Skip to main content

Lucifer and some reflections



Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer. These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot.

The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero suggests that too without much subtlety.

Just yesterday the National Herald came out with a shocking report that an enormous sum of three lakh crore rupees was printed abroad in duplicate and flown to Delhi and Amit Shah used that new currency to help certain bigwigs to exchange their old currency during the Tughlaqian days of demonetisation. Something similar happens in the movie, Lucifer. A sum of thousand crore rupees is transported to Kerala by a mafia leader in order to bribe the state’s ruling politicians. The hero intercepts the three vehicles on their various routes and the vehicles along with all that money are annihilated.

One vital question raised by the movie is whether it is necessary to have affluent corporate people to fund political parties. Can’t political parties govern the nation without such funding? Of course, that would entail basic honesty in politics. Honest politics is an oxymoron today.

We have seen ever-increasing involvement of industrialists and business people in politics especially in the last few years. We have seen our public sector banks being looted by industrialists some of whom were allowed to leave the country with their loot, a few were seen with our prime minister abroad signing new business deals of billions of dollars while at the same time those people pleaded bankruptcy in India, a few others continue to run the show with increased vigour.

The movie also shows how the media, particularly the television, has been whored by the politicians. There’s a channel, ironically named as NPTV [irony because the actual NDTV is one of the few TV channels that retain some sort of integrity even on the face of serious threats from the ruling, Orwellian political party and also because one of the characters refers to NPTV as “24x7 news channel” disregarding any subtlety], which is sold out entirely to the IUF political party [whose flag bears an uncanny resemblance to that of the Indian National Congress].

The climax of the movie implies that only a Lucifer (leader of the fallen angels, an angel nevertheless) can redeem the country now. Is counter-violence really the solution for political corruption? I’m left wondering. Personally, I can’t answer yes to that question because I believe violence is not an answer to anything. Yet what is happening in the country today makes me think that there is really no other viable solution except certain annihilations. What guarantee do we have, however, that the annihilators will be angels albeit fallen ones and not monstrous terrorists?

If you can nurture even a cruel thought in your heart, you are a cruel person even if you don’t commit the act. Can annihilators be benign? I wonder.



Comments

  1. Rajeev MoothedathApril 11, 2019 at 8:12 AM

    I wonder too- There seems to be hardly any light at the end of the tunnel...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 11, 2019 at 11:24 AM

      When art and literature begin to lose hope, there really is no hope. Look at our leaders if you wish to know the reason.

      Delete
  2. Sonal's PalletteApril 11, 2019 at 2:10 PM

    Okay, so now I understand the hype around this movie. It must have been a good watch apart from the gravity defying action and flashy song and dance routine. I think you are right, politics today is only about making money apart from the lust of power. Power is a different kind of intoxication and money is another.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 11, 2019 at 7:29 PM

      Those who never succeed in the necessary process of self-discovery turn out to be criminals and good many of them end up in politics. Gujarat is the hotbed of traders, in addition. Just imagine the coupling of venality with commerce.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
16 comments
Read more

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
30 comments
Read more

Dharma and Destiny

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...
28 comments
Read more