A twister!

Maharaja (2024, Tamil)
Director: Nithilan Swaminathan

If you are fed up watching the same old-time-tested formulaic Indian movies, this one is for you. The story starts as a comedy, but as it goes on, the storyline gets twisted. 

Just when you think you know how the story will go, it takes a tangent and yet another. And it goes on and on until it ends with a final twister. 

Maharaja, a mild-mannered barber, leads a simple life with his wife and a little daughter. Right in front of his eyes, he sees a lorry, with its driver obviously off its rails, crashing into his house, killing his wife instantaneously. His ‘daughter’ is miraculously saved by a metal dustbin. 

Maharajah continues life as a widower and a doting father. One day, his house is broken into, and the metal dustbin that saved his ‘daughter’ goes missing. Maharaja makes a police report. 

What happened afterwards is a series of flashbacks, parallel storytelling, police brutality, and police power abuse that all lead to good old storytelling and a satisfying end to a twisted comedic thriller, if there is such a genre. 

Spoiler alert: Maybe there is no such thing as a selfish gene. A person does not feel a buzz upon seeing someone with the shared DNA wronged. The skin does not quiver when a sibling is beaten up. If not, we would not have sibling rivalry. Neither would we have incest, postpartum violence or mass suicide of families. Empathy and caring are learned experiences. We all feel for our age-old friends and buddies in a closed community without sharing common DNA. Sharing Lucy’s ancient DNA does not count as a common ancestry, as perhaps all of mankind carries it. 

On a sobering note, we can see how creative some netizens can be. The main character in Maharaja, Vijay Sethupathi, in his 50th film appearance, is spotted with a bandaged left ear. As if like a fortunate stroke of serendipity (for the internet trolls, at least), on a platter, the news of Trump being shot in the ear became viral. Leave it to the ingenuity of the human mind, and the world has a picture of Vijay Sethupathi and Trump on the same poster as if promoting the film! 

In case viewers are wondering about the role of the snake in this movie. Fret no more. Snakes are notoriously known for not recognising their offspring and eating their own eggs. Helpful to understand the ending. In a world that sees mothers rushing helplessly into burning buildings, we also have mothers who feed their cubs to the wolves!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

google.com, pub-8936739298367050, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0

Life always finds a way

 Oru Pakka Kathai (ஒரு பக்க கதை, One-page Story @One-sided Story, Tamil;  2020)

If I learnt anything from Jurassic Park, and specifically fictional scientist Ian Malcolm, I remember a dialogue about how Nature has a way to deal with survival. When the mad scientist in the park only bred female dinosaurs to control the population, Malcolm warned that when species are on the brink of extinction, Nature makes necessary changes for an organism become a hermaphrodite! Reproduction may occur by asexual means.

These observations have been reproduced in laboratory conditions in certain snakes, fishes and rats. Parthenogenesis happens regularly in plants, where an unfertilised egg combines with the haploid polar body to produce a diploid offspring that is not a clone. The offspring should be a female if I understand well, since there are no Y chromosomes to go around.

The scriptures are bountiful with tales of virgin births and immaculate conceptions. Kunti is said to have been impregnated by Surya after her great worship of the Sun God. Then there are Zoroaster, Christ, and some say Plato too.

Is it not funny that there was a time when people accepted these phenomena readily. Try doing that now and see what happens.

I remember a friend telling me of his experience working at the A&E department of a hospital on the east coast. A schoolgirl was wheeled in with much drama and hullabaloo. Her teacher and two of her friends came in, accompanying wiping her brow and massaging her hand. The patient complained of debilitating gastric pains. Upon clearing the yards of garment draping her torso, my friend found a contracting gravid uterus and a fetal head was seen squeezing through her perineum. After settling down, the student father was summoned. The father, a religious leader, refused to believe that his daughter could be pregnant. He started talking about divine intervention. The daughter suddenly remembered a day, some nine months previously, when she heard some rustling noises on her roof. She wondered if some elements of the netherworld were up to some tricks. While putting on a serious face, my friend could hear the staff's muffled laugh in the background. The last my friend heard is that the father was still in denial that any wrongdoings occurred.

This film took a long time to complete. Production started way back in 2014 but got stalled along the way. The movie's outcome is quite telling as one can see that the first part of the film develops nicely to a climax only to fizzle out afterwards. Maybe the movie makers just wanted to finish it off.

Meera, a university student, going steady with her soon-to-wed beau, Saravanan, feels weak. It turns out that she is pregnant. After much accusations of a pre-marital union, which she denied, the doctors (just by history taking) and professors confirmed that the conception is actually an asexual one. This medical miracle gets media coverage, and when the baby turns three, it is abducted by priests in a temple. The priest and, in fact, other religious institutions lay claim on the divine child conceived by unconventional methods.

The story is fresh, but sadly, as the crisis develops towards the later part of the movie, one notices that the actors are annoyingly timid and unemotional when their innocent child is kept hostage in the temple. Their demeanour is so nonchalant. They do not give a fight but quietly recede to seek legal redress instead. 

One nagging question that kept playing in mind is why none of the attending doctors tested the child's DNA to ascertain whether the child indeed carried part of Saravanan's genetic material to prove or disprove Meera's claim!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Smoked out of the foxhole?

Forensic Files (S1-S7)

Netflix Collection

After spending over 50 hours binge-watching 100 over Forensic Files episodes on Netflix, all I say is the idea of a perfect crime is just a pipe dream. With the ever-changing field of forensic sciences, a crime can be solved even without the presence of a body. What used to be science fiction will soon be bread-and-butter stuff in day to day police work in time to come. If the records and specimens of a crime are left intact, the sky is the limit how distant in the future perpetrators will have to do time for their crimes.

I think the most crucial determinant of whether crimes will be solved is the country's financial standing. If one were to look at most of the cases presented in this series, there were cold cases. These are cases where initial investigations hit a stone wall, and the investigators had no more clues at their disposal. They had the resources to set aside time, money and manpower with a fresh set of eyes to look into cases trapped in the annals of time. It may also be pertinent to note that most of the cold cases occurred in a peaceful neighbourhood. To be realistic, the situation may be different in downtown precincts. 

When the population does not breed like rabbits, and the standard of living is comfortable, one can invest in a proper investigation, prove suspect's guilt via science and beat the living daylight out of him to admit to a charge, honestly or under duress. An advanced forensic lab would encourage police officers to treat posting not as a punishment, like a transfer to Siberia, but as an avenue to improve oneself in detective work.

One can pick up a few pointers here. For whatever reason, if you become the person to report a crime, out of social responsibility or otherwise, be prepared to be put on the suspect list and proof your innocence first. But then, if you do not report a crime or move a dead body, you will be accused of tampering evidence. I did not know that they could identify fingerprints from non-rigid surfaces by exposing the specimen to heated superglue. By looking at its unique marking during production, investigators may actually predict when it was made and which store sold the bag from the plastic disposal bag. Entomological studies and knowledge about weather help in identification of time of death of the severely decomposed bodies.   

When you person dies in suspicious circumstances, the first suspect would be their spouse. Come to think of it, the spouse also turns out to be perpetrator is seemingly natural deaths; especially if it a recurrent; e.g. a case of recurrent widowhood could be a serial murderer or serial insurance schemer.

In hindsight, the police are always portrayed as insensitive, and the victim's kin's gut feeling is still right. Most of the time, crimes happen within the family. 

On the other hand, there is the occasional bizarre crime that leaves a very sinking feeling inside. An innocent bystander being at the wrong place at the wrong time, gets killed for no particular reason. It gives the impression that the United States of America is filled with many maniacally serial killers who draw pleasure from systematically scheming and executing the complex and convoluted murders just to fulfil their hedonistic pleasures.

One disturbing thought that I had while watching this programme is how much the jury or the legal system will accept some of the new, untested scientific discoveries presented to the courts. Through their art of persuasion, some of the scientists tend to paint a rosy picture just how cocksure they are about their findings. We all know how experimental results are notoriously poor at reproducibility. Imagine using plant DNA and animal DNA to prove a suspect's presence at a crime scene. To be fair, some of the cases were actually challenged and were rejected after appeal.

Only a deep-pocketed state would finance a crew of a dozen police officers for months to drain a lake to look for biological evidence of the deceased. In one episode, the police suspected that a husband killed his wife pulverised her in a rented wood shredder and emptied the contents into a lake. They had to look for bone fragments and teeth.

Now they have the knowledge to predict how your face would look in twenty, thirty or even forty years later. Interestingly, the Native Americans have similar facial structures with the Orientals, probably supporting the Clovis people's migration from Siberia to Alaska. My understanding is that biological evidence from exhumed bodies is of low quality. Obviously not, it seems. Years after death, pathologists are still able to obtain DNA samples. The tooth canal is the best site to get these. If DNA is too little or damaged, fear not. There is mitochondrial DNA which is of maternal origin. They make it all sound so easy!

Do not ever buy a comprehensive insurance policy for your loved one and make yourself as the beneficiary. It would draw unwanted attention, and invariably, the law would find you guilty. 

After watching all the episodes and seeing all the gun violence, it is mind-boggling why the Americans still think it is their birthright to bear arms to protect their property. Is it not easier to treat injuries from a fistfight than a gunshot wound?

(It is all well and fine that we have all these armamentaria at our disposal. It still does not replace slip shot police work. My dentist friend was robbed at knifepoint by his patient's accomplice whilst the patient seated at the dentist's chair! All the digital recordings and the potential fingerprints came to nought as the cops made a non-show after reporting. Apparently, they were understaffed and had more pressing needs to attend to. Monitoring Twitter, perhaps?)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Will go on, with or without you!

Marriage Story (2019)

You start a family appointing yourselves as the nucleus and the other appendages as equal partners and essential requirements of the cells. You do your part thinking that they would do the same. You assume that even though the nucleus is the first pre-requisite, the others would take their place and do their part for a balanced multifunctional cell. 

You think that everything is fine until it hits you one day. The nucleolus, which is an integral part of you starts telling you that you are evil. That you are gaslighting her. That you think that you are the only one that matters. 

Before you can realise what hit you, you are bamboozled with examples of your so-called ‘misdemeanours’ as if you did it for your own selfish reasons. You thought it was for a harmonious internal milieu, but it did not appear so. You thought every organelle was in concert with that - to maintain zen. Suddenly your every action is against you like you are some kind of evil bacteriophage that takes the bejesus out of every living organism. 

You relent. You think of other occupants amongst the cytoplasm. Is it a temporary hiccough in the differentiation process? You procrastinate. You assume everything will revert to normalcy. 

It does not. You find out that every member to pointing accusing fingers at you. You try to fight, but you would not want to hurt your own fluid and membrane. You relent. Everything changes. The dynamics that you had dreamt are now but a terrible nightmare. You do not matter anymore. You are redundant. The cell can still function without you, apparently.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Go forth and explore...

To all my friends who ask me not to think too much, please ponder upon the following. We think we know everything and there is nothing more to learn. How wrong we are? I have come to realise that every living day is another fresh day to acquire knowledge.

At the end of the 19th century, investigative officers thought they had a full-proof system to track down criminals. Anthromorphological features as described by witnesses and evidence at crime were sufficient to convict suspects. We all know how unreliable are accounts by bystanders or witnesses. 

This arrangement worked fairly well when it was practised in the West where individual variations in hair, eye colours and other obvious physical were there. The British Colonial Police had a tough time policing as the natives all looked the same in their eyes. That is when fingerprinting techniques became the state-of-art avantgarde armamentarium in crime-busting. For some time, the method was thought to be so unique that it could never be wrong.  

Then it became apparent that this investigative tool was observer dependant. Slowly studies started showing high false positives between 1:18 to 1:30 as it involved human judgement, hence exposed to cognitive biases and this analysis lacked scientific scrutiny.

Soon trickled DNA as a device to aid investigators. Suddenly, it became a big shot in the arm for many a prisoner who was wrongly convicted for a crime they did not commit. And, the technique got cheaper, widespread and ultra-sensitive. 

Unfortunately, DNA detection grew too sensitive for its own good. There is even a case where a person transmitted his DNA to a murder victim just because he had been transferred in the same ambulance and had used the same pulse oximeter!

Hence, perhaps DNA is not the end of it all to solve all unsolved criminal cases.

So friends wake up. One can never think that he has reached the pinnacle and there is nothing more to learn. One cannot depend on age-old wisdom and think that it would take us through the end of times. Go forth and explore...

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Rosalind Franklin: Biography & Discovery of DNA Structure

Rosalind Franklin: Biography & Discovery of DNA Structure

Rosalind Franklin: Biography & Discovery of DNA Structure
By Mary Bagley, LiveScience Contributor | September 19, 2013

Rosalind FranklinCredit: National Institute of Health.

Many people recall that the structure of the DNA molecule has the shape of a double helix. Some may even recall the names of the scientists who won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine for modeling the structure of the molecule, and explaining how the shape lends itself to replication. James Watson and Francis Crick shared the Nobel Prize with Maurice Wilkins, but many people feel that much of the credit for this world-shaking achievement should rightfully go to someone who was absent from that stage, a woman named Rosalind Franklin.

Rosalind Franklin was born July 25, 1920, and grew up in a well-known Jewish family in pre-World War II London, and was known in the family for being very clever and outspoken. Her parents sent her to St. Paul’s Girls’ School, a private school known for rigorous academics, including physics and chemistry. In an interview for PBS’ NOVA television episode titled "The Secret of Photo 51," two of her friends recalled memories of Franklin’s school days.

“She was best in science, best at maths, best in everything. She expected that if she undertook to do something, she would be in charge of it.” By the age of 15, over objections from her father, who thought she should go into social work; Franklin decided to become a scientist.

Franklin graduated from Newnham College at Cambridge in 1938 and took a job with the British Coal Utilization Research Association. She was determined to make a contribution to the war effort, and published several papers on the structures and uses of coal and graphite. Her work was used in development of the gas masks that helped keep British soldiers safer. Her work earned her a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry awarded by Cambridge University in 1945.

In 1947, Franklin moved to Paris to take up a job at the Laboratoire Central working with Jacques Mering on perfecting the science of X-ray chromatography. By all accounts, she was very happy in Paris, easily earning the respect of her colleagues. She was known to enjoy doing the meticulous mathematical equations necessary to interpret data about atomic structure that was being revealed by the X-ray techniques. However, in 1951, she reluctantly decided it was necessary to move back to London to advance her scientific career.

Skirting a leftover bomb crater to enter the lab at King’s College in London, Franklin found she was expected to work with antiquated equipment in the basement of the building. She took charge of the lab with her customary efficiency, directing the graduate student, Raymond Gosling, in making needed refinements to the X-ray equipment.

She was annoyed when she discovered that she was expected to interrupt her work and leave the building for lunch every day. Women were not allowed in the College cafeteria. Nevertheless, she and Gosling were making progress in studying DNA when Maurice Wilkins, another senior scientist, returned from his vacation.

Wilkins was upset to learn that the female “assistant,” who he had expected would be working for him, was instead a formidable researcher in her own right. In this tense atmosphere, Franklin continued working to refine her X-ray images, using finer DNA fibers and arranging them differently for her chromatography, but she began to fear she had made a mistake in leaving Paris. Wilkins, also uncomfortable, began to spend more time at nearby Cavendish Laboratory with his friend Francis Crick. Crick and his partner, James Watson, were working on a model-based approach to trying to discover the structure of the DNA molecule.

Around this time, Franklin and Gosling made a startling discovery. There were two forms of DNA shown in the X-ray images, a dry “A” form and a wetter “B” form. Because each X-ray chromatograph had to be exposed for over 100 hours to form an image, and the drier “A” form seemed likelier to produce images in more detail, Franklin set aside the “B” form to study later. She noted that the “B” form images appeared to show a definite helical structure and that there were two clear strands visible in the image she labeled Photo 51 before she filed it away.

Around this time, Franklin attended a conference given at Cavendish to observe an early DNA model being proposed by Watson and Crick. She was quite critical of their work, feeling that they were basing their model solely on conjecture whereas her own work was based on solid evidence.

Her treatment of his friends widened the gap between her and Wilkins, leading to an even more strained relationship at King’s College. Franklin was so unhappy that people in the lab began to talk behind her back calling her the “Dark Lady.” In 1953, she decided to move to Birkbeck College to escape King’s. Somehow, during the move, Wilkins came to be in possession of Franklin’s notes and the files containing Photo 51. Wilkins removed the photo from her records without her knowledge or permission and took it to show his friends at Cavendish. [Related: 'Lost' Letters Reveal Twists in Discovery of Double Helix]

“My mouth fell open and my pulse began to race,” wrote Watson in his famous book, "The Double Helix." It was the one bit of information that he and Crick needed to complete an accurate model of the structure of DNA. Photo 51 was proof that DNA’s helical structure had two strands attached in the middle by the phosphate bases. They hurried to publish their findings in the journal Nature. The same issue of the journal published much shorter articles by Wilkins and Franklin, but placed them after the longer article by James Watson, seeming to imply that their work merely served to confirm the important discovery made by Watson and Crick rather than being integral to it.

Franklin, meanwhile, had moved on to Birkbeck. Part of the arrangement that allowed her to leave King’s was that she would not pursue any research on DNA, so she turned her talents to studying virus particles. Between 1953 and 1958, she made important discoveries about the tobacco mosaic virus and polio. The work done by Franklin and the other scientists at Birkbeck during this time laid the foundation of modern virology.

Franklin died on April 16, 1958, of ovarian cancer, possibly caused by her extensive exposure to radiation while doing X-ray crystallography work. Because the Nobel Prize can only be shared among three living scientists, Franklin’s work was barely mentioned when it was awarded to Watson, Crick and Wilkins in 1962. By the time "The Double Helix" was written in 1968, Franklin was portrayed almost as a villain in the book. Watson describes her as a “belligerent, emotional woman unable to interpret her own data.”

It is only in the past decade that Franklin’s contribution has been acknowledged and honored. Today there are many new facilities, scholarships and research grants especially those for women, being named in her honor.

Too blind to see?

Two stories got me thinking this week.

A paraplegic found out that humanity had not died. He was surprised to see that people went out of their way to appease his less fortunate self even though the last thing that the paraplegic wanted was self-pity and pittance thrown at him. Still, people obliged. It was much like the blind man who was forever taken over to the other side of the road just because he was standing at the edge of the road, not intending to cross or worse had just crossed the road.

Then, there was another chap who had been taking care of his stroke-stricken mother for the past twenty over the years. In the initial few years, he was so high-spirited to give his mother all that modern technology could provide. Things were looking brighter until she was stricken with another episode of apoplexy, paralysing her so bad snatching away her motor and vocal abilities. What is left of a once robust chatty lady is just a faded rose, responding sluggishly to stimuli. Caring for her has progressively become from bad to worse. Frustration set in both sides. Seeing her suffer proved too much for the son. Sometimes, he wonders what plan the Maker has for her; living each day enduring pain and disappointment that her appointment for the Big Sleep is yet to come. But he dutifully does what is expected of him, his filial duties and a chance to repay his dues for the care that he received in the blurry days of infancy and toddlers.

Are we innately hardwired to show compassion to others? After all the generations enduring calamities and hardship, is selflessness part of our DNA? Is it that our constant societal conditioning of its subject to care for the needy changed our selfish selves which were primally satisfied with self-fulfilling primal needs?

Just when I thought that humanity had not died and the human race had a chance for redemption, in walks my son from 'The Big Bad Wolf' sales. He had purchased a book on Auschwitz just to highlight the banality of evil that still lurks as an undercurrent in all of us.

No hope for humanity

No Fire Zone: The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka (2013, Documentary)

Director: Callum Macrae

One of our lecturers (RS) back in university told us that the more we tried to hide something, the more people would want to see. And at that time, he was referring to the then sudden urge to preserve modesty or at least put a show of, by university students after 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution. Once it is bare open, people would lose interest. Words of wisdom, come to think of it!

I decided to watch this award winning documentary which was aired last before the CHOGM meeting and Sri Lanka was to head the association that carries no real power but to remind (haunt) Britain of their glorious past! It only came to my attention after reading about its ban in Malaysia and the ongoing court case where the organiser of a public screening is charged. 

Just when you thought there was hope in humanity, comes this graphically disturbing images of people systematically eliminating a certain ethnic population of their own citizens. On one side there is a group demanding autonomy of the area they live and on the other, the people in power claim to hunt for perpetrators who take up arms for their course. The bottom line is that civilians are left dying left, right and centre.

The world is in a quandary. The Government denies any acts of wrongdoing contravening any international law. They claim that LTTE held their own people hostage and kill those who deflect. LTTE, who are guardians of the ethnic Tamil, and international UN workers categorically accuse the ruling government of drawing Tamils to areas deemed 'No Fire Zone' just to shell them to smithereens.

This rather graphically distressing film provide forensically certified photographic evidence of genocide in the land described by Arthur C. Clarke as the most beautiful land on earth. People are zeroed into safe zones and hospitals and are repeatedly bombed till there is no place to run.

 

Go ahead, watch it and spoil your whole day. It can happen anywhere. No race is immune from these. They say that the best of man comes in the worst of situations. I suppose a mob like situation, all humanity values go down the drain. The animalistic blood dirty preying fangs of survival which is deep seated in the DNA of us which survived through the prehistoric times comes into interplay!

Lena Hendry