Not the love of one's life but love of life itself!

Before Trilogy
Before Sunrise (1995)
Before Sunset (2004)
Before Midnight (2013)

Director: Richard Linklater


This must surely be a very ambitious project. In a way, it is real-life experimentation. It tells about how life treats two individuals over a span of 18 years. It shows how two 23-year-olds look all doe-eyed at life and again at 32 and 41. At each time, we get an idea of how they see life is ahead. They embrace it with so much zest, thinking that they know why their elders get it all wrong. They thought they had discovered the secret why so many from the generation before were so miserable and vowed never to repeat their mistakes. They could see as plain as day what and where they went wrong. They knew they would never prey to these situational demands.

Jesse, an American student, met Celine, a French lass, aboard a Eurail train heading to Paris. Striking a conversation, they clicked as they shared similar values. They made an unscheduled stop at Vienna and spent the whole evening talking and talking about everything under the star. Literally under the stars as they spent the night in the park. The morning after, they parted ways, promising to meet at the exact station in 6 months. That was in 1994.

Their second meet happened nine years later, in 2003. The earlier scheduled date did not materialise as Celine had to partake in her grandmother's funeral. It was a time before people had instant messaging. Both had made it a point not to exchange contact numbers anyway. Jesse is now an accomplished author on a book tour in Paris. He is now married with a child back home in New York, whilst Celine is still wandering around wondering what to make of life. She finds relationships too complicated but finds solace in caring for the environment and social courses. She works with an environmental NGO. Their few hours of tête-à-tête before the flight ended up with Jesse wilfully missing the flight. 

Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in all three films.

Another nine years later, Jesse sends off his firstborn home at the airport in the third film. Jesse's son is leaving after spending summer with his father. Yes, Jesse has divorced his first wife and decided to marry Celine and settle in Paris. They have a pair of twin girls. As they reach the tail end of their summer vacation, their otherwise blissful union hits a bump. Celine is contemplating a career change. She has to choose between a French Government post and a higher paying one in Chicago. Jesse wishes that she chooses Chicago as the job is in tune with her life ambition. Celine thinks Jesse chooses Chicago as he wants to be staying close to his son and possibly work towards custody of his son. That is when the battle started. It spiralled into a feminism war and equality, etcetera.

The irony of it all is that they end as the very similar couple that they vowed they would not be in their later years.

At the end of the day, it's not the love of the
other person matters. It's the love of life.

A few lessons of life are learnt here. Invariably love turns sour. Couples have to invest time and effort to be in love as the default button says go out and spread the love. Life is no fairy tale for that someone special to morph from nowhere to assume the role of Prince Charming. Fairy tales are grim satires of life, not an imagined utopia.

The thought of someone complementing and completing the (better) other is ludicrous. The speech 'You complete me' is a subtle invitation to indulge in the act of experimenting with the lock-and-key mechanism. It is a biological process, not a transcendental one.

Life in modern times is stressful. With so many societal expectations to meet, one lifetime is not enough. If surviving through the hard knocks of life is not challenging enough, there are gender roles to be fulfilled. Conversely, there is a push for gender empowerment as well. With all these boxes to be checked, to say that the modern man is stressed is an understatement. With all these swords of Damocles hanging over our heads, how will one attain peace at heart and mind? Only when there is peace in oneself can one find a genuine connection with others.

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Before they 'jump the shark'!

Brooklyn Nine-Nine (season 8, final season)

After a long hiatus, Brooklyn Nine-Nine returned with its last season. A lot of things happened after the previous season. George Floyd's mishandling, Black Live Matters movement and calls to defund the police did not put the police in the best of light. Despite the public sensitivities and the problems of filming under pandemic situations, the team managed to churn out an entire ten-episode season. The producers decided to keep it neutral by avoiding too much police work and limiting the storyline more to the precinct's pranks.

Fonzie on water skis, in a scene from the
1977 Happy Days episode "Hollywood,
Part 3", after jumping over a shark

Maybe it is just me; I feel that actors have all grown lethargic playing their roles. The initial glow and enthusiasm seem to have been lost. Perhaps the producers saw that too. Rather than creating a 'jumping the shark' moment or even 'nuke the fridge' scene, they wisely decided to call it quits. After eight years of 'working', the team ended the season emotionally with their classical whacky treasure hunt during the Halloween season.

What do these jargons 'jumping the shark' and 'nuke the fridge' even mean, you may wonder?

Between 1974 and 1984, 'Happy Days' was flying the waves with its sitcom set in the mid-50s to mid-60s midwest USA. After an initial stutter, they started flying high but hit a bump in Season 5. The producers tried to push the limit by using the show's main star, Fonz's, waterskiing abilities. They made him leap over a shark in one episode in his trademark leather jacket and shorts. The show went on for seven other seasons but never really regained its past glory.

Pundits always mention the 'jumping the shark' moment as the beginning of the decline of the show's popularity. It may not have not totally true as other outlandish characters appeared in that season too. Mork, an alien, stranded on Earth, made his debut. He was so popular that he went on to have a life of his own in a spin-off 'Mork and Mindy'. All in all, 'Happy Days' had 255 half-hour episodes.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag) is rumoured
to be the next Indiana Jones. 

The general understanding is that any film sequels more than three are bound to be a dud. So when the 'Indiana Jones' franchise became so popular, the monetary attraction to make a fourth film was just too great. The scene where Indiana Jones survives a nuclear explosion by hiding in a refrigerator lined with lead was simply too outrageous for even a die-hard Indy fan to stomach. Just when you think that the 'nuke the fridge' scene would put an end to future Indiana Jones endeavours, think again. Indiana Jones 5 is in the pipeline for 2022, and in keeping with Hollywood's gender fluidity agenda, a female actor may be whipping the asses of the baddies.

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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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