A Military Doctor, A Contradiction?

Doctor (டாக்டர், Tamil; 2021)
Story, Direction: Nelson Dilipkumar

At one look, it may look like a poorly made comedy with the protagonist appearing all sullen and grim, with a perpetual frown throughout the movie as if he holds all the world's problems upon his shoulders. And it is supposed to be a comedy of all things. On the other hand, the plot is about the hero rescuing his love interest's niece from abductors involved in an international child abduction racket! Quite a perplexing one is this dark comedy. It is, however, not short of one-liner punchlines. It conveys the message that we are all self-centred hedonists who are only interested in self-gratification and personal interest and see not beyond our immediate family members. Rules and regulations only apply to others. We are quick to close an eye and bend the rules when we are in the spotlight.

The movie starts with Dr Varun (Sivakarthigeyan), a military surgeon, deciding whether to operate on an Indian Army afflicted with near-fatal injury with dismal prognosis and a captured terrorist with a better outcome. Dr Varun chooses the latter. His rationale is that information from the terrorist would help to defeat the enemy. That is Dr Varun, the pragmatist who calls a spade a spade.

His very thing upsets his fiancée and calls off the whole wedding plan. She accuses him of being unromantic and unsympathetic. Dr Varun takes all this stoically. It is about that time that the finacée's niece is found missing, and the whole family goes into a tailspin. The police seem to be dragging their feet. The telephone tapping technologist that the police sent to their home is more interested in throwing his weight around than actually finding something. The local ruffians that the police rounded up appear clueless about the missing girl.

This is where our military doctor moves in, not as a knight in shining armour, swashbuckling style, but as a maverick strategist utilising his resources to recruit the local hoodlums, including the comical Yogi Babu, to mastermind the girl's return and dismantle an international network of child kidnappers.

Forget logic, indulge in the comedy and take in the message. 

Some professions need their practitioners to perform without fear or favour. They need to be fair, unwavered by emotions, but full of compassion. The controversies surrounding vaccine passport and accusation of the unvaccinated piggy-bagging on the herd immunity conferred by the vaccinated population makes us question whether this is fair. Knowing very well nothing is absolute in science, can the medical practitioners stay idle when the politicians and the Big Pharma go on churning out statistics to meet their agenda?.

An exciting combo - military doctor. An army person is just supposed to follow orders, not ask questions. A doctor is supposed to question, not take things at face value and hearsay. A doctor is supposed to investigate and make a decision. Conversely, the military does not need smart alecs; they want unquestioning loyal followers who hold the silence till the end. A military doctor, a contradiction?

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Of police brutality and power politics...

Jai Bhim (ஜெய்பீம், Tamil, 2021)

Director: T.J. Gnanavel

The Sivakumar family, by default, has come to be known as the first family of Kollywood. Of late, their production company has been churning out movies that dare to question the status quo in their state. With their clout and close association with the state's ruling party, DMK, they are often accused of pandering to the party's political agenda. Political analysts familiar with the Indian political scenarios are quick to highlight such glaring examples. (More of it later!)

The real Judge Chandru with his celluloid representation.

We have seen countless movies painting cops in a bad light, showcasing their inefficiencies and manipulative skills in 'fixing' cases. It is not all fiction. In fact, the truth is stranger than fiction. Ask Judge K. Chandru. He has thousands of such issues and more examples in his illustrious career. This movie is a dramatisation of one such case, which happened as late as 1993. Viewers who have seen this movie would agree that some of the scenes depicted in this film are pretty brutal, unbelievable that a human being, what more a public servant who promised to protect the nation, would resort to such inhumane form of torture on a fellow kind. Surprisingly, when K. Chandru was interviewed on a Youtube channel on this matter, he revealed that police brutality was even worse, much worse than was depicted on screen.

Parvathi (portrayed as Sengani), a woman
scorned by police brutality.

Judge Chandru, a Madras High Court judge, has the unenviable reputation of having presided over 96,000 verdicts in his career. On average, he would listen to 96 cases a day! As a lawyer, he worked on many human rights cases, fighting pro bono for the oppressed population.

Watching the film reminded me of the too many police lock-up custodial deaths that have happened in Malaysia. Much of the media hype surrounding many of these cases 'die' a natural death without anything concrete happening afterwards. The coroner here will accept the cause of death healthy male of early 30s as 'pulmonary oedema' as perfectly normal with no one kicking up dirt. Perhaps we need a firebrand lawyer like K Chandru here.

In 1993, a tribal lady was troubled after the police apprehended her husband and relatives for theft. They allegedly escaped detection and were at large. When she demanded to know what had happened to her husband, as she had witnessed him being tortured, she was given the run-around. No lawyers were willing to help her. Through the comrades of the Communist Party, she was introduced to lawyer Chandru. The lawyer petitioned for a habeas corpus writ at the courts.

As the story goes on, we can see how pressures from the top force the downline police officers to speed up the closure of cases by falsely fixing men from the tribal community. To get their conviction, the police beat them to pulp and creatively devised torture tactics to achieve their goals. Perhaps the mindset of the uniformed body is such that orders must be followed contributed to this. Blind obedience is expected from the subordinates, not the prick from their inner mind of mindfulness! The feudal mentality of subservience and not questioning the independence of the police need to be re-assessed.

There is no secret to K. Chandru's political leanings, even as a judge. He had been an active member of the Marxist Communist Party of India. After Kerala and West Bengal, Tamil Nadu has the most robust network of the communist movement. It shares a cordial relationship with the similarly atheist-minded DMK, which won the Tamil Nadu elections recently. With a name like Stalin, one cannot be faulted for assuming his political leanings.

This movie got a hail of praise from the Chief Minister, MK Stalin. Images of Karl Marx, Ambedkar and Periyar, and proud hoisting of 'hammer and sickle' red flags do not hide the ideology discussed in the film. If one were to scrutinise the story, there were some subtle changes in the name and caste of some characters. It may not be due to cinematographic licence, but perhaps to put forward some self-serving political agendas. The name of the brutal sub-inspector who led the brutality had been changed from Anthony (a Christian name) to Gurumurthy (suggestive of a Vanniyar caste), and the tribal group had been identified as Irular instead of Kurumbar. I wonder why?

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A makeover?

The War of the Roses(1989)
Directed by: Danny DeVito

Watching this movie again after 30 years gives a different perspective to this movie altogether. In the first viewing, the message I remember taking back was that divorces are nasty affairs. Period. Now, it opens a different perspective of what is going through the minds of each of the involved parties as they execute each move to prosecute and subsequently persecute their significant other. 

For those in the dark about this movie, it came about at a time when the trio of Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito was riding high after their super-duper blockbusters' Romancing the Stone' and its sequel' Jewel of the Nile'.

The original 'War of the Roses' refers to the feud between factions of English Nobel houses which were eyeing the English throne in the Middle Ages. In this film, however, the war is between the Man and Wife of the Rose family.

It starts with a law student, Oliver, meeting Barbara, a gymnast, at an auction site. It was love at first sight, and they hooked up. They marry, have two kids and prosper together as Oliver's career goes from strength to strength. Over the years, Oliver had become a hotshot lawyer, and Barbara manages the kids and the home. Life was blissful when in melodious lyrics of 'Obladi Oblada' Progressively, Barbara starts feeling that she is just playing second fiddle to the whole set-up. Oliver seems to be doing all the intelligent, correct, and appropriate things whilst she remains socially awkward and not-so-intelligent. Rift builds up.

All the while, Oliver left all the managing of the domestic front to his wife while he concentrated on his role as the provider. He brought the cash, and she managed diligently. He thought everybody cared for each other playing their respective roles for the betterment of everyone in the Rose family. So, sixteen years of his marriage, when he was admitted for a suspected myocardial infarct, he was flabbergasted. Oliver thought he was going to die, but Barbara did not even show concern. She was more engrossed in her newly-found interest in catering. The children were already gone to college. One thing led to another, and Barbara finally admits that the loving feeling is gone. She wants a divorce. In comes the negotiations and the legal wrangle over the possession of the family home. Both parties feel they had invested too much in the house to just give it up just like that. The fight to own the house becomes so explosive and personal until they end up hanging on the chandelier in the phenomenal final scene of the movie, both refusing to give up ownership.

Till death do you apart?
Not stopping just at the kitchen sink. 

How did it end up like this? Snap out of it. This is reality. Eternal love and till death brings us apart only happens in the dreamer's make-believe world. Fairy tales do not tell what happens after the last page that says, "...and they lived happily forever and ever!' Biochemical excitations that spark at the spring of youth fizzles with advancing age in declining virility and altered life priorities. These changes differ between individuals. Rift occurs, and existential crisis may ensue.

Perhaps in man, this midlife crisis may manifest in acts of flamboyance- buying a flashy sports car, renewed interests in new hobbies or even seeking a trophy wife or mistress are sure give away tell-tale signs. In others, maybe, it is an existential crisis- a validation of sorts of their existence. They may re-evaluate all they had done in their life and realise that they had sacrificed too much for others' well-being and forgot their own in the process. They would have found solace in helicoptering their children. But they had overgrown their nest and want to fly solo. Again they feel disposed. They may delve into spirituality to improve their standings in Life 2.0 or dive head-on into something new, away from all their previous commitments. A revolution or just for the kick of it? What the heck. 

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Not what our forefathers had in their minds!

Paradise Lost.
Mahathir & The End of Hope

Author: Dennis Ignatius

The writings were on the wall all the while. Our past leaders, Tunku, Tun Dr Ismail and Hussein Onn, saw through it all. We were just living in a wishful dream. A leopard never changes its spots. Mahathir's ideology never ever changed from the time he penned the 'Malay Dilemma'.

After reigning 22 years at the helm with an iron fist and burning a big hole in the national coffers, he left the country with a screwed up education system, a twisted judicial system and a lethargically bloated civil service.

His departure from PM'ship saw a slew of candidates who never really got Mahathir's nod of approval. He ran down his own choice of candidates. Just 10 years after his tenure, the country made the headlines for all the wrong reasons. It saw its Prime Minister embroiled in the most extensive business fraud.

A critique of Najib and the way UMNO was turning, Mahathir formed an unholy allegiance with his former arch-nemesis, Anwar Ibrahim and Lim Kit Siang. The citizens bought his story of a man trying to correct the wrong that he had done. From the word go, after his unexpected win at the GE14, Mahathir was an unhappy man. His Machiavellian mind went overdrive trying to outsmart his partners in his multi-ethnic unity government. On the sly, he double-crossed them. His sole intention was to have an all Malay government to carry his ultra-Malay nationalistic agenda. For Mahathir, Malaysia is for Malays. The other people who fought for the country and toiled their life away for the nation are still immigrants, irrespective of the number of generations their family had lived in Malaysia.

An Illustration from John Milton's
17th-century poem 'Paradise Lost'
about Adam and Eve losing their
place in Paradise (Garden of Eden)
due to Satan's nefarious act.

In his rapaciousness to fulfil his vision of restoring Malay hegemony, he sold the country's soul to Islamist elements who have permeated all administration levels: defence, education, judiciary, civil service, and the rest. In his rush to correct the economic imbalance between ethnicities, he and his band of 'visionaries' chose mediocrity over substance to cosmetically paint a rosy picture of equity.

The first thing he did after being offered the position of PM for the second time, he chaired the Malay Dignity Congress, contradicting himself on his promise of being the leader of all, irrespective of race and religion. He kept mum when India demanded Zakir Naik, a wanted criminal accused the world over for his terrorist-inciting speeches but defended his decision to keep him stay put in Malaysia. This, he did despite grouses from his own citizens.

The final hay that broke the camel's back came in the form of backdoor manoeuvring called Sheraton-gate. It becomes clear that, even though Mahathir claims ignorance, the whole steering is towards a Malay-controlled government that puts non-Malays as second-class yeomen. Mahathir had the trust of all its citizens to put things in order, but he took everybody for a ride.

The country has gone to the dogs. Barks of nonsensical rhetorics means nothing as the nation marches to glorify the absurd and put buffoons on the pedestal. Have we reached the point of no return as more and more of our young and daring minds who dare to question the status quo pack their bags and leave for greener pastures?

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With all at your disposal!

Dial 100  (Hindi; 2021)
Written & Direction: Rensil D'Silva

A few days after the news broke out that a particular member of the Khan clan was apprehended for drugs-related activities, an ardent follower asked about my opinion about the whole brouhaha. It was early into the bust, I opined that the long arm of the law should be left to spread its tentacles and take its due process.

Almost a month into the arrest, nothing seems to be moving. Aryan Khan, who was in a rave party on a yacht, is still incarcerated and denied bail. I feel sad for this 23-year-old son of Bollywood's ambassador to the world.

Many prominent figures have done worse things and had gone off on bail, awaiting trial; why not him? Is it because of the stardom that the family enjoyed and that they may have ruffled a few feathers along the way?

The officer heading the investigation is no pushover. He is a celebrated civil servant who excelled in whichever department he is attached to. He even had a run with SRK when SRK failed to declare excess baggage at an airport. This news hit the headline, and the superstar had to cough out substantial fines.

Is Khan junior being made a scapegoat here? This harsh law against drug possession was tabled in the late '60s at the height of the hippy era when people used to take a pill to sleep and another to stay awake. It was feared then that the human race would be wiped out by the end of the 20th century at the rate drugs were a menace that punitive actions deemed necessary. Unfortunately, under the guise of protecting its citizens, it also gave the powers-that-be immense clout to detain (fix) its citizen with the minuscule amount of stash. 

Rightly or wrongly, certain 'developed countries' are easing their grip on drug laws. Recreational drugs for personal consumption has been legalised. Perhaps there is a big Pharma market by medicalising weed and psychedelics.

On the parents' side, the Khans have a moral duty to protect their fallen Khan. Maybe it is the 'selfish gene', but they are within their rights to fight tooth and nail to avert detention, let it be with charm, influence or money.

That brings in nicely to the theme of this 2021 Zee produced Hindi drama. Manoj Vajpayee, still reprising his 'Family Man' role here. He appears as a police emergency hotline respondent, Senior Inspector Nikhil Sood. If talking to distressed callers and cooling them down is not enough, he must weather the storm at his domestic front. His 17-year-old son, his only child, is up to his tricks again. His mother complains that he constantly keeps late nights. Just a year previously, he had entangled himself with a drug distribution ring, and Sood had to use his clout to get him scot-free. 

In the meantime, a mysterious caller keeps bugging him during his night duty. She alleges that she has a gun and wants to kill herself. The caller actually lost her son in a hit-and-run automobile accident. The driver, a rich man's son, was high on drugs, supplied by Sood's son. The caller (and her husband) has a score to settle - to see how the Soods squirm as she shoots their only son, just as she had lost hers. She devised an elaborate tit-for-tat plan to trap Sood's son and the driver of the car.

The movie is quite dramatic but has many holes in its plot. Some viewers complained that the storyline is predictable (maybe not the ending, though). Vajpayee is typecast in a role he has done many times before - a police officer who can dictate to the whole precinct but has no control over his family.

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Any news is good news?

Trial by Media (6-episodes, Documentary; 2020)
Netflix

There was a time when jury members were told to abstain from consuming news from the newspaper, radio or TV to not influence their decisions. These days, however, this is no longer possible. One does not consume news; news consumes you. One can run, but he cannot hide; information finds you through every crack of the system; smart devices being the easiest.

Just look at how everyone has an opinion on how Covid should be managed. Everybody is cocksure where it came from, which drugs are effective and how effective vaccinations are. 

In the post-truth world, it seems that every individual forms an opinion on everything based on the validation they get online. Birds of the same feather flock together to steamroll their agenda. We can see how particular narratives are just gate-crashed, no matter the actual situation at the ground level. The confusing situation in Afghanistan that the country is left in is testimony to this. Then there is the ever confusing ground situation in India, a country surrounded by vultures waiting to pounce upon and destroy the biggest democracy of the world.

Jonathan Schmitz

This six-episode documentary tries to determine how media, the mainstream media, influences public opinion, perhaps the judicial system and its verdicts. At the end of all shows, viewers do not get answers to this, but they do get a rough idea of how media uses these cases to stir interest amongst the people. In some cases, the accused used the media to portray his squeaky clean image of themselves. The press has also moved into the courts via Court TV. 

The first episode is about the unscrupulous nature of TV, specifically Trash TV. Programmes like 'The Jerry Springer Show', 'Jeremy Kyle', 'Keeping up with the Kardashians' will be a few examples of these. In 1995, during 'The Jenny Jones Show', a neighbour, Scott Amedure, expressed his gay crush to Jonathan Schmitz. Jonathan had thought that another neighbour, a lady who invited him to the show, was going to confess her love. The whole faux pas was quite embarrassing to Jonathan. He took it in good spirits at that time, but Jonathan shot him dead with a shotgun the next day. 

Jonathan was charged and convicted for second-degree murder, and, guess what, the whole court debacle was screened live on 'Court TV'. Coincidentally, or perhaps not coincidentally, both 'Court TV' shows and 'The Jenny Jones Show' were owned by the parent company, Warner Brothers (WB). So WB had it good both ways, benefiting from the murder and filming the trial as well.

The victim's family, the Amedure, decided to sue the TV producers for recklessness and negligence. However, the TV company got away scot-free after an appeal to the grieving family's initial compensation award.

Bernard Goetz

The following case piqued the interest of the Nation again. In 1984, in the notorious crime-rich New York, a subway commuter, Bernard Goetz, shot four black boys in a subway rail. The shooter alleged it was in self-defence after being mugged. That incident sparked fueled a nationwide debate about safety on the streets of New York and other US cities generally. Goetz's case started vigilante groups that patrolled the streets to prevent urban crimes. The question of legal limits of self-defence was discussed. Is it alright to shoot once or twice to protect oneself? The NRA then worked on loosening gun laws in New York for protection. A quadriplegic victim even pressed a civil suit against Goetz for damages and was awarded $43million. Goetz was declared bankrupt.

Crime in New York saw a decline in the 1990s with new mayors and massive cleaning of the police department. It did come at a cost. Stringent policing meant there were that there was the occasional collateral damage. 

Amadou Diallo

In 1999, an African immigrant, a 23-year-old Guinean named Amadou Diallo, was shot 41 times by four New York plainclothes policemen in The Bronx. He was unarmed, with no criminal record and had come to the USA to taste a little bite at the Big Apple. Sadly he was shot down like a rabid dog. This spurred the talk of racial profiling and discrimination. Diallo's mother flew down and, together with civil rights icons like Al Sharpton, kicked up a big storm to seek justice. Sadly, nothing happened. The trial was held at a primarily different white county and mostly white juries to acquit the accused. 

Richard Scrushy

Richard Scrushy developed a world-class healthcare company from scratch in the backwaters of Birmingham, Alabama and made it to the Fortune 500. Before long, he was accused of money laundering, racketeering, money laundering, etcetera. About this time, he started an evangelical TV and went into a full religious mode. Interestingly he was active in the black Church. It is said his idea was to influence the local papers and juries to return a favourable result in his complicated and retracted court cases.

The following case is another new milestone for the media. It was the first time a rape trial was televised. Even though they had made some ground rules on maintaining the victim's anonymity and the sensitivities of the times, all hell broke loose when it came to execution. The victim's name was mentioned in full when the charge sheet was read, making the camera hound down at the victim's family home. In 1983, Cheryl Araujo, 21, a mother of two, stopped at a local bar in New Bedford, Massachusetts, to buy a pack of cigarettes when she was raped by four and witnessed by others who never stopped the crime.

The case began a national debate. As the accused were of Portuguese immigrants, there was an enormous backlash to the established fishing community of Portuguese descent. They were charged with harbouring illegal immigrants. The victim was also put on trial by the media. Her behaviour and morals were questioned. Victim blaming was apparent. It challenged the place of media in protecting personal privacy, finding newsworthiness and press freedom. The accused spent time in prison. The whole humiliation left Aroujo a wreck. She left for Miami but died at the age of 25 in a motor vehicle accident.

Rod Blagojevich

Rod Blagojevich is a second-generation Yugoslavian who climbed swiftly, with the support of his wife's political family background, to become Illinois Governor in 2002. Soon into the second reelection, he was accused of selling a Senate seat. He was impeached and was indicted by a federal grand jury. All through in between his trials and appeals, he was appearing on TV, expressing his views and basically leading the public perception in his favour. Even after his indictment, he pleaded his case on Fox TV. Surprise, surprise, Fox TV, which is said to be a Republic Party mouthpiece, tweaked the interest of President Trump to offer a Presidential pardon. Coincidentally, before Blagojevich's appointment to Governorship, he had appeared in Trump's 'The Apprentice'. It goes without saying that it is nice to have friends in high places, and it is invaluable to have the media on your side, especially when you are in trouble.

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A mistake is a mistake.

Netrikann (Third Eye, Tamil; 2021)

By placing thilak/pottu/kumkum on one's forehead, one is constantly reminded that they should look beyond the mirage of Maya and seek to look inwardly beyond physicality. The sensory eyes are outward-oriented, whilst the third eye sees the nature of oneself and his existence. It helps to distinguish what is right and what is wrong. As the legend goes, the sensory eyes are influenced by lust, ego, and the twirl of our past births (kama and karma).

Logical precision can easily be distorted whilst perfect clarity arises only when the inner vision, called the third eye, opens up. 

Some say that the third eye corresponds to the pineal gland, which histologically looks like embryonic lateral eyes. As early as the ancient Egyptian era, the pineal gland gained its unique status as the bridge between the physical and ethereal worlds. The sketch of the Eye of Horus corresponds to the anatomical placement of the pineal gland in the brain.

The pineal gland is a photo-neuro-endocrine gland. It secretes melatonin which controls sleep and sexual maturity, serotonin which controls mental wellbeing and minute amounts of DMT (N, N, dimethyltryptamine), a psychotropic substance that evokes psychic phenomena. Many cultures in South America include DMT infused tea as a ritual of worship. There was a Supreme Court case in New Mexico in 2005 which had to decide whether a small congregation should be allowed to worship with the said hallucinogenic tea. 

The pineal gland also helps to set diurnal and circadian rhythms in the body. As mentioned by Swami Vivekanda in 1899 in Chicago about neuroplasticity, specific Shiva worshipping techniques are said to increase blood flow and neural connexions around this gland. This would subsequently alter all its functionalities as desired. It is an eye of wisdom that provides us with the faculty to distinguish what is right and wrong.

It is said that there was a debate in the royal courts of King Pandiya one day. The Royal Poet Nakeeran admonished a poem that claimed a lady's mane is naturally fragrant. Nakeeran insists that it is hair tonic and care that does the trick. An unkempt hair of a slave would not. Unknownbest to Nakeera that the phrase was penned by Lord Shiva himself. When challenged by Siva on this, the fearless Nakkeran is said to have said, "A mistake is a mistake even if you are God (One with the Third Eye). [Netrikkan thirappinum kuttram kuttrame] It has somehow become the rebel yell of the oppressed against the powers-that-be.

The title 'Netrikann' has its origin from this phrase; that a wrong is a wrong, no amount of rhetorics can justify otherwise. Back in 1981, there was a Rajnikanth-starred movie with a similar name. In that movie, a son confronts his father for his skirt-chasing habit. A wrong is a wrong even if your father does it. 

Netrikann (2021) tells about an impotent gynaecologist who finds sexual prowess through violence and ends up kidnapping his young unmarried patients who turn up at his clinic for termination of pregnancy. Somehow, the protagonist of the film, a blind Nayanthara, resembles the gynaecologist's wife, and he has a score to settle with her. The gist of the movie is how a blind police officer defeats a serial killer. A blind police lady also has her own issues to handle with. She is blaming herself for getting her brother killed in a jeep she was driving.

This 2021 film is based on a Korean movie made in 2011 named 'Blind'. The story is the same, but the Tamil version is more thorough, with ample space for dramatisation. Enjoyable, though 3.5/5.

P.S. With so much stupidity exuded by our politicians these days via their statements, we should behave like Nakeeran. We should develop the fortitude to chide idiocy every time it shows up. A mistake is a mistake, even it is done by the One with The Third Eye.

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