is a time for everything. Do not put the cart before the horse!" When young couple show interests in each other, the question of class, economic status and religion become a stumbling block. When love morphs in middle age, it is frown upon again. Apparently, it is socially unacceptable when a widow or a person in advanced of age is smitten by Cupid's arrows. The society takes upon itself to ensure that arbitrary social norms and religious dictums are held up at all costs.

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