Jari Booti جڑی بوٹی

Evening walk: Thank God for Life

Kavita and Bijli take an evening walk with me 🐶👧🏽

Zero: 2 out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Shah Rukh Khan films are romantic blockbusters with a big heart. Unfortunately they defy logic and, an artistic integrity. Zero is mind-bogglingly dumb and, hits new lows with its sexism, homophobia, and insensitivity. Believe it or not, it opens up with a rape scene dream scenario where the hero saves the girl from a group of lecherous men about to gang rape a helpless woman in the middle of the street. Yes, how filmy! The hero is meant to be a 39-year-old dwarf and, achieves nothing in life except to waste his wealthy father's money because he's pissed off at his father and, God for his short stature. Everyone tells him that he wouldn't even be able to score a man. The cinema hall erupts in laughter. He falls for a brilliant scientist with a motor disease played by Anushka Sharma who is confined to a wheelchair (she seems to have been modelled on the late Stephen Hawkings). She is planning missions to Mars and, yet somehow she falls for a romantic dwarf from Meerut. Our hero dumps her on the wedding day and, goes off to enter a dancing contest to be able to meet a self-hating, item-song actress played by Katrina Kaif. The story rambles on and, the hero realises he still loves the scientist and, goes off to NSAR in the United States to win her back. The scientist of course still loves him, somehow. Ladies and gents, the hero of the film is not a brilliant scientist who makes her country proud but Shah Rukh Khan who accomplishes nothing in the film. A disabled yet genius scientist still loves a man who betrayed her and has no intellect whatsoever. She actually rejects a handsome and doting fellow scientist for a man who dumped her mercilessly. She is sending a human to Mars but who gets to be the real hero in this movie? Shah Rukh Khan! She wheels herself in her 'shaadi saari' in her wheelchair in the last dramatic scene to say good bye to the man who betrayed her. It is astounding how an otherwise phenomenal female character is reduced to a weak, weeping girl, pining after a man who she wants to take back after his shameless transgressions. I give the film 2 stars of 5 because the songs were great and sharp dialogues in the emotional moments with Katrina and Anushka are great. So, is the new universe of space training and astronauts. Yes, so we have moved to one level up and now Shah Rukh Khan gets to fall in love in an astronaut suit, he continues to romance heroines 20 years younger than him in a space shuttle to Mars.

Evening walk : "life is vanity"

Sunday walk on South Beach

Who doesn't think of the infamous assassinations of 13 government ministers and True Whig Party leaders by Samuel Doe's revolutionary coup when you are at South Beach? It is somehow always at the back of my mind. 

Yesterday I met Martha Henries and, I asked her whether I knew of her because of her name. She said her father, Richard Henries, was one of the 13 who was killed at South Beach. And, that the Peoples' Redemption Council had sent the family letter afterwards to 'apologise' for what was necessary. We met Martha at a Liberian Arts and Crafts fair at the Palm Springs Casino hotel. Martha is exporting products such as spices, coffee, pepper sauce, coconut oil, etc to the US. 

I have posted a lot of photographs here. South Beach was full of people enjoying the ocean. There were at least 2 football games going on. Children were running around. There were many people dancing at a beach bar. 

The beach has a clear view of Mama Point on one side and then the buildings behind the Executive Mansion. 

There is too much trash on the beach. Goats were eating garbage near one of the several garbage dump sites at the beach. 

The gutter coming from the community into the ocean is extremely polluted. 

There are photos of garbage in the beach sand, the dirty gutter. 

The twinkling Christmas lights near the Executive Mansion are up. 

We ate sugar cane, bananas, and oranges from street vendors (always women) on the way back. We bought an orange for $ 40 LD and one for $ 30 LD and a banana for $ 35 LD. A lady came over with a small newborn (wrapped in a warm blanket, socks and a hat) and, her 5 or 6 year old daughter. The orange lady kept teasing the girl, "So this is your ugly brother? Why you say he is ugly?" The lady next to her joked "You are getting ugly, getting fat. Are you pregnant?" I asked why the baby was warmly bundled up in this warm weather. The mother said she would take everything off at home. 

Bijli now walks without a leash beside us. She barks all day long on our balcony at cars and passer byes on Randall Street but when she is out and about she is afraid of even her own shadow.