Even serial killers want to live!

The Serpent (Miniseries; 2021)
Netflix-BBC

Ever since I read about Charles Sobhraj in the papers back in, probably 1976, I was fascinated with this character. Over the years, little snippets about him used to pop up here and there. Again, my interest in him was piqued when he would repeatedly outsmart his captors and make yet another dash to temporary freedom. Earlier, in one of my old posts, I mentioned someone who had named his newborn Sabhraj, not knowing the infamous icon behind the name. Now, after so many years, the child must be a teenager; I wonder if the child is cursing his parents or revelling in the glory of his cool name, securing many equally cool friends.

And then, this miniseries also reminded me of a friend who shares almost the same name as Sobhraj's sidekick as Ajay Chowdhury. Cocooned comfortably in his own sanctuary with no mobile phones and e-mails, he can be contacted via the landline. There is a problem here. He is so hard of hearing but does not believe in getting hearing aids for himself. So calling him is out of the question. He is not in the pinkest of health either, battling cancer. With all the travelling restrictions and the rage of the pandemic, giving him a visit has to wait. In his mind, not being able to hear is not his problem; it is others'.

This 8-episode miniseries starts with his time in Bangkok in 1975 by the poolside in his apartment complex. He assumes yet another pseudonym, Alain Gautier, as he entertains friends who later become victims. He professes to be a gem dealer, but his main interest is drugging travellers, robbing them of their monies and passport and dumping off their dead bodies. At a time when forensic sciences were primitive, the exchange of information was sketchy and local resources were limited, Sobhraj (aka Hotchand Bhawnani Gurumukh Charles Sobhraj @Serpent), and his accomplices, Ajay Chowdhury and Marie-Andrée Leclerc, could literally get away with murder.

Tahar Rahim
French-Algerian actor
who acted well to fit the mould of an
 Indo-Franco-Vietnamese serial killer.

Through the storyteller's creative storytelling, the miniseries, through its unique way of moving to and fro between episodes, managed to paint a composite picture of Sobhraj's formative years, his earlier crimes and his relationship with his mother. Sobhraj is said to have operated in France, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, India, Thailand and Hong Kong. Besides robbery and heists, he gained notoriety primarily from his systemic enticing and killing of backpacking hippies. His modus operandi is the same - befriending white tourists through charm and warmth, poisoning them, followed by taking their passports. Sobhraj and Marie would then travel, assuming the identities of their victims to avert detection.

His crime came to light through the almost maniacal investigative work of a Dutch diplomat and his wife stationed in Bangkok, Herman Knippenberg and Angela Kane, working relentlessly with a perenially under-resourced Thai police and later the Thai chapter of the Interpol.

Sobhraj and Marie's running days came to a halt in 1976 after Sobhraj's failed attempt at poisoning a group of German students in New Delhi. He was imprisoned for 12 years. Marie was diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer in prison and was extradited to Quebec to spend her remaining days. In prison, Sobhraj led a cushy life bribing the jailers. He even managed to sell his life story to a publishing house. Fearing extradition to Thailand after his time in Delhi Tihar jail, he held a big party at his 10th year of prison term, drugged the prison guard, and staged a jailbreak. He was re-apprehended in Goa and had was jailed for another 10 years as he had intended because a conviction in Thailand would mean the death penalty. Using the 20-year statute of limitation in Thailand in his favour, he walked out a free man in 1997. 

Nihita Biswas - fascinated by Sobhraj's French charm!

He went back to France for a quiet life to reconnect with his first wife, daughter and his Vietnamese mother. For reasons best known to him, Sobhraj made another trip to Nepal in 2003. It was a bad mistake. A reporter identified him, wrote about him in the local papers, and the Nepali police sprang to cuff him for an old unsolved murder. He was given life imprisonment. Some say he missed being in the limelight, hence his last trip. Even in prison, he created lots of publicity. Despite the denials by the local authorities, Sobhraj lives like a Raj. In 2018, he was said to have wedded his lawyer's daughter, Nihita Biswas, a TV personality 44 years his junior.

He pops up in the news every now and then, a complaint here and an appeal to the French President there. In 2017, he underwent open-heart surgery for defective heart valves. The irony of it all coming out from the mouth of a serial murderer accused of 12 to 24 people, as quoted by the operating surgeon, Dr Raamesh Koirala, was this. When counselled on the heart valve replacement, Sobhraj is said to have said, "do whatever you think is right for me, doctor. I just want to live!”

[P.S. The whereabouts of Ajay Chowdhury is unknown. He is said to have been sent to do a gem deal in Malaysia. Unconfirmed sightings of him in Germany were made, probably untrue. He must have been killed by The Serpent.]

The reel is almost close to the real!

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Veiled messages?

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

Novella, Author: Yukio Mashima(1963)

Film version: 1976

Thanks to MEV for introducing this novella to me.

A little bit of background on the Nobel Prize-nominated writer opens a different perspective to the story altogether. Yukio Mashima had an illustrious life; born to a samurai family, living with an eccentric grandmother and later a disciplinarian father, failure to be drafted into the Imperial Army, his involvement in the performing arts and literary work, his fascination with the spirit of Japanese bravery and right-wing movement, a failed coup at overthrowing the Japanese Government and subsequent committing of seppuku in 1970.

In summary, this tale is about a 13-year-old boy, Noboru, whose father had died five years previously. He lives with his mother, Fusako, and a helper. Fusako has a novelty shop that deals with chic Western/modern haute culture. During Noboru's visit to a ship, a sailor, Ryuji, meets Fusako and gets close. Long story short, Ryuji and Fusako get romantically linked and has plans for marriage.

Noboru is a lonely child. His mother locks him inside his room, for he had once disappeared into the night to meet his friend. Noboru has a 'gang' at school - a group of five precocious and intelligent boys. They refer to each other as numbers, 1 to 5, Noboru being number 3. The pack leader, known as Chief, is a rich man's son who has a tight grip over the rest. A bit too intelligent for his age, Chief influences the rest with his Nietzchean look at life, about the purpose of it all and the nihilism that it brings. Chief once dissected a live cat to show the essence of life, the mighty raw power, and appreciate life's soul. 

A man needs to explore his full potential. There should not be any authoritative body to curtail his pursuit of greatness. In Chief's eyes, fathers, teachers and everyone do just that. They douse the spirit.

Noboru's keen pubescent mind yearns to analyse and make sense of things around him. In his locked room, he discovers a crack in the wall that opens to the adjoining room, his mother's. It is a kind of his pastime to peep into his sexually deprived young mother's bedroom. Noboru thinks his world is perfect; at least, that is what Chief tells him. Fathers are no good.

When Ryoji comes into Noboru's life, he is initially excited. Ryoji is the conduit to his fascination, the sea. Through Ryoji, he learns about the unknown and the dangers that the sea had to offer. Scaling the sea tests human power and resilience.

Watching Ryoji and Fusako engaged in passionate love-making through the cracked wall, and when Ryoji decides to hang his seaman cap, Noboru develops a kind of oedipal envy. He and his gang schemes a devious plan to kill Ryoji and reap out his heart like they did to the cat!

Many analysts had looked, some would say overanalysed, into this novella. Extrapolating things that happened in the author's life, seppuku and all, they posit that Mishimo is exploring the boundary of life and death. He is perhaps telling that Man has to be free from the trappings of life to explore his true potential. Maybe Man is unsure what he wants in life, like Ryoji, who runs away from land to the sea, escaping the miseries surrounding his early life, thinking that his true calling is the seas. After scaling the oceans, Ryoji finds that the unknown glory at the waters does not satisfy and yearns to stay put on dry land to start a family.

Some look at this novella as an allegory of the loss of Japanese values in society. Going to the sea was a Japanese thing to do, compared to when Emperor Meiji encouraged locals to go forth and explore after Commander Matthew Perry landed in Kyoto with what the Japanese thought was the celestial dragon. Ryoji was displaying his 'Japaneseness' by venturing out to the sea. Hence, Ryoji returning to land to marry Fusako, a lady who delved deep into Western merchandise, represents the post WW2 generation that traded traditional lifestyle to modernity. Hence, it had to be ended, the murder of Ryoji. So too with Mashimo, when he failed with his coup de tat of overthrowing the Japanese government. The honourable thing to do when he failed is performing his samurai duties, seppuku!

The film version has a slightly different feel to it. Unlike the book, where the story was set in Yokohama, this is done in Devon, UK. The lack of depth in the movie version is compensated by the appearance of the heart-throb of the 70s, Kris Kristofferson, and the liberal display of flesh by the leading actor, Sarah Miles, who plays the role of the mother.

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The problem with twins...

Thadam (தடம், Track, Tamil; 2019)

One often wonders about the fascination of Indian movies with identical twins and the commotion, confusion and melodrama that the swapping of roles brings to the screen. Well, it does not only happen on the silver screen. Living up to the adage that 'life is a stage and we are all actors', art mimics only what takes place in life. In the police archives, one can find many of such shenanigans created by such identical twins. Occasionally, the legal system gets confused. Sometimes the perpetrators get away scot-free. 

This 2019 police procedural Tamil drama highlights such one case. For the records, this story is based on an actual crime in Malaysia, with a little spicing up using artistic liberty.  

In the original case in 2003, a suspect abandoned his car at a police roadblock and scooted off on foot. The police gave chase. The vehicle's trunk was later shown to have held one of the police's most prominent drug haul. The police caught up with the suspect at an apartment. Upon dashing into the apartment, they found two individuals fitting the description of the man they were chasing. They saw a pair of twins and arrested both of them.

The investigation team was at tenterhooks trying to pick out the real culprit. Even though one of the twins was bespectacled, the suspect was not donning glasses at the time of the chase. As they were both using the same car, both men's fingerprints were found in the vehicle. As we know, even though the DNA make-up is the same in identical twins, their fingerprints differ as it is influenced by intrauterine conditions. 

The prosecution team put two brothers on the stand with the charge. The case was, however, dismissed by the presiding judge. Two persons cannot be charged with a crime done by one person, but Forensics could not identify the real McCoy.

'Thadam' is based on the above. To give two over hours' screentime and the ticket's worth, the filmmakers had to drag the storyline to make it a wholesome watch for the whole family. There are love interests, fractured families, feuding parents, a mother with gambling problems, murder and a convoluted storyline to top it all. 

A murder is recorded, and the police investigation identifies a man in a picture snapped by a bystander. The distribution of the image to various police stations revealed two identical twins. The more police look into the suspects, the more either of them could be the murderer. To top it all, the police chief has a personal vendetta against one of them. With a sympathetic cop in the picture who wants to do the right thing and sidekicks who create dry humour, this movie is worth the while.

The postscript credits tell of similar unsolved cases around the whole involving confusion created by identical twins. In 2009 Germany, Husran and Abbas were accused of a multi-million dollar jewellery heist; in 2016, in England, where Patrick and James Hennessy possessed deadly weapons, and 1999 saw Jerome and Tyrone Cooper as serial rapes. All of them escaped conviction.

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Of family politics...

Ramprasad Ki Tehrvi (Ramprasad's Final Rites, Hindi; 2019)
Written and Directed by Seema Pahwa

All families will have their own internal politics. Over property, money or ego, family members may squabble and refuse to descend from their high horses. They refuse to see common ground. Nature sometimes play games to remind everybody of how fragile each of us is and tries to put us in our respective place. The easiest way Nature does this is to invoke death within the family. 

The scurrying of family members gives an opportune time to meant fences. The warring factions may rescind, albeit for a short time, only to return to their old ways once the mourning period is over. 

Human relationships are so fragile. More often than not, we do not say what we mean and mean what we say. Everything is sugarcoated to maintain harmony on the surface, but beneath it all, resentment brews. Everyone is concerned with their own survival. Family dynamics have evolved over the generations, and the extended family concept is so yesterday. Migration to towns and immersion in post-Industrial revolution age type of pigeon-holed urban housing makes nuclear families the norm. Filial piety takes a backseat after marriage, and afterwards, honouring the elders is only confined to weddings and funerals.

The film tells about the death of an elderly music teacher, Ramprasad. His children and close relatives congregate in his house to pacify and fulfil the final rites (Tehrvi). Soon, the family politics come out one by one. The sisters-in-law bitch about the youngest of them, who is an actor. The sons complain about their father. Old wounds start festering. It reached a crescendo when it is discovered that the deceased has a big unpaid mortgage on their family property. Nobody is in a position to chip in to save it. In fact, the father had taken loans to finance each and one of the offspring.

The grieving mother sees the family members like they are there for an extended vacation, catching up on all stories, snapping photographs and the sons having drinking sessions most nights. Nobody seems to be grieving. She thinks that maybe she and her husband had failed in their duties to instil hardship on their children. By just shielding them from life challenges and pad them at every fall, maybe they had made them weak. She also realises that all her kids had their own challenges to meet within their family.

The mandatory thirteen days of mourning ends. The children return to their own lives, letting the mother alone to fend for herself. Life moves on. She continues the music school for children.  

A slow-moving movie that peels the layers of unsaid and unspoken politics in every typical Indian family.

(P.S. The story and settings of this film almost parallel that of another of Netflix's offerings, Pagglait. It is also about family politics and funeral, but from the POV of a grieving widow.)

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The robe and the abacus...

Never trust a man in a suit and tie.

He may hide his evil intentions behind

his haberdashery perfection. In the

same vein, a female who reveals much

more than is needed to hide the 

necessaries may be masking the real 

thing she is hiding. 

It is said that the mark of the fall of an economy or, to go as far as a civilisation, is the disproportionate increase in the numbers of accountants and lawyers in society. Disproportionate to what, one may ask. For a community to propel to higher heights, we desperately need educators, engineers, scientists and health care workers. Educators to teach the young minds, engineers to push the boundary of the mind to explore new frontiers, scientists to discover ways to ease living and health professionals to ensure healthy bodies and minds for continual progress. As society becomes complicated, or the piece of the economic pie gets smaller, there would arise the need to protect or usurp material as much as possible, the legal way. After all, good times do not last forever.

Furthermore, the generation next would not be so resilient or antifragile to handle things given to them on a platter. Still, prosperity has to be continued down generations. Hence, there is an innate compulsion for good times to continue rolling within the family. Finances need to be fixed.

The significant jump in the numbers of lawyers and accountants may also mark the decline of morality. Whether the downfall of society is because of their increase or as a response to the fall, it is a matter of conjecture. When one sees things that used to be settled with a gentleman’s handshake amongst close-knitted friends or relatives now mandates legally signed documents to seal the deal, we know we are going down the rabbit hole of mutual distrust.

Washing dirty linen in public and broadcasting intimate detail to shame the other party is in vogue these days. The accusers think that they could play the victim card by putting all lewd pieces in the open. Little do they know, the public says a free daytime soap opera.

Trustfulness is now a forgotten virtue. When a person used to be entrusted with our monies, we did that not because he could give a beautiful account of our income and expenditure. We knew that there was no doubt about his trustworthiness as he would guard his assigned duty with his life. Now, we want a nicely executed (maybe concocted) Excel sheet with all the 't's well crossed and the 'i's meticulously dotted. Creativity and documentation supersede honesty and hard work.

Honest toiling and passion do not count in this material. All one needs to be successful and marketable in a colourful resumé with skills of articulation Lawyers and accountants help us towards that end. Teachers and medical personnel do not serve to broadcast their deeds. There do it because it is a service to mankind. At least, that is how it used to be.

[P.S. Writers and literary figures are still needed for they need to stir emotion and push boundaries, for we only know our limits when we push them to the brim.]

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There is a reason why leaders stay atop!

Grahan (Eclipse, Miniseries E1-8, Hindi, 2021)
Director: Ranjan Chandel, 

based on the book 'Chaurasi' by Satya Vyas.

I remember some workmates who were in India studying in 1984 during PM Indira Gandhi's assassination. They described it as scary times when many Sikh students took refuge in their non-Sikh friends' homes. Some have them actually had to crop their mane very reluctantly just to stay alive. A turban sticking out in a mob situation where Sikhs were targeted must be a chilling affair. 

It was at a time following Operation Blue Star when Mrs Gandhi ordered the Army to march into Amritsar's Harmandhir Golden Temple complex to neutralise Bhindranwale, who stocked weapons there. His faction wanted to fight for a separate state called Khalistan. His endeavours were supported wholeheartedly by Pakistan Government.

For desecrating the august temple with military boots, many members of the Sikh community were apparently hurt. So, when Mrs Gandhi's personal bodyguard, a Sikh, assassinated her, the general public was livid. They thought it was a tit-for-tat reaction to the temple invasion. Almost overnight, civil unrest spread all over India. Three areas badly hit by disturbances were Delhi, Kanpur and Bokaro, which is now in Jharkhand. Bokaro is an industrial city that used to be part of South Bihar, but since 2000, it is under a new state.

Bokaro saw 70 (some say more) Sikh deaths in the unrest, which some allege is a genocide. It is often compared to other heart-wrenching moments in Sikh history, i.e. Jallanwala Bagh massacre and Partition. Many Sikh families in Bokaro who were affected by this 1984 anti-Sikh riot still have not been given proper closure, explanation or compensation for their loss. No one had been identified officially as the perpetrator. At most, it had been described as a spontaneous display of emotion by the aggrieved public of the death of the nation's leader. The talk at the ground level is that it was the instigation of Congress and the willful inaction of the police that is to blame.

This web series made it to my radar when I read about a group of family members of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots who put up a legal against Disney+ Hotstar for screening a twisted version of the riots in a deliberate attempt to hurt the sentiments of the Sikhs. Funny, after watching the whole show, it appears that the Sikhs are portrayed as victims and are painted as caring members of the community. 

This show tells the tale of a policewoman appointed to head a task force to re-look into the Bokaro massacre 37 years after the fact. She soon realises that not everyone is forthcoming with information regarding the going-ons of the fateful night, which saw a bloodbath, Sikhs in the hands of Hindus. The local politician is feeling hot under the collar, so is the Chief Minister. Her father, it seems, has a dark secret that he is trying to hide.

Times 
37 years on, wounds run still deep.

The show is quite entertaining with its excellent acting, pacing and cinematography. The story paints a very bleak impression of the conduct of Man. The people in the lower rung of society (the ruled) are easily riled up by fear of the unknown. At the very thought that their position in society, their right, is threatened, they recoil into the most primal instinct of all lifeforms - violence. People with similar aspirations or cultures will flock together to ward off opposition from perceived enemies in ancient times. Now, as people are individualistic, their psyche is infiltrated via social media.   

The ruler also is one step ahead of the ruled. Sticking close to Machevellian teachings, he is always equipped with Plan B, C or even D. It is no wonder that the Ruler in most localities can use adversities for their own benefits. At the end of the day, it is always the poor who will lose.

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Any news is good publicity?

Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979)

At the time when the movie was about to start production, many financiers pulled out. They feared that Christians worldwide would be offended as it makes a parody of the events around the birth, life and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Luckily for the filmmakers, George Harrison arranged for the finances.

It is a true and true parody of the Saviour. It starts with three wise men going to the wrong manger in Bethlehem, only to greet by a ferocious sounding whiny mother. This child is Brian. The wise men soon realise their mistakes and proceed to the real Son of God. 

Brian grows under the thumb of his domineering mother to become a timid adult. The rest of the story is made up of dry British humour, centred around Brian's involvement with a resistance group out to oust the Roman occupation of Judea, called 'People's Front of Judea'. Brian is mistaken as a Messiah; long story short, he is off the Calvary for the crucifixion. The movie ends with a chirpy song, 'Always look on the bright side of life', as Brian and the others on the nearby cross whistle away to the tune.

After its release, the film got plenty of unwarranted attention from the censor boards the world over. As they say, any publicity, good or bad, is good for show business. It was even restricted screening in certain localities in the UK. All this notoriety just spiralled at the box office as cinemas promoted the film as 'too funny that it is banned in Norway'!

The initial hullabaloo was initiated by people who had not viewed the movie. Over the years, people started to accept it as artistic expression. It is even considered one of the greatest comedies of all time, grossing record ticket sales over either side of the Atlantic. 

Like many of the religion-themed movies that came out after this, so much uproar surrounding their release eventually proved to be non-events. People soon went to the daytime duties, and the producers laughed all the way to the bank. Remember the controversies surrounding 'The Message' (1976) and 'The Passion of the Christ' (2004)? 'The Message' caused such a hue and cry as people thought Prophet Muhammad was depicted in the movie. In reality, he was neither seen nor heard. 

But looking at the current environment and easily triggered stance upheld by most parties, a similar portrayal of the Prophet is undoubtedly not a good idea. Just for interest, the other day, I was watching an abbreviated version of Dante Algieri's 'Inferno'. (Thanks, Danny.) The makers of this animated presentation were so fearful of offending the sentiments of Muslims that they decided not to mention by name one of the occupants of the 8th circle of Hell but hinted in not so many words.

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