No free fling!

Kaanekkaane (As you watch, Malayalam; 2021)
Director: Manu Ashokan

Just like how my friends put it bluntly, "there is no such thing as a free f*ck! Everything has a price tag." No one is willing to give up something so intimate to them without any attachment. Something so personal surely carries with it excessive baggage and expectations in ROIs (Return of Investments). Affairs of the heart are never rational. The thrill of tasting the forbidden fruit digs one deeper and deeper into a heap of hopelessness. 

When you are not on the wrong side of the fence, it is easy to be judgemental. Sitting in the comfort of the armchair, it may sound prophetic to pass laws on what a person should and could do in a particular situation. We must remember that rules are made for others to follow. When it affects ourselves and our dear ones, we look for loopholes or, worse, shift the goal-post.

This intense family drama is told and acted in a very sober way without much dramatisation, perhaps at the end, but precisely for the right reason.

Paul, a civil servant at the land office, visits his grandson after about a year. Paul has not gotten over the death of his daughter, Sherrin, who succumbed to injuries in a hit-and-run accident. Paul's son in law, Allen, is now re-married, and his new wife, Sneha, is pregnant due any time. Paul was about to see another lawyer to appeal his daughter's case in the higher courts.

As he tries to build a relationship with his grandson, Paul realises that Allen may have got intimate with Sneha before Sherrin's demise. Slowly, everything falls in place. Sneha may have been a demanding lover, pushing to go to another level, and Sherrin's accident could have been a convenient death. Or was it murder?

Paul does his own investigation and determines that Allen had decided not to help Sherrin when he saw her sprawled by the roadside after the accident as momentarily he thought her death would ease matters with his demanding lover. It was just a temporary lapse of judgement but was long enough to take Sherrin to the point of no return.

Paul started blackmailing Allen with this theory and a recorded confession; Paul finds himself in a quandary. When he is about to tell Sneha about Allen's confession, he finds her unconscious in her home with an obstetric emergency. The idea of abandoning Sneha crossed his mind as that would mean he may gain possession of his grandson, and Allen was already going insane with guilt. Sanity prevailed in the end.

Sneha is sent to hospital; she survives and delivers a healthy baby. Paul realises that the same evil thoughts that almost made him leave Sneha to die must have been the sinister idea that took the better of Allen, causing Sherrin to die.

Paul returns to his hometown, deciding to put a rest to pursuing Shireen's accident any further. Man is not infallible. Sometimes we make the wrong decisions when clouded by emotion. We fail to make rational decisions we would otherwise make and live to regret them every living day. To forgive is divine, they say, but the long arm of the law will still get you.

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Life can be overwhelming!

All the troubles of the world 
Short Story: Issac Asimov (1958)

Thanks, MS, for the introduction to this prolific writer. All this while I have been watching many films based on the writings, sadly without my knowledge. The movies 'I-Robot' and 'Bicentennial Man' are two such examples.

'All the troubles of the world' first appeared as a short story in a 1958 pulp magazine named 'Super Science Fiction'. Since then, it has come out in a Children's Book and even a 20-minute short film. 

Within a span of 18 pages, Asimov brought us into a dystopian future where the desire of Man to keep the running of the world squeaky clean crime-wise has brought them a supercomputer that can prevent crimes before it is done. In this world, all kinds of information and thinking processes are recorded by Multivac. Multivac, in essence, is a God-like giant computer that helps in Earth's economy, sciences and most of all, security. By constantly updating Earthlings' train of thought data, the machine can predict Man's every following thought process.

After 50 years of serving mankind, dealing with much of their problems, Multivac finally decides to call it quits. In an elaborately penned plan, Multivac devises a scheme to self-destruct itself. It wants to die.

This is a conundrum that constantly plagues mankind. By developing more and more complex programmes like artificial intelligence (AI) learn and design algorithms, is it not just a matter of time that they build emotions and consciousness? Unlike automatons that are pure work-horses designed to serve, AI of the future may dictate terms with us. 

Just look at the transformation of Man. How a simpleton is satisfied with life when his primal needs, i.e. food, sleep and mate, are met. Slowly as his situation improves, as affluence and comfortable seeps in, his wants become progressively become insatiable. Despite having all the comforts at his feet, he is still a hollow man.

If Vishnu's avatars can be looked upon as the evolution of life on Earth, one can notice that the avatars have to deal with increasingly more complicated issues. That is the curse of intelligence. We become increasingly aware of possible risks in executing every task that living becomes progressively more complex and challenging. We are simply bogged with too many 'what if's and 'why not's. Sometimes it is just too overwhelming that we want to end it all.

Life is easy for the simpleton.

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Some things are beyond our control!

Jiivi (Intelligence, Tamil; 2021)

Amazon Prime.

The more we look around, the more we see a particular pattern of how people's life pens out. With a few variations here and there, we can figure how one's life will turn out. So we think. It looks pretty much like how some Bollywood /Kollywood films work.

If one were to scrutinise generic mainstream Indian films that have came out all these years, we would see a particular pattern. Someone would have come up with a specific formula that gave lucrative returns. Suddenly all new releases will have that particular storyline with a few variations here and there, but we can kind of predict how it will end.

So, after living on Earth for quite a while and witnessing things around us pass on by, we think we have got the neck of how things work out. We believe we can predict how everything works. Lest we forget that many unseen forces derail our predictions big time.

This film can be classified as a thriller but of a different kind. Kudos to the copywriters who came up with a relatively fresh story quite diverse from the usual fare churned from the Indian Tinseltown.

It sees a loafing village boy sent off to prove his worth in town. Saravanan is actually an intelligent chap but does not see the purpose in studying so hard. He is a voracious reader, though. In Chennai, after moving around doing various jobs, he works in a beverage stall making fruit juices. Reality hits him when his girlfriend leaves him at the prospect of marrying a civil servant. He realises that nobody gives a damn to the poor man. So when the opportunity comes to him of a key to a safe with a large stash of jewellery, he grabs it with both hands. Using his book knowledge and his interaction with a police informant who frequents his shop, he plunges head on to perform a perfect crime. But then, his accomplice, his roommate, is an anxious fellow. And Saravanan's father dies suddenly, needing him to return home.

Slowly he realises that his life path parallels that of his landlady from whom he steals the jewellery. And it does not look good. The similarities and co-incidences are too uncanny to be put aside. So Saravanan has to somehow break the spell, the curse or the karma that may befall his family because of his family.

A fresh storyline that overshadows the unimpressive acting by the leading actors. 4/5 though.

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We don't choose our family!

Shoplifters (2018)
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda

What is the meaning of being a parent? Is it merely a process of transferring genetic material or a legal process determined by a piece of certificate and the State? We all know that being a parent is beyond all these. There is love, cuddling, touching, nurturing and many more. But then we also see abuses and unconducive environments set by parents for the growing minds.

The low-key movie tells us in a very unusual way what it is to be family. A family, in their definition, does not involve Nature but rather tend to imply that it involves appropriate nurturing techniques that prepare children to adulthood and make their lives on Earth worth living. It does not conform to what we expect a typical family to be.

The film starts with a slightly older man with a young preteen boy pilfering something from a convenience store. Then we see that they live in a bare thread cramped living quarters with a mother figure, a grandmother figure and another young adult lady. A young girl is seen wandering outside in the cold, hungry. The 'family' take her to feed her and keep her warm. They see signs of physical abuse on her. Trying to return her to her home the next day, they overhear her parents yelling at each other on top of their voices. They decide to keep and care for the girl.

A family that shoplifts together stay together!

The father loses his construction job after injuring his ankle. The mother is retrenched from her job at the laundry. The household runs on the grandmother's pension money, and the family filled the rest of their needs via shoplifting. They justify their crime with their own moral codes. The family unit can be seen to be very intimate and happy.

Everything caved in when the boy got caught shoplifting, and police moved in. Only then, the whole truth comes to the fore. None of the kids is the couple's, and there is a secret of alleged murder and concealment of a dead body.

In a world where children are abused and neglected, does it mean anything to sire a child? There must be more criteria to be met for qualifying to be a parent. But then, we must also be aware that we cannot use our yardstick to gauge whether a parent meets the criteria of good parents. Everyone has their way of instilling discipline and imparting knowledge to their young.

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Bose, the Father of India?

Bose or Gandhi - Who Got Her Freedom?
Author: Maj Gen (Dr) GD Bakshi SM, VSM (Rtd) (2019)

Viewers who have seen the good Major General in action during his interviews agree that he is pretty passionate about war. Hailing from a Pashtun Hindu family with a strong tradition in the military, there is no denying that he is a nationalist by every means. 

This book results from detailed research of recently declassified sensitive correspondence documents of the British Foreign Office. Many of the communications happened between the local British officers and their superiors in London. The critical decision-makers involved here are Field Marshall Sir Claude Auchinleck (Commander-in-Chief in India), Field Marshall Archibald Percival (Viceroy of India), Lord Pethick-Lawrence (Secretary of State of India) and Lord Clement Attlee (Prime Minister). Included in the analysis were the many field reports from Provincial Governors to their bosses on their assessment of sentiments of the Indian crowd in the ground. 

From our history books, we came back with their idea that India's Independence was won unilaterally by the undying efforts of Gandhi and his band of politicians in the Congress Party. Slowly, as more and more truth surfaces, the world now realises that probably that narration was put up by the colonial masters. They wanted to portray an image of passing the baton to the natives on a platter with altruistic intentions.

Did Gandhi's satyagraha actually win India its Independence? This book vehemently disagrees. 

After India first resistance towards colonisation in the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857, the British moved on to attack Indians psychologically instead. They devised a 'divide and rule' strategy. They went on to dismantle the local ancient but advanced educational structure to brainwash Indians into thinking highly of the colonial master's way of life and education. 

With a tiny army, the British managed to keep the rest of Indian in check by appointing local sepoys and baboos to be at their beck and call to do their dirty job as well as maintain the master-slave arrangement. The loyalty of the native Indian sepoy to the British colonial enterprise is the bulwark of their occupation. It worked well until the call of self-rule came again in the early 20th century. Individual revolutionaries sprung here and there but were quickly curtailed by the British. The Congress Party demanded swaraj (self-rule) and later led passive resistance (satyagraha) towards this end. The British did not mind this. It was easier bulldozing unretaliating marches.

The Indians thought that the British would be moved to offer dominion status by volunteering in World War 1. The Indians later realised they were taken for a ride. Things were just getting worse. The call for self-rule grew louder. Even as late as 1942, when Clement Atlee was the War Minister, Britain agreed that Indian Independence was out of the question on both sides of British politics. Churchill and his band of pompous politicians had no intentions of honouring whatever promises they had given the Indians.

All India Forward Bloc, 
a faction within the Indian National Congress
in 1939, led by Subhas Chandra Bose.

It is a combination of loss of respect amongst the native, terrible post-war debts and the most important of all, the increase of post-WW2 nationalism in India.

Chandra Bose, who rose in the Congress Party to hold President's post in 1938, resigned following disagreements with Gandhi the next year. Bose had wanted to advocate force against the British, but Gandhi's manoeuvring of the Party ensured Bose could not.

Bose left to form a breakaway bloc to fight India's way to Independence. He made trips to the UK and specifically to Germany to form a pact with Hitler. Unfortunately, Bose found the Germans not so forthcoming. He received news that the Japanese could help. A dangerous trip via submarines took him to an audience with Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese military chieftains. In exile in Singapore, Bose formed a de-facto Indian government and created the Indian National Army from the captured British Indian Army personnel and thousands of ethnic Indian volunteers from Malaya and Singapore, including the first All-Women regiment named Jhansi Rani regiment in 1942.

Timing is all-important in military attacks. The Japanese invasion of the British forces at the India-Burma was done at the time when the Americans had moved in, and the Western front was somewhat under control in 1944. The INA fared poorly at Imphal and Kohima. 

Japanese PM with Subhas Chandra Bose Municipal Building (City Hall), Singapore. 6 July 1943.

What happened next plays the most crucial role in stirring nationalistic spirit amongst Indians that sent the British packing back to their cocoon. The decision of the British authorities to try the leaders of the captured INA leaders for treason against the Crown alerted the average Indian of double standardness. At a time of the suppression of information, this much-broadcasted trial in the iconic Red Fort in New Delhi just broadcasted to the whole of India of the sacrifice of a group of dedicated soldiers towards the nation's Independence and the injustice meted upon them. Even Gandhi hailed them as heroes.

The declassified documents just proved this fact. They cautioned the British officials of high tension arising amongst their subjects of that trial. 

The coup de grace must have been the mutiny by the officers of the Royal Indian Navy and soldiers of the British Indian Army. They openly defied the orders of their superiors. Due to mounting public pressure, charges were dropped, but they lost their pensions.

The British cut their losses, threw in the towel and fled the scene. Whilst the whole country was jubilant rejoicing around their bonfire, the British had their bonfire. They were burning up their highly classified documents before it got to the wrong side of history. 

Bose in Singapore.

History has made closet Anglophiles Gandhi

and Nehru as the heroes.

At the end of the day, it was not Gandhi's non-violence and gentle approach that had little to contribute towards Independence. It was, after all, in the end, good old fashioned violence and threat of more extensive brutality that sounded the death knell of the mighty British Raj.

Atlee, in 1956 was asked about Gandhi's role in the British's decision to quit India. He sarcastically smiled and said, "minimal!" He reiterated that the violence generated by the INA trials and its impact on the loyalty of the native Indians and the mutinies it created made them scamper in such a hurry.

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No one gives a damn really!

Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-Clapped Star, Bengali, 1960)
Screenplay & Direction: Ritwik Ghatak

I saw him brought in earlier in handcuffs and was attended to by my seniors. I noticed that everyone was looking at him with judgemental looks. So as not to embarrass him further, I just immersed myself in work. Still, from the corners of my eye, I did notice that he looked too intelligent to be wearing prison attire and be shoved around like a common criminal.

He must have seen me clerking the patients all through the afternoon, and there I was, still attending to patients at 10pm, as the first frontliner and the most junior of the staff. I must have looked gullible enough for him to quietly signal me to come beside him as I passed him by.

.

So, when he called me, I was curious. He complained he had chest pains that could be a heart attack and needed a certification letter that he had a massive myocardial infarction. I was scratching my head. At most, he could be having some musculoskeletal discomfort. His symptoms and ECG suggested that the possibility of a full-blown cardiac event was remote. I told him, "I will see what I can do", and never went in his direction again.

I later found out he was a senior lawyer charged with a criminal breach of trust suit and was scheduled to appear in courts the following day, hence the delay tactic. And, I was the sucker to be used for his personal intent.

For a long time, I was annoyed by the event. There I was, squeezing my brains trying to sort out the best treatment for the ill patients, and someone out there was one-minded to get me into trouble and sweet talk me for his nefarious intentions. 

As the years went on, I soon realised that nobody actually gives anyone a damn. At the end of the day, it is all about self-sustenance and personal gratification. If I were working through lunch that day because I thought the patients needed more urgent attention than my suppressible hunger, it is no fault of the patients. It was mine for not prioritising and lack of foresightedness. As if these things are predictable? I chose my line of duty. I thought it was my calling, so stop whining. I am just a mere spoke in the wheel of human civilisation. And the direction of the human march is forward, and I am the lubrication to ensure smooth motion. Nobody is worried that the lubricant dries up or gets denatured. It is what it is.

This 1960 Bengali movie reminded me of that event that happened 33 years ago. The film was made by a legendary filmmaker, Ritwik Ghatak, who is often to referred to as the second most influential director to another great Bengali moviemaker, Satyajit Ray. Ghatak's compositions combine neo-realism with a bit of over-dramatisation to portray the society we live in. Many of his films show female empowerment, societal divisions and the effect of the 1947 Partition on the Bengal region.

Khuki's family is a refugee family affected by the Partition. The family is probably from the Bhadralok class of society who benefitted from the British Rule acquiring Western education and 'cultured' behaviour. All that came to nought overnight as they were deprived of homes and possessions after the bloody feud for statehood. So this middle-upper echelon of East Bengal spilt over westwardly for survival.

Khuki's father is an old school teacher who could recite Keats and Shakespeare at the drop of a hat, becomes debilitated after a fall. The responsibility of caring for the family falls on Khuki. She has ambitions of higher education and marriage to the love of her life, Sanat.

Khuki's mother is forever complaining of increasing expenses for the household. The eldest son of the family, Shankar, is only interested in being a world-class singer. Till then, he was not planning to do any other work. A younger brother, Mantu, is a keen sportsman. The youngest, Gita, is a dreamy young girl interested in staying pretty and not in her studies.

Khuki sacrifices all desires for the well being of the family. She surrenders her salary, gives up her comfort and even gives up her man to be married off to her sister. What she gets in return is just more demands and contempt. All the stresses did not augur well for Khuki.

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Go with the flow?

Subarnarekha (Bengali, 1965)
Story and Direction: Ritwik Ghatak

The world, they say, constantly evolves. Every civilisation has its norms and social mores that it holds close to its heart for its society to follow. Depending on how strongly one community sticks to its belief, sometimes death may seem the most appropriate punishment meted to shirkers. 

The older generation thought they had seen it all. They know who is good and what brings destruction in the end. The young ones from all ages inherently have that rebel streak in them. They refuse to see eye-to-eye with their elders, no matter how well the latter proved themselves to be. This must be Nature's natural way to help the human race explore all avenues and choose the best way to propel forward.

It is no easy task to hang on to old traditions and values when the world is evolving, and it appears to be left behind. Even though we can see that their ways are decadent but why is everyone following them? Are we missing something?

This must be how the elders of Bharat must have felt when the East Indian Company was making inroads into India. With all the rich traditions and knowledge readily in their motherland, they cannot understand why the younger ones were fascinated with the self-defeating culture of the West.

'Subarnarekha' constitutes Ritwik Ghatak's third offering of the trilogy involving refugees during the Partition of Bengal in 1947. Ishvar Chakraborty leaves East Bengal with his sister Sita. Ishvar hangs around the refugee camp with nothing much to do. He takes in a young refugee boy, Abhiram, whose mother is taken away by zamindars. 

A chance meeting with an old friend brought him a job elsewhere. Despite being labelled as a deserter, he jumps up on the opportunity for seeking greener pasture and leaving the rest. Ishvar's boss is a traditionalist, believing in caste and creed.

Years go on. Abhiram is sent to a boarding school, graduates and become a casual writer. Sita grows up pretty, is musically inclined and falls for Abhiram. Ishvar, by now, is a general manager and is earmarked to be a partner in the foundry he is working. When Sita and Abhiram bring up the idea of marrying, the boss brings up the question of Abhiram's caste. The young ones elope, starting from scratch and scraping the barrel. Ishvar turns out broken and spirals down the ladder of decadence. The end is devastating as both Abhiram and Sita die, and their son goes under the care of his uncle, Ishvar, to stay in his abode by the banks of River Subarnarekha.

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