Under the radar

Abang Adik @ Pudu Youngsters (Malay/Cantonese/Sign Language; 2023)
Director: Jin Ong

When you wander around the wet markets or back lanes of many major cities, you find a buzzing economy independent of the one considered by economists and the national budget. There is a parallel economy going on there. 

You see many moving around, working intensely, and doing things others think are dirty, dangerous and demeaning. You see people washing dirty dishes at the back of the restaurant, slaughtering chickens and carting around loads of vegetables or sundry goods. They are invisible to most people's eyes. And they are paid a pittance in cash. These transactions are not recorded; hence, they escape the revenue departments. They are voiceless and live below the radar because, on paper, they are persona non grata. They may be undocumented foreign workers, economic migrants who overstayed or refugees. Intertwined in this group are Malaysian citizens themselves, who, at birth or due to other reasons, did not have their birth registered at the National Department.

In the eyes of the State, they are not identified in the country's statistics and do not enjoy the privileges proffered to its citizens, like opening a bank account, being part of the cashless society, obtaining a passport, or even getting into schools. What is worse is being disabled on top of all this.

Abang and Adik found themselves as unwanted kids wandering the backstreets of Pudu, Kuala Lumpur. Abang took it upon himself to be Adik's guardian, and together, they grew into adults, just moving along with time.

Abang, hearing impaired, leads a straight life, working odd jobs and saving every sen in a biscuit tin under his bed. Adik is the 'adventurous' one. He dabbles with the thugs around town, cheating illegal immigrants of their hard-earned and moonshining as a gigolo. They rent a room in a debilitated flat which had seen better times a long time ago, now occupied only by illegal immigrants. This place is periodically raided by the immigration officers to fulfil a quota of detaining undocumented immigrants. Abang and Adik would be rounded off, too, but would be released later. Their closest friend is a transgender person who took them as their son.

An NGO worker who goes beyond her call of duty to get them their legal papers helps them out. She somehow manages to locate Adik's father and invites him to meet his estranged father. Unfortunately, Adik's resentment of their father leads their conversation into a hearty argument that does not end well. 

In the meantime, Abang has developed a soft spot for a Myanmarese girl who will eventually be relocated to the US under the UNHCR relocation programme.

The last twenty minutes of the movie are the most gripping moments of the movie. The movie's most striking scene is when Abang has a 'conversation' with a Buddhist priest. When told by the priest to look at life positively, Abang, in sign language, has a long monologue, lamenting the life he has led, the hardship he went through, the parental love he never got, and, to top it off, the handicap he never asked for. Definitely worth a watch. 4.5/5. Worth the accolades it received.

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All snuffed out?

Look at the literature on senile dementia. Invariably, the first thing to be mentioned about managing these patients is discontinuing statins. Funny. I remember a time not too long ago when statins were hailed as the greatest of human inventions, after sliced bread, of course. Some even advised starting statins prophylactically after turning 40. Besides its coronary vessel-sparing effects, statistics then proposed protection against fractures and reduced incidences of bowel cancers.

Something so good had suddenly gone over to Dark Side? If one loves long enough to be afflicted with dementia, wouldn't he also be having raised cholesterol, cardiac events and the gamut? Now comes the chicken and egg story. Did the statins precipitate loss of neural functions as the whole 3kg brain is nothing more than a lumpen of fat?

Why am I even not surprised that only after two years of decriminalising cannabis, basically to draw in tourist dollars, it has taken a 180-degree turn. The Thai authorities must have realised that it was all wrong. Now, they want to reserve marijuana for medicinal uses only, under prescription and supervision.

This thought has plagued me since childhood. At six, my father brought me to the race club. I remember getting all excited seeing all those majestic horses run. It must have left a strong impression on my young mind that I became excited when a prancing horse reel appeared on our home 16" black-and-white TV. That is when the fight started. My father must have had quite an earful—one for attending the turf club and, second, for bringing a six-year-old there.

Why is it so readily available for everyone if going to the races is wrong? In the same manner, my mother told me that it is wrong to smoke and indulge in intoxicants. But then, I saw both my grandfathers in a perpetual state of inebriety with beedis or other unfiltered cigarettes slipped between their fingers. Well, that is the schizophrenic world we live in, I soon realised.

If we look back at history, mankind has been yo-yo-ing between promoting and banning intoxicants, between party time and prohibition.

When sailors returned from the New World with leaves that could be smoked, people thought that that would be their new plaything. They thought it was fantastic. Then they realised it gave them nasty coughs. By then, it was too late. They were hooked. The natives back in the New World never had this issue as smoking was customary, not a leisurely activity.

When Europeans brought in the technique of distillation of alcohol from the Islamic Empires, the Europeans discovered drunkenness, bumps and cirrhosis. The Aztecs chewed coca leaves to give vitality. Europeans thought heroin was the panacea for all ailments from fibromyalgia to insomnia and alcohol addiction!

When William of Orange wanted to balance his trade with France, he thought the most novel way to do that was for the British to brew their own gin. This led to the Gin Craze and a generation of abandoned children because their mothers were too high to let their babies suckle. To offset this, a gin tax was instituted by the mid-18th century.

People have short memories. By the mid-19th century, in the Victorian Era, it was hip again to be seen in gin palaces. This was compounded by the fact that gin and beer were cleaner than drinking water, as the sanitation system was non-existent in London. The Thames was an open sewage stream. The flamboyant drinking palaces fizzled out under the weight of drunkards and their disorderly behaviour.

Gin Craze in London

Opium was an exotic Eastern product that made its way into Europe. It became a status symbol to be indulging in a bit of weed every now and then. It was customary for artists, writers, poets and even Sherlock Holmes to be on snuff. In their stately duties in the Empire, the British East India Company was actively growing them in India to balance their trade with China. They also flooded the Chinese market with cheap opium and turned the Chinese population into opium addicts, which they successfully did. Their misdeeds finally caught up with them to bite them at their posteriors.

So, it is a cycle. People will hail intoxicants, and then the ill effects will manifest. People will suppress them, only to forget all about them later. Rinse and repeat. We are just caught in the eternal cycle like a dog chasing its tail. For the record, one theory postulates that the inhabitants vanished without a trace because they were all addicted to soma.

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A bit of Hyderabadi history

Razzakar (Volunteer; Marathi, 2015)
Director: Raj Durge

This part of Indian history is unfamiliar to most, especially those outside India. India had between 550 and 700 princely states, each under its monarchs, chieftains, or feudal lords. At the time of India's independence, at least two states wanted to stand alone and not join India or Pakistan. There was Kashmir, which had a Hindu Maharajah Hari Singh ruling over a Muslim majority. The other was Hyderabad, ruled by a Muslim Nizam over a predominantly Hindu population.

Kashmir, as we know, went into chaos when Pakistani soldiers disguised as tribesmen created mayhem. Hari Singh went into exile, and the State eventually broke up. Its problems persist to date.

Down in Hyderabad, the wealthy Nizam was not ready to part from his wealth and power. It was believed that his subjects mostly wanted to be with India. During Indian independence, the Nizam had to quell a Marxist people's rebellion. The Nizam's army, aided by Qasim Rizvi, the leader of a firebrand Islamic political party, went on a killing spree. They killed many feudal lords and even peasants who were Hindus. The vigilante group that claims to be championing the Nizam's cause and the path of Islam, as they eventually aim to join Pakistan, called themselves 'Razakkar' (the Volunteers).

Hyderabad was in a disadvantaged position. They were a landlocked state, and the fact that the Hindus were tortured gave India a legitimate reason for India to station its soldiers at its borders. The duel stood a standstill as the peasant fought back tooth and nail against the Razakkars. Indians moved in through 'police actions'. Hyderabad was annexed to India.

This 2015 Marathi film showcases an account of what some Hindu peasants in the State's periphery would have experienced under the tyranny of the Razakars. I am waiting for another version of the Razakkar's tale in the 2024 version.

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When you gaze into the abyss...

Passing through darkness.  (Miniseries, E1-E12, Korean; 2023)
Director: Park Ba-ram

Over the centuries, humans have agreed on how they should live life. Compassion, tolerance, and acceptance have been the mantras to sail through the rough waves in the high seas of life. We respect the other with the adage 'Do not do unto others what you do not want others to do unto you' and think that should suffice for all to mind their own business and lead meaningful lives.

Life, as we know it, has been so easy. As if there is not enough of Nature's hostility towards over existence, there is danger from our own kind. Nature has dictated species protect their own kind. Still, violence and savagery are justified in the name of the continuity of species and territorial ambitions, which, in a way, also ensure the dissemination and dominance of species. Only in the human species do we humans kill another for the sheer pleasure of seeing someone die. Our inquisitive mind yearns to know what lies beyond the realm of life. Sending someone to the Otherside or just stepping momentarily into the gate of death and stepping back in gives some unbelievably enjoyable thrill and erotism.

We are stepping into the zone of dark, mind-bending psychological crimes. Some wonder if we are all inherently evil. Is that any truth that this is because we are all born out of the Original Sin, that we are all sinners and are at the Mercy of the Divine for Redemption?

Did 'civilisation' or living in communities mould us to behave in a particular manner? Numbers matter when we are exposed to dangers day in and day out in our early days of existence.

Remember our school days. Children who have not fully developed the inhibitory synapses of the frontal lobe say all the darnest. At the playgrounds, they can be pretty cruel, spewing venom with filters, leaving a spate of their schoolmates/playmates with developmental issues or social anxiety.

This Korean miniseries is not for the faint-hearted. It tells the tale of a criminal profiler and his team in the Behavioural Crime Analysis of the Seoul Metropolitan Police, who takes his work too seriously. Stemming from a near-drowning episode in his childhood, the detective develops the ability to empathise with both the victims and the perpetrators of the crimes he is tasked to solve.

This journey takes him and his dedicated team through a harrowing experience, questioning everything we try to pinpoint as the culprit to make someone turn to the dark side.

Is it the absence of a father figure as a child grows up? Is childhood trauma, sexual assault, corporal punishment, bullying or humiliation the culprit? Is the brain wiring to be blamed? What is at fault, Nature or Nurture? For every possible aggravating factor that may lure one to crime, many uproot themselves out of filth to be somebody. Is loneliness a precipitating factor? As Nietzsche said, 'If you gaze into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you!'

What about the people who often associate, investigate and peep into the lives of these vermins of society? Do those who fight with monsters should look into it so they do not become monsters? Scriptures say, 'You are the company you keep with'. A calf which hangs around a piglet would eventually feed on filth like hogs usually do, Amma used to say!

Before we say the cases are hyped to appease the viewers, the cases were reported by Korea's first criminal profiler, Kwon Il-yong and journalist-turned-author, Ko Na-mu.

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Between your God and mine!

Goa Inquisition

It is probably due to cognitive dissonance. Finally listening, for once, to what they were saying, they must have had a revelation. It must have sounded so ridiculous that they must have thought of what they were smoking when they plunged head-on into the cult. Hey, heck no! They are not going to denounce everything. They had invested too much time, resources and life to give it away. The next best plan is to convince others. They would get the numbers. It cannot be so wrong if everybody buys their story. And they thought, while we are at it, let us monetise the whole concept!

Hence, the worldwide inquisition started. Because they felt they had been told the inside story about the Creator and thought they knew the backstory of everything's creation, they walked around with a chip on their shoulders.

It is funny how overconfidence leads to aggression. It does not feel wrong to inflict all the pain, injustices and cruelty upon another being because it is viewed as carrying God's will here on Earth. Nobody actually saw the memo or had the guts to ask the same. They risk the label of a heretic.

Another group would take the Word of God and spread it as a religion of peace but with violence and ambush. As if to soothe the bleeding wounds, they would send in nuns and nurses who have dedicated their lives to saving lives. To make the natives useful idiots, schools would be built with the conquerer's belief systems. Servants of God would parachute down to spread the Word and plead with compassion and forgiveness as if trying to whitewash their previous misgivings.

Another method employed to subtly convert the next generation was through the boarding school systems. Horror tales of promising students uprooted from society with the promise of a better life, which ended with tragic ends of torture and death, are rampant in the Australian, Canadian and American aboriginal communities.

Just when you thought this was a footprint of colonial times, think again. Subversive religious conversion of adults and minors has always been ongoing below the radar. Much evangelism work was ongoing under the pretext of providing educational, medical and emotional support. Good for them.

Recently, a video flared up on social media of strategies for converting Malaysian secondary school students and keeping their religious conversion under wraps until they reach adulthood when they are free to profess their religion of choice.

Firdaus Wong is sharing advice on TikTok with teachers
 on converting their students to Islam without their
parent's knowledge. F.B. pic; June 6, 2024.

This naturally created a lot of apprehension amongst parents who saw schools and other governmental institutions as hotbeds for religious activities. Murmurs about this had been in the people's consciousness all this while. Still, everyone naively believed that the Nation had adequate laws to protect people of different belief systems from professing their religion of choice. If formerly conversions were done at the end of the sword, now it is insinuated through subtle reasons like economic prosperity and rebel yells of the ignoramus.

For anyone to trust the legal system, laws must be carried out, and justice must be seen to be done. Over the years, as evidenced by the pile of cases taken up by NGOs against the State, citizens cannot be blamed if they were to think that there exists a sinister plan to subjugate one religion over the others. 

 

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P.S. As any other Indian mother would, Amma was apprehensive when her much-loved son had to spend two years training in a state in the Malay heartland. Her circle of friends constantly told her tales of many promising young Hindu men falling flat for the fauna and flora, fawning over females there, returning home with a different name and surname, spotting moustache-less beards, and refusing to partake in functions deemed necessary by their parents, i.e. final rites and ancestral worship. So, Amma saw a shaman to make an amulet to ward off evil spells. The only restriction to be observed while wearing the amulet was that it should not be worn in places considered unclean with negative energies. Well, what does the shaman expect in a hospital? Of course, there will be deaths, suicides, diseases and all the negativities that need correction! As a good son, yours truly did don the contraption. Expectedly, Amma had thought too highly of her offspring. He fell for the flora and fauna, but there was no inkling of fawning over or by someone!

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A historical figure not often mentioned!

Swatantrya Veer Savarkar (Hindi, 2024)

Director: Randeep Hooda

It is funny how names like Savarkar, Bhagat Singh and Subash Chandra Bose escaped our consciousness when we were taught Indian history in school. We were only told of Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian Congress Party and their brand of civil disobedience. Gandhi's passive demeanour, recurrent fasting, and imprisonment eventually won India's Independence. Oh, right! Savarkar and the gang were branded as terrorists and troublemakers, destroying the order, culture and modernity the highly evolved superior race brought to the lost natives. 

Now, we are told of alternative narratives of events that may have happened during the 200 years of the Raj's rule in India. The victors control the narratives, but entertaining the other side of the story is worthwhile. Let us not forget that the immediate reason for the British's sudden exodus from Bharat was not just the bludgeoning British debt to India incurred during WW2 but the Indian Navy Mutiny that kicked out around the time of the trial of captured INA soldiers in 1946.

Savakar has always been and is still labelled a bad boy. He used the word 'Hindutva' way too often to make British and non-Hindus hot under their collar. Even in today's context, the mention of Hindutva brings forth the image of a saffron-donning warrior hoisting a flag with an image of a ferocious-looking Hanuman as a motif. In the eyes of those in opposition to the second-term ruling party BJB, this is a dog whistle for the battle for Hindu domination, a.k.a. Hindutva. 

Not in Savarkar's mind, however. He chose the path of aggression against the invaders. The secret society 'Abhinav Bharat' was his brainchild. It became a nidus for many young spirit men to take arms to assassinate British leaders who wronged Indians. Savarkar looked at Hindutva as a political, geographic, and cultural movement linked to the region from the Sindhu River to the ocean that is Bharat, as it is considered their ancestral land. He used the concept of Hindutva to reel the masses, Hindus and non-Hindus alike, to chase out the invaders. Unfortunately, in modern times, it has taken an oppressive meaning to mean to oppress the minority, the weak and the downtroddden in the fringe of society.

Even as a student at Ferguson College in Pune, he was a rabble-rouser. Being a brilliant student, he managed to secure a place to study law in London with the help of local sponsors who were also quiet revolutionaries. It was in London that he blossomed. He landed in India House in Highgate, the hub for Indian revolutionaries. Famous icons like Madam Cama (who brought India's plight to the Socialist Forum in Stuttgart in 1907 and unveiled India's 'Tricolour' with the word Bande Mataram and logos representing significant religions of India), Madan Lal Dhingra (who assassinated the officers of the Secretary of State for India, Curzon Wyllie) and many other rebels had met Savarkar there. 

Early Tricolour -1907

In 1907, Savarkar wrote 'The War of Independence' in response to Britain's celebrations of the quashing of the 1857 Indian Rebellion. This mutiny also called the Sepoy Mutiny, caused the British to introduce tight gun control and draconian measures to curb Indian resistance. Savakar's book has become the handbook for future Indian freedom fighters who opted for Independence through armed resistance. Savarkar looked at the 1857 mutiny as India's First War for Independence. 

In 1910, Savarkar was arrested for multiple charges, including starting a war against the Crown and was deported to India by sea. When the ship docked at Marseilles, he attempted a dash to freedom but was rearrested and returned to the British after much deliberation. In India, he was sentenced to fifty years at Kala Pani in Andaman Island. The world passed him by. His brother was also jailed on the same island, but they never met till much later. The state confiscated his family property, and his wife, mother, and sisters lived as paupers. Savarkar's degrees were withdrawn. 

By 1921, Savarkar, after writing many petitions after petitions, was transferred to Ratnagiri prison on the mainland. He obtained restricted release by 1924.

He was ideologically opposed to many of Gandhi's proposals. He felt Gandhi and the Congress Party were too appeasing to the British demands. It was no wonder why none of the Congress members were ever jailed in Kala Pani. Gandhi's Sathyagraha movement was oppositional to his violent approach to clinching Independence. Savarkar suggested that Indian youths should partake in British Army training and combats, in contrast to the Quit India movement and Congress's refusal to enlist for war. These exercises, he thought, would be helpful in the Indian War of Independence later. Savarkar was also inimical of the Khilafat movement.

As the head of the Hindu Mahasabha, he allied with the Muslim League to successfully compete in many provincial elections. 

Be careful with whom you pose in a photo.
Here, Savakar (centre) is seated beside Godse
(dark half-jacket)

Savarkar is reputed to have helped to erect the Patit Pavan Mandir when Orthodox Brahmins refused to let Dalits into their temples. It now runs an annual Ganesh festival, which all castes attend.

After Gandhi's assassination in 1948, Savarkar's name was dragged in again. The assassin, Nathuram Godse, was a member of the Hindu Mahasabha and RSS and had allegedly had a meeting just before the said killing. The Kapoor Commission was set up to ascertain his involvement, but the decision was left hanging. Only in 2018 Savarkar's name was erased as the co-conspirator of Gandhi's shooting.

Savarkar died in 1966, soon after his wife's death. He fasted himself to death, refusing food, water and medicines as he felt his work on Earth was done.

The irony of all is that the man of passive resistance, Gandhi, died a violent death. In contrast, Savarkar, who advocated violence as the means to win Independence, died in a relatively passive way without giving a fight.

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