Ho, ho, ho... all the way to the bank!

We all know how much Christmas is commercialised in the modern world. Not to forget how the tunic of beard man Yuletide coincidentally shares the same colour with the most favourite drink, Coca Cola.

There is this town in Finland, in Laplands over the Arctic Circle, named Rovaniemi. Besides being the spot to view the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis), it is also said the official hometown of Santa Claus. After being flattened out in World War 2, the town promoted itself as a Christmas destination after Eleanor Roosevelt, American First Lady, popularised it. Rovaniemi welcomes about half a million visitors annually.

If the rest of the world is contented with one stereotypical look of Santa, Slovenians can be incredibly proud of their three Santas. Each of their Santa reminds them of a different time in their country's history.

Santa, Miklavž and Mraz

First, there is the story of Saint Nicholas (or Sveti Miklavž in Slovene), a third-century bishop who is reputed to have saved a girl from prostitution by delivering a bag of coin in the dark of the night. Slovenians commemorate this day on the 6th of December by giving presents to children. Miklavž was a relic of the Hapsburg Empire when Roman Catholicism was the religion of the land. 

After the Austria-Hungario Empire crumbled after the First World War, the Slovene people became part of the authoritarian rule of Tito of Yugoslavia. Catholicism and religious holidays were banned under the communist regime. So was Saint Nicholas. But the thought of stopping giving presents to children was too much. Hence, Tito continued this tradition modelled after a Russian communist Santa named Ded Moroz. In Slovenia, he was called Dedek Mraz. 

White Christmas in Slovenia

When Slovenia became an independent nation in 1991, it was drawn to the western economic model. Naturally, Santa and consumerism ruled the roost. The more, the merrier the Slovenes thought. Now, all three Santas go on a rotation to have a month-long celebration in the month of December.

Each Santa reminds Slovenians of their ancient past - under the Empire, a Russia-controlled ruler and as an independent nation. 

It is intriguing how a celebration becomes an ideological or an economic model statement. The powers in control will tell their subjects what should be celebrated and how it should be celebrated. The rest, like lambs, will just follow the herd under the lead of the shepherd, whose sole intention in life is to fatten his flock and prepare them for the slaughterhouse!

(P.S. Meanwhile, in confused Malaysia, in the midst of trying to find her right footing in the ever-changing 21st century, after 50 years of racial and religious indoctrination, has left some of its citizens in a quandary. To wish or not to wish is the question! On the one hand, they are told the Creator created different tribes with various languages so as for people to know each other. Their idol, Zakir Naik, the foreign ultra-conservative evangelist with a bounty on his head, whom they hold in esteem, says it is haram to wish each other 'Merry Christmas'. By wishing so, he insists, that one is accepting that Jesus (or Isa in the Quran) is the Son of God. That, the fact that God (a.k.a. Allah) can have a wife and father a child is sacrilegious.)

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A twisted tale of cops and bandits!

Churuli (2021)
Director: Lijo Jose Pellissery

When it came to my attention that the Kerala High Court agreed that the language used in this movie is 'atrocious in nature' after a portion of the film was played in the court following a writ petition, I was excited. In my mind, any publicity is good publicity. After plucking the movie out of cyberspace and watching it, I was hooked. I was eager to find out where the film was heading.

Amidst the beautiful green lush of tropical Kerala countryside, two undercover cops infiltrate into a remote village to apprehend a hardened criminal. The problem is that neither of them had a clue how he looked like, but they were determined to find out anyway by mingling with the villagers.

The towering trees, the rugged terrain and the imposingly dense forest with the eerie background sounds of Nature set a perfect backdrop for a suspenseful thriller with hints of extraterrestrial visitation.

The undercover cops, Anthony and Shajivan, soon discover that the timid villagers who share the transportation suddenly turn abusive after a certain village perimeter. This is the beginning of more surprises and suspense to come. The cops end up becoming helpers at an arrack shop which morphs into a church on Christmas! Many things happen around them, but they cannot finger them. There are many bizarre characters around them, the hut which houses giant machinery with tiny gear-like contraptions ticking away inside, the firefly-like flashes of light that appear every day now and then, and many more.

At the end of the day, this story is based on old folklore. A monk once entered a forest to fight a demon. After looking high and low, he found no monster, only a coiled-up anteater. The monk placed the anteater on his head and continued his journey. He sensed he had got lost in the woods. He asked the anteater for directions. With this 'assistance', the priest got more and more misplaced into the jungle. Nobody knows the outcome of the search. The moral of the story is to highlight the importance of choosing the right partner in any endeavour. A wrong one will lead one astray.

By the end of the film, it is anybody's guess who the villain is and what the story is all about? Are the character caught in a time loop where events happen again and again in indefinite loops? Are the characters subject to alien experimentation? Is there some kind of energy that brings out only the evil part of people? These are precisely the uncertainties that make this film enjoyable!

(P.S. Is the use of profanity necessary? Yes. This lingo is used in the real world, away from civilisation and the rule of law, where hardened criminals rule. Civility only manifests when life is at peace and certain.)

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When there is no governance!

Bure Baruta @ Cabaret Balkan (Буре барута @ Powder Keg, Serbian; 1998)
Director: Goran Paskaljević

I learned about this director when I watched 2016 'Dev Bhumi, Land of the Gods'. This film is another of his many highly acclaimed directed movies.

Made in the heady times of the 1990s when the Balkan country, Yugoslavia, was on the cusp of disintegrating, and every ethnic group was embroiled in conserving their dominance. Slobodan Milosevic's Army was terrorising, and the economy was in the pits.

This era even brought a new English word - 'Balkanisation'. Like Yugoslavia, which was synthetically united by the winning political powers of the Second World War and their own as six sovereign nations, Balkanisation is the term given when a few provinces want to gain autonomy from a country.

The film's first dialogue reminded me of a recent conversation at a dinner table with a friend. "This is a goddamned lousy country; why would anyone want to come back?" That was reminiscent of what someone uttered when the father of a young lawyer who excelled in his studies at a prestigious university overseas announced his intentions to return home to serve the country. *

Taman Sri Muda, Shah Alam

The movie is a composite of many loosely interlinked stories that show what happens when the rule of law collapses. People are only courteous to each other when they going is good. When the element of security is threatened, or when economic opportunities dwindle, our society suppressed animalistic behaviours surface. Gone are chivalry, respecting the weaker community members, respect for private property, concern for human dignity, regard for human life and sanctity of human bodies.

Human beings are considered civilised when they transfer their security duties to a third party, i.e., governing bodies and not getting their hands dirty. As long as these governments continue their control and legitimacy, law and order are maintained. When governance fails, and Man has to resort to his primordial ways of dispensing justice, the outcome is ugly. The dormant reptilian brain awakens. 

* What started off as an Asian tiger with lots of hopes for the future, with the sound administrative background left by their colonial master, all the new nation of Malaysia had to do was to maintain its brain and head for more unexplored frontiers with the sky as their limit. But instead, the elected leaders opted for a self-defeating myopic path sacrificing meritocracy for supremacy of a certain race and religion. People say to coup de grace came when the elected government of GE14 was sabotaged by their own leaders in the name of race and religion again.

** Just after writing this post came the story of residents looting a convenience store after the massive floods in Shah Alam. Rather than emphasising the lack of rescue missions provided by the powers that be, the police seem to be more concerned that a crime has happened. They had forgotten that people were stranded on the roofs for more than 48 hours!

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With a little help from their friends...

The Beatles: Get Back (Docuseries; 2021)
Disney Plus

Imagine working around Saville Row, London, on 31st January 1969. You step out for lunch and hear a loud commotion with music emanating from atop one of the roofs. Upon enquiring, you find out that the Beatles were performing live. It was destined to be their last public performance before the group disbanded.

A year previously, they had come out with the eponymous 'White Album' to soaring success. The White Album, their ninth album, a double album, was named simply because of the colour of the album's jacket. The White Album was a phenomenal hit, but it was rumoured that the four members had serious creative differences that most of the time, they had to record separately. It is said Yoko Ono's persistent presence in the studio was their sore point, together with Paul McCartney's domineering attitude. 

Partly encouraged by the skyrocketing sales of the 'White Album', they were coaxed to get together for a brainstorming session. The plan was to have a public concert and to pen new songs. The getting together was a volatile business. The idea of breaking up as a group was still in the air. Their previous agreed arrangement of not allowing spouses into the studio was not followed. Yoko was no mere expressionless fly on the wall making some occasional eerily high-pitched screech; she was more of a leech clinging on to the juices of John Lennon. George Harrison constantly expressed his displeasure over Paul's vetoing of his creative ideas. It led to its zenith when George quit the band, only to be cajoled back to write songs together for their next project. The project is another problem. The band was unsure what it wanted to create. After yo-yoing between cutting singles and albums, they finally decided to make a movie/documentary, 'Let it Be'.

"Let it Be' came to fruition in 1970, and a few months, the Beatles split.

60 hours of video and 150-hour audio recordings were left in the estates of the remaining Beatles and their estates. To keep the band's legacy alive and make some moolah on the side, Peter Jackson was hired to make a 'documentary within a documentary'. He managed to squeeze it down to ~7.5 hours.

The documentary brings viewers up close into the recording studios to show just how talented the Fab Four were. Just how easily their creative juices flow and how seamlessly song lyrics and melodies welled up.

Get Back!

It is interesting how the 'Get Back' came to be. It was a time when the newspapers were full of reports of the Labour Party's stand against South Indian immigration. The demonstrators' banners screamed 'get back' and 'go back to where you belong'. So, when Paul saw these headlines, out rolled 'Get Back' and veiled reference to protest against Labour's stance. Looking at the whole, it may be a swipe at counterculture. Jo Jo was a weed-smoking hippy and transgender Sweet Loretta Martin. Interestingly, in the documentary, every time Paul sang the verse 'go back to where you belong', he looked at Yoko as if mocking her presence there. Maybe, he is telling her to go back to Japan or leave the Beatles alone!

One must remember that the footages are not raw material but recorded with the 'actors' knowledge. They were aware that they were being taped, sometimes breaking the fourth wall. Hence, they must appear on tape to do the socially accepted thing.

What I learned after watching Fab Four's behaviour, I gather that Paul is a prolific writer of songs but somewhat wants his way of doing things. George feels stunted as a musician, Lennon is too profoundly into Yoko, and Ringo just gets along with a little help from his friends.

(P.S. Remember 1995 when the world got all excited when the Beatles' old recordings re-surfaced, and we were all waiting eagerly to hear the unheard versions of the same old Beatles' song? Well, to the uninitiated, this whole exercise of sitting through a seven and a half-hour band recording session, brainstorming, talking, arguing and singing the same song, again and again, may sound uninspiring. To a true blue Beatles fan or an occasional music lover, both the Beatles' Anthologies albums and this docuseries are treasure troves of all the nostalgia and musical genius embedded in Beatlemania.)

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The best time is the present!

Last Night in Soho (2021)

Director: Edgar Wright

We always like to think of the 'good old days' and how life was simpler then and people were honest. Were they really so? Artefacts from our pasts stir so much serotonin that nostalgia sells. Like Pavlov's dog, we drool at sephia photos of yesteryear. Would we really give up everything we have right now and recoil into the past and do it all again if those days were indeed so simple?

If we were to delve into our lives, we should consider ourselves lucky to have survived the negativities that could have brought us down at every single turn of our lives. We should thank our lucky stars that the turns we took at the crossroads of our decision-making moments turned out to be a-OK. Not perfect, could have been better than could have been worse off. What made us take the right turn? Is it some kind of guardian angel, guiding light, our sheer intellect or the deeds of our past karma? I guess it is a topic for the sophists to argue and convince, not the simpletons.

Nobody is saying that life is so easy that we should just accept life as it unfolds upon us without giving a good fight. We should not be fatalistic and just surrender to fate as fate is what we make of it. Akin to the conundrum of whether God had decided that war should commence would also depend on us sending the battleship. Even if God had decided that a battle should occur, it would not happen unless and until we send our armada! Future depends on us and our actions or inactions.

This film tries to us that any time can be a good or bad time. The present can be as challenging as the past and the future. There were injustices before, just as it is now and will be in time to come.  Bigotry, bullying and wanting to domineer is engrained in our DNA. 

Eloise, an aspiring fashion designer from the countryside, gets her break when accepted into the London College of Design. She grew up with her grandmother as her mother, a fashion design aspirant, killed herself when Eloise was young. Eloise sometimes sees visions of her mother. Longing to be with her mother, Eloise, showed a keen interest in things of the swinging 60s. In keeping with this motif, we are sprinkled with many of the British invasion songs of the 60s, e.g. Petula Clark (Downtown) and Cilla Black. A pleasant surprise inclusion is Dusty Springfield's 'Wishing and Hoping', James Ray's 'Got my mind set on you' (Cover by George Harrison in 1980s), Sandie Shaw's 'Always something there to remind me' (Cover by Naked Eyes in 1983) and many more.

Eloise found her batchmates quite repulsive of her background, and hence, she found her own accommodation. It appeared ideal for her as it appeared that time had stood still in that room. The settings were like the 60s. It was fine until she started having recurrent vivid nightmares in which she also became a participant and witnessed a murder. 

After a heady rollercoaster ride into the past and future, Eloise finally resolves her issues and pursue her aspirations as how a good movie should end!

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To each, his own!

Miniature boats on Karthika Purnima to commemorate 
the rich maritime glory of ancient Odisha. It marks the 
change of monsoon tides. Sail is set for Java from Odisha.

We like to convince ourselves that a particular ritual will help us in our life ahead. Perhaps paying tithe or giving alms will ease our path to salvation. They say that a cleansing bath in a specific lake on a particular day will symbolically wash away one's previous sins, even of previous births.

With the conviction that we had of our past lives and have more future births to sail through to attain Moksha, the breakaway from the curse of repeated birth and attainment of eternal bliss, we religiously indulge in this activity and that.

Karthik Bath in Odisha

The recurrent thought that has been going on throughout my life is this. Am I so lucky to have been told these secrets of life by virtue of my birth as a Hindu? My other good friends who, through no fault of theirs, had not been exposed to these intriguing shortcuts of attaining Satchiananda (existence consciousness bliss). But then, they too had their own pathways to the same. Sometimes our paths contradict each other, yet each is convinced of his own. 

When we were young, my sisters and I were repeatedly reminded to respect our school books and school bags. We were told the books were representations of Goddess Saraswathi, the goddess of knowledge. We could not be seen sitting on our bags or kicking or disrespecting another person's book. Our parents told us that we would eternally be cursed to be daft by invoking divine wrath! And there was he was, the top boy of the class, who would be resting his feet on his school bag whilst waiting for his mother's car but nothing terrible happened to him, academic wise!

What is good for the goose must surely be so for the gander, so I thought. When number 8 is auspicious for some, it is 9.

They both cannot be correct. One, or even both, could be wrong. There can either be a rebirth model or 'heaven and hell'. We cannot have both. Or, conversely, neither, after this life, is just void. Game over. White noise. Zzz...

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Eyeball to eyeball; the fellow blinked!

Thirteen Days (2000)

Director: Roger Donaldson

Recently Barbados, the Island Country in the Caribbean, cut her ties from British Commonwealth and declared herself a republic. She unceremoniously replaced QEII with her President as the Head of State to cut off England's previous legacy in slavery. 

It also declared China as a friendly nation to rub salt on an open wound. To strengthen bilateral ties, flights between countries were commenced, and Barbados went so far as to let the Middle Kingdom finance many of its development projects. The Western world decries that this is a prelude to a takeover of Barbados by China via debt traps. Barbados denies, saying that China's loans constitute only 2.5% of the nation's total debt.

America is, of course, hot under the collar because of its proximity to the United States. This kind of reminds us of the thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis in the autumn of 1962, which almost triggered the Third World War. 

Soviet SS4 ballistic missiles.

After the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, Cuba requested Big Brother protection. The Soviet Union offered to park some medium-range missiles in Cuba, just in case. This was discovered by the prying USAF U2 spy planes.

The movie tries to capture the events that unfolded over the next thirteen days in October 1962 as President Kennedy and his team tried to get these nuclear missiles far away from their soil. It is told from the point of view of JFK's political secretary, Kenneth O'Donnell. 

It showcases the Army bigwigs so gungho in pushing the Big Red Button to start a war with the Soviet Union as JFK attempts desperately to avert a clash. Kenneth O'Donnell is seen as a kingmaker in cutting many back deals behind the scene with the Russians. JFK imposed a 'quarantine' to prevent Soviet missiles from reaching Cuba by sea. It was purposely not labelled 'blockade' as it would infer aggression and justify war. The US did lose a pilot and had another plane shot at as it went on its clandestine reconnaissance work. Still, it was hushed from the media apparently by O'Donnell's backhand manoeuvres. Of course, O'Donnell's keen involvement in the whole hoopla is denied by many who were directly involved in the crisis. They say that his job was just to attend to JFK's political needs, not actively influencing the President's and the AG's (Robert Kennedy) decisions! 

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