A philosopher's stone?

The Vaccine War (Hindi, 2023)

Written, Directed by Vivek Agnihotri

This is a sort of victory lap, a valedictorian dance to celebrate their success, a pat on the back for a job well done. It is also a proud moment to have stayed resilient when no one had any confidence that India would survive the COVID-19 pandemic. It gives them the bragging rights to flaunt their success story in thumping the virus that took the world by storm. They persevered when the rest of the world shook their heads, disapproving and sneering at their moves. When everyone, including their own people, mocked their actions and shamed them via media and toolkits, they stood their ground. 

Even though India had an excellent track record in the pharmaceutical industry, its experience in making vaccines was in its infancy at best. With the pressures of impending doom and possible annihilation of mankind, Big Pharma had all to lose by not selling its vaccines to the most populous country on the planet. 

Maybe it was politics or national pride, but the powers that be decided to put their trust in science and local scientists. India became one track in wanting to roll out its own home-researched vaccine. 

This film narrates the trials and tribulations that the Government of India, the researchers and the scientists of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) endured from the time they worked on the virus and finally rolled out to vaccinate the entire nation in record times. Along the way, they had to fight the lobbyists calling for the entry of foreign vaccines, primarily from Pfizer and the paid local babus; they spoke people. Pressures from the Fourth and even Fifth Estates, who merely fulfilled their roles in check and balance, appear unpatriotic during this exercise. 

Finally, after a few ups and downs, the ICMR managed to churn out their indigenous vaccine with inactivated whole-virion, which elicits a neutralising antibody response. They upheld their stance that it is superior to the mRNA vaccine. History has proven them right in retrospect, as India was the first country to put the ghost of the Wuhan virus behind them and move forward economy-wise. The whole pandemic had improved their standing in the eyes of the world as they went to donate their Covaxin to the world like a big brother would. 

Despite WHO's initial hesitation to allow India's COVID-19 vaccines to be approved for mass utilisation, it later relented. Unlike Pfizer, which only provided its vaccines to the highest bidders, India decided to portray itself as a saviour to mankind by sending its vaccines to the remotest and poorest regions of the world.

It is a feel-good film for the right-wing-leaning supporters of the current government. The left-leaning liberals label it as a self-aggrandisement exercise and are quick to point out everything that is imprecise in this presentation. The proof of the pudding is that India swiftly recovered from the COVID lockdown and has gone on to 'business-as-usual' mode in record time.

P.S. A philosopher's stone is actually a metaphor for the enlightenment experience. When we obtain the Philosophers' Stone, we achieve what the Buddha achieved. We find what was lost when we fell. We recover who and what we truly are.

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Air sick...

It was a necessary trip, not a pleasure cruise. It needed to be done. 

Just as the restrictions that kept us within our borders were eased, I made a dash for it. I thought everyone would be excited to fly free as a bird all over again - the passengers would be thrilled to meet with their loved ones overseas, and the flight crew with the licence to serve in the airspace, ecstatic to scale the skies.

How wrong I was! 

The powers that be probably decided to take an excellent last squeeze on travellers one more time, one for the road, before the scare of Covid dwindled away. Out of the blue (not mentioned in any pre-travel requisites), recipients of Sinovac vaccines needed to provide a negative report of their nasal swab for virus detection (PCR-Ag). New directives, it seems. When travellers expressed their dissatisfaction, the staff reassured them that they just happened to have a state-of-the-art laboratory at the airport, by the way, and results could be obtained within two hours, just in time for them to board their flights. How convenient! But the catch was that it cost RM500 when it was done for RM200 outside. Hey, if you could afford a flight ticket...

In my eyes, the flight crew did not display much enthusiasm for their newfound freedom. Maybe it was because they were scheduled on a 'graveyard route' - a route allocated to newbies, as a punishment or demotion, a trip to the Gulag. The flight (KUL-DEL) with the most number of unsettled passengers who are never satisfied and undeservedly feel flight attendants are like slaves on Captain Morgan's pirate ship, fit to be abused. To an outsider, the scene looked like a group of primary school teachers controlling many boisterous students - teachers running away, appearing busy and school whining, asking for this and that.

I remember my first international flight on MAS. Their tagline, service with a smile, was complemented with the secret to capturing a man's heart. I was puffed with a full meal, periodic snacks and free-flowing beverages. No thanks to the democratisation of air travel with the invasion of budget airlines, the flight menu on this regular flight too had been 'plebeianised'! Passing off shrivelled dehydrated chicken pieces for rendang is criminal. And a cake piece which looked like one obtained from a bread vendor? 

The return trip was no better. Two hours of delay in flight take-off but a single breath of apology, but instead, the pilot gave a lethargic description of his flight path and altitude… 33,000 ft above Visakapatnam etc. No one word remotely resembling sorry, delay or beyond control in his wasteful banter. No one was bothered that the passengers may miss their connecting flights or other pressing engagement. Oh, what the heck? They are performing a charity mission...

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The unseen non-medical effects of lockdown?

Unpaused (Anthology of 5 episodes, Hindi; 2020)
Unpaused: Naya Safar (5 episodes; 2021)

As the numbers of Omicron variant cases continue to rise, allegedly after a large congregation of unvaccinated pilgrims made it all the way to the Holy Land, now is an opportune time to reminisce the good old days when a virus from Wuhan labs jumped ship and affected humans. It is mind-boggling to fathom how much this pandemic had jolted the core of our existence.

It goes without saying that the pandemic has affected everyone in so many ways. Economically, it affected all, predominantly those on the lower rung of the food chain. Interestingly, the ten of the richest globally has doubled their wealth at the end of the second wave.

Inconspicuously, Covid infection started as a concern only for the affluent and frequent flyers as they picked the bug after globetrotting. The poor were not so concerned then. Soon, the tables turned. Living in a restricted living space and close proximity between family members made the poor more vulnerable and even outcasts when society started combating the disease.

What is often forgotten in the equation is the psychological component of this whole calamity. In years to come, the full extent of the post-traumatic stress of being cooped indoors, studying online for two years, non-attendance of familial functions and spending hours gazing at a blue screen will come to the fore.

These two anthology types of miniseries explore many of the stresses people endured in the past two waves of the pandemic. Many of the stories are so surreal and plucks the strings of the viewers' hearts. We stop complaining about our shoes when we see someone with no legs.

In the first season of Unpaused, the episode that piqued my interest was the one called 'Glitch'. In a futuristic universe, Covid has mutated so many times. The world is divided into two types of people - the 'hypos', short for hypochondriacs who simply live an isolated life with a morbid phobia of coming in contact with humans and the 'warriors', who are scientists and frontliners who fight hard to annihilate the virus. It is no more Covid-19; it is Covid-30 in the year 2030. Years of isolation have drained people of interactive social skills, and they have to depend on computer programmes to hook people up. A glitch in the systems meets two people' virtually' in a chat room. The problem is that one is a hypo and the other a warrior. The warrior in real life is a mute scientist. After an initial stormy hook-up, love transcended all differences. The hypo learns sign language and overcomes his germophobia tendencies.

In the second season, two of its episodes were, I thought they were very well made. In 'War Room', a quiet school teacher was assigned to help out at a hotline centre to arrange ICU beds for Covid patients. She carries the burden of the death of her teenage son on her sleeve. He had apparently committed suicide. Legal proceedings were ongoing as she tried to sue his college principal for negligence as the school did not arrange for medical assistance in time to save him. Despite the overhanging sorrow over her head, the teacher hoped to serve society to pay her dues. Fate plays its twisted humour when she gets into a position to deny a bed for the said principal when his son called in requesting an ICU bed. The rest of the story is about she deals with this moral dilemma.

'Vaikunth' (Heaven) is another exciting episode with a compelling storyline. A crematorium worker has his hands full as the number of Covid deaths increases during the second wave. He is a single parent, and his father is admitted for Covid. He also has a young son whom he is trying desperately to educate. He thinks he is doing excellent service to mankind by diligently handling the extra bodies to cremate. Unfortunately, his landlord and his neighbours believe otherwise. They are not comfortable with his close link to Covid, attending to Covid death and his father being Covid+. Nobody is willing to care for his son temporarily; hence, both stay on the crematorium premises. Meanwhile, there is no avenue available to find out whatever happened to his father. He is a 'frontliner', braving himself against the unseen enemy, but nobody actually gives him a second look. 

There are more things to appreciate than the story itself in these two and other episodes. The subtle inclusion of motifs (like the fire in Vaikunth - fire to cremate at the end of life, fire to light the stove for sustenance, and fire to light a cigarette to enjoy life) and the excellent cinematography. The episode ends with a poetic message about how the ashes from the burnt bodies are used to fertilise the rice fields to germinate new seeds, completing the circle of life from ashes to ashes. 

Hope is the thing with feathers/ That perches in the soul…." Emily Dickinson

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The post-apocalyptic pillbox?

 

T junction - Semenyih, Hulu Langat Batu 18, Genting Peres.

This junction had seen better days. Weekends and holidays used to be marked with a hive of activities, loud banters and laughs. Streams of cyclists enjoyed the mild temperatures, the greenery and the challenge of steep hills leading to Genting Peres. This is the once busy T-junction of Batu 18 Hulu Langat leading to Peres and beyond. Now it stands a sorry sight of the testimony of all the putrifying underhand dealings that had been happening right under our noses.

Used to be a family heirloom, now a staircase
to nowhere.

To me, this reminds me of my own imaginary vision of how the world would be after the apocalyptical World War 3 - a pillbox amidst the man-made ruin, standing proud as the last man standing, a symbol of victory after a zero-sum game.

To the outside world, it was a front for prosperity. Unbeknownst, behind the row of lush greenery that paved the web of highways lay hidden hectares over hectares of government-sanctioned logging to line the pockets of political ballcarriers. As if a signed document can cement the ecosystem that Nature took generations to reach a steady state. 

As a near sexagenarian, looking back at the repeated faux pas that put our nation in the international media for all the wrong reasons, I realise my generation and the generation before me have blood in their hands.

Nowhere in the world would Forces of Nature
systematically slice timber! Yet the authorities
denied issuing any logging licences. Of course,
the issuances were legitimised at whim.

First, they told us the majority of the country held only 5% of its wealth. Let us all prosper together, they said. What was kept away from us was an accurate breakdown of the distribution of wealth. Somehow, statistics from Government-linked companies did not make it to the public pool. Then they said affirmative action would only last 20 years. But then, a cat fed milk daily would shy away from catching mice! Then race supremacy, and religious hegemony ensued. Rubber barons ruled the roost under the cloak of official secret and siege mentality. A halo of grandiosity was painted on its citizens. Like an Emperor with his new clothes, only we were proud of our perceived achievements even when meritocracy took a backseat and the floodgates to brain-drain laid bare open.

The leaders who we thought would take care of various interests either slept on the job or were bought over. Yet they keep painting a rosy picture despite the parched desert terrain that we see. We sensed a feeling of unease when two strange bedfellows, politicians and businessmen, were screaming 'win-win'. Little did we know that 'win-win' never referred to the nation and its citizens but upon themselves!

Meanwhile, as the economic pie got smaller, accentuated by a worldwide pandemic by years of sweeping under the carpet, the stench from years of decay is finally seeped out. It took a global jolt to expose the shortcomings. Do we need another cataclysmic catastrophe to change this crony capitalism, nepotism and unashamed corruption?

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