Is it funny that every time Man thinks that he has it all figured out, Nature (or fate if you like to call it) just jolts him back to reality? Like Will E Coyote and his spanking new latest invention from ACME Corporation, it just falls flat and blows right on his face again and again, and Roadrunner always goes scot-free, scooting off yet again, screeching “beep..beeep!”
The latest viral scare of COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019) just opens up our vulnerability. All the so-called foolproof systems that we had installed are just scribblings on the sand – they cannot withstand the test of time. And they are so porous. We thought we had all the arsenal that could not only not annihilate our enemies but ourselves in the process too. All these are useless in combating our electron-microscopic size enemy. We are literally crippled by an unseen offending foe. All the King’s horses and the King’s men cannot put our peace of mind together at least for now.
In the 1990s, our leaders were hellbent on embracing globalisation. They argued that we were heading to a borderless world where physical borders were an illusion. Commerce transcended boundaries, and we should welcome it with open arms. No one could live in isolation. Now, see what is happening. Countries are scurrying to close the borders as not only diseases spread like wildfire, refugees who bungled up their own nation are clawing through the immigration gates displaying their victim card. Many have opted for self-isolation to keep their people safe.
Over-dependence on particular countries for supplies and over-concentration of the supply chain from a specific region has not a smart move after all. It looks like when China sneezes, the whole world may get pneumonia.
The democratisation of flying made travelling no more an activity of the bourgeois. Now, everyone could fly. With it came secondary industries and opening of new regions and tourists attractions. Unfortunately, the concept of open skies also opened the Pandora box of international subversive activities and seamless flow of problems. At the time of writing the tagline of one of the most popular low-cost airlines have changed from ‘Everyone can Fly’ to ‘No one wants to Fly’ or ‘Nowhere to Fly’.
We thought the world wide web of interconnectivity was going to transform the world into a utopia of a knowledge-based society, well-informed consumers and broad-thinking creative communities. How naive we were. What we have are fake news of questionable authenticity and a band of fist thumping keyboard warriors who type away their hate speeches under the cloak of anonymity without a thought of the effects of their actions.
Generations before us grew up without any exchange of physical touch or public display of affection. In some societies, physical touch between unmarriageable kins was frowned upon. With open-mindedness, bodily contacts by handshakes, hugging and pecking became the norm. Come SARS, MERS-CoV and now COVID-19, and we are back to our traditional ways of salutations – bowing and placing of own palms together; fear of transmission of pathogens.
Just a thought…
The mighty Chinese armada used to travel to the four corners of the globe. They are said to have ‘discovered’ the Americas even before Columbus’ alternate route to India. But then everything stopped. The Ming Dynasty decided to opt for a closed-door policy of the world. Even the Japanese kingdoms underwent a similar transformation. Was the spread of disease the reason for this move?
(Nerd Alert: Corona is Latin for Crown. Corona also refers to the gaseous accumulation around the Sun (which looks like a crown enveloping the Sun), mainly around its equator. Did you know that there is a field of study dedicated to studying the Sun called Solar Science (Helioseismology)? The suffix ‘seismology’ is used here because Solar Scientists principally study it via the oscillations of sound waves (?Om – ௐ, ॐ etc.) that are continuously driven and damped by convection near the Sun’s surface. One of the puzzling thing about the Sun is that the Corona is hotter than the Sun surface by a factor of 150 to 400. The Corona can reach temperatures of 1 to 3 million Kelvin.)
Farouk Gulsara is a daytime healer and a writer by night. After developing his left side of his brain almost half his lifetime, this johnny-come-lately decides to stimulate his non-dominant part on his remaining half. An author of two non-fiction books, ‘Inside the twisted mind of Rifle Range Boy’ and ‘Real Lessons from Reel Life’, he writes regularly in his blog ‘Rifle Range Boy’.
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (2018) Jordan B. Peterson Life is easy when you are living it with your eyes closed. For an idiot, life is a bliss. He does not analyse or overanalyse things that happen to or around him. He lives for the moment. There is in the now and the past; no future to worry about. In his eyes, everyone is good, and they mean well.
In reality, life is not so straight forward. Inherently, we build a hierarchical pyramid. The occupants at the top perpetuate their positions by merely being there. Their positions ensure continuity of power and status, much like the analogy of lobster that Peterson often quotes. The hierarchical order in any society is exemplified by our crustacean friend. The lobster, a remnant of our ancestral past, illustrates how any societal structure works.
The higher up a hierarchy a lobster climbs, this brain mechanism helps make more serotonin available. The more defeat it suffers, the more restricted the serotonin supply. Lower serotonin is in turn associated with more negative emotions – perhaps making it harder to climb back up the ladder. Serotonin gives one courage and confidence to fight for better, mate and territory, which will consequentially attract better food, healthier partner and subsequently better genetic pool in the offspring. In other words, society ensures that the occupants at the top of the pecking order and the ones at the bottom find it hard to move up.
This is one of the books that try to answer difficult questions in life. The problem is readers with a short attention span like me tend to forget the questions as he starts reading the answers as well as get lost grasping the answers too. Everything is a rollercoaster of circumlocution. Nevertheless, the discussions surrounding the answers are quite engaging, even if your answers are not obvious out there.
It seems that we are re-exploring what our elders once taught us, but we thought that it was old fashioned. When we were young, our parents insisted that we rise early in the morning. We did not see the relevance then, but we now know that it makes a lot of sense. We thought following a timetable was madness. Now we realise that Man needs a fixed routine to maintain sanity. Following a religion gives them a tuft of hope when the going gets tough. Rudderless without a set of rules for life, their life goes asunder.
The following rules of life as set by Peterson would make more sense after reading the book.
Rule #1 - Stand up straight with your shoulders back Rule #2 - Treat yourself like you are someone responsible for helping Rule #3 - Make friends with those who want the best for you Rule #4 - Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who others are today Rule #5 - Don’t let your children do anything that makes you dislike them Rule #6 - Put your house in perfect order before you criticize the world Rule #7 - Do what is meaningful and not what is expedient Rule #8 - Tell the truth, or at least don’t lie Rule #9 - Assume that the person you’re listening to knows something you don’t Rule #10 - Be precise in your speech Rule #11 - Don’t bother children while they’re skateboarding Rule #12 - Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street
This YouTube video gives an excellent summary of the book in a summarised and animated form. This type of advice is targeted towards the younger generation who are keen to turn their lives into something worthwhile. Unfortunately, these types of information do not excite the younger ones as they are eager to enjoy the spring of their youth and utilise their freedom to the limit. To them, philosophy and doing the right thing can wait. He has a large following in his native country, Canada.
P/S. We think we have it all under our control. How wrong we can we. Dr J Patterson recently recovered from devasting complications of benzodiazepines which he started to consume them to deal with the stress of caring for his wife's ovarian cancer and his daughter's debilitating juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.
P/S/S. Peterson became popular among the conservatives for his vehement opposition to the demand of transsexual to choose a pronoun of their choice.
The Forgotten Army, Azaadi Ki Liye (For Freedom, Hindi; 2020) Amazon Prime.
26,000 Indians had died under the banner of Indian National Army (INA) while fighting for Independence of India. Their actions triggered the Royal Indian Navy mutiny, which nailed the coffin of the British occupancy in India. The plea for Independence and the spirit of Indianness were supported by the diaspora outside India just to be sizzled out by the historical turn of events. They say that history is written by the victors. This is one clear proof of this statement. History had vilified the efforts of INA and had labelled them as traitors. Their agitations had been marked, not as nationalism but as treason.
Flag of Azad Hind
Their rebel yell, Dilli Chalo (Let's go Delhi), was not in keeping with the narrative of the day then, as dictated by the Father of India and supported by the Congress Party. These people wanted India to be a British dominion to be given crumbs by their colonial masters. As such, Gandhi et al. decreed that Indian should be fighting for the cause of the Allied Forces to stay loyal to their master's path.
Subash Chandra Bose wanted full Independence from the British, not being a protectorate of Britain. He definitely did not believe that Gandhi's non-violent path would lead to self-rule. He managed to garner support from all the enemies of the British and the Allied Forces. At a time when India, being the subject of the British, was expected to fight for against the Axis Alliance, Bose lobbied for an Army to march with the Japanese against British in their Burmese campaigns. Indian National Army (Azad Hind Fauj) was his brainchild, armed by the Japanese Imperial Army and financed by contributions expatriate Indian civilian volunteers of Malaya and Singapore. Hence, he was labelled as a traitor and enemy of the state.
Even though the operatives eventually turned out to be a dangerous one and had to be abandoned due to logistics as the Japanese found the whole exercise an uphill task, the INA did leave its mark. They stirred Indian nationalism. They were instrumental in initiating the Royal Indian Navy mutiny which expedited the British exit from the subcontinent. They were also the first Army (after Russia) to recruit a whole regiment comprising women -The Jhansi Regiment. For that time, the act of Indian women donning pants itself was revolutionary.
History never really gave the INA its befitting place. They were never given credence as free fighters, only tried as traitors. The 13,000 odd INA soldiers who were apprehended were never given due recognition for their sacrifices and never remunerations reserved for freedom fighters. Their activities actually roused the nation and stirred political consciousness in British colonies. Their soldiers later initiated left-wing and union movements in Malaya, Singapore and even Indonesia. They began to think of Independence. In Malaya, after Merdeka, their members continued carrying education reforms and women empowerment movements at the local and national levels.
This 5-part miniseries brings its viewers through a nostalgic journey into the past. Using the spruced-up colonial buildings of Singapore, the rubber estates in Malaysia and the jungles of Thailand as backdrops, the director managed to narrate the genesis of INA. Starting with prisoners-of-war of Indian descent serving the British Indian Army, the Japanese riled up patriotism to recruit more volunteers to serve at the Burmese-Indian border in their encounter with the British.
Using characters with names of known figures who had participated in the mission, the storyteller managed to create a love drama of soldiers as they scaled the treacherous terrains of the Arakan and the perilous battles in Manipur.
Janaki is the story refers to Janaki Athi Nahappan who went on to establish Malayan Indian Congress with John Thivy. She continued her social work until her demise in 2014.
Rasammah Naomi Navarednam
Rasamma here refers to Mrs FR Bhuphalan, a Malaysian educationist and social activist, the 95-years lady of steel who appears in the media annually during the Merdeka month. The character Lakshmi denotes Dr Lakshmi Swaminathan @ Lakshmi Sahgal @ Captain Lakshmi, who gave up her medical practice in Singapore to join INA in the Azadi movement. She later became a Minister in the defunct Azad Hind Government. After the war, she settled in Kanpur, continued her medical practice, entered politics under the Communist Party banners and passed away at the ripe age of 97 in 2012.
A lovely miniseries that educates the ignoramus on the side of history as narrated by the fallen. Excellent cinematography and prudent use of computer graphic imaging (CGI) to recreate the feel of a real war and fairly credible combat scenes. We are relieved of the typical gravity-defying acrobatic battle encounters typified by Bollywood. Worth the watch.
The plaque erected by the
National Heritage Board at Esplanade Park,
marking the INA Monument site in Singapore.
Even after death, worth a thousand sovereigns, Tamil; 2020)
Netflix
We paint our faces to make them presentable to the outside world, just like how we dress our dear departed as they leave on their journey to the other side. A make-up artist does that to make the actors look desirable. The undertaker does the same - to showcase the deceased so that the mourners can only see a pleasant looking corpse; devoid of the pain and misery of the tail end of his life.
In a way, life and death are the same. A make-up artist and an undertaker do the same job, masking the unpleasantness of reality. Like a birth which is celebrated with revelry, so should death. The joy of the cry of a newborn child is comparable to the wailing of the aggrieved mourners.
In most Eastern cultures, deaths are noisy and long affairs. The graphic display of emotions and rituals are actually ways to help the relatives resolve the separation issues and put closure to the death of a family member.
This film reminds me of the many Tamil films made in the 1980s with the villages as their backdrop. Like those movies, the actors are generally newcomers, and the theme is something intertwined with the traditional village folk practices. Here, the filmmaker narrates about the meeting of a grandmother and her granddaughter and the handling of the issues that kept them apart. The grandmother is the official 'village mourner', someone assigned to create the tone of melancholy in a funeral by belting rhymic songs interspersed with playful use of words in painting the deceased's life achievements and setting the mood of loss.
The granddaughter, a make-up artist from Chennai, is summoned to come to the village to settle some property issues. She grudgingly comes. Her parents had bad blood with the villagers and had to leave, hence, the resentment. The granddaughter was apparently married off at the age of five to the opposition of her mother. The supposed husband is the one who dresses the dead. In a way, applying make-up is the family tradition, one for the living and one for the departed.
Because of delays in the paperwork of the land transfer, the granddaughter has to stay behind. This becomes an opportune time to rebuild the broken bond and her understanding of the village practices—a great movie with natural acting. The spoken dialogue may appear vulgar, but we have to admit that is reality. Nobody bothers with niceties in real life. The style of photographing is surreal, as if the viewers are there in person witnessing the charade. A memorable scene is when a two-timing husband dies in the embrace of his lover, and the two women of his life fight over to perform the final rites. This commotion is reminiscent of a moment in a 2009 Japanese movie, 'Departures', where a closet crossdresser is wrongly dressed in the wrong garment to the furore of family and relatives.
The title of the film refers to a Tamil proverb, 'Yaanai irunthaalum aayiram pon, iranthaalum aayiram pon' (யானை இருந்தாலும் ஆயிரம் பொன், இறந்தாலும் ஆயிரம் பொன்), which tells the insignificance of the human body. A corpse is worthless once life departs, perhaps only useful as a cadaver in a medical school. An elephant is worth a thousand gold coins, dead or alive. A living elephant is helpful for hard labour and a dead one for its tusk and hide.
U-Turn (Tamil, 2018) We think that rules only apply to others. We simply break the rules without batting our eyelids. We want the lawmakers to just close one eye, give leniency or forgive with a slap on the wrist. Somehow when the same law is broken by others, we are quick to throw the full might of book at them. How many times have we seen drunk driving and the sequelae of such acts? How often have we seen friends cajoling their buddies to have 'one more for the road'? This must be what is meant by the saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. This film is a sort of drama with a social message - 'Don't take things for granted!' It is a public service announcement to remind us that every single, seemingly useless regulation means something in the long run.
Many road users take an illegal U-turns atop a flyover by moving the laid-out concrete slabs. After making the intended turn, they do not re-adjust the concrete layout. Many accidents had happened there and an intern journalist, Rachana (Samantha Akkineni), decide to run a cover story on that. She pays a homeless guy to note the plate number of vehicles taking U-turns on the flyover. With her contact at the Road Transport Department, he gets the whereabouts of the vehicle owners. She then interviews them. She goes to the apartment of her first contact but fails. The next thing she finds out is that she is a suspect of the murder of the first contact. Soon she realises that all the persons in her list of offenders have all died recently. And their cause of death was suicide, all of them! Things get complicated when the superior officers pressure their subordinates to close the case, and Rachana has no means to prove her innocence. Luckily, there is a sympathetic police officer who believes her. Together they try to scale up to the limits of the paranormal to get to the root of the problem. An entertaining flick with a message.
In 1964, renowned filmmaker Satyajit Ray was asked to create a short film for ‘ESSO World Theater’, a cultural showcase presented on television and funded by the American oil company Esso. Asked to write and direct the film in English, Ray opted instead to make a film without words. The result is a poignant fable of friendship and rivalry. As he did for many of his movies, Ray composed the music for the film, including the haunting tune played on a flute. After Satyajit Ray was awarded an Honorary Academy Award in 1992, the Academy embarked on an ambitious endeavour to preserve the works of the Bengali filmmaker. “Two,” also known as “Parable of Two,” is part of the Academy’s Satyajit Ray Collection (http://www.oscars.org/film-archive/co...), which includes 18 feature films directed by Ray and preserved by the Archive. (Youtube)
It is ironic that film without words can make one speechless. One can say so much by not speaking at all. It is partly the storyline and also the ingenuity of the director that helps to bring out the unspoken message which is left to everyone's imagination to decipher.
It is ironic that Ray made this short film for a multinational company which is involved in the global promotion of consumerism, materialism and decadence of the environment. I look at it as a slap on the face. From the get-go, one can see a well-fed home-alone well dressed young boy complete with a hat with big ear-like contraptions which will only remind one of Mickey Mouse. And he is seen gulping a beverage from a bottle which has the shape of Coca Cola - what else can it be? He is obviously feeling bored despite all the expensive toys that are lying around him.
Out down from his window, he sees a poor peasant boy having a whale of a time playing a melodious tune on his flute. Jealous that the poor boy can have such a good time, he sabotages his every plaything; banging his drums, shooting with his toy gun and even shooting down his kite.
Despite all the destructive attempts at spoiling the poor boy's play, the latter returns with more ideas to entertain himself. The rich boy remains unhappy despite his access to luxury and the toys at his disposal.
The people in power are hellbent on crushing the hopes and attempts of the less fortunate to progress. The well-heeled feel that only they deserve to be happy. After all, money can buy happiness, they think. The poor, they believe, merit what they have for all their Dionysian outlook of life.
The clip may be voiceless, but the message is loud and clear. Happiness is also a metaphor for the human spirit. The poor are representative of the human race collectively. Despite the repeated insults hurled upon them by the powers that be, the rich multinationals which rapaciously destroy the planet or even Mother Nature who regularly test them with calamities, the human race will never give up. Hitting brick walls has become second nature to them. Overcome they shall.
Krishna and His Leela (Telugu, 2020) Netflix Even though this film has just been released, it has kicked up such a storm over the cyberworld. Hashtags like#BoycottNetflix and #KrishnaAndHisLeela are trending. People are calling @NetflixIndia Hinduphobic, citing many of its latest productions apathetic to the Hindu sentiments. Films like Sacred Games, Bulbul, Ghoul, Delhi Crimes and Leila have allegedly denigrated the Hindu deities. In this offering, is it a merely by chance that the main character's name coincides with the protagonist of the epic Mahabharata? Krishna in the movie is an indecisive chap who conveniently two-times his two girlfriends whose names just happens to be Lord Krishna's two of His eight queen-consorts, Radha and Satya. There is a third girl whose name sounds similar to Rukmini. The fact that the protagonist pushed the boundary of public 'Indian' decency that ired viewers more. In most Indian movies, the story of a hero is only allowed to be engaged in relationships with more than one partner only when it is a comedy film or for actors in villainous roles. Still, engaging in sexual relations with more than one is taboo. Sex is revered a special status that is only reserved for that one true love. If a hero sacrificing his true love to marry someone else to defend social mores, that is alright, but not a wilfully two-timing. Characters with godly names and pushing the social boundaries is a tad too much for the public liking.
Ashtabharya (8 consort-queen) with Krishna - 19th Century Mysore painting.
It seems portrayal of Jesus Christ as a nose-ring bearing lesbian woman by Paris Jackson (daughter of the King of Pop) in a new movie 'Habit' is not okay. We all know what happened to Salman Rushdie when his satire 'Satanic Verses' mocked the Prophet. The Hindus are the harmless punching backs. Even the local stand-up comedy scene is bountiful with jokes with all religions except Islam for fear of being accused of being Islamophobic and of bearing the brunt of the rage of its believers.
A few new trends are seen in the lifestyles of the young adults as the norm, as suggested here. Once one is of a certain age, there is a strong compulsion to explore and prove their sexual identity as well as to fulfil their sexual appetite. Living off their relatively well-heeled parent(s), they do not need to think of their essential day-to-day survival needs. Maybe sexual prowesses has become another basic tenet to prove their existence. Their future is the last thing they consider. Time just passes by as they search in vain their passion, theirraison d'être, as they drag their sorry ass slugging through one frustrating task after another. Did I mention alcohol flows like a river at every insignificant moment of their life? True, they drink occasionally, but every occasion is a reason to get drunk. Overindulgence in intoxicants is not seen as a sign of being irresponsible but of living life to the max. At least that is what the media and celluloid pseudo-world seem to glorify. It is as though they deserve it, they earned it for all the troubles and difficulties they go through in modern life. Every generation thinks they had it tough and the generation before and after them had it on a platter.
Maybe this is the subtle way how the East India Company with its Scottish doctor-trader, Dr William Jardin, defeated the mighty Chinese around the time before the Opium Wars. They basically weakened the Chinese bureaucracy and machinery into becoming drug addicts. Like a bacteriophage, the British took over the driver's seat and the whole car, i.e. Hong Kong as the entire Chinese machinery was paralysed. In their subtle way again, the entrepreneurs of the world have made beer-drinking and football game revelry synonymous. Is this a secret ploy by the anarchist to weaken mankind and turn us all to obedient automatons. The movie also questions that perhaps the male gender, often accused of showing its toxicity through its patriarchal set of social rules, have gone all mellow. To conform to political correctness, not to rock the status quo or create ripples in a perceived stable society, they have to just take dictation to what the fairer sex recites. Yes, you can; no, I feel violated; I will tell you when; stop means stop are the buzz words that define the dynamics of modern boy-girl relationships.
Me, glad the rat race is ending as I set into the horizon.
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