RIFLE RANGE BOY

President Thomas Jefferson, left, and his predecessor, President John Adams. (Feuding Fathers) Getty Images At this time of one's life (stepping into the seventh decade of existence), one often wonders about all the people who made their appearances all along my life. Some of theirs were short and sweet. Some left with a sour aftertaste. Some got lost in the annals of times. Occasionally, I had people who took everything wrongly and left anything but amicably. One did not like the sight of me and had nothing nice to say about me. Well, what can I say but that the feeling was mutual. Recently, I read about the friendship between the two Founding Fathers of the United States of America. They were not really best friends. They had a big job to do for a greater cause. They looked at things from different perspectives; both felt compelled to defend their conviction until the end. Towards that end, they argued ferociously and wrote stinging letters to each other but all the time, acquiri...

Perjuangan Politik Komuniti India dan Kempimpinan Malaysia Indian Congress 1946-2020 (Indian Community Political Struggle and the Leadership of Malaysian Indian Congress 1946-2020) (Malaysian Language; 2023) Author: Periasamy Muthan, M.A. The story of Indians sojourning in the Malayan peninsula goes way back to a time before any form of Malay influence was seen here. Traces of its Swarnabhumi history, which is really the root of the cultural civilisation of this region, were systemically hushed by the ruling class to put their version of Malaya where it sprung out of nothing to be civilised by Muslim traders and thinkers. After the first wave of Indian settlers, who came in around the time of the Malacca sultanate, the second wave arrived at the end of the nineteenth century with the British clerical team. The bulk of Indians, however, were brought in to work in the sugarcane, coffee, and later rubber plantations in the early 20th century. Working under slave-like conditions, the natur...

Bastar: The Naxal Story (Hindi; 2024) Director: Sudipto Sen This is supposed to be inspired by actual events. That part may be accurate, but the problem is that this part of Indian history has been ongoing for so long that the moviemaker took the liberty of cutting and pasting events that happened at different times in India's history.  For the record, there was a rebellion in 1910 when the British were eyeing the minerals in Central India. Come to think of it, that may be when the word 'thug' came into the English language. Tribal people who resisted British invasion were labelled as carnivorous people worshipping a blood-thirsty form of Kaali named Thugeesewari. The tribals donned machetes for farming but were labelled as armed resistance forces instead. In the late 60s, when the Communist Party of India split after the Sino-Soviet split, a group of them had the idea of a peasant revolution changing the status quo. This group came to be named Maoist (after Chairman Mao). ...

The Monkey Man (2024) Director: Dev Patel At first look, one is forgiven for thinking it was going to be a non-cerebral offering with senseless violence, gore, pyrotechnics and stunts that defy science principles. On further viewing, one would assume there would be lots of Indian bashing, Hindu culture ridiculing and Modi shaming. It cannot be so wrong. Far from it, this is also an attempt to retell the Ramayana story. In the Ramayana narration of events around 5000 BCE, King Rama was exiled for 14 years into  the forest after political arm-twisting led by his stepmother. Raavan became the villain when Rama turned down Ravana's sister, Shurpanakha's sexual advancement. Her antics got her nose slashed off. Raavan kidnapped Rama's wife, Sita. Rama, in search of his missing wife, Sita, befriended Hanuman, and the rest is history, as written by Valmiki and others. In the Ramayana, Rama and Hanuman are on the side of the truth, whereas Raavan, with his 10 branches of wisdom, ass...

We didn't start the fire (History Podcast; 2021-2023) Hosts: Katie Puckrik & Tom Fordyce In the mid-1980s, a young person commented to Billy Joel. In the young person's mind, the world of the 1980s was plagued with tumultuous events. In passing, he said, "I bet the world must have been a more peaceful place when you were growing up." That got Billy Joel thinking. He started jotting down all the significant events from his birth in 1946 throughout his time growing up in New York till the summer of 1989. Like that, he came up with close to 119 incidences that impacted him at least. He started arranging the list, like a good composer would, and wrote a record-smashing hit that everyone in the 90s would know. Billy Joel realized as he reminisced about the years that went by that the world had always been a restless place. Looking back on the events, one thing is clear: It was as unsettled then as it is now. The list he came up with became a narration of all the events...

Capricorn One (1977) Director: Peter Hyams With the confidence of singlehandedly defending the motherland against the German soldiers in Operation Barbarossa in 1941 and essentially stalemating Hitler in the Führerbunker, Russians knew they were no pushovers. Stalin's forced post-war industrialisation efforts skyrocketed the Soviet Union into space exploration. The Americans, coming out of World War 2 smelling of roses, after being able to turn the war around after their participation, felt they had to be numero uno. After all, after the Second World War, the US of A was the wealthiest nation around. On top of it, the war forced the migration of top scientists from Europe to America. The 1960s saw rabid competition between leaders of the free world and the communist bloc to outdo the other in space exploration. The race intensified when the Soviets sent their first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, to orbit the Earth in 1961. That spurred JFK to declare that America, the leader of the free ...

The Hungarian Parliament House by the Danube at sunset They did not know where they came from. They intelligently guessed they must have come from the Ural mountains around 800CE. No, say the archaeological finds. Excavations showed carvings and even scripts that go back 5,000 years! Modern history tells them of Prince Stephen, the first devout Catholic King canonised posthumously. People were happy going about their daily lives, leaving the administration to the monarch, whom they were programmed to believe God Himself ordained. They were glad to part with a portion of their hard-earned produce in return. After all, He decides whether the people should live, suffer, or die. Soon, times turned for the worse. Other nations tried to dominate. People’s trust in the Divine soon dissipated. Then, Godless men steamrolled their ideology upon them. The communists preached equality and Utopia on Earth. It was, of course, another tale to outwink the unassuming. They knew they had to rise. An up...