The Glamour of Intercontinental Travel Clipped!

Pan Am (TV Series, S1, E1-14, 2011-12)
Come Fly With Me: The Story of Pan Am (2011, BBC Documentary)

There used to be a time when air travel was a novelty. People used to get all dressed up to the nines to start their journey. Nobody was stopped for being underdressed, as getting on a plane carried some dignity. Boarding a plane was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Only the deep-pocketed could travel, and the airlines made sure their clients were pampered to the brim.

The idea of having dinner in one place and breakfast in another time zone fascinated many a young aspirant that the fast, furious and restless applied for jobs to serve their clientele. In the service business, aesthetics and physical attributes were essential in selecting stewards and stewardesses. This, of course, was before the time body-shaming and diversity was even a term. Even though ferrying rich guys from points A to B is basically what a paid chauffeur would do, being a pilot brought so much dignity. Parents soon accepted it as an addition to the top four professional courses, i.e., medicine, law, architecture and accountancy, they wanted their kids to do. Of course, much science is involved in bringing a heap of metal across continents. Furthermore, an undesirable outcome for affluent customers may have disastrous consequences for the world economy or progress.

That was when stewardesses had all the time to chat with passengers to help them when needed. Of course, there was a natural selection of travellers. Remember, not everyone could fly then.

Talking about 'everyone can fly', the famous tagline of Asia's biggest budget airlines, the democratisation of the air space also opened up the job of flight stewards (later rehashed a lesser important sounding flight attendant) to less stringent criteria. Anyone could fly as a crew.

Pan Am ruled the airspace at a time when planes were small and propeller-driven. Even when jet engines made flying easier as bigger planes could be built, less fuel was consumed, and with fewer stops, Pan Am was the unofficial carrier of the USA. Its staff were the benchmark of how training should be done. Their ticketing model and computation were followed the world over. The persona of a  flight pilot, steward and stewardess became a yardstick for other airlines to emulate. 

Starting as a getaway route to escape the effects of Prohibition in the 1930s, Pan Am prospered by using boat planes from Florida to Cuba. Wealthy people could fly to Cuba over the weekend for their alcohol fix. Slowly, aeronautical technology improved by leaps and bounds during the World Wars. After WW2, jet engines became the preferred method of flying.

Pan Am ruled the skies, and its icon logo spoke volumes of its branding. Everyone found pride in carrying the marine blue Pan Am bag. Many knock-offs sprang up in third-world countries like Malaysia, and many of my friends in school used them as school bags.

Behind the squeaky clean image of the airline, there is a darker side. The Americans had used its vessels to clandestinely spy on other nations. In 1962, just before the Bay of Pig invasion, its plane rescued many American spies from Cuba. Back then, the picture of a line of air stewardesses walking poise past the sea of travellers in the airport, leaving a trail of a whiff of perfume, was deemed empowering. It was customary to impose stringent weight quotas and restrictions upon marriage and child-bearing to continue working.

Pan Am's golden age ended with the easing of flight regulations. The 1970s energy crisis contributed to it. Restricting operations after the reign of Juan Trippe, where they concentrated on US domestic flights, proved disastrous. The last biggest news that came before their bust was the fatal bombing of the vessel in Lockerbie by Libyan terrorists in 1988. By 1991, they were bankrupt.

Boeing B-314

The pinnacle of flying boat technology in the 1930s. 

Pan Am chief Juan Trippe continued using the term 'Clipper' for its airplanes 

to link his airline with the maritime heritage of the world's great ocean liners. 

The planes could land and take off at any harbour, no airfield needed.

 

Boeing 314 Dining Room

The Pan Am TV series was very successful in recreating the innocent age of baby boomers. After putting the evils of the Second World War behind them, the world was single-hearted in taking leaps and bounds in science and technology. The subversive elements of the world had not resorted to hijacking an aeroplane to make a political statement. The cockpit need not be securely bolted from the inside. And taking pictures in the pilot's sea was cool and inspired many wannabe pilots. Now, the crew has to defend themselves for indiscipline. A cockpit is a volatile area and a restricted zone at that. Every entree into the plane, or for that matter, every passenger, is now viewed as a potential suicide bomber. A shoe is not just a shoe but needs to be examined for explosives. It was perfectly normal then to recite a prayer loudly in the cabin if you were anxious about flying. Try reciting anything in Arabic now! You can no longer call your old friend, Jack, 'Hi Jack' without the air marshalls tasering you down. 

The hierarchical order in command in full force can be seen here in this era. The Captain takes full charge, and everybody else is beneath him. As time passed, we realised that this same attitude brought down many planes in many instances afterwards. Pilot error was apparent in many crashes to everyone except the airline pilot, but the co-pilot and the rest of the crew were too timid to voice out. Repeated flight crash reports highlighted this fact later. 

Unfortunately, the TV series only lasted one season. Business wrangling between studios made making the second season difficult. 

I remember my Parasitology professor telling the class that more people die of malaria than from jumbo jets crashing. But obviously, the hype of the news of a jetplane crashing draws such attention that so much money and research is invested in making air travel safe. Unfortunately, malaria, being the curse of the poor, remains unfunded. 

During my last travels, after watching Pan Am, the series, my twisted mind went wondering yet again. At one time, it was the crew's duty to guard their passengers at all cost, with idioms like the Captain would go down with the ship and all as Captain Edward Smith did with the Titanic. Now, it is like they herding a herd of cattle, ensuring the pack reaches the marketplace akin to how Uncle Buck and his jolly men would herd their cattle from High Chaparral to Tuscon, Arizona. They want to spare the embarrassment of explaining their whereabouts to Big John Cannon. 

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It's never the same!

The Almond and Sea Horse (2022)
Director: Celyn Jones and Tom Stern

Within the evolutionary scale of things, the human brain evolved. Our brain can roughly be divided into three parts. There is the primitive part, which controls our essential body functions and aids in our fight-or-flight response. The basal ganglia, cerebellum and brainstem form this reptilian complex. Next came the paleomammalian complex, which gave the limbic system the pathway of emotion and linked with memory. The Amygdala and hippocampus, which look like an almond and a seahorse (title of the movie), are found here. The most recently evolved is the neomammalian complex (neocortex). It connects to all the older brain parts to give humans the complex functions they do.

This film acts more like a public service announcement to educate us on living with patients with amnesia. As we can increasingly salvage patients who suffer from severe brain conditions, patients are left to fend for themselves with much morbidity. The patients themselves do not realise that they are not functioning normally. They think they are functioning normally; the world is the one that has changed. The loved ones and family are the ones who have the brunt of all the heartaches and inconveniences in their lives. 

We only look at the grander outlook of things. We only look at survival rates and salvageability from serious ailments but conveniently overlook the morbidity that the family caring for the patient must endure daily.

The independent film looks at two couples. In the first, after a near-fatal car crash, a then-pregnant lady survives while losing her child. Her lesbian partner endured 15 years living with a stranger who cannot remember their previous liaisons and sexuality. The trauma of living with a stranger with retrograde amnesia, who had shared so much together, is too overwhelming for the other partner. She had to give up her job as an architect for her sake.

In the other story, an archaeologist is living in a meaningless marriage. Her husband had a brain tumour operated on. The surgery was successful but left his memory stuck at a time before the operation. He is childlike, cannot work, forgets to take his medications and is socially awkward. Their dreams of starting a family are crushed.

There is medical rehabilitation, but only so much one can do. Life is never the same.

The Almond and Seahorse

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Tied me down?

In this day and age, would feminists find Rakshabandhan relevant anymore? Increasingly, we see ladies becoming the alpha and highly testosterone-charged beings. If domestic abuse victims were assumed to be fairer sex, think again.

Imagine telling a modern 21st-century lady that she needs a male guardian to protect her from the vulgarises of society. Someone with a cape to rise to the occasion to shield her to save her life and chastity. It may have been relevant when society comprised males with unabated raging hormones on steroids. With civilisation, these toxic behaviours had been identified and put a lid on.

Women empowerment efforts, education and job opportunities have sprung open for them to clinch their list positions in society. The male community members have been conditioned to respect women, tolerating smug and passive-aggressive manipulations. Many men have suffered in silence in the name of peace of mind and wanting to maintain sanity.

Don’t get me wrong. The world is still not a safe space. There are plenty of discriminations and injustices happening under our very noses.

Rakshabandhan allows feuding siblings to mend their fences. Sure, the ceremony with all bright colours and public display of sibling affection is Instagram-worthy. Siblings, being siblings, are sure to get entwined in occasion skirmishes. The ceremony, done out of compulsion or otherwise, gives time to reflect the strong co-dependent bond knotted by the Universe and cemented covalently by DNA. These bonds are man-made and decided by the Universe and happen randomly at a cosmic level. It is also an opportune time to hook up and boost old relationships.

On a lighter note, it may also give an avenue, a secret weapon for young girls to tell off their stalkers, “Buzz off!” Hold them down, tie the Rakshabandhan brotherly wristband, Rakhi, and douse down any burning desire for possible romantic liaisons!

The flavour of the times.
Bhumi Matta (Mother Earth) trying rakhi to Chanda Mama (Uncle Moon)

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When madness is accepted as norm!

Shutter Island (2010)
Director: Martin Scorsese

Back when India was a newly independent nation, its Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, was officiating the opening of a psychiatric hospital in New Delhi. As part of his visit, he did a walkabout. All its inmates were excited to have a PM visiting them. All of them were standing smiling, waiting for Nehru to speak with them, except one. He was sitting in a corner, looking away, staring into space. Nehru approached him. 

"Hello, how are you?" told Nehru. "I am the Prime Minister of India. How do you find this hospital?" The man slowly turned around, lifted his head to look at the Premier, and replied, "Yeah, that is what I thought when I first arrived, too. Don't worry, they will give you medicine, and you will be alright!"

That is how it is. There is a thin line between reality and insanity, which is detachment from reality. It is all about perspective. Imagine telling the world that someone is watching you all the time, and you will be labelled as having paranoid schizophrenia in the 1980s. Now, it is legitimate to have closed-circuit TV all over the place to monitor citizens for the public's safety. Remember when the Soviet Union and the USA had such high numbers of schizophrenics. The peculiar thing about their condition is that a Soviet schizophrenic will be labelled normal in the US and vice versa. 

We are well aware of the concept of gaslighting and Munchausen Syndrome by proxy. Popularised by Ingrid Bergman's 1944 film 'Gaslight', a husband tinkers with the home fittings and events around the wife to convince her that she is turning mad. Munchausen Syndrome, by proxy, is another favourite theme of Hollywood. Here, the parent or the caregiver, usually with advanced medical knowledge, will wilfully keep their subject either by exaggerating symptoms or by poisoning their ward themselves to give themselves (the caregivers) a sense of importance. 

It seems that it is easy to suggest mental illness. If one does not conform to the perceived acceptable mode of conduct, he is deemed a deviant. He is ignorant if he does not subscribe to one way of thinking. If a specific ritual is not followed, he is unstable. A label would be put upon him by the rest. 

There will come a time, as is already happening now, when bizarre behaviours that used to be frowned upon are considered normal. Many of these acts go under the cloak of self-expression and privacy setting. One is not supposed to bat an eyelid when a hirsute, phenotypically male person with a full moustache and beard decides to don a body-hugging dress and put on a 6-inch stiletto, strutting his posterior to an unamused crowd.

This film is an interesting one where the viewers are left to guess what is real and which are imagined. What is right and what is wrong? Between good and evil. Two US Marshalls are sent to investigate the missing case of an inmate of a hospital for the criminally insane. As the Marshalls get deep into their case, they realise that many things do not match.

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To the naysayers

More than enough people are quick to sneer at India after Vikram's successful soft landing at the Southern Pole of the Moon. On one end, people were quick to say that the whole exercise was a hoax. It is an illusion. Then, others blurted that a country that cannot provide toilets to its citizens and whose population mostly live below the poverty line should not be sending rockets to the Moon (and playing with nuclear bombs). One even threatened to stop monetary 'aid' to India, conveniently forgetting any discussion on repatriation monies after years of looting from India. 

Firstly, everyone knows there is no way for everybody to prosper in sync before society moves up one notch higher. Things happen in tandem. There will be people who will have to do catching up, and there will be those who will lose out in the race for prosperity anyway. The only people who believe that the world needs equity are communists. Again and again, it has been proven that human greed surpasses any attempt at equity and even equality. Four-legged creatures elected to replace their two-legged oppressors will eventually begin standing erect on their hind legs. 

To be fair, India has improved by leaps and bounds since Independence. It has even overtaken its former colonial master as the 5th biggest economy by GDP after being left as the 13th poorest country on the planet when the British left their land. With regards to foreign aid, many quarters deny the usual foreign aid that first-world countries offer to a despotic basket-case government. Monies that trickle into India are investments from which investors hope to draw returns. Some are charity contributions by well-wishers with personal intent, e.g. evangelism and political donations.

With the 'Clean India' campaign in full steam, open defecation is a thing of the past. With many states having 100% access to toilets, open defecation is a thing of the past. 

Paradoxically, the country with the biggest economy must face the same problem. With its chiselled pavements and famous postcode 90120 that it sells to the world, even Los Angeles also has to deal with homelessness, drug addiction and cleaning up the sidewalks littered with human excrement. 

Karma often plays its game most cruelly. The colonisers who robbed their colonies blind now have to be content seeing their descendants being fed by the descendants of their subjects. The innumerable hungry, homeless and impoverished British regularly frequent Sikh soup kitchens for a square meal. 

Our experience from the 1960s space explorations has shown us there are many trickle-down benefits. Besides the numerous improvements in medicine and engineering, it also improves the life of the man on the street. Teflon was discovered. The knowledge to produce heat-resistant garments with adequate cooling technology becomes a game-changer in the day-to-day duties of firemen. Luggage bags with roller wheels have their origin in the space programme. At a time when the younger generation shows scant interest in STEM subjects, these types of ventures will surely rekindle their dwindling keenness. The Industrial Revolution and the subsequent leaps in civilisation did not happen because of economists and linguists but by scientists. Remember the economic opportunities that these ventures that offshoot from space travels. Money spent is not wasted but merely changes hands. Charity and social work can still go on. 

The West cannot handle the paradigm shift in the world order. For more than two centuries, people of the Judeo-Christian traditions held the chalice of power. This century is when the power transfer happens from the West to the East.

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Identity has many meanings!

Split(2017)
Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Identity means different things to different people. For some, it is all about religion. No matter which part of the world they practise their religious rituals, it remains uniform. They wear their similar-looking tunic on their sleeves as their badge of honour. 

On the other spectrum, a new generation of society swears by the gender they identify with. It is immaterial to them the chromosomal makeup they carry and how they look phenotypically. In fact, they also believe that gender is so fluid that they may decide to don the gender they feel at the drop of a hat or the side of the bed they get up from. 

Identity sometimes overlaps, too. People who identify themselves as great outdoors enthusiast may also click with bibliophiles. A person in one group may be a member of another. Businesses have long known this, and they sell their products under the guise of lifestyle choices, e.g. targeted mechanise to meet their so-called lifestyle. Politicians use the identity of race, religion and siege mentality to rally voters to their side. Statesmen use sports and flags to stand under the identity of a nation to push its citizens to greater heights. They identify the 'others' who do not share these sentiments as the enemies of the State.

Ancient wisdom needs to appreciate the concept of State-Nation. There is a Man and his relationship within his community. His identity morphs in tandem with the change in his responsibility within his community. A newborn is ushered into the fold with rituals. Once a child reaches puberty, an initiation ceremony, be it a celebration to promote her marriageable status after her menarche or tattooing of boys to honour their entry into manhood. Then, the marriage, the delivery, the funerals and so forth. 

A person's identity changes within his or her lifespan. Even at any time, he has to don different identities: a son, a brother, a friend, a student, a husband, a father and so on. Sometimes, he has to take multiple identities to play his role. His demeanour may alter as and how the role demands him to be. His base is the same, but he has to wear different hats.

The occurrence of multiple identities, even in psychiatrists' experience, is rare. This is different from the ebbs and waning moods that all of us are prone to. We are talking about a total change in personality, mannerisms, accents and demeanour. Of course, for the sake of telling stories, authors push their creative licence to the limit. 

In 2005, Kollywood came forth with 'Anniyan', a nerdy do-gooder Ramanujam transforms into Remo, a vigilante alter-ego who tries to correct the wrong things that Ramanujan is too meek to do.

As part of a trilogy between 'Unbreakable' and 'Glass', M. Night Shyamalan's 'Split' tells about a seriously mentally disturbed with 32 personalities. He suffers from DID (Disassociative Identity Disorder) and has a penchant for kidnapping teenage girls.

At the end of the day, people with vested interests use identity politics to create mayhem everywhere. Instead of coming together as one human race and aiming for utopia, the anarchists and communists, and even neocons, want to press the red reset button at the earliest time possible. For the anarchist, destruction is the seed for a new beginning. For the Commies, armed struggle is the way to change. The Neo-Cons care a damn. Since they have accepted God, for all practical reasons, they are ready for Armageddon. At the End of the Days, they know they have a reserved place in the Lord's bosom in His Kingdom. The Mozzies use identity politics as a victim card for more concession and no contribution.

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A test of faith?

There Mohammad was all up cheery in the morning. One more week, and he will be off back to his hometown. His sister was to get married, and he needed to earn extra cash to spend with his childhood friends back home.

Off he went answering the requests as the e-hailing app requested. The Klang Valley sun was getting hotter as the day went on. By 2 p.m., he thought he had enough. He would do one last delivery and call it a day. For his latest job, he had to ride to Shah Alam to deliver some foodstuff.

“Waze sends me through Elmina to reach, okay!” He told himself. “After that, I can call a day! After all, it’s his childhood friend Amin’s birthday.”

He was just reminiscing all his times from kindie to adulthood. After losing Amin to the many gruelling challenges in life, they rekindled their friendship through a mutual friend. They just did not have enough of each other. Stories of so many years cannot be completed in a single session. Tonight they plan to continue where they had stopped.

“What is that?” He asked himself as he spotted a white shadow on his rear mirror. He was just about to turn around to see for himself what the heck the white object in the sky was.

Boom!!! Before he could even open his mouth in awe, the white object came directly at him and hit him right smack. Wham!!! Even before he realised what hit him, he was dead.

That is how life is. This is a recreation of a freak accident where a Grab rider was hit by a private plane that went off course and crashed on a highway in Elmina, Shah Alam. Life is so unpredictable. Which motorcyclist. in his wildest dream, would be on the lookout to avoid a stray plane when he is riding on a Malaysia highway. It is a question of wrong place, wrong place.

JAL715 McDonnell Douglas DC8 aircraft
34/69 passengers and 8/10 crew died.
Tokyo - Singapore (via KUL)

Here is Mohammad doing all the right things, leading an honest life, then this. If there is a just divine force supervising all lives on Earth, it is undoubtedly doing a lousy job at it. The seemingly evil beings get scot-free, only to continue doing what they do best with impunity. People have the most diabolical answers for this. God loves the pure so much that He wants to keep him close, and living life on Earth is full of aches and pains. So death is a much-wanted relief from it all. Really?

Purists will say God works in mysterious ways our nimble minds would not comprehend. They tell us to look at the bigger picture of His greatness, whatever that may mean. Then, a group will quickly hurl insults of lack of piety after scrutinising his past, as if he is qualified to cast the first stone. This is as ridiculous as blaming natural calamities on human behaviour, e.g., decadence and earthquakes.

Yet another group will end all questions by invoking the law of karma. As if something intangible like sins of past lives can be argued, it essentially douses the amber of the need to find an answer.

But the flame of curiosity does not extinguish so quickly. In yet another revelation, somebody discovered a similar plane crash in the same vicinity some 46 years previously. Netizens will be engrossed in correlating these two events from all loose ends until another breaking news breaks ground. Then they will lose interest.

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