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Pleasure in pain?

Crimes of Future (2022)
Director: David Cronenberg

Despite all the good deeds attributed to Tipu Sultan in fighting the British and planting the seed of nationalism amongst the people of Bharat, the Muslim monarch is infamous for signature torture. He would slice off his enemies’ noses. There was a time in South India when many defeated Hindu soldiers with gaping nasal openings on their faces. 

It is said the peddlers on market squares of old India were trying to insert prostheses to correct the victims’ nasal defects. Two visiting surgeons from the UK saw this during their visit to exotic India and decided to write it up in medical journals. That was the birth of rhinoplasty and the conception of cosmetic surgery. 


Tipu Sultan
Soon everybody found something wrong with their appearances; too fat, too plain, too Asian-looking, too unalluring, lines of ageing or even too short. Everything could be corrected if one were daring enough to go under the scalpel. The fear of surgery itself was a put-off to potential customers (not patients since they were not technically sick).


For those who braved the procedure or danced the nectar of joy of improvement of their perceived looks, an enhancement to the first cut became the norm. In a way, the first cut was not the deepest but became a stepping stone to many more to follow. As experience had proven, it soon became an obsession, no longer a therapeutic correction. In the real world, repeated nose jobs have resulted in necrotic nasal cartilages and the nose literally dropping off one’s face! If the rumours about Michael Jackson were true.

The movie tells us of a not-so-distant future where humans develop tolerance to pain, and somehow people do not get infections. The human body constantly evolves and is able to produce synthetic organs. A group of people can digest plastic. Because pain is ‘pleasurable’ and is tolerated well, surgical incisions and public displays of self-mutilation replace traditional sex. In this topsy-turvy world where growing new organ is an art form, the authorities try to register new organs!

Kosaji, after his nose job

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Location: Mysuru, Karnataka, India

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