Weekend musings - 04
The week of activists getting bail, turning tracks, and Drishyam 2
First a request:
Do you have deposits in a bank? Obviously, you will have. Good for you. Now check if you have mentioned a nominee. If you haven’t then please do it without any further delay. You don’t know when you will die and once your dead your family will have to run from pillar to post just to prove that they are your legal heir.
My dear father created two deposits without any nominee in SBI. And now for more than a month, I have been running from one government office to another for creating a “Family Tree”. So that my mother becomes a nominee and both her sons have no objection.
And if you can’t speak Kannada then life has some sweet surprises. The entire system is online but while we are going digital we hardly test how the entire workflow works. So you are at the mercy of government babus and agents all eyeing for money.
Save your family from the pain.
Activists getting bail, cracking pitch and social media laws
The week has been a sparkling one.
India got a new stadium named after our PM that started cracking from day one. India won the third test wrapping it up in two days. It was exciting but the credit goes to the pitch - Joe Root took 5 wickets for 8. Obviously, the English were not moaning about this achievement. Anway both tea and cricket invented by the English are now almost ruled by the Indians.
The week also witnessed activist Nodeep Kaur, and Disha Ravi getting bail, petrol prices are closing to Rs.100, Didi riding an electric scooter to show her might in a state that is already witnessing blood bath, the ceasefire on the LOC, China, and India border de-escalation(TikTok isn’t coming back) and state governments warning of another lockdown.
Citizens are like Poda - “We don’t fear the virus anymore.” Definitely, it is not cool.
The week was also about a single-judge bench of the Allahabad High Court rejecting an anticipatory bail application filed by Aparna Purohit, a top Amazon executive in India over a UP Police FIR in Noida against the makers of the web series 'Tandav'. Ms. Aparna has been accused of promoting religious enmity and defiling a place of worship.
As quoted by NDTV:
"Whenever such crimes are committed by some citizens of the country, like the applicant and her co-accused persons, and it is made the subject matter of demonstration and public protest, the forces inimical to the interest of this country become active and they make it an issue and raise it before different national and international forums alleging that the Indian citizens have become intolerant and 'India' has become an unsafe place to live.
"Even in the liberal democracies of the West, it becomes a topic of debate and the Indian diplomacy has to face tough time protecting the interest of the country and assuring the international community that the protests made against such acts are stray and genuine and it is not mark of any intolerance in the country as a whole."
Referring to the case of comedian Munawar Faruqui, the judge said, "Western filmmakers have refrained from ridiculing Lord Jesus or the Prophet, but Hindi filmmakers have done this repeatedly and still doing this most unabashedly with Hindu Gods and Goddesses. Things are worsening as is evident from the fact that an obscure stand-up comedian, Munawar Faruqui, from Gujarat made comments on Hindu God and Goddesses in a New Year show at Indore and gained undue publicity on being arrested in a case.
My entertainment shouldn’t be at the cost of someone’s faith or belief. In comes the aspect of freedom of speech. But I am amazed at how everything has been connected. If you have followed the Munawar Faruqui case then the reason he got bail was that the police had no strong evidence for his crime.
Earlier this week Disha Ravi was granted bail from a court in Delhi. "The resistance to the bail plea seems to be more of ornamental in nature…Considering the scanty and sketchy evidence available on record, I do not find any palpable reasons to breach the general rule of 'Bail' against a 22-year-old young lady,” the court said.
"Even our founding fathers accorded due respect to the divergence of opinion by recognising the freedom of speech and expression as an inviolable fundamental right. The right to dissent is firmly enshrined under Article 19 of The Constitution of India."
23-year-old Dalit labour activist Nodeep Kaur gets bail by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in an attempt to murder case.
Somewhere the law of the land is still strong. However, all of them had a strong influence and media support so it got due attention. What about the rest of the crowd who are battling every day to get some respite.
Visiting a government office is no less than a horror movie.
Meanwhile, the Indian government announces new social media laws to curb misuse. The one guideline that caught my attention was the section on Traceability as reported by MediaNama.
Significant social media intermediaries will have to enable the identification of the originator of the information for the sake of investigation purposes. This essentially challenges end-to-end encryption available on messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Signal. Readers should note that traceability has been a controversial subject, and was also prescribed in the previous draft Intermediary Guidelines, 2018.
Going forward if the Government wants to know the source of the message on WhatsApp, Facebook has to oblige it without any drama.
Controlling social media was on the agenda for Congress when they were in power. In fact, states and centers have been working together to bring a controlling mechanism. Just that the present government has been aggressive behind it.
While it will give more power to the governments and stop the growth of big tech but what happens when these powers are misused to stop an agitation.
Think before what you post on social media becomes all the more important in the present times.
Do we know thyself?
Do you know that the Egyptian people revolted against the Mubarak regime even though it provided them with safer and longer lives than any previous regime in the history of the Nile Valley?
Yuval Noah Harari argues in the last section of Sapiens - “The average Egyptian was far less likely to die from starvation, plague or violence under Hosni Mubarak than under Rames II or Cleopatra.” He further adds:
“They weren’t comparing themselves to their ancestors but rather to their contemporaries in Obama’s America.”
In this section the author discusses and does his best to decode happiness and the various theories around it - Buddhism says that the key to happiness is to know the truth about yourself. But do we really who we are. Most of us wrongly identify ourselves with our feelings and thoughts, likes, and dislikes.
The pertinent question is do we know the truth about ourselves.
Buddhism says craving is the root cause of all our problems. We need to stop craving, accept the present moment or whatever we have, and live in the moment. Instead of fascinating what might have been.
Brilliant but no one told me when I was growing up. Everyone advised me to chase things in the external world. Happiness was meant to be in love, sex, money, and external assets.
During my second Vipassana 10 day camp, 2018, I asked my teacher - how is it possible to love someone without getting detached. “Imagine I have a daughter and you are asking me to not love her madly. I should keep a balance so that if tomorrow she dies I am okay with her loss. And you are telling to a 40-year-old man who has been programmed to love and look at life in a completely different manner.”
The teacher smiled and said you can start from now. And my struggle continues to observe myself and my emotions.
Last night I had a long debate with a dear friend about the similarities between a dating platform(Bumble) and matrimonial sites(JeevanSathi). “The end goal is the same everyone is trying to find a soulmate because everyone wants a happy life.” was my argument.
While making this assumption I have selected girls over 35+ in mind. You can argue with me on this but I have been on Bumble for a while and I freaked out seeing every other profile wanting to find their soulmate or man of dreams on the platform.
Can we at least hold a conversation before looking for a soulmate? And hence my stint was short-lived.
Thereafter I decided to settle with peace rather than finding happiness.
At the end of the chapter, Yuval says that history books focus on the ideas of great thinkers, and their bravery but they say nothing about how all the influenced the happiness and sufferings of individuals. “The biggest lacuna in our understanding of history. We had better start filling it.”
At least we have started to study the history of happiness.
Drishyam 2 - an exciting thriller
Is Georgekutty happy now that six years have passed from the crime he committed to protect his dear family?
He now owns a theater and has invested plenty into a script. He wants to make a big name in Malayalam cinema. But the fear of the police and the past consequences are killing the family. Nevertheless, Georgekutty is living a happy life with positive thinking.
That is the first half for you from Drishyam 2 - streaming on Amazon Prime. While the first half has its moments, I was anticipating what is going to happen but the calmness on the face of Georgekutty and the odd characters were enough to make me restless.
This is the brilliance of a storyteller Jeetu Joseph( writer and director) who is playing with his audience in the first half while setting up the build-up. Then the second half hits you so hard that you are now catching with every move that Georgekutty is going to make. The last 20 minutes of the movie when the master plan unfolds makes the sequel a promising watch.
In 2013 the original Drishyam in Malayalam was released. I watched it after watching the Bollywood version. Ajay Devgn and Tabu did a neat job but Mohanlal is Georgekutty.
In the second offering, he does a phenomenal job. The beauty of Mohanlal is his eyes and expression. He pretty much has a straight face and in that face, you will find his love for his family, his drinking banter and in that same face, you will find guilt and anger as well.
The last 2-minute walk has no dialogues, no chest-thumping, no muscle power but it is such a powerful one.
I will watch it again. But this one deserved the magic of the big screen.
Two other movies that caught my attention - The Dig and Penguin Bloom. Both have their own charm that are being streamed on Netflix. The first one is a British drama based on a book with the same name which reimagines the events of the 1939 excavation of Sutton Hoo. History fascinates me and so did this one with the overlapping of human emotions.
On the other hand, Penguin Bloom is also based on a book of the same name which is a story about a happy family that suddenly is left in shambles after the mother(Sam Bloom) is bedridden due to partial paralysis. Life starts changing when an injured Magpie bird is adopted by the family. The bird named Penguin gives hope to Sam to fight and live life once again.
It is a true story.
I leave you with my favorite song of the week from the Tamil movie 96 - Kaathalae Kaathalae (Love Love)
Peace be with you,
PN.