GBUF - 16Jan22

 

Happy New Year! Happy Pongal/Sankranti!

Here is our latest edition of Good/Bad/Ugly/Fun of what happened over the last week around us.

CYA: Views are mine 😊

#sriGINthoughts #GBUF

 

#Good 💚

·       Next time you take a bus at the bus stop near Fu Lu Shou complex in Bencoolen Street, look carefully at the green advertisement box there. And don’t be surprised to see some kalian or cabbage or lettuce growing there. #GIC has embarked on this initiative to raise the profile of urban farming in Singapore by having these boxes in seven bus stops across the island. Well, the wife has a mini farm in our block from which we get a frequent supply of bananas, curry leaves, flowers etc. Where is that next piece of land? #SuperbanFarming

·       Next time when people buy coffee from one of the ~37000 Café Coffee Day vending machines in India, spare a thought to an entrepreneur VG Siddhartha, who took away his life unable to take the burden of mounting debts. 18 months later, his wife Malavika Hegde helming the affairs at the beleaguered company has managed to reduce the debts by over 75% (from about USD 1Bn). Granted she has sold most of the non-core businesses; maybe she had help from her politically-connected family. But got to say, she ensured the coffee #SmellsGood

#Bad 💔

·       King Kohli, the fire behind India’s many wins over the last seven years has stepped down from captaincy. His aggression, energy and in-your-face attitude burnt down many an opponent; at the same time, they affected people who weren’t seeing eye-to-eye in his own dressing room, as Ashwin-supporters will vouch for. But do not take away the fact that Kohli was the main man behind building an India team which these days enters most of the contests as favourites, domestic or overseas. There in lies his legacy. #LongLiveKing

·       We spoke about their predicament a few weeks back. Now Sri Lanka’s problems seem to have been exacerbated more. If debt obligations of USD 29 Bn are not met, the country of 22 million will go bankrupt this year. That is less than 10% of Elon Musk’s net worth, to put things in perspective. A country caught in between the machinations of an indifferent northern neighbour and an ambitious far-off economic giant. Hope they survive this and comeback good. #TroubledEmerald

 

 #Ugly 😡

·       Kollywood and Tollywood have taken a few extra(!) regressive steps recently. First it was actor Siddharth (who?) baiting India’s ace badminton champion Saina Nehwal with a sexist, innuendo-filled tweet, just because she supported Modi. Then the latest Telugu hit Pushpa has gone onto ensure that the female characters (including a O-Oo so ‘philosophical’ Samantha) do stuff for money, all the while spouting mother sentiments. #ThaggedeLe 

·       World is suffocating under the stress of omicron. Governments world over, are struggling hard to ensure normalcy returns based on vaccination of its populace. Then you have someone like Novak Djokovic upping the ante in the reverse direction. He tries to enter Australia with NoVac, claims his agent made a mistake, says he got Covid in December, probably broke his own country’s isolation rules. All for what? To risk hundreds, perhaps thousands? #ChampionJoker

#Fun 😆

·       World has so far revelled in spewing four-letter words right, left and centre. Enter Joseph Wardle, a software engineer (who else?). He created a simple, addictive game called #Wordle where you are expected to know ‘good’ five-letter words. Like I said, the game is quite simple. You can play it only once a day. You get six tries to guess the word with some clues. It probably takes about five minutes to indulge in some mental calisthenics. Play it. #PowerWordle

·       While Darwinism proposed that humans evolved from monkeys, science has found that the pig organs are remarkably less likely to be attacked by human immune systems. It took a significant forward step when a team lead by Dr Muhammad Mohiuddin from University of Maryland transplanted a genetically modified pig’s heart to a terminally ill David Bennett, (who is well), the health frontiers have opened up. Imagine David being ribbed for being pig-hearted instead of being pig-headed! #HeartFullOfVaraha

 

Sources: The Straits Times, Lowy Institute – The Interpreter, The Nature, ESPN Cricinfo, Amazon Prime, powerlanguage.co.uk, Tamil Murasu

Three Patient Tries!

 

Patience is key to success in life.

Even the most impatient over-achievers were patient at some stage.

In Tamil, you have the saying: பொறுத்தார் பூமி ஆள்வார். (The patient ones shall rule the world).

Hindi also has it: सब्र का फल मीठा होता हैं (Fruit of patience is sweeter).

By a quirk of end-of-year fate, we watched three movies over the last few days - all of them extolling the virtues of patience. The choice was random. The coincidence uncanny.

Jai Bhim [Victory to Bhim]

[Tamil; Prime]

Loosely based on a real incident about the trials (literally) and tribulations (too literally) of a tribal woman belonging to Irular community (who live/d a life of catching snakes and doing other menial jobs). It is about one intrepid lawyer’s (Justice Chandru) struggle to find her husband and his friends after they disappear from police custody. Police brutality is common across the world. Degrees vary. But the depiction of the same in this movie has notched it up a few levels. Not for the faint-hearted. 

The court scenes are like Sehwag’s batting – playing to the gallery. Messages are hard-hitting. But what was really heartening was to see how patiently the case is unraveled – step by step, knot by knot. If it were a Vijay/Ajith movie, there would have been a few action sequences introduced to settle the matters then and there 😊 All the brouhaha about caste misrepresentation/change etc., simply misses the point in my opinion. The first five minutes of the movie simply hits the nail on the head and that is that. Jai Bhim is the rallying slogan by Dalits in India to remember Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar. Apt.

#StrongBhim 🌞🌞🌞⛅

Yara [Butterfly]

[Italian; Netflix]

Another movie based on a real-life incident that rocked Italy from 2010. It is the story of an investigator who goes to great lengths to find the culprit responsible for the disappearance of a teenage girl. How she goes about it methodically, amidst mounting political and departmental pressure, self-doubts, insecurities, mistakes et al., forms the crux of the movie. The scientific details are unobtrusive, and the super-methodical nature of the investigations hook you to the proceedings. 

What could have turned into an emotional mush has been handled deftly. The cinematization of events in certain portions – politician’s Sehwag-like (that man again!) proclamations, Bhagavad Gita moment for the heroine – they were probably added to make us feel for the story; but superficial since the premise was strong enough. Of course, the very patient sifting for the proverbial needle in the DNA stack was what ‘wow’ed us. Just went on to prove that real-life is often in a sllllloooow motion when compared to the reel life.

#FlutteringButterfly 🌞🌞🌞

Sardar Udham [Leader Udham]

[Hindi; Prime]

Indian Independence struggle is truly historic. In a protracted fight spanning more than a century, the largely non-violent approach was interspersed with some violent mutinies of various sizes. People still refer to the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny as the first struggle; but there have been several even before that.

Fast forward to 1919. The British government ruling India passes Rowlatt Act empowering the gahmen to try certain political cases without juries and permitted internment of suspects without trial. Tough. Protests sprang up all over the country and more so in Punjab. On 13^th April 1919, a large, peaceful crowd of men, women and children gathered in Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar. Rest, as the cliché goes, is bloody history.

This movie is about Udham ‘Ude’ Singh, one of the affected people from Jallianwala Bagh/Amritsar massacre in 1919. He becomes a revolutionary (a lovely definition by Bhagat Singh on what differentiates a revolutionary from a terrorist 💓); gets caught; escapes from the prison; travels through Afghanistan, Russia and reaches London; waits patiently like a vulture and assassinates Michael O’Dwyer, the Governor of Punjab who gave a carte blanche to General Dyer to ‘instill fear’ on that fateful day. Well, his wait was for almost 21 years to seek revenge! That is some patience, one might say!

Movie worked largely due to wonderful casting & excellent period setting. Vicky Kaushal as Sardar Udham, the investigating officer Stephen Hogan, Shaun Scott as the remorseless Dwyer – all of them carried the movie exemplarily.

The massacre scene was quite gory. Again, not for the faint-hearted. But that was nothing when compared to the next 20-odd minutes which were excruciating to say the least. Probably that was needed. In fact, in a tribute to Attenborough’s Gandhi, the first few shots of the massacre resembled the ones from Gandhi; but then it veered full left, right after that – after all, this is a movie about violence, right?

Thankfully, the movie was not jingoistic (unlike Uri – Vicky got a India National Award for acting in that!) to the large part and stuck to the known facts and figures.

#OdeToUde 🌞🌞🌞⛅

#sriGINthoughts #reviews #movies