When it all ends...

Leave the World Behind (2023)

Director: Sam Esmail

(based on the novel by Rumaan Alam)

A Tamil proverb goes like this. 'Never live in a town without a temple'. 

The main structure of a Hindu temple, specifically those from Southern India, which is placed above the central area, the sanctum santorum, is a gopuram. On top of the gopuram is a golden vessel containing nine types of grain. 

Besides being a lightning conductor, the gopuram is a storage area for various grains for use as a starter pack in the event of a major catastrophe, like massive flooding when seeds are destroyed or even a nuclear meltdown. These reserves are said to be good to use for 12 years, after which they have to be replaced. In temple nomenclature, the act of replenishing new seeds is a kumbabishegam.

With everyone in their comfort zone, having the illusion of being in control of it all, they built certain biases around them. They confirm their biases by reading materials reinforcing these preconceptions and hanging around people in an echo chamber who trumpet their sentiments. They say they are kind, care about the world and the poor, and recycle trash. Deep inside, are they really the same people they want others to be?

Others believe charity begins at home. Takers keepers, they say. And they have no qualms, showing a lack of social etiquette to get their agenda off into orbit. Life is a race, and they do not want to lose.

Then there are the doomsday prophets. They 'cry wolf' so many that crying had lost its sting. These are the conspiracy theorists.

Now, when the end of days really comes to our doorsteps, which by each day appears more and more inevitable, how would we react? Would we shed off our prejudices and go out to save mankind? Would we still be immersed in our bigotry and eyeball at our fellow brother with scorn? Will we still act so high and mighty and look down upon those beneath us?

Or would we be only interested in satisfying our simple pleasures rather than worrying about what tomorrow may bring? Like the youngest character in the film who is only interested in knowing what happens in the last episode of 'Friends'.

When the end becomes a reality, how will our fellow dwellers of Earth, i.e., animals, treat us? Will we be a threat to them? Will they depend on us for protection? Or, as per the Law of the Jungle, they would push the idea of the survival of the fittest? Even the docile of animals, e.g. deer, would turn against us with their alpha male turning up with daunting antlers. 

Life is so dear that species fight tooth and nail to stay alive.

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Hold on to your seats!

Irugapatru (Tamil, இருகப்பற்று, Hold on Tight; 2023)

Written, Directed: Yuvaraj Dhayalan

I saw the bride's mother. She seems so happy seeing her firstborn all dolled up in her matrimonial regalia, walking up the aisle to exchange vows. With all her worry lines nicely masked beneath the layer of makeup, I could have forgotten all the trials and tribulations she went through throughout her marriage. Though hers was a love marriage, the reality of life soon set in after the honeymoon period was over. Her husband was apparently neither ready to cut ties with old girlfriends nor cut the proverbial umbilical cut from his mother's womb. Her tussle with her husband trying to squeeze love and money was an eternal challenge throughout her marriage. Like squeezing water from a stone, despite its challenges, she managed. Proof of her success is her three daughters and their successful careers. The husband is still very much in the picture, painting a perfect portrait of a happy family. 

Now that the daughter is getting married, I wonder if she will take all the challenges that life hurls upon her as her mother once did. Knowing that 50% of all marriages end in separation, my guess on the path that hers would take is like predicting the possible sex of a child at birth, 50-50.

Of course, the access to avenues for rights now is different than thirty years ago. The institution of marriage no longer garners the august status that it once did. Economic opportunities are no longer centred on one gender. The concept of an extended family caring for another member is slowly dying. Society's perception of what constitutes a happy family is changing. In the eyes of the younger generation, the image of a happy family is not merely one that includes a father, mother, children, and a pet or two. The Venn diagram representation of a family has so many circles, each representing family members (or a single member), and the intersections are so numerous. 

With the increased responsibilities the female members of society have to carry and the many hats they have to don these days, it is impossible to just push them to the backburners, stay invisible and be labelled 'just a housewife'. They are now more educated, more exposed and more empowered. They have a voice. Society is no longer patriarchal. The fairer sex demands equal standing. Even referring to them as the fairer one is not acceptable.

Glitches happen when a middle ground is not found to allow both parties to prosper and prove their birth's worth. 

This film goes through the marriages of three couples through the eyes of a psychologist/marriage counsellor. The irony is that one of the couples is the counsellor and her husband. 

In the first story, a chronically irritable husband is frustrated with everyone around him. He is working at a job he dislikes. He does it to pay his bills. He had been prodded to do this and that throughout his life, giving his desires a backseat. His homemaker wife, who had just delivered a couple of months previously, is fat. He cannot believe it is the same girl he was match-made to marry. And she seems too lazy to do something about it. He wants a divorce. 

In the second instance, a magazine writer gets increasingly irritated with his wife. He thinks she is dumb when, in reality, she is not. His constant berating draws her into her cocoon. He wants a baby. She wants to work where she finds appreciation. The couple cannot imagine the other as the same person; they were deeply in love before marriage. She wants out. 

The counsellor thinks she has everything under wraps and suggests ways to save her clients' marriages. She thinks her marriage is sailing smoothly. She was trying out a new app that told novel methods to grab the partner's heart. When her husband discovers he is a dancing monkey in her social experiment, he flips. Her previously understanding and dream husband starts giving her cold treatment. 

The message behind this film is that there is no single quick-fix way to make a marriage work. It takes a lot of hard work. Neither party should take the other for granted. The modern institution of marriage has two co-pilots equally responsible for taking the boat ashore, bringing its cargo safely and ensuring safe disembarkation of goods and passengers. 

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Wrath of the Goddess?

Wrath of the Goddess?

By Farouk Gulsara

The big day will be here soon, tomorrow, to be exact. School life had been going on, dragging its feet. They say time flies when you are having fun. I do not remember having any fun, but it flew by anyway. 

Whenever I start thinking of the future, time seems to be ticking like a time bomb. There is so much uncertainty, and so much can happen. So, I tell myself to tread one day at a time. The best thing to do is not to think too far ahead. But then, that would make me no different from my father, would it not? Enjoy today of what is uncertain tomorrow.

Continue here... Wrath of the Goddess?

https://borderlessjournal.com/2023/12/14/wrath-of-the-goddess/?fbclid=IwAR3LdG0QeviVmyFdY9LBzWnCu071NTO16Hz21HIhRiXaesMy_xn1dp3bLSc

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We haven't changed!

Emancipation (2022)
Director: Antoine Fuqua

This movie is about an Afro-American slave in Louisana who lived around the 1860s during the American Civil War. A man who never knew his ancestry, age or birth date. His master called him Peter, so Peter he was. All he ever wanted was freedom and to be with his wife and children. What he got was incarceration, and he was transported to slog it out as a manual labourer on the expanding American railway line. Even though he heard about a decree that freed slaves, all he got were abuses and beatings. The photograph of his bare back, laden with keloid-filled scourge-whipped scars, was a selling point for abolitionists. This graphical representation not only manifests the pains the slaves had to endure in the development of the country but also shows the gall a fellow human being would inflict on his own kind. 

Parents tell their children to be kind and loving. The Book instructs us to love one another and that God created us in his own image, but that advice is only applicable to his own kind or the white race.

'Scourged back' of Peter or Gordon (~1863)
The former slave whose photo was
circulated by the Abolitionist Movement
during the American Civil War.

150 years moving forward, are we any wiser? I do not think so. Our wisdom remains skin-deep. We continue beyond one's colour and justify our evil deeds with the selective interpretation of the Book. Despite all these, we are told to stay hopeful and be the change for better things to come.

To appease the woke generation, films like these reinforce the idea that continued racial persecution is the primary reason for the discrepancy in living standards of blacks in America 150 years on. Academicians like Thomas Sowell continue denying this postulate. He vehemently stresses that affirmative action only produces a weak generation.

As a history student at the primary school level, what I grasped from my school books was that people from the North felt terrible for the slaves and wanted to free them. How naive?

In reality, it was all about economics. Abe Lincoln had no undying compassion for the blacks. He had no unending desire to break bread with them or drink with them. He only wanted to free them and pack them off to Africa, maybe Liberia. The South depended heavily on slaves to move their labour-intensive agricultural sectors. Cotton picking and sugarcane production needed much manpower. The South was not willing to surrender their slaves so easily, hence the Civil War.

Unfortunately, even though The Emancipation Bill was passed, the former slaves were ill-prepared to withstand the pressures the Bill brought. Lincoln was assassinated. The blacks had the power but not the ability to partake in deciding their fate. Then came the Ku Klax Klan and their hooded witch-hunts. Jim Crow laws ensued. All these measures did nothing to their well-being. 

. 

The movie revolves around Peter's escapades as he escapes from the clutches of slavery to the grasp of the guard dog, the jaws of the swamp crocodile, and the end of the barrel of the gun. He was finally rescued by the Union Soldiers and lived to tell his account of his misadventure.

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"Tonight we dine in Hell!"?

300 (2007)
Director, Screenplay: Zack Snyder
(Based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller)

I was drawn to this movie after listening to Empire Podcast, hosted by William Dalrymple and Anita Anand. It is a riveting podcast that takes its nerdy listeners on a long journey through history. What started with the East India Company and the British Empire in India, they have covered the Ottoman Empire, the history of slavery, the Russian Empire, and now they are discussing the Persian Empire. They were discussing the Battle of Marathon and The Battle at Thermopylae, and the film '300' emerged.

King Darius I's Army was defeated at Marathon in 490 BCE. Then, the messenger ran 26 miles to bring the news to Athenians. He died doing that, but that was the birth of the marathon run.

In 480 BCE, King Xerxes I sent an entourage to the Spartan King Leonidas demanding 'earth and water' as a token of submission to the Persian King. Of course, Leonidas, in his most Spartan way, retaliates. He pushes the messengers into a bottomless pit and takes the challenge to war. Leonidas battles the Persians at the Battle of Thermopylae.

Historians may disagree with what is depicted in the film as history. At the outset, the director has cleared the air that it is just a retelling of what was presented in Miller's graphic novel. It is a documentary or suggested viewing for history students.

King Xerxes

A true blue Spartan warrior would not be parading in spandex and capes but with full regalia of full body armour. I just realised that the Persians were the first to introduce trousers. They thought they were cultured as it prevented their inner thigh from chaffing as they spent long hours on horseback. For the record, the Tartars placed raw meat as saddles on their horses. By the end of the day, after a long ride, the meat is tender enough to be eaten raw. Of course, it is an urban legend made by people who have not seen a Tartar in their life. 

Besides the attire, the weapons choices were also different between the factions. The Persians used a lot of bows and arrows with long swords and rode on horseback, whilst Greeks liked to see their foes in their eyes and stab them with their short blades.

When the movie was released, the Iranians stated their objection to the depiction of their ancestors as hedonistic, grandiose, slave-owning tyrants. In their defence, King Xerxes was depicted as effeminate and promiscuous. History also tells us that Cyrus the Great freed Jewish slaves in his time. And the Spartans were high on slave ownership. The leaders asserted that the movie was just part of a comprehensive U.S. psychological war aimed at denigrating Iranian culture.

Another thing about Persian history is that what the present world knows about Persia is biased as they were written by Herodotus, who was at the receiving end of the assault. Figures could have hiked up, and the invaders could be painted as more evil than they really were. On top of that, Herodotus is said to have had many variable accounts of what transpired during the clash. Plutarch had refuted many of his writings. 

The Greco-Persian Wars have been labelled as the clash between the East and West, the good versus evil battle. In reality, nobody is good or bad. It is just geopolitics. Both sides had their superiority and defects. The Persian Empire was the earliest and most prominent Empire. The Spartans who led the land offensive at Thermopylae were stellar combatants. Hitler was so impressed by the Spartan fighting spirit that he built his military school based on the Spartan model. That must have helped the Nazis in their blitzkrieg as they marched through Poland and Belgium. Methamphetamine also must have contributed too. The war was led by Sparta, but other states would contribute manpower, too. 

This battle had a sea warfare component, too, led by Athenians. Their heavy ships caused much damage to the Persian fleet during the Battle of Salamis that followed afterwards. Intertwined in the saga are stories of betrayal by a Greek and the convoluted prophesy of the Oracle. Ephialtes, a Spartan rejected from the Army, decided to sell information on easy passageways to the Persians in exchange for a Persian uniform, wealth and pleasures of the flesh. The Oracles are apparently bribed by Greek turncoats. A kingdom will fall, they say, but which one?

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Just points of view!

Napoleon (2023)
Director: Ridley Scott

Emphasising the importance of learning history, Mr LKK asserted that if Hitler had known his history well, he would have avoided repeating the same mistake as Napoleon did, that is, invading Russia in winter. Another teacher, Mr KSG, mentioned in an unrelated matter that great men often land with divorcees or widows, quoting George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte, who married Martha Dandridge and Josephine, respectively. And they had spouses who were older than them.

We learned way more history and geography than the present generation does. More than we needed to know. Did it make our generation a well-rounded one? Or was it worthwhile knowledge required to start a conversation in a boring party, a sort of an icebreaker?

It is not easy to make a movie about Napoleon, and more when it comes to making a biopic. Napoleon is such a controversial figure with whom not everyone can agree. History is a dynamic subject. Nothing is cast in stone but begs to be argued by historians.

In an interview, the director was critiqued about alleged historical inaccuracies in the movie. An incensed director was heard to have replied, "...like all history, it's been reported. Napoleon dies. Then, ten years later, someone writes a book and writes another, so 400 years later, there's a lot of imagination [in history books]." "When I have issues with historians, I ask: 'Excuse me, mate, were you there? No? Well, shut the f--- up then.' "

So, that is how it has come to be. Everyone has his side account of what could have possibly happened. And he would die defending it.

Anyway, since we last learned history, discoveries have been uncovered. Napoloeon's retreating soldiers from Russia did not die of hypothermia. Newly excavated bodies of his army suggest typhus as their cause of death.

Another thing that came up recently is the question of Napoleon dying on St Helena's Island in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean. He was supposed to have succumbed to stomach cancer at the young age of 50. Someone threw a spanner into the work by suggesting arsenic poisoning. 20th-century examination of his hair showed high levels of the poison. It must be added that arsenic was a regular ingredient in many concoctions in those days. The British allegedly did that. He carried a lot of clouts and had escaped exile earlier from St Elba in 1815.

Another bizarre conspiracy theory is that Napoleon had faked his death. Submarines were the newest toy around then. He had made an elaborate plan with an American submarine builder to rescue and start a new life in the New World.

The Napoleon-Josephine love letters were common knowledge, but infidelity by both parties was an eye-opener in this movie.

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