Peace with a price...

Rambutan Kisses - Poems (2022)

Author: Malachi Edwin Vethamani

If the illustration of the cover is not provocative enough, the poems will definitely do. 

This is a sampling of the many thought-provoking poems, old and contemporary, found in this collection. Enjoy.

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The pressure cooker life?

Beef (Miniseries, S1E1-E10; 2023)

Netflix

This convoluted drama reveals the whole message behind its story only in the last two episodes of the season. Suddenly everything made sense. It tries to show how fragile we are as a society, to maintain peace and to fit in. We pull up a front to portray an image of Zen to the outside world, but deep inside, we hate the person beside us. We wish we could just wring their necks. Unfortunately, civil society does allow this. So we suppress that urge. As we did in our cavemen days, we yearn to be part of the pack to hunt together. Our strengths lie in our numbers.

We exhibit specific behaviours in front of people but let our hair down and show our true inner demons under the cloak of anonymity. In public, we are expected to utter certain pre-ordained niceties. When somebody mentions death, the automatic response is, "I am sorry!" irrespective of whether he died as a national hero or OD'ed. We are expected to put a smiley face in public, no matter how low morale or bad our day has been. We may have had a shitty day at the office, or a Damocles sword could be hanging over our necks over a misadventure. Our professional reputation may be at stake over a misjudgement.

In this cut-throat world where everybody is trying to make a cut for himself, the stresses of the job bring out the worst in us. Yet we are expected to wear an Odin mask but with a perpetual grin.

In a world where siblings care for each other, sometimes love smothers. Instead of stirring interests, it muffles them. In the name of doing the best, it is quite the opposite.

Many things are expected of us in this lifetime - to leave our mark, succeed in life, acquire wealth, continue our progeny, exhibit filial piety, conform to societal expectations, and so on. Go marry and be merry, but can you?

This film shows two characters who are actually on the same life journey with similar life ambitions but end up on opposing sides of society. They kept bottling up the anger of their unfulfilled dreams and the pressures of wanting to mould themselves into doing the 'correct' thing. It reached a point of no return when these two characters honked at each other at a supermarket car park.

Danny, a Korean American handyman, was in the USA with his brother Paul. Danny's sole ambition is to make it big in his business with his brother, build a house and bring his parents from Korea. Somehow all his endeavours proved unfruitful. On the other hand, Paul is just loafing around, just playing computer games. Danny feels he is a failure and wants to kill himself. He was at the supermarket returning the wrong burner that he had bought. He had tried to gas himself dead.

The other character is Amy. She is an example of a rags-to-riches success story. She was born Vietnamese and made it big, selling boutique potted plants. He has a husband and a young daughter. She is planning to lure a wealthy lady into investing in her company. Deep inside, she is still unhappy, undergoing an existential crisis, and finding no purpose in it all. She has many unresolved long-standing issues with her parents growing up.

The near hit at the car park was the straw that broke the camel's back. It spiralled into road rage, a tit-for-tat, social media trolling, and sabotaging, which climaxed to each other going for the jugular.

In the last two episodes, we see them stranded in the woods and fighting for survival. They have to depend on each other to stay alive. A good watch which showcases the Maya of what we see. The world is a big show, and we are acting our roles, reading the script. We are to follow the scripts carefully or risk expulsion. Just maybe, if we alter the words slightly, the final product may shine brighter. Is it worth the try?

PS Sometimes Easterners go with a chip on their shoulders, thinking that their way of living is superior to the Western philosophy, which they believe to be so individualistic and self-centred. At the end of the day, they would soon realise that either way of thinking has its shortcomings.

Quotable Quotes from the Miniseries


    'You ever notice how people who have money think that money isn't important?'

    'Jesus did all those nice things, and look at what they did to him.'

    'Western therapy doesn't work on Eastern minds.'

    'God's just trying not to feel alone in nothingness.'

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Laws to protect the protected?

So a niece, lured by all the promises of a blissfully contended modern life by being a proud owner of an iPhone 14Pro, decided to 'not so smartly' and allegedly took her aunt's debit cards to purchase her ticket to freedom. Unfortunately, the long arms of the law had caught up with her. Her long march through the corridors of justice in handcuffs excites the journalist of the country's premier newspaper. Of course, nobody in the country will have the gravitas to question the need to handcuff a petty thief. Even someone who allegedly squandered the nation's sovereign and turned the country into an international embarrassment still cat-walked these same corridors flashing his branded suits, dressed to the nines uncuffed.

That is the thing about the law. The law and enforcements target the commoner. Paradoxically, the legal hierarchy is there to protect the high-heeled. Wealth can ease the path to procure all the lawful representation money can buy. If a person fails to obtain an acquittal, have no fear. The higher courts are at your disposal, with all the robed sharks demanding an arm or a leg to give you a clean chit. At an even higher loot, at an even higher court, if retrial should fail, experts to the experts can be summoned with much pomp and splendour to tear up the charge sheet.

A poor man can just pray for a miracle, an early discharge for good behaviour and God's grace at heaven's gate or purgatory.

With 160 criminal charges, they still
won elections and graced the august
house of democracy.

The recent triad type of killing of a gangster turned politician, Atiq Ahmad and his brother Ashraf while under police custody in Prayagraj opened a can of worms of the politico-law enforcement- electoral machinery-mafia unholy union, at least in India. I think this web of deceit is confined to third-world countries, banana republics, and even mature democracies. Just that the mainstream media is quick to quash such bad publicity of their own nation but is super efficient in highlighting other countries as a Wild West.

Over the years, through mishaps and experience, government offices have secured a safety mechanism to ensure transparency, efficiency and accountability. Many checks and balances have been instituted towards this end. An honest leader will follow the pre-set path of prosperity, the primary aim of the nation's and citizens' well-being. Their tenure is limited, and they have to stamp their legacy in a short time. Undoubtedly, there would be backstabbers who would wait to pull their rug under your feet anytime, jealous the leader had beaten him to the post. Honey-trapping, freebies and lure to corruption would be red-carpeted for the weak-hearted to fall into. Keeping all this in mind, a leader who had gone through the rank and file would know how to protect himself. The system itself would ensure no hanky-panky is easy to carry out.

If not for opposition to bringing in foreign lawyers, bigwigs from Queen's
Counsel would be sauntering haughtily along our corridors of native justice.

With all these safety nets in place, it is challenging to unknowingly earn himself a corruption charge. Is it wrong for me to assume that a leader charged with criminal breach of people's trust is guilty unless proven otherwise? With all the dos and don'ts at their disposal, and the law feels there is a case for the leader to answer, what do you make out of all these? Small fries, sharks, and whales are surfacing with their petrifying shenanigans.

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Behind the gentrification...

Kakka Muttai (Crow's Egg, 2015)

Story, Direction: M. Manikandan. 

Thanks to JT for the recommendation.

All they wanted was to eat pizza. All the advertisements convinced them that it indeed tasted heavenly. It must be valid since even their favourite movie star endorsed it. All the graphic images of fillings of the pizza and sticky cheesy must be an experience to behold, they thought. And they made it their once-a-lifetime achievement to savour one of those. For these two boys from the Chennai slums, paying ₹ 299 for a box of pizza is abominable. After all, for these slum boys, whose father is in jail and mother is at wit's end trying to get him out, it is just a flitting dream. The boys, nicknamed Kakka Muttai, cannot afford to go to school and scrap a living selling coal that drops off a moving train. On a good day, they manage to earn ₹15. 

They see their favourite playing ground slowly being cordoned off and transforming into a shop lot and a happening pizza parlour. They are intrigued by all the hype surrounding the place. Even their favourite movie star, Simbu, is seen dining there. And they keep watching the pizza advertisement repeatedly flashing on the telly. The boys resolve to save money, bit by bit, to lay their fingers into the coveted divine meal. 

In the meantime, slum boys are shooed from the pizza parlour. A security guard is placed there. It seems their presence is not welcomed. 

After getting a windfall, they managed to save ₹ 300. But when they arrived to buy pizza, they were chased away. They were not dressed up to patronise the place. The guard went as far as to assault the boys. A passer-by took a video of the event and viralled it. 

A comedy of errors ensued. A local goon, on being aware of the incriminating video, tries to make a quick buck extorting to sell the video to TV channels. A local politically connected man from the slum tries to earn brownie points when local dwellers plan a demonstration. The goon's sidekick tries to outsmart his boss by breaking a 'better' deal with a TV channel when in fact, his boss was trying to fleece him. 

In the meantime, when the pizza owner realises the bluff, they send their own people to apprehend the boy to do damage control… 

We see gentrification happening around us. We feel proud seeing the backwater backyard that we once lived, undergoing beautification, look whitewashed and refined. Suddenly we find our parents, if they owned the properties, boasting about their prized million-dollar property. Unfortunately, the whole exercise comes with a cost. 

A segment of the population would be left out in this rat race. If life is an F1 race, they would forever be the minion Minaldi, just to make the race, not win it! 

The displaced segment will be pushed more and more to the periphery. This group is the target of politicians and matters most for mass decisions. Their concerns are often highlighted to smokescreen the leaders' true intentions. 

The marginalised will stay marginalised. Wealth is a zero-sum game. It cannot be created from thin air. To make money, somebody has to lose. The same usual suspects repeatedly appear on both ends of the spectrum. The peep show may vary, but the stage remains the same.

(PS. When the brothers finally dug into the pizza, they realised it was all a letdown. The gooey feel and bland taste were a turnoff. They learned the experience was not worth their effort. That is marketing in modern times, turning unassuming humans, i.e. (m)asses, into ravaging zombies oblivious to what they actually need.) 

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Race, Religion and Rock N' Roll!

Blinded by the Light (2019)
Director: Gurinder Chadha

Maybe it is the slave mentality at work. The slaves looked up to their masters and wanted to be like them very much. They see them as the proof of success, the pinnacle of achievement, and yearning to walk in their shoes. That is where the buck stops. The slaves chose what was 'good' and what was not acceptable.

Many middle-income Malaysian Indians who were teenagers in the late 70s and early 80s had to endure this, yours truly included. The parents worked hard to provide their offspring what they missed growing up. What they thought they missed most was the ability to acquire education, pass examinations and the remunerations that came with it. They wished to achieve what they did not get, like the opportunity for education, freedom by their standards and academic achievements through their children.

They did not, however, want the Master's idea of independence. Their idea of children is to be seen but not heard. The last thing they wanted was children talking back to their parents. They did not appreciate the parents' shortcomings in parenting to be pinpointed. No matter how high the children flew, they had to display Asian values, filial piety and show unwavering loyalty to the clans till their dying days. 

One peculiar thing about my mother is she was not too keen on us, the children, listening to Western songs. They wanted us to be conversant and proficient in English, but Tamil songs on RTM Red Network were the only songs blaring over the family radio. When my parents were away on errands, we heard English songs clandestinely over Radio RAAF and the RTM Blue Network. She feared we would be wild kids, showing disrespect and forgetting our roots. That was what she thought of the Masters - only substance but no soul. She wanted us to learn the things that would pull us out of the clutches of poverty but keep the Indian values.

Fast forward to the 21st century. A few of the family members have uprooted themselves from this country, seeking greener pastures in the land of the Masters. In their minds, their children would be more assured of a comfortable lie ahead.

With the children now at rebellious ages, these parents face the same dilemma as my parents. Like my parents, they wanted their kids to absorb what they viewed as 'good' qualities and reject the 'bad'. Of course, life is never so easy.

Boy George

That is what Malik, a Pakistani immigrant to the UK, had to encounter bringing up his children in Luton in the 1980s. On one end is Malik, who uprooted his life for a better life for his family. He has big plans for his family, things he never had in Pakistan. On the other hand, he wished his host country could be more cordial with their arrival. It was the 80s at the heights of unemployment and Thatcherism. Malik's son, Javed, has a mind of his own. He wants to experience life, be a writer, enjoy music, and not follow the uninspiring path that a typical Pakistani teenager is made to follow. Somewhere along the way, Javed is introduced to Bruce Springsteen's music. It just blew his mind. He finally found someone who reads his mind.

The rest of the movie is a musical galore for teenagers of the 80s who grew up with liberal doses of synthesisers-filled Brit new-wave music. It is a long trip down memory lane with the likes of 'Pet Shop Boys', 'A-ha' and an overdose of Bruce Springsteen. Sadly, I never grew up appreciating his type of shouting melody. It was a time when girls dressed up like Boy George with pleated hair, thick make-up and chequered dress, and Boy George was not a boy. But nobody made a fuss about it.

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An introduction to TN separatist movement!

Viduthalai Part 1 (விடுதலை, Independence; 2023)
Director: Vetri Maaran

This story is mentioned to be a creation of fiction. Still, a connoisseur of Indian, especially contemporary Tamil Nadu (TN) politics, would realise that it is a compilation of a hodgepodge of events around TN in the 1980s and 1990s.

The movie is based on a short story titled 'Thunaivan' written by 

Jeyamohan. In this movie version, an honest rookie police constable, Kumaresan, is stationed in a god-forsaken place on the borders of TN. This place is active with Naxalite activities, and the tribal people are said to be harbouring a wanted criminal, Perumal @ Vathiyar. He is said to be heading a terrorist group named Makkal Padai (People's Army) which masterminded many destructive activities, including a bomb blast and derailing a train, which caused much damage and lives lost.

Kumaresan falls in love with a tribal girl and soon realises everything is not as it seems. The police are not interested in performing their duties. They are just eyeing their remunerations and the medal that they will receive. The officers are just yeomen to their superiors and buying time. Nobody is interested in taking the extra mile or in what vital information he has to offer. The hierarchal order in the police is so toxic. The administrators are only interested in putting up a good image and recommendations from the public for work well done. The media keeps churning out half-truths. The whole machinery works for so-called development that purportedly improves peoples' lives, but in reality, it just fattens the coffers of the power that be. But he wants to do his job to do as a policeman. The first part of the offering showcases how this rookie comes face-to-face with the feared hooligan.

Pulavar Kaliya Perumal

The Makkal Padai is fashioned after Tamil Nadu Liberation Army (TNLA). TNLA is said to have formed after a reported incident when Indian Army personnel were sent to Sri Lanka during the LTTE insurgency. Apparently, the Indian soldiers raped or molested a big group of Tamil female detainees under their care. This fringe group had a bone to pick with the Indian Central Government, hence the formation of TNLA to liberate TN. Unable to garner support from the general public, they went underground, linked with the Communists and Naxalites to engage in arms struggles.

The gruesome train accident depicted realistically in the early part of the movie did actually happen. In 1987, The Rockfort Express train travelling between Madras and Trichy was derailed when Naxalites bombed a section of a rail track. Even though somebody did alert about the bombing, the message got lost in bureaucracy. Former Indian Finance Minister P Chidambaram was supposed to have been travelling on that train.

TNLA was started by Pulavar Kaliya Perumal @ Vaithiyar (note a similar name in the movie - Perumal and Vaithiyar). It has strong links to the Communist Party of India - Marxist-Leninist (CPI-ML) but severed its ties to follow the Naxalites' path of arms struggle. It started as a sympathetic group to LLTE and fought for a separate nation within India. It is linked to many bomb blasts within the state. Many of its leaders have perished in bombing accidents or are behind bars. It remains a front behind many legitimate organisations and has established links with the sandalwood forest brigand Verrapan's group in Karnataka. 

Just for the record, CPI started in 1921. After the war with China in 1962, patriotism to India made it difficult to show allegiance to Mao. Mao's brand of Communism concentrated on peasant revolution, versus traditional Communism, which chose ruled by a selected group of workers named the proletariat. In 1967, armed peasants seized crops around Naxalbari and surrounding areas in West Bengal, which was already ruled by a communist government, as a revolt against their non-representation. The peasants controlled harvests and ran the villages like a government. They even ran a people's court to mete instant justice. The authorities shot it down, but it became a prototype for other people-controlled Naxalite-Maoist insurgency.

(NB There is an active movement to take Tamil Nadu out of the Republic of India. There is a feeling that TN is treated as a stepchild compared to the other states. The present political parties are mostly all self-professed atheists who oppose the current rise of Hindu consciousness in India. Ironically, a region that is testimony to the glory of Hindu architecture and knowledge has spiralled into this. And 'God's own Country' @ Kerala is governed by a godless Communist government!)

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A full circle?

Women Talking (2022)

(Based on a novel by Miriam Toews)
Director: Sarah Polley

"What's new?" said DA. "Women can talk; they sure do." He started talking about the male and female brain and how their connexions differ and such... One is action-orientated, whilst the other talks!" But that is not the point. It is about women's empowerment and talking back against a system that subjugated them to stereotypical roles. Every civilisation and religious path must have started with novel intentions of giving everyone a place in the sun and a right to pursue certain rights in life. Along the way, the leaders found it easier to rule by decree, and certain obscure divine ordains showed their presence.

Even though they are built tough and resilient on the inside, women lost out on many physical day-to-day duties and worked in tandem with their male counterparts to complete their tasks. Manual labour in the good old days was intensive. Mechanisation and industrialisation of the Sufferage era made work less labour-intensive. And finally, the sexual revolution of the 60s, for once, gave women, for the first time in aeons, a chance to control their fertility. All these while, parturition and child-rearing were their most significant hurdle in reaching greater heights. Maternal hormones and societal expectations prevented them from pursuing their worldly desires. 

With equal education and job opportunities, the past fifty years saw the fairer sex coming to par with their male counterparts. Their journey was no walk in the park. Their presence in education, economy and politics is beyond compare. Now, there is a re-look into their combative stance to be at par with men. Some have started asking questions. 

With all advances in contraceptive methods, failure is a real thing. Unfortunately, the by-product of all the sexual merriment is borne by the female gender. The maternal hormones circulating in their veins draw affection to the newborn or the soon-to-be-born. It is just simply impossible to detach oneself from this. A mother cannot just stand idle at the sound of a wailing baby. Neither can she prioritise her sleep over nursing her offspring at o'clock in the morning. Anyway, all the deferment of fertility to concentrate on career prospects in endangering childbirth at a mature age. With age, with wisdom, choosing a life partner becomes much more problematic. Single parenthood has its own problem. 

Again, some ask whether the biological differences in sex are for deservedly different reasons. Both perform various duties towards a unified front. One need not compete but rather complement the journey of life.

This film is based on a novel by Miriam Toews referring to what happened in a Mennonite colony named Manitoba Colony in Bolivia between 2005 and 2009. The Mennonites arose from the Anabaptist movement that emerged from the Reformation era. The Anabaptists believe baptism should be voluntary at a mature age, not infancy. 

The colony's 151 women and young girls were mass-sedated with cow tranquilisers and were sexually assaulted. More than seven were charged with rape, and so was the veterinarian who supplied the drug. The novel is a fictional account of what the affected women would have discussed before taking their next course of action.

This type of discussion going back and forth is what our forefathers must have had before leaving their lands and family in India, China or elsewhere. Even longer before that, when our first ancestor took his first step out of Africa. Quite recently, my daughter had to decide this before moving lock, stock and barrel to uproot from Malaysia and work under the NHS as a skilled immigrant labourer. They all must have considered the three choices - do nothing but forgive, forget and hope for the best, stay and fight, or leave.

With depleting national coffers while keeping the vote banks happy with race politics, civil service has taken a drastic deep in quality, efficacy and integrity.

[P.S. On another note... In the story, the ladies noticed that on the nights someone kept vigil, the said molestations did not occur. Gruesome assaults happened when everybody slept soundly. This reminded me of the double-slid experiments in quantum mechanics - results obtained with and without an observer, suggesting that everything is unreal.]

[P.S.S. Realising that humans need to live in a community and be herded to the correct path, which religion seems to offer, individuals prey on gullible victims to fulfil their desires.]

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