A rewarding job?

Kavaludaari (Policeman, Kannada; 2019)
Amazon Prime.

Most Indian movies stereotype policemen as either corrupt or a superhero who would singlehandedly beat the living daylights of gangsters twice his size, with his bare knuckles. This rare neo-noir movie coming from the state of Karnataka puts things right in perspective. As in many things in life, there is no happy ending in police work. The Universe does not offer poetic justice. Is it our job to right the wrong? Should we just leave it to the divine powers to mete out justice in the afterlife or next birth? Should we use the whole length and breadth of the man-made justice system to punish the perpetrators? Are we justified to use the system to correct the mistakes when the system that we put up to provide justice fails? Can we, like Nadhuram Godse, in his last speech at his trial, justify our violence by quoting Man's history and scriptures which are anything but peaceful. 

Doing the right thing may not be easy. In retrospect, one's action may be just, but in the breath, a person with persuasion can paint an ugly picture of the act.

Not to give too much away, this film starts with a man lying in a pool of blood, an open and empty safe with a well-dressed man leaving the premises desperately. In the next scene, we see a traffic cop going out of his way to stick his head in a criminal case. In a highway construction site, old remains of three bodies are found. The gist of the story is tying up the cop and his obsession with the discovery of the corpses.

An exciting movie which breaks the mould of a typical swashbuckling and over-the-top ridiculous stories that are constantly churned out from the sub-continent. Of late, the industry seems to be going places.

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In wars, all are losers!

The Fortress (Korean; 2017)

Somehow, what I read in secondary school history came flooding into my mind when I was watching this movie. The setting had a lot of similarity to the time, in 1274 and 1281, when the Mongol fleet led by Kublai Khan, attacked Japan. In the first attack, the samurais defended their lands fiercely. The Mongols retreated to their ships only to be blown away by a typhoon. In the second, the attackers could not land as the Japanese had built a sturdy wall. After hovering around the coast for months, the Armada was swept away by another big storm. The Japanese, having been saved by the elements of Nature, named the typhoon 'kamikaze' (divine winds).

In this film, based on fiction, a small territory in an icy cold region of 1636 Korea with its own King and ministers, is harrowed by the impending attack by the Chinese Qing Army in the North. The King, with his Army, is pushed to defend in a fortress as they wait for reinforcement from their reluctant neighbours in the South.

The movie, though appearing draggy at times, discusses the nitty-gritty of how war affects the general people. The need to hoodwink into nationalism and blind obedience to the people in power seem to be a sure way for leaders to cling on to the throne. Within the melee too are internal squabbles within the ruling junta to appear more relevant, earn brownie points and climb the ladder of the hierarchy. It is a dog eat dog world, and the losers are always the poor and powerless.

It is a compelling costume drama with violent battle scenes as well as poignant heart-wrenching instances to showcase futility of wars.

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Medical science and medical crime!

Kuttram 23 (Tamil; குற்றம் 23, Crime 23; 2019)

It looks like the trend these days in the Tamil movie industry is to make films with a social message using contemporary issues. You have to appreciate the story overlooking the fact that the filmmakers still use the same old time tested masala flavours. You have to stop asking why the hero is the only policeman who seems to be doing actual work. The others are just there to fill up the numbers and crack jokes to entertain fellow policemen and the viewers. You have to ignore how a single lone wolf unharmed policeman can always bring down bands of hardcore criminals, physically with brute force every time. The hero will do this even if he is injected with botulinum toxin. But wait! When the villain is imbued with the same, he succumbs to the effects almost immediately.

Pushing aside all the technical issues, not wondering how clomiphene citrate (a fertility drug) can be traced in the fluids of a cadaver of a mother, what more in an advanced stage of pregnancy, or how paternity test can be on done dead tissues, it, nevertheless, breathes new ideas into storytelling.

Is it not ironic that society gives so much importance to the continuity of progeny, of passing down the genetic imprints that they are willing to go through great lengths to achieve parenthood? This they do, despite knowing that many orphans are present among us yearning for homes to grow in. On the one hand, there is a significant push to use and misuse medical breakthroughs to achieve fertility, to shed the social stigma of being barren, whilst on the other hand, offsprings are discarded heartlessly as an unwanted by-product of attaining man and woman's carnal pleasure.

Is the passing of genetic pool and achieving fantastic outcomes so important that unscrupulous people would go to any length to attain their goals? The next question is the use of donor gametes to achieve conception. 

Scientists do unimaginable feats just because it is difficult to do, to push the boundaries of human capacity. Can advanced fertility treatments be considered a kind of overindulgence? Just food for thought.

(P.S. 23 in the title refers to the 23 pairs of chromosomes that form the axis of life. Man in their greed to attain fame and power, would monetise, criminalise and abuse any new knowledge that comes to him.)

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A walk into the past!

Roaring Thunder Revue (Netflix; 2019)
A Bob Dylan Story (Directed by Martin Scorsese)

In a way, it looks like a mockumentary. It captures a specific time during Bob Dylan's tour of Northern America. It was 1975 and Dylan did a hodgepodge musical tour with no preset number of performers. Artistes of the era joined in as they landed in various towns. A diehard Dylon fan may know these people by hard, but to me, only Joni Mitchell rings a bell.

This film puts forward the actual 16mm footage of this tour with present-day Dylan giving interviews. Over time, probably with the state of intoxication that the musicians were in, many of the information remains a blur. The real reason the title of the tour is one instance. One says it is an honour to a Native American chief, Rolling Thunder. Yet, one cites the weather at the start of the planning of the trip. Could it be that it was about the open secret North Vietnam carpet-bombing by the American Forces during the Vietnam War? After all, Dylan's songs were mostly carried social messages and injustices in society.


But wait. I got my bearings all crossed when the documentary started talking about American bicentenary celebrations and Nixon's resignation which happened in 1976 and 1974 respectively while the concert was in 1975! 


Even if one is not a Dylan fan or a neophyte, he would surely appreciate the Kabuki-esque painted Dylan and sometimes his ex-beau, Joan Baez, belting out meaningful songs with social messages. There were songs about Ruben Carter, the middleweight potential World Boxing Champion and his wrongful arrest for murder. Then there was a song (the Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol) about deadly assault of three black hotel workers by a drunk white male. The assailant went scot-free.

Sure, intoxicants were used left, right and centre. It is interesting how, in some people, these substances managed to open a new window to shows them things from another angle. It is a known fact that hallucinogens, naturally occurring or synthetically produced ones, open portals into a totally different realm that is rarely assessed by the conscious mind. Some individuals managed to harvest knowledge from here for the betterment of mankind while others just succumb to the persuasion of the Maya.

History of Mankind has thought us that every intoxicant is this world, if not treated with respect, will lead to destruction. Tobacco, even though the Native Americans had been using it during their entire early civilisation in the continent that was later called the Americas, they never had any problem with it. The smoking of pipe was a sacrosanct ritual with a specific purpose. When the European explorers brought it back home for leisure, it became a problem. The same scenario with the coca plant and the Aztecs. Workers were chewing coca doing backbreaking jobs without a fuss. When the pillaging Spaniards brought it home, and soon the physicians recommended it as the panacea for all ailments from morning sickness to migraine and alcohol addiction, it became a social problem. Alcohol which was unknown amongst the Native American became an issue when it was introduced there.

The take-home message is to treat everything with respect. No single substance is without side-effect. It is just that it is yet to be discovered. Sugar is sweet but try drinking concentrated syrup. You would not stomach it!

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Laws are made for others

Breathe ( Amazon Prime, Hindi; 2019)
Miniseries (8 episodes)

Humankind is quick to determine what is right and what is not for its kind. All rules and regulations are cast in stone for others to religiously adhere to and live by. Most of these 'prophecies' had been self-thought when Man was at an altered state of consciousness. To lay credence to these rules, the name of God was invoked. To go against this grain would incur the wrath of the Divine Forces, they would say. 

This sort of arrangement would work just alright most of the time when the general populace is ignorant and obliging. Trouble starts when people start thinking, or the ones in power believe that the laws do not apply to them.  

Many external factors make people assume that the rules should not apply to them. The selfish gene, in wanting to care for its progeny and to maintain continuity of species, tries in whatever way to protect its offspring. If the law states that it is criminal to murder someone, the parental instinct will ensure the safety of its kind. Kill to save if it has to.

In the same vein, man-made laws are flaunted so quickly when it comes to defending one's beliefs. Killing, harming, and looting becomes legitimate under the guise of protecting the sanctity his faith. In the history of Mankind, more lives were lost under the umbrella of religion and politics than all other natural calamities and diseases combined. Man does not harbour any remorse when the wrongdoing is in the name of defending one's faith. 

Writers are becoming more creative. They keep on churning out new ideas. I wonder what they would come out with next.

Danny (R Madhavan), a widower, has a young son who is chronically ill with cystic fibrosis. His condition is quite severe and needs an urgent lung donor for survival. Due to compatibility issues, the son's lung donors are hard to come by. Believe it or not, Danny gets the information, after breaking into the doctor's office, that his son is fourth on the list of recipients. With the list of potentially suitable donors for son, he deviously plans ingenious ways to hasten the death of donors as his son slips further into hopelessness. Even though initially everything goes well as expected, a grieving policeman gets hot on his trail.

The police officer is still reeling over the death of his young daughter, who accidentally shot herself with his service revolver. His wife left him because of this. His sorrows draw him to the bottle.

The story is a narration of one man willing to commit crimes to save his son. Even though in real life he is a law-abiding and caring human who is also an animal lover, his books of normality include doing everything in his capacity to give life to his offspring, at all cost. This is in contrast to another who find busting crime as a way to justify that his daughter's death was not worthless. The mishap from the gun that his daughter's life is countered by the use to save others' lives.

A gripping 8-episode miniseries with a few 'too-coincidental to be true' scenarios but attention-grabbing, nevertheless. 

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Deprival Devours?

A thought flew past me as I was sitting through a lavish wedding dinner in a posh establishment recently. A doctor in the infant years of his career was proudly showcasing his catch to the world to ogle. Set with the high-brow society setting and the ambience to match, we, the mortals were given a sneak peek into the lives and times of the groom and bride through a montage of a roll of photos that was rolling during the function. We gathered that the respective families went through thick and thin, scaling the waves of obstacles to attain the comfort that they had acquired in life. 

Well and dandy, all these...

But how is a measly paid medical officer in the notoriously underpaid system of Malaysian civil service going to sustain the same type of lifestyle? Is he still going to be that dedicated doctor who will weather all kinds of resistance to put wellbeing above everything else as he chose the profession, not for the glamour but the calling? Is he going through grind those hard times dealing with difficult cases in the wee hours of the morning? Is he going to pacify his anger nerves as he treats drunks with avoidable wounds? Is he going to tell himself that it is a calling to be a physician as he slogs through the long New Year weekend as the rest of the city embroil in stuporous revelry of the Season? Will he think that his good deeds would earn plus points for his afterlife or that the divine forces throw him a bone to lead a comfortable family life? As the demands for modern living becomes more expensive, is he going to sacrifice the comforts of his early life for an epicurean one?

At a Klinik Desa, the reality.

Bordering on stereotyping and over-generalisation, it is probably going to be a ‘no-no’ to the above. Living in comfortable times deprived of the valuable lessons from the School of Hard Knocks of Life and acquisition of a degree through the back door means would hamper his tenacity to face the realm of the unknown. 

Now, whose fault is this? Are poverty and deprivation the only way to strengthen the mettle of Man? Will the comforts of life only create snowflakes much like how a sterile environment lowers one’s immunity guard?

Should medical vocation be reserved for those with aptitude only or to those with undying zest to serve despite adversities? Are these mere statements of assumptions?

I envisage the groom, ten years down the line, abandoning the real call of the profession to serve the needy of medical attention who are invariably the ones least deep-pocketed, to venture to something less demanding with better remunerations, like rubbing shoulders with bankers and financiers. At least their clients do not come with tales of melancholia and hopelessness but with tall stories of the impossible of pots of golds and pink unicorns. 

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Timeline of the Malay Peninsula

The timeline of the known history of the Malay Peninsula (40.000 BCE - 2018 CE). From the arrival of the first modern humans, the spread of cultures, the emergence of Hindu-Buddhist city-states, the era of Srivijaya Empire, rise of Islamic sultanates, European colonialism, up until modern-day states in 2018.

(Reference: Lazardi Wong Jogja youtube)

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