Meeting Dr. Kalam!

Today, I met Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam, the former President of India at North Eastern University(NEU) in Boston. He attended the Energy Expo at NEU. This is the second time I am meeting him in person. Back in 1992, he presided over the convocation at IIT Madras. That was the first time I met him. He was then the head of DRDO-India. 17 years has brought a lot of change in life. He went on to serve as the President of India and ascended to the peak of his reputation. It was a honour and privilege to listen and talk to him. He was kind enough to sign his book "Ignited Minds" for me. He talked about the importance of having a vision and leadership ability to bring the vision to reality. He recited the following poem and made the entire audience repeat after him.

If there is righteousness in the heart,
there will be beauty in the character.
If there is beauty in the character,
there will be harmony in the home.
If there is harmony in the home,
there will be order in the nation.
If there is order in the nation,
there will be peace in the world.

and asked so where does one learn to be righteous?! It was funny to watch him give marks to the audience who answered. Some got 20, 30 and one guy shouted "Father" and he got 50. Then Dr. Kalam went on to answer the question himself.

"There are only three sources to learn righteousness.
1. Mother and
2. Father."
He immediately qualifed the two with the phrase "in a spiritual environment" and added
"3. Primary school teachers!"

He insisted that the people who have profound impact on every individual are the influencial teachers of early education. I couldn't agree more.

What I found interesting was that he extended my understanding of Character and Destiny as stated in my previous posts by identifying the root cause of those qualities. That leap makes it possible to derive a set of actionable steps to influence character building and thus facilitate grass root transformation in the fabric of a nation.

Danish and Dutch...Did you know?

Danish is the language spoken in Denmark. Dutch is the language spoken in The Netherlands.

Netherlands is sometimes (falsely) referred to as Holland (which really is just a part of The Netherlands).

I am human

This is a review of the Tamil movie “Naan Kadavul” (Translation: I am God) by director Bala. This movie seems to have made significant impact on many people and the reviews have generally been in praise of the subject matter of the movie, the protagonist and the director. If you have not seen the movie you may not want to proceed further with this review since it may spoil the story line for you.

For some time I was reluctant to watch this movie since I only expected a sad and dismal movie from this director on some off beat subject. His previous movies, although were commercially successful and won several awards from Indian agencies handled odd subjects and generally portrayed a tragic view of life in an extremely violent manner, all disguised in the name of reality. I brought myself to watch this movie when a chance came by recently. It just reinforced my view of the director’s mindset.

This is a disturbing movie, to say the least, with a cannibalistic psycho sanyasi as the protagonist who comes to clash with the life of helpless, handicapped beggars forced into begging by ruthless exploiters. The beggar leader in the name of offering protection to the beggars’ savings and begging zones, in the absence of any systemic protection for such people, violently ill treats those folks. The cruelty of this exploiter who networks across state borders to buy and sell orphaned children, handicap them and force them into begging is mind boggling. It also reinforces the slum dog millionaire view of the Indian begging situation.

The hero sanyasi is an arrogant, kanja doping young man who was abandoned by his parents when he was young because few astrologers deemed him to be bad luck to his family. He grows up on the cremation grounds of Kasi and was taught that he is part of Siva, the God of destruction in the Hindu mythology. So he grows without understanding any human value or emotion or respect for life.

The movie shows the sad life style of the subjects in gory detail and climaxes with a bizarre “deliverance” of a pathetic blind beggar girl who is violated by her master. The movie doesn’t fail to glorify the psycho who thinks he can kill anyone and remains above the man made laws. The authorities who are there to protect the innocent victims are in cahoots with the beggar leader and are afraid that the sanyasi will “curse” them. So they let him go scot free.

The movie is probably not intended to have any message. However, if you think through the story line a bit, it expresses a half baked understanding of Hindu mythology. The title claims that the Sanyasi declares himself as God and plays the role of the Destroyer to liberate a suffering soul from her earthly life and destroys the evil that causes the suffering. So the title is justified to that extent. However, isn’t the intent of the destroyer also the renewal of life? Per Hinduism, Brahma creates and Vishu grows. Siva completes the cycle by destroying and enabling creation and growth to sustain endlessly. Destruction is never for the sake of just that; violent destruction that doesn’t end anything or enable creating anything. It is here a gap arises in the perhaps unintended message of the movie. Of course an explanation can be offered in terms of Karma of the ‘ill fated’ individuals. This has been the foundation of all problems in India historically. Everything is “understood” and felt pity about, but nothing is done since it is deemed that destiny governs the life of the suffering and some lone hero will come to rescue them. This movie goes down the same beaten path to glorify life of an outcast who in the name of “helping poor souls” kills them without any remorse.

There is no denying of the injustice and the mysticism in the world. I am not sure if it is art to express the failed life of a likely mentally disturbed and disillusioned individual who dwells on death and killing people. The sadness of the story line and the brutality depicted is unprecedented. It is as if the movie is intended to raise your feeling of disgust and make you feel depressed as an after effect. There is little entertainment value in the movie.

The context is unusual, the story is disturbing, the message whether intended or unintended is confused and there is little entertainment value. So what is it that I don’t find in this movie that people are gloating about? If you thought this is a great movie, won’t you let me know please…?!