Tag: Netflix

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2022-16

About: the world this week, 17 April to 23 April 2022, a not-even-a-fly-can-escape kind of siege, the wind in the air, a champion of the Earth, and getting back your sleep.

Everywhere

I’ve tried to keep Ukraine off the headlines, but Russia’s abominable actions insist I keep it: no intimidation, though.

India struck a chord this week, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projecting that India is all set to bulldoze its way into becoming the fastest growing economy in 2022. IMF forecasts a GDP growth of 8.2% for India. India is a happening place. And despite all the noise there is a certain quietude in which you can go about your business.

The coronavirus is still around and cases are increasing in almost every state of United States and most parts of the world. Masking, physical distancing, and clever ventilation are the three mantras -in addition to the hand washing technique – we need to keep saying as often as possible.

The Last Man Standing

Near about 60 days of the Russia-Ukraine War and Russia is unable to gain control of any prominent city-primarily due to the fierce iron-resistance of the Ukrainians.

Last week Russia issued an ultimatum to surrender, to the last remaining Ukrainian troops holding out in the besieged port city of Mariupol, but it wasn’t heeded this week. The city has been facing a humanitarian catastrophe for weeks, as Russian tanks advanced pulverising everything in its path. The number of civilians killed is unknown.

Meanwhile, Russia’s President has ordered his troops to ‘put in place’ a ‘not-even-a-fly-can-escape siege of Mariupol.

The fall of Mariupol, the largest trading Port in the Azov Sea from which Ukraine exports grain, iron and steel, and heavy machinery, would be an economic blow to Ukraine and a strategic victory for Russia, connecting territory it holds in Donbas with Crimea it annexed in 2014: all stolen from Ukraine. Expect Russia to announce the ‘Liberation of Mariupol’, should they succeed.

In what is being called Phase-II of the Russian Invasion, an offensive in the eastern Donbas region is underway. The stated goal of the invader is to secure all of Ukraine’s eastern regions parts of which Russian-backed separatists have controlled since 2014. Another aim seems to be to crush the remaining resistance in Mariupol to consolidate a land bridge linking the Russian region of Rostov with Crimea.

The battle of Kyiv may be over, at least for now, but the battle of Donbas is becoming more intense and the West needs to keep pumping weapons into Ukraine to sustain the fight, while saluting the bravery of Ukrainians.

The Ukrainians have shown themselves to be canny tacticians in this conflict, ceding territory to preserve resources, but using their knowledge of the land and their mobility to inflict heavy losses on Russian units.

At this stage, Ukraine has its tails up. And I wish they capture a big victory in this senseless, inhuman war started by Russia.

Hanuman and Jahangirpuri

Hanuman is introduced to us in the Epic Ramayana. He is a wholesome devotee of Lord Rama and is his constant companion in the Epic; is a central character first befriending Rama, realising his divinity, and then helping Rama find and rescue Sita. In those days without GPS and Google how does one find a missing person? Hanuman did it with his special powers. And could have grabbed Sita and brought her back to Rama, but Sita insisted Rama do it.

Rama, we know, was an incarnation of Lord Vishnu who lived on Earth to show and set an example of how to rule righteously and teach people to voluntarily follow rules.

Hanuman, elevated to God Status also appears in the Mahabharata-as a retired Ram Bakth – where Rama returns to Earth in the avatar of Krishna. He can be seen in a miniature form nonchalantly perched on the flagstaff of Arjuna’s chariot, driven by Krishna, during the great Mahabharata war. It was a promise he made to his half-brother Bhima-to watch over Arjuna. Krishna and Hanuman do not fight in the war using any kind of weapons and remain mostly neutral watching the ultimate triumph of good over evil, first-hand, in close quarters. Hanuman is also the brother of Bhima-both being sons of the Wind God, Vayu.

Over the years, Hanuman’s stature has reached great heights in India – with many statues coming up all over the country, close to the wind of his father.

Hanuman is a divine Vanara (monkey) with supernatural powers which even Lord Rama does not have: He has immeasurable strength, cannot be burnt by fire, cannot be harmed by water, can shrink his size or hulk it at will, can move to any place he wishes to without restraint, and can fly like the wind. Superman, Spiderman, Batman, Iron-Man, Hulk…all in one. He has a special weapon called Gada, a mace – a round end mounted on a shaft made of wood or metal. Typically, wrestlers use the Gada and worship Hanuman for wrestling strength.

Legend says that Hanuman-the son of the Wind God Vayu and Anjana, a nymph-as a child when hungry sees the moon red in the sky, and thinking it to be a ripe fruit leaps up to grab and eat it. Indra, the Kings of Gods seeing the danger to the Moon, strikes him down with his thunderbolt and child Hanuman falls dead on Earth with a broken jaw. Angry on what happened to his dear son, Vayu withdraws all the air on Earth forcing Lord Shiva to step in and resuscitate Hanuman to life, to save mankind. The Gods then rush to pacify Vayu, loading Hanuman with various supernatural boons in the process. The best part is with all his mind-boggling powers Hanuman is always subdued and plays the ultimate devotee to Lord Ram. Due to a curse, earned during his child prankster years on Sadhus and Sages, he forgets and has to be reminded of his superpowers to be able to use them.

Two childhood images occupy the central space in my mind. One of Hanuman flying in the air, carrying a whole dug-up mountain when he cannot find Sanjeevani, a life-giving herb to cure a fatally wounded Lakshmana. And two, of him carrying Rama and Lakshmana on his shoulders while the two brothers shoot arrows in the war against Ravan’s evil.

The 16th April of every year is celebrated as the Birthday/Jayanti of Hanuman and worshipped to attain victory against evil and provide protection in the vicissitudes of life. It is typical to take out a procession on this day, which has been a practice over the years.

Jahangirpuri is a very dense and mixed, middle and low-income population locality situated in the North West District of (old) Delhi. It mainly holds Hindus and Muslims and some Punjabi and Sindhi communities living in harmony. There is also a considerable number of Rohingya Refugee Muslims settled here, over the years since the Rohingya crisis began in Myanmar. Jahangirpur is near Azadpur Mandi said to one of Asia’s largest fruit and vegetable wholesale market.

On 16th April in Jahangirpuri, a Hanuman Jayanti Procession was being taken out and when it passed a mosque, where Muslims were holding Ramadan prayers, trouble broke out this time. Stones were pelted and gun shots fired, triggering a violence in which nine people including a Police officer was injured. Both sides blame the other. The marchers say they came under an organised attack by Muslims, who threw stones and other objects from rooftops. Muslims say that Hindus yelled provocative slogans near the mosque, leading to an argument. The first stone, they said, came from the other side. However, some videos of the incident show that the, until then, peaceful procession was attacked from the rear, cascading to the violence. Many of us know how these begin and who starts the fire: over to the investigators to get to the bottom of the stone.

Delhi Police have arrested 23 people, mostly Muslims, including two juveniles. Five of the accused-including a the key conspirator- a Muslim, and another person who was seen on video firing a pistol during the clashes -face charges under the strict National Security Act.

A few days later on 19 April 2022 prompted by a complaint from a Party State President, the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) issued a late-night order to demolish houses and shops on the street where the incident had occurred, claiming them to be encroachments into public areas. Bulldozers were called-in for the job and a rush approach to the Supreme Court resulted in a Stay to halt the proceedings: the court ordered the parties to cool their heels for two weeks- to consult with Lord Hanuman?

At Home in China

Carrying on from the previous infectious weeks, Shanghai continues to face the wrath of the coronavirus and is still reeling under a strict lockdown-fourth week running. Shanghai has recorded about 400,000 cases during this outbreak.

This week China adopted a strategy of moving COVID19 ‘tested negative’ (that’s awfully clever – the positives stay positive in their Homes) people to quarantine centres over 150 km away – relocating whole communities. They have done this before, moving entire populations, and they are hoping it works this time too. Residents were told to pack their belongings, leave their wardrobe doors open and also keep open the front door of their homes. Pets were disallowed from going with their owners: Authorities say they will be taken care of. Well, China sure is one helluva of a positive place to live in!

Champion of The Earth

Sir David Attenborough is a broadcaster, biologist, natural historian and author, famous for writing and presenting, in conjunction with BBC’s The Natural History documentary series, the ‘Life Collection’, a comprehensive survey of animal and plant life on Earth.

He is not to be confused with his bother Richard Attenborough best known for directing and producing the movie ‘Gandhi’ and also as the builder of ‘Jurassic Park’ in the movie of that name.

This week Sir David Attenborough was named a Champion of The Earth by the United Nations’ Environment Programme. The prestigious award recognises the 95 years old’s commitment to telling stories about the natural world and climate change.

Accepting the award, Sir David said the world must take action now to protect nature and the planet.

His celebrated documentaries including ‘The Green Planet’ and ‘A Plastic Ocean’.

Sir David said that environmental success stories should give us hope that change is possible. “Fifty years ago, whales were on the very edge of extinction worldwide. Then people got together and now there are more whales in the sea than any living human being has ever seen. We know what the problems are, and we know how to solve them. All we lack is unified action.” That’s well said.

Please Yourself

Netflix, which remains the world’s leading streaming service with more than 220 million subscribers has enjoyed uninterrupted quarterly growth in subscribers since October 2011. However this week, it admitted it was losing customers to rivals, while struggling to expand due to password sharing. Shares of Netflix have slumped by 35% after it revealed a sharp drop in subscribers and warned millions more are set to quit the streaming service.

It also said a decision to raise prices in key markets had cost it 600,000 subscribers in North America alone, while its exit from Russia over Ukraine lost it 700,000. This wiped more than USD 50billion off the firm’s market value as experts warned it faced a struggle to get back on track.

With rising inflation and household budgets becoming tighter, people are finding ways of reducing expenses including ‘fixing the net’. Or perhaps sleep being the only competitor to Netflix, people are re-discovering the benefits of sleeping?

More procession of stories marching up in the weeks ahead. Don’t pelt stones – the bulldozers may come after you. It’s safe to drive with World Inthavaaram. Sleep well and wake up to read.

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-30

About: the world this week, 18th July to 24th July 2021. Floods of water, fish, spying, flying into Space; Faster, Higher, Stronger.

Everywhere

A ‘Deluge of Floods’

Over the years we have heard of innumerable Weather Satellites launched by various countries, to endlessly circle the Earth and send back tons of data, from up above the clouds, that enable us make humble weather forecasts and foresee potential natural disasters.

It is over 60 years since the first Weather Satellite, TIROS-1 (Television Infra Red Observational Satellite), was launched by the United States’, NASA, and surely mankind has made great leaps of faith – breaking into the clouds and beyond – in predicting the weather, using Satellites, among other things. But, now I wonder if all of this is actually working. Or am I missing something? Have the Weather Satellites become Aliens of a kind?

Over the past weeks, Europe – especially Germany and Belgium – has been devastated by unprecedented flash floods generated by torrential rains. Rivers, in turn, receiving the copious run-offs, became dissatisfied with the fixed deposits and bursted their Banks sending the water dashing into precious Homes. This is being touted as Germany’s worst natural disaster in more than half a century. Over 140 people died. Particularly hard hit were the German States of Rhineland Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia, and Eastern Belgium. Around 700 residents were evacuated after a dam broke in the Town of Wassenberg, near Cologne.

On the other side of the World, parts of the United States have also felt the wetness of water. On 19th July, flash flooding occurred in Birmingham and the surrounding Jefferson County, Alabama, following heavy rains, disrupting otherwise dry lives. Cars could not become boats and people lost their legs, below the knees, to the water.

Jumping to Asia, on 21st July torrential rain pounded the Central Chinese province of Henan, bursting the banks of major rivers and flooding the streets of a dozen cities, including Zhengzhou. The sudden flooding inundated and trapped people in shopping malls, schools and even subway trains, leaving locals in a perilous situation. The region has seen the heaviest rain since record-keeping began 60 years ago. Zhengzhou experienced the equivalent of a year’s average rainfall in just 3 days!

In early July, a landslide hit the popular resort of Atami, in Central Japan: a torrent of black-mud crashed through the city. Several houses were swept away by the mudslide, which followed torrential rain. Atami has had more rainfall in the first three days of July than it usually sees in the whole month!

As communities devastated by the catastrophic flooding swam out and started drying themselves, they are wondering how it all went so wrong, so fast. Europe, for example, has a world-leading warning system that issued regular alerts for days before floods engulfed entire villages. The Copernicus Emergency Management Service sent more than 25 warnings, for specific regions, of the Rhine and Maas river basins in the days leading up to the flooding, through its European Flood Awareness System (EFAS), well before heavy rains triggered the flash flooding.

But few of these early warnings appear to have been passed on to residents early and clearly enough, catching them completely off-guard. Now questions are being raised over whether the chain of communication from the Central European level to regions is working. This is one example, in a modern developed country loaded with fabulous surveillance systems.

If we keep our heads above the water and look up to The Netherlands, just across its borders with Germany’s and Belgium’s flood-devastated areas, the picture is entirely different. The Netherlands too experienced extreme rainfall, maybe not be quite as heavy as in Germany and Belgium. And it has not escaped unscathed. But its towns are not entirely submerged and not a single person has died. Officials were better prepared and were able to communicate with people quickly.

The Netherlands’ water strength lies largely in its organisation. The country’s infrastructure is managed by a Branch of the Government devoted solely to water, the Directorate General for Public Works and Water Management, which looks after some 1,500 km of man-made defenses. And they are doing a damn good job of it.

Moving closer to home, in several States of India, Maharashtra, Telangana, Karnataka – to name a few – the story is about the same, with the rains battering cities, towns and villages and sending people scurrying to elevated dry land.

In one of the smaller Towns, in the State of Telangana, the nearby River, tired of sleeping on its bed, got up and started running on the streets. In a revenge mode, the people descended and flooded the streets armed with nothing but fishing nets: many caught giant fish, in the Indian Stream, that could put ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ to shame-of the Gulf Stream. Who said The Planet of the Apes is up ahead? Welcome to The Planet of the Fish!

Even while we are sinking in the floods there are several parts of the World, say, Western North America and Canada, being fried by a flood of heat waves. These places boiled this week in all-time high temperatures that have caused dozens of deaths.

Hold on… we have been flooded with stories of such breaking of records, frequently these days: worst ever, first time in a century, never-before seen, goes on…and of course that dreaded word, ’Climate Change’ and its good friend, ‘Global Warming’ as being the ubiquitous villain responsible for all of this.

We need to think beyond hurting each other with guns and nuclear weapons and instead build weapons against nature to prevent and avoid the mass destructions we are witnessing. With a gun in my hand, can I shoot down a wave, a flood, a hurricane? Are we up to the task of being responsible and making meaningful change? Only the ‘rise of the water levels’ will tell?

How about getting a Noah’s Ark ready! Ship ourselves to another Planet?

Snooping

Pegasus, in Greek mythology, is a divine winged horse, an offspring of the Olympian God Poseidon, usually depicted as pure white in colour. It is a mysterious creature capable of everything symbolizing the divine inspiration or the journey to heaven: in modern times it has been regarded as a symbol of poetic inspiration.

Leave alone being a poetic, I am inspired by the ‘mysterious aspect’.

In the real world, Pegasus is a spyware developed by Israeli cyber-arms firm NSO that can be covertly installed on mobile phones running on iOS and Android.

The NSO (named after Niv, Shalev, Omri – The founders) Group develops best-in-class technology to help government Agencies detect and prevent terrorism and crime.

Simply put, Pegasus hacks computers and smartphones, in order to gather data and serve it to a third party. It is malicious because it gathers such data without the consent or the knowledge of the person owing the device.

Once installed, the Pegasus spyware can turn the Android or iOS phones into surveillance devices. The earliest version of the hacking software Pegasus would infect phones through text messages or emails containing a malicious link that the target would click on. However, the technology has grown more discreet and dangerous since then. And now, Pegasus could infect a phone without any user interaction or with ‘zero-click’ – vulnerabilities, flaws and bugs in a phone’s operating system – that the phone’s manufacturer is unaware of, or has been unable to fix.

India was rocked by a deluge of reports, that a flood of people were on the Pegasus list of ‘Persons of Interest’ without any evidence whosoever on what was found, or not found, and whether it had any effect on the political or safety climate of India. Some even considered it an honour to be on the List!

However, with the mystery and the secrecy involved, this will be a very hard nut to crack unless we hunt down another offspring of Poseidon to ‘talk to and infect Pegasus’, or should we, at all?

Amazon adds Space

This week, Amazon founder, Billionaire Jeff Bezos, flying on the generous bounty of Amazon Staff and Buyers, lifted off in his Blue Origin, New Shepard Space Craft to Space. He was keeping one eye on the Virgin trail left by fellow Billionaire, Sir Richard Branson, who did a similar feat in the week gone by. He was accompanied by his brother, Mark Bezos, an 82 years old Space Race pioneer, Wally Funk, and an 18 years old student, Oliver Daemen. The flight lasted 10 minutes and 10 seconds.

Two minutes into the flight, the capsule carrying the Space travellers, separated from its rocket – at a height of about 76 km-continued its upwards trajectory towards the Karman Line, crossed it – going up to about 106 km – and curved back to achieve a safe, parachuted landing on the West Texas Desert floor in the United States. Jeff Bezos stepped out wearing a Texas Cowboy hat, and I almost expected him to grab a horse, hit the trail, and ride into Town. Meanwhile, unnoticed, the launch vehicle-booster return-landed at about 3 km away from the launch pad.

Looks awfully easy. Maybe there is a message out there that the Earth is unsafe and we better start flying up to grab a better place to settle…and escape the ‘water spills of Earth? Overall, the signal I get is we all need to lift ourselves (with or without rockets). Let’s say, move up in life.

The Olympics

The COVID-19 pandemic stumped and badly bruised Tokyo Olympics 2020, rescheduled to start on 23 July 2021, is itself a testimony to the spirit of sport, having weathered a great deal to get the Games started. I salute the persistence of the Organisers and Japan for leaving no stone unturned – as they say – to get the Games going.

The easiest and the most sensible way to face the pandemic would be to just cancel the Olympic Games. And it requires mind-boggling effort to carry on with the COVID-19 prevention protocols. On our part, we should encourage a safe Olympics, pressuring infected Athletes to quarantine and go home, and the others to blossom. Support our teams remotely, watching on Television or any other physically-distanced media.

Finally, this Friday, the Tokyo Olympics was officially declared open by Japan’s Emperor Naruhito. Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka lit the Olympic cauldron to mark the formal start of Tokyo Olympics 2020. The opening ceremony took place in an almost empty Stadium, witnessed by about 1000 spectators, without the glitz and glam normally associated with such ceremonies. It was celebrated as a moment of global hope – we need every ounce of it to make the Games a success.

Citius, Altius, Fortius.

Please Yourself

Over the past year I went to war with the Vikings, fought to save The Last Kingdom, Resurrected myself with Ertugrul, played the Queen’s Gambit, and went on to wear The Crown. In the process, my body received a pounding, and the wounds of battle were hurting. It’s then, I decided to see ‘The Good Doctor’ on Netflix. It’s been great healing ever since. And I’m fighting fit again.

The Good Doctor is an American Television Series, about Dr. Shaun Murphy, a young autistic, savant, surgical resident at the fictional San Jose St. Bonaventure Hospital, California. Dr. Shaun’s brilliant savant abilities include near-photographic recall and the ability to note minute details and changes. It’s about how he finds acceptance in the Hospital and goes on to contribute to life-saving decisions and surgeries…and making wonderful friends on the way. I was inspired.

More savant stories coming up in the weeks ahead. Stay inspired and keep your head above the water.