The thrills and spills of being hip...

Pam & Tommy (2022)
Disney + (8-episode miniseries)

The joyfulness of youth does not last forever. Its spills and its thrills fade with time. All the hormonally charged freshness of young adulthood eventually loses its mojo. They say we want to immortalise all these as you only live one (YOLO). Time and tide wait for no one too. Hence, there is a pressing need to freeze everything you have to last a lifetime. Time is man's greatest foe; the race between man and time always sided time. 

This country, this world is no place for older men or women. It is all about youth, vibrancy and freedom. Even Nature sides the young. With wear and tear, the facial musculature of the old naturally sags, giving its wearer a perpetual frowning facies. In the words of Schaupenneur, the world is a miserable place, and Nature knows it. Senescence is grim. Hence, the lips curve downwards with age, opposite to how a smiling face of innocence appears.

Pamela Anderson, in her iconic role

Photography and later video were God-sent. These can permanently capture the joy and visualisation of assets long after the battle scars of Hard Knocks of Life knock them down. With the advent of recording devices at everyone's disposal, immortalising that notable, intimate, non-event or pornographic material has never been easier.

It is a trend for newlyweds to digitally commemorate the image of their supple young bodies. As part of their wedding photography shootout, they even include a pose in their most sexually enticing pose in their birthday suits. This, they would like to admire way after the scars of life take over their mortal bodies. 

Since everybody is doing it, the peer pressure to get a full monty representation of the shames of the Garden of Eden is ever compelling. So every average Jane does it, and nobody gives a second look. Not when the player is every young man's dream girl - the buxom Pamela Anderson who gained stardom appearing semi-naked every week on Baywatch and had appeared without a thread as Hugh Heffner's bunnies.

Pamela and her then-husband, the wild cocaine-snorting Motley Crew's drummer, Tommy Lee, found out the hard way when their intimate honeymoon sex tapes were stolen that the world is not kind. 

Even though they laugh with you and encourage you to do whacky things, when you get on the wrong side of the law, you are actually alone. The world judges you through their conservative lens even though you think the world has changed. No siree. The media is there to yank you out of any shred of dignity still left you. Everybody just takes you to the cleaners. You are left shivering in the cold while everyone prospers on your account while you salvage whatever self-respect that is. Court injunctions and proceedings are just farce. It does not lead to anything meaningful.

The lesson here is that youth and love are many splendoured things. The underdevelopment of the neocortex of the frontal lobe makes you do many things. But remember, many of these things have long-term effects and ruin the rest of your remaining life. It is OK to be young and free, but freedom comes with specific responsibilities. You do not want to be stuck, on tenterhooks, for the rest of your remaining life with its aftermath.

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History is kind to Victors!

Churchill's Secret Wars (2010)

(The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during WW2)
Author: Madhusree Mukerjee

In 1952, Nehru appeared on BBC TV in his first ever TV appearance. He was invited to the UK to partake in the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. As the head of a former colony of the Crown, Nehru was there, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Winston Churchill, gracing the event. By that time, Churchill had descended from his intense contempt for all races except whites. Churchill must have been brimming from ear to ear as India and many other former colonies had consented to stay under the umbrage of the Crown under the title of the Commonwealth. If two hundred years of looting of wealth from India was insufficient, now their subjects have agreed to make their wealth common! 

It is ironic that Nehru and the bulk of the Congress leaders spent crouched in jail all through the most pivotal years before Indian independence, during World War 2. It was the time all the wheeling and dealing of talk of carving the country was in progress. In 1953, barely ten years after the ugly Partition, there was its leader chummy with their brutal colonial masters. Nehru says no offence in the interview when asked about the 18 years he spent behind bars fighting for India's independence. What the interviewer did not mention was the systematic philandering of India's wealth over 200 years, which saw India spiral down from a country which allegedly possessed over 20% of the world's GDP in mid 18th century to become the sixth poorest country in the world when the British left India.

No wonder the current generation of Indians want to re-evaluate and re-write their history, not from the viewpoint of the conquerors but the conquered. As the African proverb goes, "Until the lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter."

The events surrounding the systemic state-sponsored persecution and mass murder are constantly reminded to the world. The word 'Holocaust' is almost synonymous with the killing of six million Jews by Nazis during WW2. The world has not been fed about the repeated famine-related deaths that the Jewel in the Crown of the British Raj had to endure to enrich its colonial masters and his countrymen were well fed.

In 1950, Winston Churchill embarked on a journey to write the history of the perilous times of the 20th century. He wanted to ink his legacy of how he defended his tiny island nation and shouldered the burden of her mighty empire. His six-volume just conveniently forgot to mention Bengal's 1943 famine which engulfed nearly 700,000 lives by modest colonial estimates and up to 5 million, according to village scribes and academics.

It was a heartless inhumane strategy to sacrifice the perceived lesser human race to safeguard and feed the Europeans. When Churchill was repeatedly told about Bengal's humanitarian crises, he blamed the malady squarely on the Indians for breeding like rabbits. 

In reality, it was the British's elaborate plan to impoverish and weaken the Indians. It constituted part of its strategy to defeat the enemies of the Allied Forces. Just as there was the threat of the Japanese from India's eastern borders, the British scorched all the rice fields. The produce, however, was shipped off to feed the Allied soldiers. Then there was the subsequent smuggling, hoarding and spiralling of food prices. Farmers who fed the nation instead died of hunger. There was no plan whatsoever on the part of the British to rectify this. In fact, the efforts by the local British representatives were thwarted by Churchill. To Churchill, it was imperative to feed hungry Europeans than some brown people. In Churchill, rationing of food to the British was unthinkable. At no time during WW2 did the UK have any food shortage. Famine was endemic in India all through the British Raj rule. Approximately 15 million died from 1850 to 1899 in 24 major famines.

Mother Nature had not been to the Bengal region. Before this famine, there was a devastating monsoon. Then there was the heavy taxation. And the British scorched the fields to prevent the Japanese from getting their food supply. Shipments of food supply from the US, Canada and Australia scheduled to arrive in India never made it.

"I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits." -Winston Churchill

Churchill always tries to put the narrative that Hindus are an uncouth race. The enlightened followers of the Abrahamic faith stand to be oppressed in an Independent India if India was a free nation. With the increasing debt accumulated because of WW2 and lopsided trade practices that impoverished the Empire, Britain had let go of its colonies. The India that Britain encountered 200 years previously was submissive and easily conquerable. It was like that no more. Initially, Gandhi and his passive resistance to demanding self-rule worked just fine. It was India's death wish, and the British easily thumped their boots on the resisting freedom fighters. The coup de grâce came as a mutiny of the British Indian Navy after the trial of captured Indian National Army prisoners of war in Delhi.

Jinnah and his band of born-again Muslims decided to play their victim card that people of the Muslim-dominated areas in India would be treated as second-class citizens in an independent India. They started demanding a piece of land to be carved out of India to call their own, a new true blue Islamic country named Pakistan. The British thought it was a jolly good idea too. The rest is history.

This book results from years of meticulous research into many de-classified British documents. It concentrates mainly on Churchill's mishandling of the 1943 Bengal famine and eventual Partition. The author's point is that he intensely disliked the non-white race. His actions indicate that he was stuck in his Victorian mindset. He felt that the white race was superior and it was the white man's burden to civilise and govern over the rest. Churchill's handling of the famine can border on negligence or criminal by today's standard. Despite all these, the world puts Churchill on a pedestal, hailing him as a true statesman and a great leader.  

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They think they have everything under control!

Kala Bhairava

The slayer of Time with a dog as his
companion. Hence, dogs are given
due reverence.

Maybe the nihilistic part of me cannot stomach all these. My athymic insides cannot stomach the idea that someone can be so cocksure about everything. I have come to understand that Time and Tide wait for no man and that Time is the greatest killer of Man. Time flies; Man's hopes go! No Man has yet to win over Time; Shiva, a wandering seeker, is the exception and was conferred the title 'Kala Bhairava' - the conquerer of Time. 

I just cannot fathom how a group of people are forever pleased with themselves, knowing very well that they have covered all the potential glitches in life. They act as if they have in their possession a crystal ball through which they have a clear view of what lies in front of them in life's journey of uncertainty.

They have the acquaintance of an experienced seer. Using ancient astrological knowledge, he can precisely point out times they must be careful. He carefully calculates pockets when the planetary positions are not in their favour. Bad events, he asserts, can be averted through rituals that can appease negative energies. 

If that is not enough, they want to know their karmic baggage from their previous births that could potentially derail their blissful time on Earth. Fear not! There is indeed a specially pre-ordained palm leaf in a specific village for every living soul on Earth. It is a genealogical account complete with past karmic brownies and demerit points. Again corrective rituals can be instituted here to keep maladies at bay. 

Maybe one can take a walk in the lonely pathways of holy towns in India. Chances are that he can have a chance encounter with someone who is his long-lost soul from a previous life with a score to settle. A little exchange of wealth in current life should suffice.

Being born in the Hindu diaspora is viewed as a boon as they have avenues for release from the unrelenting life cycle in their armamentarium. In their own way, they feel that they are indeed Universe's chosen ones. Is it not funny that everyone carries the aura of grandiosity and as being the point of reference? Even in their previous lives, they thought they were someone of importance who had changed the world. Statistical odds suggest a nobody, a peasant with a short meaningless life or even a dead neonate!

Come what may, there is nothing lots of money cannot reverse. With a bottomless pit of moolah at one's disposal, unexpected medical emergencies or misadventures are just a medical bill away. There is nothing preventive medicine cannot preclude.

While I tread life with caution, keeping abreast and taking notes of the varying stimuli fed to me, they walk with their noses high like breathing on imported air. The fidgety me took guarded little steps like a prancing jaguar, knowing very well that the lost prey would mean staying hungry and possibly disappearing into oblivion.

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Generational clash?

Hi Mom, Dad! What's Up? 

Greeja De Silva

The moment Elvis Presley went on stage gyrating his pelvis, belting his then-new number 'Hound Dog', the elders went white. To them, his suggestive moves were the mark of the beginning of the end, Armageddon. Nearly seventy years on, we are, however, still very much rocking.

Ironically, almost all toddlers make Superman out of their fathers. This admiration slowly dwindles as puberty hits when opinions about the perspective of life clash. They grow apart with the passing years only for the toddler, now a middle-aged father of an adult child himself, to realise the 'Superman-Ubermench' capabilities of his old man. 

All these are nothing new but generational gaps. The generation next looks at their predecessors as obsolete and the elders at their offspring as decadent and self-destructive. Even Socrates must have thought the same of the youngsters of his times that he thought his death by hemlock would awaken them. 

Of course, we can now point all these clashes to the relatively incomplete development of the frontal lobes on one side and the genuine desire to impart life lessons to the kids on the other. The kids are overwhelmed with unabated exposure to the outside world and the unfettered ability to verbalise their thoughts.

Technology is a double-edged sword. Cursed for causing divisiveness between generations, it has also found its uses to unite them. Like the Elvis moment, the elders viewed unrestricted access to information as dangerous. Detractors to this assert that the 'Superman' wisdom will prevail. It is envisaged that the cyber-savvy generation will realise that great powers come with big responsibilities. Hopefully, a steady state will prevail.  

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Can't beat the original!

Laal Singh Chaddha (Hindi;2022)

Bollywood version of 'Forest Gump'

Director: Advait Chandan

Even before Aamir Khan's latest film made it to the silver screen, a large portion of India's population, or at least those vocal on social media platforms, went on a crusade demanding its boycott. The threads #banLallSinghChaddha and #BoycottLaalSinghChaddha gave the impression that the movie was demeaning to the Indian psyche. 

It all stamped from the time following the events of the Gujerat riots. Aamir Khan, an essential icon in the average day-to-day Indian's going on, as all Bollywood of is and movie stars are, made a public statement that he, a Muslim, and his then-wife felt unsafe in intolerant India. Khan later earned the public ire in 2020 when he was photographed with the First Lady of Turkey, Emine Erdogan, after filming in Turkey. President Recep Tayyib Erdogan, at that time, was quite vocal about the aberration of article 370 in Kashmir and had clearly stated his pro-Pakistani stance on the Kashmir issue.

The keyboard warriors had all the ammunition to run down Aamir Khan. They thought his previous film 'PK' denigrated the Hindus. Then someone suggested that Aamir Khan was not alone. It seemed that the whole Bollywood mafia was concerted in bringing the values Indians held dear to them. The platform was set to bash Bollywood and the first families of Bollywood (i.e. actors who made it big due to their sheer family connections). Films that glorified India, promoted nationalism and tried to re-narrate India's past history were given publicity and feted.

People may say that cancel culture and mob mentality are just rearing their ugly heads in public space. They are telling Aamir Khan and the likes, with their newfound Indian nationalism as the world becomes more and more inclusive, to mind their words if they wish to make money out of them. They would not continue taking all the Indian bashing anymore.

Perhaps because Netflix and the other OTTs just opened the floodlights to other new non-Bollywood mafia-linked sons and daughters of actors, people have realised that they do not need Bollywood to feel good. People have also discovered that a wealth of gems are being churned out of other Indian language cinemas, especially in the South. 

To be fair, this film 'Laal Singh Chaddha' is not all bad and demeaning. The only slacking thing is it is a bit draggy. If one were to nitty pick, one could say the film defames jawans (warriors) by implying that even a mentally challenged individual can be deployed as a soldier. This is, of course, a stark in the Vietnam War, which the original film depicted when the US Army had its hands full replenishing the numbers who kept returning in body bags. Uncle Sam took in all!

Laal Singh's characterisation appears too familiar. We think we saw him in 'PK'. And the frequent 'Mmming….' gets a bit annoying after some time. Diehard Bollywood would be pleasantly surprised by a digitally de-aged Shahrukh Khan appearing in a cameo role as a fledgeling newbie trying to break into the silver screen. 

On a positive note, LSC excelled in creating an emotion that connected with viewers. The narrative gave a scroll down memory lane of many significant events that happened in India in recent years. The outdoor shooting is breathtaking. The idea of showing India's different skyline must have gone through Aamir Khan's mind when he saw Forrest Gump start running the whole span of the USA. Hence Khan must have bought the rights to remake the movie. 

It may not be groundbreaking, but LSC is indeed a wholesome, feel-good movie that the family could watch together without being encountered in embarrassing adult moments. 3/5.

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Oh Woke, wake up!

One of the most learned members of our clan, Uncle Shan RIP, was once working as the head of a reform school for juvenile delinquents. In his later years, long after his retirement, he used to reminisce about some of the exciting situations he encountered as a counsellor. I remember one such scenario.

By and large, the school inmates were of extremely high intelligence. The only problem was that their true potential was hijacked by negativity. A teenager was admitted after being caught breaking into a home with his friends and sent to reform school. Uncle Shan used to have pep talks with him. The message that stuck with him was what the young man had told him, "if only my father had smacked me on the head the first time I came back home late, I would not have spent how much time outside and got entangled into the wrong crowd!"

The children do not know what they want. Oh, what the heck? Even adults do not. That probably prompted Steve Jobs to say about mobile phones, "People do not know what they want, we will tell them," when one of the designers queried whether customers would buy into their groundbreaking designs on a device named iPhone.

Michael Jackson lamented that he never had a childhood because his father prepared a gruelling, back-breaking regime to make superstars out of the Jacksons. The fact of the matter is that Michael never grew out of childhood, having been caught in a Peter Pan syndrome trapped in Lala land. Michael would not have attained what he had if not for that early bone-bending manoeuvres. The world would probably not have known about Moonwalk either.

Now it seems that the woke culture has permeated every level of society. Of all professions, one would think that the predominantly conservative and cautious medical community, whose motto 'primum non nocere' (first, do no harm), would be guarded against joining the woke frenzy. Apparently not!

It is puzzling why over such a short period in our civilisation, there is a rush to squash what society has planned over millennia, gender separation. Gender is fluid and binary. Pigeon-holing individuals into gender stereotyping is discriminatory, they say. There is an urgent agenda not to assign gender but to allow children, as early as pre-schoolers, to explore, and discover their true gender, not the biological ones they were born into but with which they align psychologically. But at such a young age?

At lightning speed, the medical fraternity is prescribing hormonal therapy and even gender re-assigning surgery to correct the so-called 'Nature's error of gender designation. But guess what, with all the wisdom and breakthrough discoveries that scientists claim to have, early inventions have proved disastrous in many cases. Puberty springs in and offsets the whole arrangement. Then the person is really trapped.

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Convenient partnership?

Mandi (Market Place, Hindi; 1983)
Directed by: Shyam Benegal

It was a time when Bollywood could not go wrong. With their vast array of capable actors, there controlled the narrative. Even though initially, Bollywood catered for the masses. It tried to put forward the leftists' agenda, and the rest of the population would just feed off their hands.

So when Bollywood made a movie out of a classic satirical novel with prolific and talented actors of that era, the likes of Shabana Azmi, Naseeruddin Shah, Smita Patil, Om Puri and Amrish Puri, it became an instantaneous national and international hit. It has a string of accolades under its belt to boast.

Things have turned 180 degrees since OTT platforms democratized movie releases. It seems that the Bollywood mafias are struggling to produce even a single hit. All their recent releases have tanked repeatedly. Conversely, unknown newcomers often shine at the top.

This movie takes a sarcastic look at the unholy alliance between the madame of a house of disrepute with the police and people in power. Members of an NGO are up in arms against a brothel in the middle of a town. They want it closed. The politicians are looking at its real estate value. In the midst of it all, two of the brothel girls perform at the landlord's son's engagement ceremony. The potential groom is all smitten with the performer and is lovestruck, wanting to elope with the callgirl! 

An interesting movie that takes a swipe at the convenient coalition between the oldest and the second oldest profession in the world.

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