No free lunches!

The Great Hack (Documentary; 2019)
Netflix

They say there is no such thing as a free lunch. Everything comes with strings attached. When something as luring as a freebie on the internet in exchange for some seemingly unimportant information and filling up questionnaires of sweet nothings, it is not just public service. There was a devious plan to collect little data about users. Sure, these were useful in devising digital businesses like Uber and Food Panda and developing algorithms into human behaviour. Unfortunately, this familiar and predicable human behaviour is the very thing that think-thank groups used to influence people's actions.

Cambridge Analytica (CA) and its parent company SCL (Strategic Communication Laboratories) are specially mentioned in this documentary to have been mining data from people with the help social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp. 

CA and SCL employed psychologists help to improve advertising and influence public opinion. They further expanded its business into military warfare (by changing public views to win wars) and political interference. With the help of data collected from Facebook, they allegedly vilified Hillary Clinton, swang the votes of the voters in the swing states to ensure victory for Donald Trump. The modus operandi is to collect data from seeming simple, jocular and sometimes fun questionnaires. Through this, 'persuadable' - people who may be influenced are identified. They are then fed with newsfeeds and perhaps fake news to steer their thinking towards a set agenda.

CA is also accused of skewing the Brits to vote for Brexit and landing the politics in the current disarray. 

The whole imbroglio surfaced when David Carroll, a US academician, sued CA in the UK to obtain his personal information and was denied. This opened the can of worms which finally made Mark Zuckerberg appear in front of the US Congressional hearing. Former employees of CA who were part and parcel of the whole kerfuffle, Chris Wylie and Brittany Kaiser, became whistleblowers. This documentary joins the dot between Jullian Assange's Wikileaks files, Russian connections to Trump's victory and the Mueller investigations. The Guardian journalist, Carole Cadwaaldr, explains the nitty-gritty details of the inquiries as seen in this film.

CA is said to have influenced elections in Trinidad and Tobago, Nigeria, Romania, Lithuania, Myanmar and even Malaysia. In Trinidad and Tobago, CA had deviously affected supporters of the incumbent to abstain from voting as though it was promoted as the cool thing to do. The underdogs naturally won. 

In the history of mankind, Man has utilised many grossly inhumane ways to stay in power. Psychological studies, like the Stanford Prison Experiment, have repeatedly shown the innate evil that prevails in all of us. So, it is no surprise that something as close to the pillar democracy like having free and fair elections can be tampered with.

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Go forth and explore...

To all my friends who ask me not to think too much, please ponder upon the following. We think we know everything and there is nothing more to learn. How wrong we are? I have come to realise that every living day is another fresh day to acquire knowledge.

At the end of the 19th century, investigative officers thought they had a full-proof system to track down criminals. Anthromorphological features as described by witnesses and evidence at crime were sufficient to convict suspects. We all know how unreliable are accounts by bystanders or witnesses. 

This arrangement worked fairly well when it was practised in the West where individual variations in hair, eye colours and other obvious physical were there. The British Colonial Police had a tough time policing as the natives all looked the same in their eyes. That is when fingerprinting techniques became the state-of-art avantgarde armamentarium in crime-busting. For some time, the method was thought to be so unique that it could never be wrong.  

Then it became apparent that this investigative tool was observer dependant. Slowly studies started showing high false positives between 1:18 to 1:30 as it involved human judgement, hence exposed to cognitive biases and this analysis lacked scientific scrutiny.

Soon trickled DNA as a device to aid investigators. Suddenly, it became a big shot in the arm for many a prisoner who was wrongly convicted for a crime they did not commit. And, the technique got cheaper, widespread and ultra-sensitive. 

Unfortunately, DNA detection grew too sensitive for its own good. There is even a case where a person transmitted his DNA to a murder victim just because he had been transferred in the same ambulance and had used the same pulse oximeter!

Hence, perhaps DNA is not the end of it all to solve all unsolved criminal cases.

So friends wake up. One can never think that he has reached the pinnacle and there is nothing more to learn. One cannot depend on age-old wisdom and think that it would take us through the end of times. Go forth and explore...

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Living on borrowed times

Radiopetti (Radio Box, Tamil; 2015)

I used to wonder why the humming of the radio was the constant background of my home as I was growing up. At the first break of dawn, if Appa had the choice and not for Amma's nagging, it would start with the early morning chanting of Subrapaatham and just breeze through the day and night until transmissions ended. Yes, there used to be a time when even broadcasters called it a day, mostly at the stroke of midnight.

At that time, the radio announcers' songs and rants sounded more like a nuisance, as my sisters and I were busily cramping our cranial vaults with facts and notes to regurgitate in the next tests. Nobody could understand Appa's fixation with his cranky radio box, which he later graduated to a transistor radio. It was not that the devices were manufacturing Top 40 hits. Sometimes, only white noise or high-pitched zapping sounds emanate when he tunes in to the short-wave bands from Kuala Lumpur or Singapore. 

But he continued this practice till his dying days...

The delicacies we consumed in childhood taste much better than the same thing available now. At least the memory of it is. It is probably the same reason why old songs mean so much. Every song, food, smell, and sensation that tickles our tastebuds is associated with a particular moment. Every byte of information stored in our grey cells is linked to one specific event in our existence; a fond moment with our loved ones, the yearning for an unfulfilled romance, a blissful time that would never come back or a time when things were simpler.

This low-budget, low-frill, award-winning movie never really made headlines. Only through word of mouth did it come to my attention. 

 Arunachalam, probably in his 60s, spends most of his time relaxing on his lazy chair after retirement, listening to the transmissions from his old diode radio set. Ired by the constant blaring of the radio, his only child, probably in his mid-20s, leaves his paternal home after a tiff, smashing his radio to smithereens. 

Six years later, Arunachalam and his wife spend their time in sheer solitude. The couple is engrossed in their routine. Arunachalam is busy working as a clerk in a cotton mill. His wife, Lakshmi, is happy serving her husband. The memory of their son pops up every now and then. His contact is limited to his occasional phone call. The son is living with his wife and her family elsewhere. For company, they have a fellow tenant downstairs whose husband works overseas and her tantrum-throwing pre-teen son. 

Arunachalam's old radio is only a distant memory. Lakshmi's surprise gift, a transistor radio, rekindled his suppressed memories. The broken diode radio was one of the only remaining assets of Arnachalam's now deceased parents. The rest of the movie highlights the loneliness endured by the senior members of society. After fulfilling their familial duties, unable to keep up with the demands and changes in values of the generations next, they are generally left to fend for themselves. Their life is mired in silence, with an occasional highlight of a visit of a long-lost friend or relative. 

Even if they are financially taken care of, boredom is the basal undertone. Just how much of TV can one indulge? Nostalgia, which has a bad reputation for making people delve into the past rather than looking at the future, is not all that bad. With the curse of a long life, perhaps an unhealthily long life sustained by advances in medical sciences, longevity may be a curse. As if dragging their feet into the twilight of their existence, sweet memories of the past may be the only thing that keeps the bunny going. The presence of crazy friends in their lives goes a long way...

A good movie, 4.5/5.

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Meet the P-stars

S2B: Seoul to Busan
It is not a race. Ep #1
Episode #2: Meet the P-stars.

It is time to see our pedalling stars. Officially there will be seven cyclists. The seventh participant will be joining us from Australia. A young punk teeming with adrenaline and power, he is Coach's son and is doing his secret training to 'keep up' with the oldies.

Coach

@Coach
Spending half of his adult life on the hockey fields, he continued to keep himself fit even after hanging his boots. After his retirement from work, rather than lazing around counting his end of days, he found pleasure in the outdoors.
He remains the driving force in pushing us to explore our true grit. Like Jesus Christ, he goes around recruiting same-minded people who are willing to fight a good fight against surrendering to effects of ageing. 

Wayang

@Wayang
He is the second most seasoned rider in the group. He is nicknamed 'Wayang' (Theatrics) not because he is showy but precisely the opposite reason. He would often start his day lamenting how exhausted he is and how he did no manage a single wink the night before. At the end of the ride, he will be speeding past everybody else.
Always a 'Pekeliling flat' at heart, he enjoys the simple pleasures of life. Not forgetting his roots, he still carries the hidden mojo that sees him through any challenge.  

Tabib

@Tabib
Another dark horse in the group is Tabib. Named so because of his profession, (Arabic for healer), he has been secretly training on his own after an unforgettable, sweat-drenching, heart-pouncing outing with the group months earlier. He came out strong like Rocky after months of hibernation. Like a majestic swan, the little ugly duckling had transformed slim and durable. No hills remained unconquerable for this former state hockey player. Cycling clears his mind to think of the next topic to discuss in his next radio show.

@Rabbit
Known for his speed, he is aptly named rabbit. A perfectionist, a stickler to time and a master planner, he worries about everything that may happen and may not. Being higher achiever, after successfully completing a full marathon, the only natural thing to do is to cycle and swim. Come April 2020, he will be a triathlete. Going through an existential crisis, he is still wondering why he is cycling and from what he is running from!

@Bionic Man
The hockey stick would have been another appendage on his body in his teenage and early adulthood. His constant roasting and sweating it out in the hockey field earned his appearance at the national level. That also made his whole body re-aligned and his knees traumatised so severely that it had to replaced at a relatively young age. He did not reach the pinnacle of his achievements lying down. Hence, with the same determination, he laboured through the pains of bilateral knee replacement and the subsequent gruelling physiotherapy. His never-say-die attitude has now brought him up hiking mountains and cycling along interstate highways.

@Chennai Express
This Johnny-come-lately is the latest addition to the gang. Not being of the athletic type, he contended himself jogging around the housing estate. The fear of contracting diabetes, which ran deep in his family history made him run farther. Like Forrest Grump, he kept on running and now cycling, giving much palpitations to the family instead. Nicknamed Chennai Express for his occasional burst of energy that eventually fizzles out much like an express train that starts out with much pomp and splendour but reaches its destination late as usual!

Rabbit

Bionic Man

Chennai Express

(T - 32)
[Next: The Storyline]

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Oh deer! My deer...

https://kitaab.org/2019/08/31/short-story-oh-deer-my-dear/

Mitali Chakravarty  August 31, 2019 

2017 best fiction, 2019, Asian short stories, Immigrants, immigration, short story

Short Story: Oh Deer! My Dear…

By Farouk Gulsara

Malaysia National Day Special

Like the Sword of Damocles, his domestic troubles hung over his head. There was nothing much he could do about it. It had gone on too long, too deep. He just had to live with it and move around it. He could not give up everything. There was a nagging heaviness in his temples. He knew things were going to take a nasty turn and it might get worse. He had created some arbitrary goals to improve his life, but this one had crashed it all. But still, life had to continue. As they say in showbiz, the show must go on.

He knew it was a bad idea. With all these problems plaguing him, he thought it was inappropriate for him to participate in this event. But then, it was also a lifetime achievement — a success hailed by his kinsmen as the epitome of his checkered life. Akin to a water lily, growing wild amongst the filth of marsh, stench and reptiles infested wetland to glorify the lotus feet of Buddha, it was an achievement enviable to some but yearned by all and privileged to only a few!

The problem, as he understood, was not something that developed overnight. Like a crystal, the lattice had developed over the years slowly but surely to its full wrathful glory. How could he be so dumb? Or was it beyond his control and was decided by the constellations and the genetic predisposition?

In other people’s faces, he saw joy and happiness. Flashlights from cameras blinded at intervals, a reminder for achievers to immortalise and digitise the moment. Unfortunately, for Gus, it was only melancholia. With philosophical rationalisation, he decided to forgo everything. He resolved to enjoy the moment, to be in the spotlight, to immerse himself, to bask in the glory of the moment. After all, it was not every day that a lowly village doctor gets feted at the Royal College of the Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in London.

Gus Muniandy had given up the simple things in life to serve the rural poor of the Malayan peninsula. Despite offers of postgraduate degrees and the lure of the city lights, Gus answered the calling to dedicate his service to uplift the living standards of the marginalised aboriginal community of the country. Ever since he attended to a young teenage mother who almost bled to death during parturition, Gus made it his divine calling to prevent such an event from ever occurring in that community.

It was all from a page of memory from a time so long ago. Maybe he was too engulfed in his obsession with saving the world; he failed to see the elephant in the room. He neglected his duties as a father. His loving daughter’s cry for help fell on his deaf ears. If only he had realised her yearning for unrequited love and her quest for release through intoxicants. If only Gus could turn back time.

His professional duties, however, did not go unnoticed. His single-handed efforts to improve the awareness amongst the community to women empowerment, equal educational opportunities and need for antenatal care caught the eye of the authorities and the obstetric fraternity. What followed next was the flurry snowballing of accolades and salutations. If only things were equally fulfilling on the family front!

“Professional studio photography, sir?” somebody suggested, pointing enticingly at the display of families of graduates flashing their enamel possessions as if they were advertising for a tooth care product.

“No, thanks,” said Gus as he hurried through the main hall. “What is the meaning of all these things,” he thought to himself, “when there is no peace of mind?” His mind wandered through his childhood. He recalled all those seemingly desperate times when sad songs were the flavour of the day. Happiness was then an unattainable feat. The future was stretched out before him so that he could just walk and harvest its fruits. “Oh, how I had longed for this day!” Gus lamented. “But do I want to go through all of it again?”

Just as his mind was deeply engrossed in the nostalgia of yesteryears, his daydream was interrupted. “Do you have any food preferences, sir?” the lady at the reception voiced out, appearing slightly irritated, probably as Gus’s appearance did not exude cordiality.

“Pardon ma’am?” Gus replied politely.

“Do you have any preferences for your dinner, vegetarian or vegan?” the receptionist read out mechanically.

“We are okay,” Gus replied in unison, with his wife nodding in agreement.

“As long as there is no beef.”

“So, can we serve you vegetarian? Since we are serving deer meat tonight,” she replied.

“Dear meat?”

“Yes, deer meat!”

Then it hit Gus and his wife. “You mean you are serving venison!”

Gus, chuckling inside, wanted to see the change in the receptionist’s face.

Though we may look Indian on the outside and are not so metropolitan in the way we dress, she should have guessed that the guests, especially the ones on the honour list, the ones appreciated enough by the esteemed British college, would be likely to be well conversant in English, thought Gus.

She must have been some actress or perhaps a right hand at poker as she never flinched a muscle giving away a clue that she might be embarrassed.

Gus was in two minds to start his sermon on how words like mutton, venison, beef etcetera came to the English language from French, but against his better judgement, he decided to keep it for another occasion another day. After all, Gus was a feted guest and guests ought to behave at the highest etiquette to honour his host. Maybe sweet revenge would come another day…

I swear I had seen that surname somewhere, cogitated Gus. But Indie? Surely it must be a shortened version of the name Indiana. Indiana for a British? Strange. Anyway, I never understood why someone who would name a child after a state. Saying that Malaysia was the most popular newborn girl’s name in the United States of America last year among the black community. The only association between England and Indiana that I remember was the riddle when I heard as a young adult about where Prince Charles spent his honeymoon!

In the modern age, when in doubt, what does a sane person usually do? Google of course. Within a fraction of a second upon typing the surname of the staff of the college, the whole anthroponymy of the said name appeared in full glory. Now, it made sense. I could not have guessed, thought Gus. When she offered vegetarian food for dinner, was she under the impression that venison and beef were from the same ‘cattle of fish’ (pardon the pun)? I was wondering why she said, ‘deer meat’? My usually dull grey cells went into hyperdrive. I thought that perhaps she was one of those true-blue Anglophile, who was trying to restore the old glory of the English language. She was attempting to revive the language to a period before it was corrupted by foreign words from the self-appointed bourgeois societies like the French or the contamination of the returning officers of the British Raj, who boasted of being familiar with everything in the world while indulging in a bout of logorrhoea laced with gibberish.“Jungle, bungalow, khaki, juggernaut, loot, shampoo. We have our own words,” they said just like any hardliner would say. “And we need no ham, no mutton and certainly, no venison.” We need to keep our language clean just like our bloodlines!

Gus’s little research revealed that the ‘deer meat’ lady is indeed a descendant of those that the British Raj tried to abandon in 1947. Her surname was a dead giveaway, originating from the cattle-breeders’ clan of the Punjab Valley. Her pale complexion and her pseudo-accent had fooled me. For all you know, ‘Indie’ could have been an abbreviation of ‘Indira’.

“My, my, Oh righty!” she had said in a typically British manner, he recalled.

In the same way, a Farsi by birth, Farrokh Bulsara, born in Zanzibar, grew up in India, became Freddy Mercury to blend well into the society to become a British icon, Indira Kaur Gill had become Indie Gill.

Gus was telling himself, “Here we are, two descendants of the Indian subcontinent, one displaced to one colony and another deciding to snuggle up with the masters trying to outdo each other thinking that one is more British and know more English than the other! Interesting coolie mentality.”

But then how different are we, really?

Gus’s grandparents decided that India was too toxic to bring up their children in the trying years of the early twentieth century when mob rule, violence, injustice and uncertainty were the order of the day. Their gamble brought his parents to a fresh green land called Malaya. Like a chameleon changing its hue to the surroundings, the new nation became their land. The challenges meeting its population became their own. Their souls became embroiled in that of their new found motherland. It was not a case of abandoning a biological mother to find a stepmother but to relieve instead a grieving Mrs Hubbard of feeding her hungry offspring while living in a shoe.

And there Gus stands proudly for deeds done for the only motherland that he knew. Even though on the outside, anyone could tell from a mile away that he must be an offspring of the Indian diaspora, Gus felt every inch a Malaysian on the inside. For that matter, he had not even set foot in India. Flying over its airspace would not count.

Indie, or Indira’s family or perhaps, ancestors must have thought long and hard to decide that the United Kingdom was the place to be. Growing far from cousins in India, Indie would have yearned to be wanted, to be one of the contemporaries that she grew up with. Her mother tongue would have appeared aversive, perhaps even too derogatory for her liking. Pretending to know the collie’s language, English, with the local flavours would have suited just fine. There you have, Indie Gill, as British as Beefeaters can be.

Perhaps, it was not a case of economic pull and push only. After years of tyranny and subjugation, people of the Indian subcontinent have landed where they are by the twisted fate of history. Everywhere they laid their hats, it became their home and they embraced their adopted home wholeheartedly; much like how Gus is very much a Malaysian and Indie, a British. Perhaps, at some point a common unifying thread may ignite their common past akin to the chorus of Men at Work’s super hit song ‘Down Under’ where the mention of something quintessentially Australian brings all the characters in the melody together.

Farouk Gulsara is a daytime healer and a writer by night. After developing his left side of his brain almost half his lifetime, this johnny-come-lately decides to stimulate his non-dominant part on his remaining half. An author of two non-fiction books, ‘Inside the twisted mind of Rifle Range Boy’ and ‘Real Lessons from Reel Life’, he now ventures into the genre of fiction. He writes regularly on his blog ‘Rifle Range Boy’.

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The struggle continues...

Leila (Miniseries, Hindi; 2019)
Netflix

Many Indians have accused this miniseries and Netflix as being anti-Hindu.  They even called for a boycott of the channel. Some suggest that the setting of the show, a dystopian India of 100 years after its independence, reflects many things of the present. Detractors assert that this fictitious 2047 India, which worships one man as a demi-god cannot get more real than the present. They insist that the division of the nation along religious and class lines already exist. The film tries to imagine a future when the schism along these lines goes overboard. The rulers of the day want to purify the race, separating couples of mixed marriages and of their offspring.

India has been renamed Aryavarta, with an apparent reference to its Sanskrit roots. In Aryavarta, the rich have swapped places with the working class. A new nationalist leader has taken charge. An ultra-conservative stance is revered by all. The people who used to be amongst the upper echelon of society are vilified and sent to labour camps. Western ideas are scorned upon, and there is a penchant to go back to the traditional values of the community. In the midst of all these, civil society is broken. People live in fear, and the country is a big garbage dumpster. Water is a rare commodity and citizen kill each other for it. The air is severely polluted, and rain is dirty.

The protagonist, Shalini, is a Hindu woman who married her Muslim husband. Their 'decadent' lifestyle is 'punished' by government vigilantes. Her husband is killed. She is incarcerated for purification, and her child goes missing. The story revolves around the story of a mother who is trying to find her lost child. To do that, she has to work with the government resistance forces to beat the system that is hellbent on punishing its citizens who flout the seemingly just law.

Leila is India's version of 'Handmaid Tales' of a bleak future. Shalini's character is representative of the much-loathed liberal, an upper-middle-class young English-speaking urban-dweller. Despite her outlook of modernity, she has been ingrained over generations of caste and class consciousness in her daily life. This is what the new regime had promised to overturn.

What many fail to realise is that there is a lot of difference between the Hindutva political movement and Hinduism. Hindutva can be viewed as a governmental entity that seeks hegemony of Hindu practices over other religious beliefs, whereas Hinduism can be construed as a way of life as practised in the Indian sub-continent. The supreme leader referred to in the miniseries is none other than Modi himself. The motifs and colours used by the ruling junta have an uncanny resemblance to BJP's and Hindus' use of the colour saffron in many of their auspicious functions. No wonder the conservatives allege that there is a concerted effort by the West (or liberals, or leftist - pick your poison) to discredit anything positive developments in the post-colonial economies. When science and technology are emphasised, they are accused of sidelining poetry and literature. When history is retold from an Asiatic viewpoint, they are attacked for rewriting history to suit their political agendas. 

A particular sect of champagne-drinking intelligentsia and socialists who benefit from overseas grants from institutions with specific agenda would continue spewing hatred towards anything Hindu, they say. One way to achieve this is by creating false narratives of victimisation. But, surely there is work to be done in many areas to improve society. There is no perfect solution to the problems of the world. And the struggle continues...

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The question of Random Chance or Intelligent Design

Signature in the Cell (2009)
DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design
Stephen C. Meyer

Take the instance when you receive a fax. You marvel at how a message at one end of the line is transmitted to the other many miles away. You think you know it all when you discover the nitty-gritty of how a facsimile machine works. You forget all about the composer of the document.

Learning about the essence of life, DNA is something like that. When Watson and Crick suggested the double helix model as the prototype for DNA in 1953, the world thought material science could explain everything. Delving further, later scientists came with theories after theories of how internal milieu of the cell worked.

The author posits that the possibility of creation of life from the Universe's 'pre-biotic soup' just by chance - by random 'trial-and-error' is merely impossible. The probability, in statistically sense, of Nature coming up with the correct combination that can sustain life, from zero, is simply very remote.

Meyer, a self-professed staunch Christian, a Professor of philosophy and a scientist, came to the fore when in 2005, a school board decided that students should be exposed to intelligent design as a possible origin of life. American Civil Liberty Union chose to sue the school board for teaching something counter to the accepted theory of the origin of life.

Meyer, being a scientist, does not bring in the story of Genesis as the beginning of time. He instead, postulates that perhaps there must be an intelligent designer who orchestrated this potpourri of life forms. There are simply too many hostile or destructive forces in Nature that against life formation. He does not create argue in the fashion of a theologian who goes on bringing in the word divine in his answers but instead tries to give scientific explanations to his reasoning. Whether the scientific fraternity accepts his argument, that is another question. They mostly consider his accounts as pseudosciences. Meyer insists that science makes many conjectures before concluding something. Hence, intelligent design can be presumed.

The exciting thing about science is that it accepts new ideas. All the scientists have to do is to prove their finding. With time, their theories are open to debate and maybe disproved altogether. Perhaps, they would be a template for further developments. This must surely be better than shutting our minds to new ideas and accepting that the human race has nothing new to learn but to depend on age-old scriptures. Nobody knows the whole truth about our origin and the purpose of our existence. Only our intellect remains the last bastion to bring us there, at least a little remotely close there.

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