Rifle Range Boy

At book launch...

2026-10-14T00:00:00.000+08:00

Malaysian Indians: Impact And Pain
Narration of an Unending Saga of a Marginalised Community
"The State's Systemic Discrimination on a Vulnerable Segment of Society"
Author: Janakey Raman Manickam

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for letting me speak at this important event. Why do I say this event is important? As we realise, as the days go on, the country's history is slowly being rewritten, and the roles of certain groups of people are omitted and deemphasised. The book being launched today forms the backbone and a constant reminder to all Malaysians of who we are, who we were and how we came here. As the proverb goes, “one who does not know where he came from will not reach where he is going to!”

I have to congratulate Mr Janakey Raman on yet another fruit of his labour. I first came to know Mr Janakey Raman after reading his book, ‘Malaysian Indian Dilemma’, in 2011. I wrote a review of this extensively researched history of Malaysian Indians and their economic plights. The book received a roaring response and was also translated into Tamil.

Mr Janakey has dedicated his life to social research and activism, and he has an arsenal of statistics that could unlock the country's secrets and potentially rewrite the history that we've been told.

In the 1990s, while I was working at Hospital Tengku Ampuan Rahimah in Klang, I was waiting at a traffic light to enter the hospital compound when I saw an incident that made me think. An Indian female ward attendant was waiting for her bus at the bus stop. She looked anxious. She was probably late for something. Just then, another lady, also a female ward attendant, a Malay woman, pulled up to the bus stop in her Perodua Kancil to offer the Indian lady a lift. That got me thinking, “Why is it that even though both ladies do the same job, one can afford a car and the other cannot? Is it that one has excellent economic planning and the other does not? Why is there disparity? Is there a systemic ploy behind this?

Mr Janakey Raman is trying to answer some of the questions in the latest fruit of his labour, “Malaysian Indians: Impact and Pain. What you will read in this book is not pretty and may hurt our leaders, of the past and present, in areas that would hurt them most.

In the 1990s, if you wandered around Wilayah Complex in Kuala Lumpur on Friday nights, you would see scores of luxury or vintage cars parked there. Their owners were, of course, attending their regular watering hole, Chakravarthy. That is the place to be, to convince ourselves that all Malaysian Indians are doing very well. The reality is that our achievements are far from equal. On one end, we have high-achieving, internationally recognised Malaysian Indians. On the other hand, there are the oppressed Indian poor who are stuck in the same poverty trap for generations.

All is not lost. These days, more and more Malaysian Indians are telling their stories so that everyone knows about them. People are talking in podcasts. They are producing books and sending WhatsApp messages about the achievements of past and current Malaysian Indians. This is more urgent now than ever. Every day, the country's history is rewritten, and the role of Malaysian Indians is slowly being erased. Hence, Mr Janakey Raman's book is essential reading as a reminder.

The last thought that I want to leave you with, which has been plaguing me for so long, is this. If you look at the Indian diaspora brought to the world over, be it to South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Suriname, Guyana, or Fiji, they have all done well. In many countries, they have prospered so much that other ethnicities envy their achievements. Well, Fiji even had a prime minister of Indian descent in 1999. In Malaysia, however, despite the country's international achievements, 40% of the B40 population remains Indian. Why? We have to find out!

Malaysian Indians: Impact and Pain tells the story of an unending saga of a marginalised community. The author theorises that this is the result of systemic discrimination, first by the colonial masters, who were mainly interested in milking wealth from the colonies to enrich themselves and their motherland. They were least interested in the welfare of their workers. When they left, Malaysian estate owners emulated the same business model, putting profit over social responsibility. When the 1969 race riots happened, the emphasis was on improving the living conditions of the Bumiputras. Again, the marginalised community was pushed aside. In the 1980s, as industrialisation was in high gear and estates were cleared, workers were left high and dry, with no living skills or housing. They also had to compete with foreign labour for work. They were just expected to find their own space in society.

Decades of failed investments and failed promises filled our history. Even our contributions and existence are slowly being erased as our heritage also disappears. Their temples, which had been around for more than a century, have, in a bizarre, twisted turn of events, become illegal or effectively nonexistent.

You can learn more about these and many more in Mr Janakey Raman’s book. Thank you.

For orders, contact the author at 6013 3927727.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The affairs of the heart are complicated...

2026-10-11T10:38:37.115+08:00

Rental Family (English/Japanese; 2025)

Written and Directed by: Hikari

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14142060/

The genetic bonds that unite people are quite different from other connections that bind people together. We may confidently assert that we may be connected to the hip with someone based on likes and dislikes, social background, religious beliefs, or even Alma mater or place of origin; when the push comes to shove, the binding bonds of DNA sequence invariably prevail.

Increasingly, these bonds are being monetised. Mates, boyfriends, girlfriends, mock spouses and playmates can be found at a reasonable price. These are purely transactional and do not stand the test of time, or do they really? With the string of relationships and the vow of marriage becoming as impermanent as scribblings on a sandy beach. We merchandise relationships, put a price on intimacy, offering more on OnlyFans and scoot off from a broken union with a fat lump sum.

These days, not only are relationships mirages, but even everyday people are only a fragment of who they claim to be. Against this background, Phillip starts looking for a job in Japan. He is a small-time actor who is now struggling to find his next gig. A company named 'Rental Family' offers him a peculiar job. He is to act as a child's estranged American father to a Japanese girl so she can gain entry into a private school. Phillip agrees.

He has to show up as a soon-to-be husband to a Japanese lady's parents. This lady is actually a closeted lesbian who is secretly married to her wife and plans to migrate to Canada. The arrangement worked well. Everyone is happy.

Another assignment is to masquerade as a journalist to interview a demented man. His caregiver, his daughter, is hoping that it will jog his memory of his past.

Phillip soon realises that these transactions are not mere transactions but carry heavy baggage. The affairs of the heart are not so cut-and-dried.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Man of God beyond reproach?

2026-10-08T00:00:00.000+08:00

Death of a Pastor's Wife (2026)
Documentary, 3 episodes (Season 1)

https://letterboxd.com/film/death-of-the-pastors-wife-2026/

This is a documentary presentation of an ongoing case. A young wife of a pastor was found dead in her car, in a national park, far from where she was residing. The police deemed the death a suicide, but there is an increasing cry from the general public that the death was anything but self-induced and that her husband, the pastor, is as guilty as sin.

The documentary makers try to lay down the facts, perhaps with a lot of input from the victim's siblings, friends and former attendees of the Church the Pastor and his wife, the victim, used to preside over.

The Solid Rock Church in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It was established by a charismatic preacher named John-Paul Miller. The Church had a huge following and was quite active with its singing sessions, preaching and motivational speeches by JP. Mica's mother and her many siblings moved to Myrtle Beach after their parents separated. Going through a tough time at 15, Mica found solace in the Church and its activities. JP was probably a father figure whom she lost. JP was already married at that time. Mica married a fellow congregant by the time she was 18. By 20, she and JP were caught by JP's wife red-handed in an extramarital affair. JP was 35. There is talk of some kind of grooming going on there. Mica was 13 when she joined the Church was already the pastor.

Mica and JP were married for about 9 years in what could be described as a toxic marriage. JP was the one who called the shots, using Biblical verses to cow Mica into submission. There was plenty of gaslighting and probably sexual abuse. Mica at one time was institutionalised for a psychotic episode, said to be due to an adverse anaesthetic reaction following a breast augmentation surgery. There were many hospitalisations subsequently and a hint of infidelity on the part of the pastor.

Things became worse with domestic violence, restraining orders, desperate 911 calls, medications and so on. She served divorce papers to her husband. Two days following that, Mica was reported missing and was found dead in a State Park far from her residence after apparently shooting herself with a gun she had bought earlier.

JP has not been charged with Mica's death but is awaiting trial for charges of cyberstalking and giving false evidence to the federal investigators. That would probably be a second season of Mica's death. At the end of the season, the story is left hanging. We only hear what appears to be the victim's family's POV of the whole situation. The police records paint the pastor in a very bad light, almost as a psychopath, with all the gaslighting, psychological manipulation, religious indoctrination and cyberstalking. Despite all this, her death is still classified as a suicide. Unfortunately, we do not hear the pastor's side of the story. JP was never charged with murder even though, from what this show seems to insinuate, all the evidence seems to lead to this.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Citizen Vigilantism, ok?

2026-10-04T12:54:44.265+08:00

https://www.facebook.com/kinitv/posts/a-petition-calling-for-
rohingyas-to-be-removed-from-malaysia
-has-been-taken-down/1455906693246600/

Of late, day in and day out, social media platforms in Malaysia are inundated with reels of citizen-vigilante action groups against so-called illegal stalls set up by the immigrant population, specifically the Rohingya, all over the city, especially around Selayang.

It looks like citizens have made it their birthright to walk into stalls and shops to demand their licences and work permits, accompanied by roving mobile phone cameras.

The commentator would then hurl insults at the immigrants who do not have a business permit in the first place. In Malaysia, certain goods deemed essential for daily consumption are protected by law. To sell cooking oil, cooking gas, and rice, one needs special business permits. There are certain bylaws regarding the sale of fresh produce and meat. These businesses default on all of these.

The vigilante group would verbally abuse the immigrants for overstepping the welcome given by the Malaysians to them. They were granted asylum as fellow brothers of the same faith, but the vigilantes assert they had overstayed their welcome. They accuse the Rohingyas of siphoning off the country's wealth, stealing locals' businesses, and even spending lavishly at their private functions and, unbelievably, talking back to the locals!

That is how things have become, with the locals taking the law into their own hands while the rightfully employed officers slumber on the job. This influx of Rohingyas started about 10 years ago after the political leaders gave a blanket rule to magnanimously allow Rohingya refugees to land on our shores when they were denied entry to Indonesia. As the general election was imminent, the leaders wanted to earn some brownie points among the majority population, who are Muslims as well. Malaysia did not need to do that, as it is not a signatory to the 1951 UNHCR Refugee Convention, but it did so anyway.

Since it is not a signatory to the convention, Malaysia is not required to provide them with accommodation, schooling, or healthcare. This duty is handled by the numerous NGOs and charitable organisations around the country. The refugees, after going through hell to reach where they were, still had the fire to work hard and achieve things in their lives. They were young; hormones ran high, so they married. That union produced offspring. Children needed to receive a sound education, since their final destination was expatriation to another host country. If Malaysia did not provide education for refugees, they made makeshift schools. That, apparently, was against the local law. To support their families, they needed to be creative in making money. Again, all their endeavours ran afoul of local laws.

Everyone has ambitions and wants to be a step better than the generation that preceded them. Youth is finite. They cannot be living as beggars or on handouts forever. Anyway, the refugees are willing to do the work that is shunned by locals for being dirty, dangerous and degrading.

The citizens are barking up the wrong tree. They should instead channel their anger towards the politicians who systematically allowed foreigners to flood the country, as well as the enforcement officers and civil servants who are on the take or work with one or two eyes shut! Humans, Rohingya, migrants or not, are just fulfilling their biological and social needs. They are simply completing their raison d'être.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The burden of a grieving father…

2026-10-02T00:00:00.000+08:00

My Boy Jack (2007)
Director: Brian Kirk

https://www.primevideo.com/detail/
0SCANTPFXJ2P5YXSOFULRVJ3LV

We all know of Rudyard Kipling. We literally grew up listening to stories about Mowgli, Sher Khan and Baboo in the 'Jungle Book'. As we grew older (and wiser), we began to see another side to his writings. The poem 'The White Man's Burden' revealed his rather dark thoughts. He opined that the white race had a moral duty to civilise the natives. He pinned this legitimacy seal to imperial powers to advance their colonising ambitions.

As World War I drew closer, Kipling was busy pushing for Britain to mobilise its forces to fight the Germans for their invasion of Belgium. He was vehemently loud in the speeches that he prepared for Britain's propaganda messages to its citizens.

Naturally, his only son, his 17-year-old John, took up the idea of enrolling in the Navy. Rudyard had two daughters before John; the elder of them died young with pneumonia.

Now, the problem is that John keeps failing his medical entry examinations into the Navy and Army because of his shortsightedness. Wearing glasses is considered a liability and is automatically rejected.

Rudyard uses his influence to secure a place for John, not in the Navy, but in the Army. John starts his training with great difficulty but is eventually commissioned as a Second Lieutenant and later as a Lieutenant. He is much liked by his contemporaries. Unfortunately, in a gruelling trench war, just a few days after his 18th birthday, John is reported as missing in action at the Battle of Loos in France.

That uncertainty started the avalanche of emotions in the Kipling household. Months of enquiries and pestering the Army brought no closure. That led Rudyard to become active in the Imperial War Graves Commission (later renamed the Commonwealth War Graves Commission) to ensure that fallen British Empire heroes are given due recognition and are named, and that their graves are marked correctly. Only after three years, it became clear that John Kipling was shot by German gunfire after losing his glasses in the mud during an assault.

Rudyard Kipling, his wife and his remaining daughter spent the next years heartbroken. The Kipling heritage ended with him, as his daughter never had a child.

At the turn of the century, objections were raised as the Commission failed to honour the thousands of non-British soldiers, especially Indian warriors who took the bullet for their faux pas in Gallipoli. In 2026, it was announced that close to 10,000 names of fallen Indian soldiers under the banner of the British Empire were to be mentioned too.

A quite stirring story complemented by a sterling performance by Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame. Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem titled 'My Boy Jack' in 1916. Even though the poem mirrors his personal grief over the loss of a son, it was written as a prelude to his story 'Sea Warfare' about the Battle of Jutland. It was based on a celebrated fallen young naval hero, Jack Cornwell. John Kipling was never referred to as Jack in official documents, but was sometimes called Jack in the family.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

"Mathematics can change lives"

2026-09-29T05:58:51.657+08:00

I had written about Anand Kumar back in 2014, when his efforts to change the landscape of rural Bihar were in their infancy. He came to my attention when I watched a documentary about his ambition to coach his handpicked students from lower strata of society to achieve 100% admission to IIT. He had started the Super 30 programme in 2002. Anand was a Mathematical whiz who qualified to read Mathematics at Cambridge University but had to opt out due to financial constraints. He decided to start an institute instead.

Much time had passed since then.

Now, in 2026, in the company of some friends from Bihar who happened to be Ananji Kumarji’s students, I learned that he was in town. While attending a conference in Kuala Lumpur, he managed to set aside some time to meet up with his former students who had done well. I joined in as an independent observer.

It was an evening filled with an overflow of emotions, but not of the melodramatic kind. It was a meeting of grateful students who could not find a better way to express their gratitude to their teacher, who had lifted them out of the yoke of poverty and carried them to the international arena. Many of the students had cracked their IIT examinations, gone on to join MNCs, and completed postgraduate studies at overseas institutes of repute. Within a single generation, through education, they had leapfrogged themselves and their families up the food chain.

The Government of India also recognised Anandji's selfless efforts by honouring him with one of its highest civilian awards, the Padma Shri. Despite all the accolades behind his name, he continues his philanthropic work. Anand Kumar had a one-to-one informal session with his gleaming students and their young families, who had nothing but admiration for him. They feel that he played a part in the recent resurgence of the State of Bihar towards prosperity, after so long being cast out as the land of gundas, poverty, and chaos. Maybe one day, it will reach the glory days when Nalanda University and the Magadha Empire defined Bharat, which is also India.

https://www.riflerangeboy.com/2014/06/then-what.html

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Our endless appetite for news!

2026-09-26T00:00:00.000+08:00

Nightcrawler(2014)

Written & Directed by Don Gilroy

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nightcrawler-DVD-
Jake-Gyllenhaal/dp/B00OZJ2WVW

The people's rapacious appetite for news as events unfolded probably began at the outset of the Gulf War, when the USA believed it had to overrun Kuwait. What was initially thought to be a short surgical strike that would last only a week, we know never stopped. During Operation Desert Storm, we were given the impression that cameras were actually following the tanks into war zones and bringing us live coverage from ground zero, just as Sanjaya narrated the events of the Kurukshetra War to King Dhritarashtra.

The cravings for news never abated after that. People kept wanting more. One after another, everything became groundbreaking news—the 2001 Twin Towers 9/11 tragedy, the 2004 Tsunami, the 2014 missing flight MH370 and the list just kept on going.

Soon after that, with the advent of mobile devices and the ease of recording outdoors, citizen journalism became a thing. News channels liberally paid contributors, even for the faintest and scrawniest raw footage, as long as it depicted live coverage of an event dear to the public.

This movie just shows the extent to which photojournalism and citizen reporting can go to capture the most sensational angle of the news. Sometimes crime scenes were altered, bodies were moved to get better lighting, and crime scenes were contaminated; in the rapacious pursuit of having events recorded on film, human decency, like helping the wounded, takes a back seat. Money and the lure of being in the limelight supersede everything else.

Nightcrawler is a neo-noir film that tells the tale of a petty thief who scavenges public property for a few bucks and suddenly discovers the lucrative business of photojournalism on the violence-filled streets of Los Angeles. While most of the city slept, there was a wealth of money in selling exclusive footage of violent and morbid events to a local news station.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

A sad end to an era.

2026-09-23T00:00:00.000+08:00

The Last Moghul (The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857)

Author: William Dalrymple (2006)

In our secondary-school history lessons, we were taught that the 1857 rebellion by sepoys serving in the East India Company’s army was caused by their unease about handling Enfield rifles and cartridges greased with beef and pork fat. The sepoys needed to bite open the cartridges before loading their rifles. This was unacceptable to Hindu and Muslim soldiers alike. They revolted, but the British managed to suppress the resistance and continued to rule India for another 90 years. Unfortunately, that may be only part of the truth about what actually happened.

This book suggests that there was more to the rebellion than meets the eye. It gives a minute-by-minute account of what transpired before and during the months following the outbreak of the 1857 uprising. Some disgruntled Indian soldiers in the East India Company’s army—Hindus and Muslims alike—refused the high command’s order to use the newly commissioned Enfield rifles. Mangal Pandey was court-martialled and hanged soon afterwards. Before long, some of his contemporaries also refused orders and were imprisoned.

Resentment towards the British had begun well before the introduction of the Enfield rifle. Its roots went much further back.

India was already in a different league before Western imperial forces entered the country. The British were awed by the Mughals, who ruled India and displayed extraordinary wealth. Sir Thomas Roe, the first official ambassador sent by the British Crown under King James I, was mocked for his choice of gifts for the Mughal court. The gifts, which included paintings, a carriage, maps, and a cloak, were regarded by the Mughals as cheap and worthless. The Mughals reciprocated with superior maps, priceless linen and other treasures. It proved to be a diplomatic nightmare for the British East India Company (BEIC).

Early BEIC arrivals were respectful of local people and integrated well into the community. Some married Indians and embraced the Indian way of life. The Anglo-Indian community thrived.

Over the years, however, attitudes changed. Possibly influenced by the increasing influx of missionaries, the newcomers began to look upon Indians with scorn. They regarded the local population as uncultured heathens, increasingly emphasising religion and promoting the incorporation of Christianity into everyday life. Morning prayers were introduced in government offices and even in the army, offending the local people. Then came the controversy surrounding the Enfield cartridges. It began with a group of sepoys refusing to obey British orders. They were court-martialled, humiliated and stripped of their uniforms.

By 1837, Mughal hegemony in India had dwindled to the confines of Delhi. Emperor Bahadur Shah II, also known as Zafar, and his family were largely restricted to the Red Fort, as was their influence. Zafar—a poet, a Sufi and an old man—was quite comfortable with this arrangement. The British paid him a regular pension.

The detailed events surrounding the Sepoy Rebellion—also known as the Sepoy Mutiny, the Indian Rebellion and India’s First War of Independence—were documented in the Mutiny Papers, written in Urdu and Persian. They provide a detailed account of the sequence of events from the perspectives of the British, the royal family and ordinary people caught up in the turmoil.

The rebels—disgruntled Indian soldiers in the BEIC army—freed their imprisoned comrades and rushed to the Red Fort, where they strong-armed Zafar into becoming their nominal leader. Meanwhile, another group of devout religious leaders and volunteers joined the fray. Over the years, they had witnessed the Christianisation of India and had long wanted to change the status quo. Zafar, whose mother was Hindu, was a fair-minded man who managed Hindu–Muslim relations well. The jihadists, however, sometimes created unnecessary tensions between the two communities. One such incident occurred during Eid al-Adha in 1857, when they were determined to slaughter cows for the occasion. To avert unnecessary friction, Zafar decreed a ban on cow slaughter.

The uprising is sometimes described as the ‘Raj’s Stalingrad’. It witnessed considerable brutality and cultural destruction. The British tried to inflame ethnic tensions by pitting one group against another. Both sides—the rebels and the British—worsened the situation through widespread looting and robbery. The Hindu community, which included many merchants and business owners, bore the brunt of these losses. The unrest soon spread from Meerut to Delhi to Kanpur to Lucknow and, by June 1858, was said to have been quenched in Gwalior.

There was also considerable betrayal within the warring factions. Zafar’s younger wife, keen to install her son as heir to the 82-year-old emperor, sought British assistance to achieve this end. The rebels’ lack of cooperation and communication proved a blessing for the British, who mobilised resources from Bengal, Punjab, and the North-Western Provinces to retake Delhi. They also employed psychological warfare, bribery and covert operations to provoke communal divisions in the city.

Moreover, a solar eclipse that occurred amid the turmoil sent many rebels scurrying home, as they interpreted it as a bad omen from the universe. The mutiny, however, also spurred many local leaders—including Nana Sahib of Kanpur, Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi, Tatya Tope, Babu Veer Kunwar Singh of Bihar and Rao Tula Ram of Haryana—to rise to the occasion.

After Delhi fell, Zafar took refuge at Humayun’s Tomb. He and his family were subjected to a sham trial. His princes were executed, and Zafar and his wives were exiled to Rangoon for treason, formally bringing the rule of the last Mughal emperor to an end. The British East India Company later transferred governance of India to the Crown.

Zafar spent his remaining years in melancholy. He wrote poems lamenting the grief and heartbreak of exile from his homeland, sometimes using burnt sticks to write moving Urdu poems on walls. He died a broken man in 1862, aged 87. The British buried him in an unmarked grave to prevent the site from becoming a focus for future anti-British uprisings. In 1991, workers discovered the grave during excavation, and later erected a shrine over it.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

How the RBI Governor saved India?

2026-09-20T12:26:57.161+08:00

Governor: The Silent Saviour (2026)
Director: Chinmay D. Mandlekar

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/hindi/movie-details/
governor-the-silent-saviour/movieshow/130622351.cms

In the 21st century, India seems to be on a roll. With a young, qualified, internet-savvy population proficient in the world’s lingua franca, the world is its oyster. Its economy, by GDP, ranks sixth after the US, China, Germany, Japan, and the UK.

Its position in 1991, however, was quite dismal: India ranked between 15th and 17th place and accounted for less than 1% of global GDP.

Independent India started life as one of the poorest countries in the world, a far cry from its pre-imperial era, when India and China accounted for two-thirds of the world’s GDP. Nehruvian Fabian economic policies were socialist in nature, and the government of the day had tight control over how money was spent.

In the 1980s, however, under the leadership of Rajiv Gandhi, India increased government spending. External borrowing also became significantly heavy. A growing debt burden and rising inflation were noticed. Tax revenue collection was also dismal. By 1990–91, following the US invasion of Kuwait, oil prices had risen. The import bill increased, and foreign confidence declined. India had very low reserves. By June 1991, it had sufficient reserves to pay for only three weeks of imports. Political instability following the fall of Rajiv Gandhi’s government and the subsequent short-lived rules of V. P. Singh (1989–90) and Chandra Shekhar (1990–91) did not help the situation. Leaders had to focus on their own survival rather than lay out concrete steps to strengthen the economy.

S. Venkitaramanan was appointed Governor of the Reserve Bank of India by the Chandra Shekhar government. Under the Narasimha Rao government, with policies introduced by Finance Minister Manmohan Singh and the RBI Governor, an emergency contingency plan was implemented to address India’s balance-of-payments crisis.

Manmohan Singh oversaw broader fiscal and structural reforms, while the Governor handled monetary, foreign-exchange, and banking matters. It is said that Venkitaramanan, while serving as Finance Secretary (1985–89) under the Rajiv Gandhi government, had alerted the government to the impending danger.

The IMF forwarded a loan while India strategised on measures to improve its finances. The IMF also helped to improve international credibility. The RBI mobilised gold from the country, including 20 tonnes confiscated from smugglers, as collateral to secure loans from the banks of Japan, England, and Switzerland. The gold was India’s last resort to secure the loan and had to be transferred physically and discreetly to convince creditors that India had the reserves. It worked. By November 1991, the RBI had repaid the loan.

P.S. A memorable quote from the movie: “Beyond truth and lies lies responsibility.”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The churning of the primordial soup!

2026-09-17T00:00:00.000+08:00

Newton's Third Law (Telugu; 2016)

Written and Directed by Rajesh Karna

Newton's Third Law of Motion is fundamentally different from that of Karma. According to Newton's laws, equal and opposite forces act in tandem to make an object move. They work in opposite directions and do not cancel each other out.

In Karma, however, the focus is more on the philosophical or moral consequences of one's actions. There are no two opposing forces; rather, one action affects another, as in the butterfly effect, where the flutter of a butterfly's wing can cascade into a tornado, as suggested by Edward Norton Lorenz.

In the Karmic sense, actions are actions. They are neither good nor bad actions. Whatever action one takes, it can set off. Nor is promiscuity triggering climate change. Good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. It is all an interplay of players in the primordial soup, which can be swayed by a single flicker of action.

This story is an interesting one that happens to involve two deaths. A young man in his 20s falls from his balcony. A young mother dies in an apparent hit-and-run, leaving her young child staring blankly into space. The police investigate. That was only the prologue. The current storyline shifts to the present, when someone receives a book in the mail about the incident above. The receiver gets hot under the collar and summons the writer to his mansion.

The story then unfolds. The young man, his buddy, his staff nurse mother, his alcoholic, hot-tempered father and his shortcut to wealth, involving a dangerous gangster. On the other side, the young mother receives news that her husband is killed in a fire. The only connection between these two families is that the young man's mother and the young mother are both nurses and working colleagues.

The joy of the storytelling is that it goes from twist to twist without appearing too outlandish for Indian movie standards. 4.5/5

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

We Come with Nothing…

2026-09-16T00:00:00.000+08:00

It was just another meeting to catch up. The topic that cropped up was about downsizing. One of my friends, now in her sixties, realised that her house was filled with too many things. I do not know whether she had just heard about Marie Kondo, but that was what she had been talking about all night.

It all started when she was growing up among the members of the lower heap of the food chain. Her elders told her to value everything in life. She was taught that even a small twig has its use: to pick the teeth. The compulsion to keep and not waste began

https://borderlessjournal.com/2026/09/15/we-come-with-nothing/

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Use God-given assets to succeed?

2026-09-13T15:47:00.000+08:00

Baby Face (1933)
Directed by Alfred E. Green

I remember someone who was quite a player in his heyday. He left a trail of broken hearts, just moving on after getting bored with his latest flavour of the month or when the girlfriend becomes too clingy. The next thing I heard, after a few years, was of him being hospitalised after a suicide attempt. Apparently, one of the girlfriends he fell head over heels for rejected his advances. The affairs of the heart are sometimes difficult to predict.

Trainees, in those days, were expected to manage all patients in the ward and to rattle off their treatment regimens and latest investigation results at the drop of a hat. Failure to do so will invite verbal and personal abuse from the seniors, all in the name of excellent patient care. In every batch, there would be repeat offenders who would not live up to the mark. Somehow, they would get away with murder, using all of their God-endowed assets. Watching this pre-Code movie rekindled those old thoughts.

Pre-Code movies refer to Hollywood's post-sound movies in the 1920s and the period when strict censorship was enforced in 1934. The Hays Code was deemed necessary to curb the portrayal of crime, sex, and sexual manipulation in a positive light and as rewarding. As with this movie, many filmmakers had to change storylines or dialogue to conform to the Code.

Looking through today's lens, the story may be construed as a feminist rebel yell. But then, maybe not, as here we see female empowerment is seen to be abused to fulfil personal agendas. We also see Nietzsche's text manipulated to justify the heroine's shenanigans through his fictitious book titled 'Thoughts For A Reason'. Nietzsche had always said in the book, "face life as you find it - defiantly and unafraid. Waste no time yearning for the moon. Crush out all sentiments".

Barbara Stanwyck, who was praised for her performance here, plays Lily, a hostess and escort at the abusive father's bootleg bar. The characters who end up are mainly uncouth gangsters and lowbrow members of society. The story seems to suggest the father may have abused her and even encouraged her daughter to cosy up with an important client. A fire destroys the joint and kills her father.

Lily and her servant/confidante were at a crossroads. A cobbler, a frequent visitor of the pub, advises her to migrate to New York to build a good life for herself. That is when she starts holding the bull by its horns. Using her physical charm and feminine prowess, she manipulates men to climb the proverbial corporate ladder at a bank, leaving a trail of broken hearts in succession. The series of boyfriends grows more affluent and powerful over time.

The screened version showed Lily as remorseful and content to start over from the bottom. This type of poetic justice is not seen in the original, uncensored cut (restored in 2004) version. It exposes a significantly more uncompromising view of male hypocrisy and female agency.

P.S. Nope, this movie is not about the life and times of America's notorious bank robber, Baby Face Nelson.

P.P.S. Another Nietzschean quote in the movie is 'you must be a master, not a slave. Exploit yourself.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Only some deserve sensitivity?

2026-09-10T07:04:07.811+08:00

Zoolander (2001)

Director: Ben Stiller

https://letterboxd.com/film/zoolander/

It is now water under the bridge. When Trump made a stopover in Kuala Lumpur last year, he was welcomed by a gleaming Malaysian Prime Minister. Trump was so happy with the hospitality that he broke protocol and started strutting his dance moves with a random Malaysian dancer who was part of the welcoming crew.

Nobody remembered the movie Zoolander, which Hollywood made 25 years earlier, and thought that assassinating the Malaysian PM would be a comedic piece. The average Malaysian would not have had the chance to watch it, as our Censorship Board had banned it. The enthusiastic few would have viewed it after a visit to their friendly local DVD seller, whose network would have a pirated version at hand even before the movie had a theatrical screening.

The Government thought, rightly so, that it was offensive to outrightly mention the call to assassinate the leader of a sovereign state. Most films usually create fictitious countries for these types of acts, such as Wakanda in Marvel and Tomania in Charlie Chaplin's 'The Great Dictator'. But no, it is Malaysia, and it is mentioned 27 times.

Another reason the ruling party, then led by Mahathir Mohamed, was up in arms about the movie was its choice of actor to play the Prime Minister of Malaysia. They thought the actor, an American-Japanese named Woodrow W Asai, looked too Chinese for their liking. There is an unwritten law in the country on who could be the leader of the country or the state under Malay supremacy rhetoric (Ketuanan Melayu) professed by UMNO, the most dominant political power in the country. So, a Chinese face did not cut it!

25 years on, nothing has changed in Malaysia. If anything, with the rise of identity politics worldwide, Malaysia's own brand of divisive politics has gained further legitimacy. What Malaysians thought was reform turned out to be the same garbage, packaged in different vessels. The politicians have sold their souls to Satan to control the majority of seats. It looks like UMNO will hail in the next general election as well.

Zoolander is a lowbrow satire that takes a dig at the modern macho image that modelling agencies project onto men. The male fashion models who are supposed to dictate how a real man should appear in public are portrayed as shallow-minded, effeminate, easily manipulated, unthinking beings who crave to be in the limelight. To many, these narcissistic icons are their role models. Are we heading to a dystopian world of immature humans, less of substance but only colourful outer wrappings?

Derek Zoolander, a three-time model of the year, loses his fourth attempt at the award to an up-and-coming younger model, Hansel. The frustrated Derek is lured by his agent and another fashion mogul to assassinate the new Malaysian Prime Minister, who decided to outlaw child labour, upon which the whole fashion industry apparently thrives. What follows is a goofy storyline meant to entertain only Americans.

P.S. It appears that hurting sentiments only applies to Americans, not the rest of the world. Since the film was released only two weeks after the 9/11 attacks, the director took the executive decision to digitally remove the Twin Towers from the New York skyline as a mark of respect.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

There's a difference between them and us!*

2026-09-05T21:20:49.018+08:00

Operation Safed Sagar (Operation White Ocean; 2026)

Miniseries (E1-6)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt36643714/

US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor's first visit to Jammu and Kashmir has triggered a diplomatic uproar in Pakistan because, in his speech, he mentioned that Jammu and Kashmir was an important part of India. Pakistan's stance, since 1947, has been that Maharajah Hari Singh's accession of the princely state to India is illegal. Being a Muslim-majority state, Pakistan asserts that it should be governed by Pakistan. As far as the UN and many countries that support it are concerned, its people are yet to determine, through a plebiscite, where they want to be. That is why, during the Pahalgam attack, the world heard the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, refer to Kashmir as 'India-occupied Kashmir'. Turkiye and many Islamic nations do not recognise the Line of Control (LoC) as the demarcation that separates the Indian union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh from Pakistan-administered regions like Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.

The modus operandi has always been the same. Be it 1947, when Pakistani soldiers masqueraded as Kashmiri tribal shepherds, starting a skirmish or 1999, when their soldiers infiltrated the no-man's-land dressed as Mujahideen, all the Pakistani government did was deny, deny and deny. They asserted that Pakistani intelligence had no activities at the disputed border and that India was weaving a fiction. The irony of it all was that all of this was happening while India and Pakistan were engaged in cross-border diplomacy. Atal Vajpayee, the then PM of India, went on the inaugural New Delhi-Lahore bus service through the Wagah border into Pakistan to sign the Lahore Declaration with Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif.

As the saying goes, 'all countries have their armies. In Pakistan, the Army has a country'. From 1958, after General Muhammad Ayub Khan became the first military dictator following a coup d'état, the Army has always held the reins over the democratically elected civilian PM. The sudden ouster of Imran Khan after he began criticising the Pakistani Army is a testament to this.

This miniseries is a highly engaging, big-budget TV production that successfully evokes Indian nationalism in its viewers, whilst painting a rather 'lesser than human' kind of persona upon their arch rivals, the Pakistanis.

While Sharif was holding peace talks with Vajpayee, the Army, led by General Parvez Musharraf (who later ousted Sharif as PM), was not having any of those. In their mind, Kashmir is Muslim land, and per the agreement before Partition, it should be given to Pakistan. Period. It did not matter if Kashmiris wanted to remain with India. Cladestinely, Pakistani soldiers crossed over to the LoC, spilt over into Kargil district and occupied strategic checkpoints.

That is where the Indian Air Force Squadron #17 comes in. The story is centred around them. While engaged in one of their aerial reconnaissance drills, one of their fighter jets is hit by a Pakistani missile. To rescue his comrade, another fighter pilot rushed to his rescue. Both jets crashed. The second pilot was, however, apprehended by the Pakistanis, interrogated, tortured and subsequently killed mercilessly. India soon realised that the Pakistanis had infiltrated deep into the LoC.

This started an international scare. Two nuclear nations at loggerheads did augur well for regional stability, the big powers, especially the US, were heard saying. The trouble is that the US were in the precarious position of arming both parties, with preferential treatment to Pakistan, of course.

The Indians were using the Russian-made MiG planes with American-made GPS systems. That is when the Indians realised that the US-made systems were compromised, perhaps intentionally so, to ensure India's failure. Embodying the Indian spirit of jugaad, the Indian Air Force successfully executed critical, unprecedented high-altitude aerial operations to overcome its enemy.

Throughout the whole imbroglio, the Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif was kept in the dark about his Army's operations. Even its Air Force was not brought in. By the time the Kargil War reached its zenith and the Pakistani side was losing, there were mounting pressures to call for a truce. It was a soul-crushing defeat for the Pakistani forces, yet again. Pakistan faced diplomatic isolation. Soon afterwards, Musharaff executed a military takeover and became the supreme leader of Pakistan. For India, the Kargil War was a wake-up call to develop its own expertise. It became evident that their technological know-how jumped by leaps and bounds. Proof of this was seen later in the subsequent space missions.

P.S. 'There's a difference between them and us!*' is a line from the miniseries. Just because the other side acted barbarically, it does not justify doing the same. That makes the difference!

Time to right the wrong?

2026-08-29T00:00:00.000+08:00

Little Children (2006)

Director: Todd Field

https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0IR3T53J
0UTJ6AIR056JYHJXAB

I had not heard of this movie till the trailer just popped up in one of my Buzzfeeds. I looked at it, so I decided to give it a go.

Quite often than not, we are quick to judge other people’s actions. We use some arbitrary yardstick to compartmentalise people and straitjacket them into pigeonholes; this person is good and that one is otherwise. We all inevitably miss the elephant in the room. We ourselves are no beacon of righteousness. Somehow, these shortcomings get obscured in the cloud of hubris.

This film is a satire of all that - a movie about being straight-laced and keeping up with the majority. Set in a suburban neighbourhood, Sarah, an out-of-place, bored housewife who thinks she should be somewhere better, is trapped in a loveless marriage with an internet porn-crazed husband. She spends most of her time taking her daughter to the local park with some gossipy housewives.

To the same playground comes Brad, an unambitious lawyer who has yet to make a full-hearted attempt to pass his law exam. He is married to a high-achieving documentary maker. Brad, on the other hand, is too laid-back, trying to find his mojo. They start an affair. Brad

Against this background, a registered paedophile, Ronnie, lands in the area. There is much apprehension in the neighbourhood. Then, there is Larry, a sacked police officer who shot a child during his police work, whose life purpose is to harass Ronnie, who stays with his mother.

The story goes on to show how people who are quick to judge what is right and wrong can be sucked into wrongdoing. It also shows that one can always make amends for those wrongdoings and make it right again.

The title 'Little Children' does not refer to kids but to adults who behave like little children.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Do you know where you going to?

2026-08-26T00:00:00.000+08:00

From (Season1-4, 40 episodes)
TV series

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9813792/

This is one of those miniseries that one day may build itself a cult following. Mark my words. Even after faithfully going through four seasons of ten episodes each, totalling almost 40 hours of viewing time, I am still perplexed. I am still trying to find a plausible explanation of how the group of people got trapped in a time warp. One moment they were driving on a lonely highway, only to see a fallen tree across the road. In the next moment, they find themselves going around in loops after making a U-turn.

Things become complicated as zombies start roaming as the sun sets and go on a killing spree. The crux of the miniseries is how the people protect each other, outwit the zombies and try to identify cues around them and map out their escape.

It is not as easy as just finding the reset button, pressing the eject button and getting out of the conundrum. There appear to be clues, dead ends and false leads which bring them back to where they started. To top it all, the zombies somehow get their kind to infiltrate and move amongst the non-zombies.

Surprisingly, there is a power supply with no power lines and a water supply with no water pipes. There is a food supply. There is a big collection of people who carry a heavy load of emotional baggage with them. People somehow organise themselves and try to get life going.

The whole show is an analogy of the human path here on Earth; how humans appear on Earth with no idea what they are here for. Armed only with a consciousness that questions everything and a cognitive ability to think out a rational purpose and the path they should lead, he moves on. Throughout the series, we are told of virgin births, reincarnation, intuition, premonition, and more, which do not have easy explanations.

Season 5 is said to be the final season, which is set to explain the whole conundrum. I doubt it. This would not be one of those that end with a bummer, just left without a comprehensive explanation and hinting at the possibility of another season.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

When Life Gives Us Lemons, Make Lemonade!

2026-08-22T00:00:00.000+08:00

The year was 1816. On the 21st October, Reverend Robert Sparke Hutchings, as part of his life mission to civilise the natives, started an English School free from the interference of royalty and wealth. The Penang Free School was opened to all people of Penang who wanted to learn. Hutchings’ idea of a school was not for free, as in charity, but free for all children of different races and creeds to mingle.

That year, too, the modern world first realised how closely connected it was. This was long before the world had known the song ‘It’s a Small World after all!’ A year earlier, Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) expelled megatonnes of volcanic material into the skies. It was the world’s most explosive eruption in recorded history, and its effluents lingered in the atmosphere for a full year, giving the air a permanent, greyish, dirty tinge. As a result, the European winter in 1815 was extreme.

https://borderlessjournal.com/2026/08/21/when-life-gives-us-lemons-make-lemonade/

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Going in Circles?

2026-08-20T00:00:00.000+08:00

I remember a friend, a few years ago, who would not pick up cycling as a recreational activity. At that time, his friends were slowly taking up cycling and cutting back on long-distance running, as years of thumping on the knees had started to take effect. In my friend's mind, reverting to cycling was a kind of downgrade. His immigrant ancestors got off the boats here as economic migrants. Owning a beaten-up bicycle was a luxury. His grandfather had an old bicycle as his sole possession. He had nothing else to do will down to his children, except a roof under which they could shelter and siblings for love and affection. The friend's father managed to own a motorcycle and later a secondhand car. The father, the son of an immigrant, thought he was his success story.

My friend managed one step better. He secured himself a tertiary education and a white-collar post, driving around in a continental car. In his mind, he had made it in life. Philosophically speaking, he had cracked the curse of poverty. Cruising around in an air-conditioned vehicle, protected from the elements, not panting, moving from A to B, is his definition of moving on up. Hence, he said no to cycling.

A few years down the line, surprise, surprise. My friend, too, got the cycling bug. Slowly feeling the strain of running, he too embraced pedaling for health reasons.

These days, he is singing a different tune. He boasts that it is a privilege to have the luxury of spending long hours in recreation while the peasants plough for their supper. He now labels recreational cycling as a bourgeois activity.

Another friend grew up in a new slum-like living accommodation in low-cost flats. He hated his life and frequently felt embarrassed when he needed to fill out application forms. He could not understand why his parents could not live at a place with a regular address but instead in one which stated the floor, lot number and the name of the pathetic flats, which immediately tells the reader that he is from the ghetto.

His aversion to poverty propelled him to move on up the ladder of prosperity. One of the first things he did after working was to buy a home, a landed property with a house number, a road name and a district name.

Time flew by. His daughter, now in her own element, secured a life for herself. The next logical thing to do after marriage was to build a home. So, where did she and her beau decide to do that? Not a landed property, but a high-rise apartment.

The country had progressed and grown exponentially. The price of land and properties had skyrocketed. Naturally, the country was growing vertically. The younger generation, quite impressed with the resort-type of living, often opted to live in condominiums, which provided security and recreational facilities.

My friend, who attended the housewarming celebration, told me what went through his mind as he proudly perused his daughter and son-in-law's brand-new abode.

So that is how it is. Life often comes full circle. What is fashionable today often becomes passé tomorrow. Things that we abhor today may one day become our survival toolkit later on. The high-rise living accommodation that my friend hated in his younger days turned out to be his daughter's crowning glory. We may hate the sight of our parents during the confusing days of the teenage years and vow never to be like them, only to realise, in our twilight years, that the apple does not fall far from the tree. Such is life, taking a full circle.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

What's our new story?*

2026-08-17T00:00:00.000+08:00

Balan: The Boy

Director: Chidambaram

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt35254624/

We are always told that a mother's love has no boundaries and is beyond compare. We have been bombarded with pictures of mothers embracing their offspring, curled up to break the fall of debris in collapsing buildings. And we have seen mothers barging into burning buildings and icy-cold lakes to save their little ones.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have mothers who have done the opposite, unable to bear the burden of feeling empty brought on by the puerperium. The sudden plummeting of 'happy' hormones may lead vulnerable mothers to look at the newborns with contempt, the imp that took away their joy.

Then there are mothers who refuse to sever the umbilical cord that attaches to the newborns. These mothers feel they are the only ones who know their kids inside out. They may go so far as to gaslight them and even create an illness just to show how indispensable they are, like in Munchausen by proxy. Others meddle in their kids' married lives, essentially convinced that no one can do a better job than they can at managing their adult kids' day-to-day affairs.

This story explores a different bond of mother-son relationship; something akin to 'Bonnie &Clyde', only that they are not romantically linked, but linked through maternal-child bondage. The part where they commit crimes and swing from place to place seems somewhat similar. Unlike Ma Baker and the gang of sons who rob, they do not do such things. They just want to be together.

A lot of mystery surrounds a mother and her young son, a team that gets released from prison. Their backstory is not immediately known. The duo moves from town to town, leaving once their caretaker becomes too close or someone from their past resurfaces. In every town they land up in, they assume different identities. Even the son is resigned to this fact and plays the game well. She finally lands as a caretaker with a lonely lady whose children are overseas and have no plans to visit the mother anytime soon. Everything was going on fine. The son started school, and the lady made it clear that she did not want to be attached to anyone. Just then, a former inmate of the prison shows up, complicating everything.

An emotional movie that has an interesting storyline. The story is not told in a linear fashion, leaving viewers to piece it together. Even then, it may not be the right one. A mother-and-son team who just want to be together.

P.S. * "What's our new story?" was the often-repeated dialogue as the mother and son duo went into a new area to assume a new identity.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Nature always wins?

2026-08-14T07:27:55.543+08:00

14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible (2021)

Director: Torquil Jones

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14079374/

Every student knows that Edmund Hillary, a Kiwi, was the first man to reach Everest in 1951. And even about the Brit, George Mallory, who died trying to reach the summit in 1924. Almost never does anyone mention the numerous Nepali climbers and helpers who accompanied them and carried their supplies all along the way.

The Sherpas, living in high-altitude regions around Tibet and Nepal, engaged in farming and herding and had genetically adapted themselves to thin air. Long before the British 'discovered' the Himalayas, this range had been their playground. The British found them invaluable as guides and porters for expeditions.

It became quite obvious when Hilary was knighted, whereas Tenzing Norgay, his faithful companion, was not. The reason cited for this was that Nepal was an independent nation and not part of the Commonwealth. So, it was Sir Edmund Hillary, but sorry, no Sir Tenzing Norgay.

Over the years, since mountaineering tourism became popular, Nepalis have dived head-on into this wildly dangerous recreational activity, which humbles an individual at the same time bringing him to the cusp of death.

In front of the forces of Nature, man is nowhere. High-altitude mountaineers are essentially sitting ducks when they stand at the wrong end of an advancing avalanche. There is practically nothing one can do at this wrath of Nature. Man can foresee, plan, and take the chance, but the mighty Mother has the last say, always.

Nirmal Purja, a Nepali-British who served in the Gurkha regiment, was a latecomer to the field of mountaineering. After a revelation, he found a true calling in climbing hills. If the Westerners can conquer the Himalayas with the guidance of Nepalis and take all the credit for it, without even mentioning the guides' names, why not have a Nepali-led expedition instead, he thought. In most TV interviews, the guides are referred to as 'Sherpas', as if they have no name or a proud surname. Purja wanted to make it right and tell the whole world about it.

He wanted to conquer 14 peaks over 8,000 meters high. This height marks the boundary of what is dubbed the death zone, where the air becomes extremely thin, offering only a third of the oxygen available at sea level.

In the 80s, Reinhold Messner was the first person to have climbed all 14 peaks, over 16 years. In 2013, a South Korean, Kim Chang-ho, completed them in over 7 years. So Purja thought his team could put a wager on completing the feat in 7 months.

Making a challenge was the easy part, but financing the whole project was not. Very few saw the living daylight coming of this endeavour, named Project Possible. First, Purja had to remortgage his house in the UK. Slowly, sponsors started trickling in after Project 1 showed some promise.

The project was divided into 3 phases: one involving Nepal and 6 summits, one involving Pakistan with 5, and finally Tibet with 3.

Each phase had its own spills and thrills. When his team climbed Annapurna, they helped rescue a Malaysian climber who had been exposed to the cold for 40 hours with no oxygen or food. Then, over in Kangchenjunga, they resuscitated three stranded climbers who were later diagnosed with high-altitude cerebral edema. Then at Dhaulagiri, they battled bad snow, which almost derailed their mission. They took the risk and reached the summit.

The second phase, over the relatively untested paths of the Karakoram in Pakistan, had its own dramas. Purja fell and was dragged 100m before he managed to catch a rope. Getting a permit to continue his third phase proved problematic, as China refused to grant permission to climb the last eight-thousanders. Diplomatic efforts from the Nepal Government and persuasive emails from the Chinese fan base were helpful.

In between the projects, Porja and his family had to deal with their gravely ill mother back in Nepal. Completing all the 14 peaks was a bittersweet gift to their mother, who was anxiously monitoring her youngest son's progress. Purja completed the whole task in a record time of 6 months and 6 days.

The team's success proved to be a morale booster to all the Nepali and even Pakistani guides. It portrayed them as elite record-setting athletes rather than mere aides. Pakistani mountain touring industry got a short in the arm. K2 and Nanga Parbat are suddenly on everyone's radar.

There must be something about Nature that draws people to return every now and then. In the words of John Muir, a Scottish-born American naturalist, writer, and early advocate for wilderness preservation, who helped start Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks, 'The Mountains are calling, and I must go!" Purja made another attempt to summit the 14 eight-thousanders again. This time, he and his team were to do it without bottled oxygen.

On his second-to-last mountain, Broad Peak, Purja and nine other climbers were trapped by an advancing avalanche and were killed tragically on 30th July 2026.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

A psychedelic trippy trip!

2026-08-11T00:00:00.000+08:00

Yellow Submarine (1968)

Director: George Dunning

I always wondered about the meaning of this seemingly nonsensical song. What the heck could they mean when they said, "We all live in a yellowish submarine," and "all we need is sky of blue and sea of green"?

What's more, it was made into a full-length animated feature film using psychedelic colours and wavy lines. Initially, I thought it was a children's song. Over the years, I came to understand it was no child's play.

The song, Yellow Submarine, and the movie are satirical depictions of modern society. It showed the dark side of modern society: how people run their lives as ignorant fools, controlled by people in power and probably big corporations.

In summary, the story is about the spoilsport brads, the Blue Meanies, who abhor the colour and cheery atmosphere of Pepperland. Its leader bamboozled his way into shooting down and draining off all the color from the land, turning it into a drab shade of grey. One of the residents managed to escape Pepperland in a yellow submarine to ask for help. Who comes to their rescue but no one other than the wise-cracking, word-playing, nerdy-joke-filled members of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Band, aka the Beatles.

The whole is filled with tongue-in-cheek one-liners that Gen Z and millennials would call lame. For example, in one scene, Ringo is told not to pull a lever but does so anyway, replying, "can't help it I'm a born lever-puller," which sounds just like "I'm a born Liverpooler."

It starts with a rather melancholic song, ‘Eleanor Rigby’, which tells about a rather lonely lady who spends all her time serving the church. A self-conceited pastor writes sermons that nobody listens to. When Eleanor dies, she dies a lonely death. Missed by no one. Even the pastor who handled her ceremony, Father McKenzie, seemed so impersonal. To him, she is just another dead body that needed to be buried. Nobody was saved in a theological sense. They are just trying to illustrate the futility of man's conviction that a personal God is looking after us and that, by serving Him, we would be saved.

Interspersed between scenes are examples of lonely people apparently indulging in purposeless activities, such as binge eating and playing with pets.

Even though, according to The Beatles, Paul McCartney was supposed to have written a whimsical children's song for Ringo Starr to sing, its content delves into psychology and higher-level thinking. There are even a lot of inkblot charts, which are part of the Rorschach Test to uncover personality characteristics, emotional functioning, and thought processes. There is even a mention of the nuances of time expansion theory, which is no child's play. Lines like 'he's so smart, he doesn't know what he doesn't know' must surely be a veiled reference to Socrates' 'I know that I know nothing'.

Most people in their 20s do not really bother about aging. But not the Beatles. McCartney allegedly wrote the song 'When I am 64!' when he was 14. The 'Nowhere Man' may have a reference to Maharishi, the Beatles' spiritual guru at one time. The Guru is supposedly all-knowing about the Universe, but in reality, he does not have all the answers. 'Sitting in his nowhere land, making all his nowhere plans for nobody' seems apt for a man sitting in the Himalayas telling people how to live life. In reality, 'He’s as blind as he can be, just sees what he wants to see….' Someone with all the intellectualism without an emotional connection is going nowhere.

In the story, the Blue Meanies, implying the evil forces of the world, probably people in power, political leaders and clergymen, were just draining the colours of our lives and turning us into grey, uninteresting, lifeless statues. Clearly, the people of Pepperland needed 'Help!'.

So, the Beatles saves the day not with violence, but with lots of love (All You Need Is Love), with 'A Little Help from My Friends', and in the true fashion of the 60s with a little flash of psychedelia (in the sky of blue and land of green and Strawberry Fields). Flashes of green and blue seem prevalent during an acid trip.

Yellow is the colour of fear, and a submarine submerges in the crypts of the cold, dark seas. The reference here is that the mean-meaning Blue Meanies are hellbent on sending mankind into submission. Love, music and art are the saviours to overcome oppression, conformity and emotional isolation.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

From the Poem of Anger!

2026-08-08T00:00:00.000+08:00

Troy (2004)

Director: Wolfgang Petersen

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0332452/

In a sense, the film is a retelling of the Iliad with some modifications. In the Iliad, there was no single hero; everyone played their part and was a hero in their own right. However, in this film, the story revolves around Achilles and his prowess, transforming him into a love-struck lover boy. Nevertheless, Brad Pitt, who portrayed Achilles, excelled in this role. Almost prophetically, Brad Pitt sustained an injury to the same vulnerable part of the Greek warrior.

The film also emphasised that Achilles' weakest point was indeed the tendon bearing his name, where his mother, Thetis — an immortal goddess — held him to dip into the River Styx to make him invulnerable. Achilles was born from the union of an immortal nymph and a mortal father, which made him mortal. Therefore, Thetis aimed to make her son invincible.

The Iliad and the Odyssey are considered the only surviving poems of the ancient Greek epic tradition. There were at least ten to twelve other poems from antiquity that have been lost over time. These epics may constitute different chapters of a larger corpus, but their details are lost to history. The good thing about these poems was that, in each chapter, there was a kind of recap of the chapters before, just like the events at the beginning of the Odyssey overlap with the end of the Iliad. The lost chapters, known as Epic Cycles, tell events happening before the Trojan War: the origins of characters like Achilles, his parents' wedding, Helena's abduction, the mid-war madness, and the tragic events occurring in the aftermath of the War.

In the haste to preserve what was lost, many versions and folklore began to be associated with the myth surrounding the heroes and the sequence of what truly happened. For example, the story of Achilles being dipped is not part of the original Greek myth but a Roman addition.

The theme prevailing in the Iliad is anger. Other books talk about homecoming, betrayal, longing, hospitality and cunning intelligence. Anger caused the Trojan War; anger at having his captive girl (Briseis) taken away made Achilles withdraw from the War halfway; anger at losing Patroclus made Achilles go on a rampage to kill Hector (Patroclus' killer and Paris' brother, who abducted Helen) and drag him all around tied to his chariot. It warns us how wrath can destroy an entire civilisation. Troy was never the same again after the War. Nevertheless, some areas showed compassion and high-level thinking. When rage cooled down, Achilles had an emotional meltdown, looking back at his actions during his meeting with Hector's father, King Priam.

The poem shows how anger reaches a zenith, extends beyond human rage, plateaus, and resolves with an emotional avalanche. By then, its destruction would have reached a point of no return for the rest to pick up the pieces. Everyone finds peace in shared grief.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Cut from the same cloth?

2026-08-05T07:01:41.404+08:00

The Odyssey (2026)
Director: Christopher Nolan

https://www.jubileecast.com/articles/38223/
20260726/the-odyssey-is-unstoppable-
christopher-nolan-smashes-another-
box-office-record-in-epic-second-weekend.htm

The film gives a chance to dive into the dizzying world of Greek mythology. There are so many characters, and their names are so tongue-twisting that they do not stick in the mind.

We all have heard the story of a wooden horse used to trick the enemy and infiltrate their territory somewhere in our school curriculum. But surprise, surprise. Homer, who is credited with writing the poems The Iliad and The Odyssey, only mentioned the wooden horse in passing at the end of The Iliad and the beginning of The Odyssey. It is not the mainstay of these epic poems. It seems that scores of written poems which were transmitted orally through the generations were lost through wars, fires and the passage of time. Some were lost altogether whilst others had patchy retrievals. The epic poem about the Trojan War was completely lost.

For the uninformed, The Iliad narrates the events leading to the Greek-Trojan war, while the Odyssey tells the story of what happens to the victors as they travel back home. Either story spans over ten years each. Ten years fighting the Trojans, and it took another ten years for the protagonist of the story, Odysseus, to return.

The return journey is not merely a narration of sorcery and adventure into unknown lands with scary creatures. It subtly tells us our frailty, our moral dilemmas, our temptations, and the effect wars have on our psyche. In ancient times, there were moral codes to be followed during war and afterwards. Unfortunately, the intoxication of success goes into one's head, and plundering, looting and abuse go unabated. It also warns of the danger of intoxicants (e.g. lotus eaters) where one chooses mindless pleasure over struggles of reality. Repeatedly, Zeus' law is mentioned, emphasising the need to respect visitors as well as for visitors to show decorum. The killing of the Cyclops, son of Poseidon, angered Poseidon. Hence the storm and subsequent loss of ships and crew members.

The final part of the movie tells of how Odysseus sees his kingdom, Ithaca, overrun by opportunistic suitors waiting to pounce on the throne by winning over Penelope, Odysseus' wife.

In many of the Greek poems, they talk about a time when it seems that the Gods interacted quite intimately with humans. They parent children with mortals and somehow pass down certain divine attributes.

There is a curious similarity between the Greek mythologies and those from Ancient India. For a start, there are startling similarities between the Greek Gods and the Hindu Gods. Zeus, the god of thunder, wields a thunderbolt, much like Indra, the Hindu deity of the sky who holds a similar weapon. Both are not devoid of human emotion, like passion, desire and wrath.

The idea of using a wooden animal to infiltrate an enemy's fortress, like the Trojan horse, is also found in the Mahabharata. One of Arjuna's descendants, King Udayana, is said to be famous for taming wild elephants with his veena. One of his rivals built an untameable mechanical elephant for Udayana to tame. He was lured into the jungle, where soldiers hiding in its belly jumped out to apprehend and later imprison him, just like the Trojan Horse, a gift to Athena, allegedly left behind by the fleeing Greeks. Unbeknownst to the Trojans, Greek soldiers hid in the horse, only to terrorise Troy once they were in the fortress.

The Greek-Troy war all arose because Helena, the fairest of them all, who was pledged to be protected by all of Greece, did indeed launch a thousand ships when she eloped with the Trojan prince, Paris. Some accounts say she was abducted by Paris, just like how Sita was abducted by Ravana in the Ramayana.

The Greek soldiers in Troy went on a rampage, burning the whole city down, just like how Hanuman burnt Lanka with his tail.

In one of the later parts of the movie, we are told of Odysseus' uncanny ability to string a bow that no one else could. Such a scene also appears in the Mahabharata. During Sita's Swayamvara (matrimonial tradition), Rama was the only person who could string Shiva's bow.

Odysseus' remarkable shooting of an arrow through a series of targets is reminiscent of Arjuna's similar feat at Draupadi's Swayamvara. Rama too shot a single arrow through seven trees. A Cyclops-like creature also makes an appearance in the Ramayana. Rama and his brother, Lakshmana, encounter Khabanda, who later helps them contact the Vanara Army to rescue Sita.

The Sirens, female-like creatures who could lure men with their high-pitched voices, are compared to the apsaras in ancient Indian mythologies. Unlike their Greek counterparts, who are destructive, apsaras are benevolent. But both put men under a spell.

When Odysseus returns to Ithaca, he has to go under disguise to assess the situation on the ground. He has to find out whether he is still missed, whether his wife has remarried, whether someone else is ruling, and generally assess whether he can return as King. This concept of royalty going incognito seems to be another common thing in the Mahabharata. The Pandavas, as a part of the deal when they went into exile after losing the dice board game, had to spend the thirteenth year in disguise!

https://www.thecollector.com/portugal-indian-ocean-spice-trade/

To top it all off, Homer, if ever he was an individual bardic poet who wrote the Greek epic poems, may have been blind. He compiled age-old oral tradition songs into long poems and painted an image of how Ancient Greeks used to live and value in his mind. Much in the same way, Sanjaya, the court seer blessed with the 'Sanjaya Gift', perceived a running commentary of the events unfolding at the Kurushetra War telepathically. He then narrated the events as they happened to the blind King of the Kauravas.

With so much similarity between the Greek and Indian mythologies, would it be too much to say they are both cut from the same cultural mould? The vast expanse of trade that occurred between these two countries and the mutual respect they had for each other could have sparked cross-pollination of ideas and social mores.

P.S. The Odyssey has been told and retold many times before. It is said that Nolan's Odyssey is a version that seems to satisfy the appetite of the woke community. The use of a Kenyan face to portray Helen, the face that would indeed launch a thousand ships, and whom Homer described as 'white-armed ', is the woke's way of saying beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Rumour had it, before the release of the film, that a transgender actor would play the role of the man who would come to be the very definition of the modern man, Achilles. It turned out not to be so. Indeed, the actor turned out to play another valiant role. Elliot Page played Sinon, the brave but tragic soldier who became a pawn in Odysseus' and Antonio's (who stayed to woo Odysseus' wife Penelope) power play. Sinon was the one who introduced and convinced the Trojans that the Wooden Horse was a gift to Goddess Athena.

P.S.S. The Zeus Law, which was mentioned in the film where guests are treated with utmost respect as the guest may be the gods doing a spot-check, probably died after the Trojan War. The Mycenaeans of the Late Bronze Age did not respect the law when they infiltrated Troy in a wooden horse. The Indians, on the other hand, must have stuck with their own Zeus Law. When the first sailors from Europe landed on their shores, they were treated like gods. We know what happened afterwards.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

A question of trust?

2026-08-03T00:00:00.000+08:00

American Crime Story (Season 3; E1-10)
Impeachment (2021)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2788432/

Many wise men, including Socrates and Valluvar, have noted, in the wealth of knowledge they imparted to the world, that leaders not only need to communicate skilfully, display empathy, garner support, and have a clear vision for their strategies, but also need to display moral integrity.

Of late, it seems the last part is superfluous. In this day and age, the end result determines everything. The path towards achieving this goal, it seems, does not matter. Governments, they say, are separate from personal life. What someone does for recreation after hours remains, as the name says, private. Infidelity, which purists would argue is a form of untrustworthiness, betrayal, and a breach of promise, does not matter as long as the nation's economic prosperity remains unwavering. Trying to right the wrong through the slippery mace of Law is deceptively fraught with biases and the sentiments of the day. The system merely maintains the Law; it does not offer justice to either victims or perpetrators. The only beneficiaries from all this hullabaloo are lawyers.

This miniseries discusses the Monica Lewinsky-Bill Clinton White House fiasco. It highlights how this event specifically affected four ladies dragged into the imbroglio.

The Lewinsky-Clinton scandal and the story of the stained blue dress with recorded telephone conversations captured the imagination of many when it hit the headlines in 1997. Unfortunately, because of the ongoing investigations and the flurry of information from various news channels trying to hit the airwaves with 'Breaking News', the audience was left confused and inundated with so much unnecessary information that never saw the light of day. So, a compilation like this sheds light on what may have happened, providing a bird's-eye view of the situation. Unfortunately, it could be just one person's version of what transpired. After all, Lewinsky is credited as its producer.

Lewinsky is portrayed as an emotionally immature 22-year-old girl born with a silver spoon but a broken family who is helplessly lured by a predatory President when she is interning in the West Wing of the White House in 1995.

After finishing her internship, she was transferred, maybe against her wishes, to the Department of Defence (DoD). At the DoD, she befriended Linda Tripp. Tripp was transferred from the West Wing, too, after the change of administration (from Bush to Clinton) and the demise of her boss. Actually, her overbearing and bossy attitude got transferred to DoD.

Monica started sharing the stories of her liaisons with the President with Linda. Linda, at that time, was quite sore with the White House for being shoved out of the West Wing and was hellbent on exposing some of the wrongdoings that had happened there during her tenure. Her publisher, however, told her that her story did not excite the public. Upon hearing Monica's tall stories with the President, Linda was advised to tape the telephone conversations, which she did. In total, there were 20 hours of Monica's taped conversations with Linda.

Just about that time, in 1994, an Arkansas State employee, Paula Jones, accused Clinton of sexual misconduct when he was the Governor of Arkansas. The story of the tape somehow came to the knowledge of Jones' lawyer. The innocuous court case initiated by a nobody soon took a cataclysmic turn. The independent counsel appointed to investigate Clinton's Whitewater real estate scandal soon expanded to cover Lewinsky's case. The FBI, after getting wind of the Tripp-Lewinsky audio tapes, soon moved in to charge the President with perjury and later impeachment. The tapes later proved that Clinton's famous words, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky", were lies.

Another nitpicking line from Clinton's grand jury testimony about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky is "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is".

Paula Jones is portrayed as a simpleton, an insecure woman manipulated by her lawyer and her husband. Even though Paula was content with the $70,000 payoff promised to Clinton, she was hoodwinked into pursuing it further, hoping for a bigger payoff and an apology. Sadly, nothing like that happened. She later divorced her husband and led a quiet life. Her insecurity pushed her to have plastic surgery. To make ends meet, she posed nude in Penthouse and even took part in a celebrity boxing match in 2002.

Linda Tripp, a discontented civil servant full of herself, considered her transfer to the DoD a demotion, even though she was drawing a higher salary. Perhaps, to hit back at the White House for ditching her, she began compiling facts about Clinton's escapades. At the end of these, throught the impeachment trials and thereafter, she was easily the most hated person in the US.

Hilary Clinton, the woman scorned amid this whole affair, was in limbo about how to react throughout the drama. Her ratings as a politician actually escalated. It later paved the way for her presidential candidacy.

Lewinsky became the butt of jokes in many late-night comedy shows. She disappeared from public view for a decade and returned from the UK to the US, rebranding herself as a crusader against online harassment and cyberbullying.

Nobody actually knows why the people involved in the saga did what they did. Was it to carve out money from the deep-pocketed who did not mind disposing of a little spare change? Did they pursue the matter because it was a responsible thing to do, not wanting to mar the august post of a leader of a sovereign nation? Did they crave their time in the spotlight and the grandiosity placed upon them? Whatever their true intent may have been, the final beneficiaries were the lawyer who laughed all the way to the bank. Not to forget the media, who made mountains out of molehills with their hourly breaking-news segments, churning out the same garbage ever so often.

We are left with this question. Society has put certain sanctions on human behaviour. A person in power is expected to maintain these man-made mores. Can we trust a leader who breaks the trust of fidelity to safeguard many of the country's deep secrets? Can we trust him to put the citizens' priority above anything else? Is a private affair quite distinct from holding office?

Bill Clinton had to go through the impeachment trials but came out smelling of roses. The trials ended with the House of Representatives finding Clinton guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice. Still, the Senate acquitted him after failing to get the mandatory two-thirds majority vote to convict. He completed his second term and remains a million-dollar-demanding speaker at high-brow society. His Clinton Foundation is still active, doing what it does best.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

When you gloat in praise...

2026-07-31T00:00:00.000+08:00

American Crime Story (Season 2; E1-9)

The Assassination of Gianni Versace (2018)

https://ew.com/tv/2017/06/21/the-assassination-of-gianni-
versace-american-crime-story-cover/

There used to be a time when random killings, serial killings, and killing sprees only happened in the United States. At least, that was what it was till about the turn of the last century. So, that was how the Generation-Xes and Boomers felt when John Lennon was gunned down by a deranged fan, Mark Chapman, in the streets of New York on a December morning. Almost everyone accepted the fact that it was what some fans do to their idols in America.

In the same manner, when we heard of Gianni Versace, the fashion icon, being shot down at his doorstep in 1997, the same thought went through the minds of newspaper readers. The stress of modern living did that to people, we thought. Till such a random killing hit our shores, a 16-year-old was stabbed by a schoolmate in Banting, and a 19-year-old college student was stabbed 61 times in Terengganu. If not for our strict gun laws, the victims would have been shot instead.

There is something queer about the modern groups that scream at the top of their lungs that there should be a separation between physical intimacy and deep, exclusive commitment. Who better to promote this than the LGBT movement itself! They preached free love and the pursuit of authentic relationships devoid of restrictive societal and state norms.

So, when Versace, an unabashed gay personality, was shot down by Andrew Cunanan, another gay man, the investigators sat down to investigate. The dizzy LGBT world was not about creating a world of apple bees and honey bees, but has its own testosterone-raged moments. Infidelity, abandonment, domestic abuse and violence are there just like in any heterosexual union. Added to intoxicants and abuse of substances, the outcome is lethal.

This mini-series is an attempt to give a human face to the killer who shot a man for no apparent reason. Told in the 'Memento' fashion of 'non-linear' storytelling, it tries to find the possible reason why Cunanan did what he did and the trail of brutal killing he left before being cornered for this one.

At the end of the show, what one can sum up from his story is these. Andrew grew up in a family with an abusive but extremely timid mother. Despite being abusive to his wife, Andrew's father, a Filipina immigrant, put Andrew on a pedestal. He even gave up his master bedroom to his son to use while the parents used one of the other regular rooms, even though Andrew had two other siblings. Andrew was pampered with money and gifts. He grew up to be a prolific liar who thrived on telling tall tales about his life. This narcissistic smooth-talker identified as gay and moved along that circle. He befriended lonely, wealthy, older gay men to have sexual liaisons in lieu of cash. Amid the constant changes in get-ups, narration, and friends, Andrew also befriended other contemporaries who eventually discovered his lies.

Feeling disappointed, unable to be the most liked, successful and wealthy person he always thought he would be, and looking at Versace as the gay icon that he should have become, the experts feel that led to Andrew Cunanan's killing spree. Technically, he is not a serial killer, as serial killers kill in a particular pattern, leaving signature marks.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.