This weekend, I was in the mood for some experimental cinema and happened to indulge in a Lars von Trier marathon featuring Melancholia, Anti Christ and The Idiots. This post is an allergic reaction to exposing myself to a day full of quasi-surreal themes, scenes impregnated with ambiguity, and characters who are more harshly real… [Read more…]
March 16, 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RMx31GnNXY
This TedTalk by Anthony Atala tells us of a revolutionary technology that prints human kidney, bladder, skin and bones, inspired by the 3D printer. Two videos stunned me moments ago, compelling me to write about the marvelous leaps in bio-technology that researchers have made. My mind is still in thrall, even refusing to believe what the video clearly demonstrates. A 3D printer can print human organs such as the bladder, and experimentally small kidneys, bones and skin grafts. Another video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOXJaIvRltM) demonstrates a technology called skin gun that sprays layers of skin on to burn patients using their own stem cells. Second-degree burn victims, who would earlier been writing in pain for months before their own skin healed enough, now have access to an experimental therapy that simply takes four days to regrow their natural skin. The slightly weird but compelling film 'The Fountain' directed by Darren Aronofsky, has the lead character Hugh Jackman playing a medical scientist, trying to find the cure for cancer as his beautiful wife, played by Rachel Weisz, nears her death. Jackman doesn't believe in death - yes, he thinks it's just a disease for which a cure hasn't been found yet. The premise of this film never struck me as preposterous. Growing up on a diet of science fiction books from Isaac Asimov to Orson Scott Card, for me it was but inevitable that science would eventually surpass sci-fi to make real the wonders of cloning, life-extending drugs, anti-age cures, A.I and emotionally intelligent robots, teleportation and eventually space travel. But the science fiction worlds of Asimov were hinged to reality. The Foundation Series teach us that power structures and the social construct of the ruler and the ruled will never go away, only transform from the monarchy to the clergy and from the bureaucrats to the sciento-technocrats. So, what's the connection between these science-fiction novels and the videos? Well, it seems we are right on track with following the blueprint of technological progress as well as evolving power structures. As technology breaks old boundaries, society is plagued with morally ambiguous debates about the meaning of quality of life and future of humankind - is cloning moral, is human engineering god's will, are designer babies ethical, pro-life, pro-choice, euthanasia, treatment of persons with disabilities, surrogacy, sex-change, sex-determination. While scientists are busy finding ways to re-grow a burn victim's tissues and engineering humanoid robots that are bound to change the ways we work, live, play and think about what it means to be a human, we have politicians stuck in the thick of what is morally correct! The citizen never gets to decide what is necessary or beneficial for their life, the state will have the final word based on laws, morality and religious lobbies. Here's another news that got me cheering from the rooftops. You know how pharma and drug companies patent life-saving drugs right? If one pharma company has a patent on anti-retroviral drugs (used in the treatment of HIV-infected patients) then any other company can't use the same composition of chemicals or formula and create the same drug - that would be patent infringement. What this means is that one company ends up ruling the market; they decide where the drugs are released, at what price and to what markets. Plain and simple commoditization of health and treatment. "In a first-of-its-kind move, a government agency has invoked the compulsory licensing (CL) provision of the Patents Act to allow Hyderabad-based Natco Pharma to sell its generic version of German multinational Bayer’s patent-protected cancer medicine, Nexavar (sorafenib tosylate), at a fraction of the cost of the latter drug in India." (http://business-standard.com/india/news/natco-to-sell-bayer-patented-cancer-drug-nexavar-/467537/). Bayer is considering legal options of appealing this decision as it's worried about its intellectual property rights. What it's really worried about is how it can recover a ripe cancer-market of $2 billion in India alone. Sad? Angry to hear that a company would care about profits more than healing sick cancer kids? But you are not surprised, right? You are digesting this news as if it's an everyday weather update - unbearable heat but expected weather. The videos on the breakthrough medical technologies leave me with an impending sense of doom actually. It doesn't fill me with joy that my children, family and the whole world - all the sick, dying, disease-ravaged people - would now have access to previously incurable conditions. It doesn't give me a sense of hope that we can beat this thing, that we can deal with being ill temporarily because the good medical researchers have bent over backwards inventing miraculous technologies for the people. No, the good scientists won't be knocking on your doors anytime soon. Death is a disease and billions of us would continue to die from it. Those who will raise a toast to "The Fountain" will be the
March 4, 2012
“This blog is written, month after month, in hopes of reaching the dizzying Page 1 rank on Google Search”. Hah! How many of you would put this as your blog’s epitaph, or on your music album’s cover, or as a signature to your painting? None? But that’s what you are secretly hoping for, innit? At… [Read more…]
December 18, 2011
Where I Try Playing Catch-up With My Favorite ‘Fictional’ Stars By Stalking Their Real Life Counterparts. *Warning: This article makes frequent references to the Twilight Saga, non-Twihard fans, suck in that incredulity, now. Street stalking is actually passe. It’s too much of an effort hiding behind the bushes outside your favorite movie star’s house, waiting… [Read more…]
October 31, 2011
A tailor houses his shop opposite my apartment building on a busy residential road. What makes the road busy? Well, the usual menagerie of four-legged, non-domesticated pets: mongrels, kittens and bovine-smelling buffaloes; children peddling their cycles in a zig-zag fashion – as if toeing a straight path on the road is antithetical to their play;… [Read more…]
July 11, 2011
I don’t want to forget Let this impasse be on loop I’ll remember Till I choose not to recall anymore, notions Of being in this state Of being that someone other who soars in love. Let this stillness play on loop lest I lose track, Of all that remains to be traced In records &… [Read more…]
June 24, 2011
We refer to them variously as a script, a play, a performance, a mirror. We hold them up for scrutiny. We rely on them for our memories. They become our alibis; they evolve into our screen double. Conversations, what else? Our textual voice is our living tombstones, dead after the second you hit enter and… [Read more…]
June 21, 2011
Bits and pieces, odds and ends Junk and clutter, the sacred and profane, The road map to my house Is alive with throbbing veins Follow the trail of shoes and books The chipped walls ripened with age. A left from the coiled wires & lavender-cupped underwire, Go past the broken mirror and half-seeing eyes Toss… [Read more…]
June 16, 2011
Introduction by Sam: This post explores the sensual aspects of humans and their objects of writing. Not only writing instruments, but the paper, the surface, the act of writing itself… and their associated memories and feelings are dissected in an almost compulsive way to show the romantic relationship that we construct with the experience of… [Read more…]
June 7, 2011
Stereotyping the Contours of A City-and-a-half That Inhabit My Mind, All For the Sake of Remembrance India: Multicultural Regionalism / Sectarian & Caste Disparities | Land of Plenty / Of Beggars, Slums and Poverty | Explosion of Cuisine, Language and Culture / History of Violence Against All Minorities | Scientific Minds and Techie Genes /… [Read more…]
April 9, 2012
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