We, the people?

Grapes of Wrath (1940)
Director: John Ford
A novel by John Steinbeck

A typical scene in a big establishment when a crisis looms. When a patient is discharged from a hospital and has to speak to somebody who has the authority to give a discount, he will be given a runaround. Nobody has the power to approve that slash in the bill. It is always about the system, or the management has to decide. Who is managing, they may ask? Nobody can give a straight answer as a management team is not one person, and his job his not permanent. Even the CEO has to safeguard his career - too much of a discount-and may lose his job. Same with a big establishment like a bank. Even the bank manager emphasises with his loyal customers, his hands are tight. He has to toe the line of stock-owners and continue squeezing the debtor for dues. 

All the big establishments invoke the fear of the weight of powers that be upon the weak. The elites and powerful side of the society are constantly rubbing shoulder with the authority and the corporations. This unholy alliance creates a deep fissure in the community, as the haves and have-nots fleet further and further away from each other. In times of calamities, this becomes apparent; the effective use of all the resources upon their disposal to pounce upon the poor ensures that the rich continue enjoying their living style. 

If history has taught us anything, we realise that the widening of economic prowess is a perfect recipe for a revolution. When they feel powerless against a perceived autocratic system, people will raise their working tools in solidarity to fight back. We saw it in the French and Bolshevik revolutions. Hunger is a potent trigger to change the course of history.

Logically, we should soon be seeing the effects of a year of Covid-induced lockdown. Civil servants continued receiving whilst the self-employed had to tighten their belts with loss of income and the inconveniences of multiple Government restrictive policies.

After the initial euphoria of the end of WW1, the world plunged into an economic depression in 1929. The weather was also against their side for the Joad family in Oklahoma. The family has to leave their farmland as the bank pressures them for outstanding payments. The family with other Okies (Oklahomans) leave their Dust Bowl State for California in their rickety truck, together with Tom, who had just been out of prison. After enduring a treacherous journey, they soon discover that California is no promised land. There is starvation, oppression by the authorities, bullying by employers and police's unholy union, and restrictions on personal liberties. 

John Steinbeck's 1939 novel is a Pulitzer-winning classic with much Reds undertone and is used as reading in many American schools. He went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962 for that work. The book is a stark reminder that the subject matter discussed can be topical at any period. The poor will always remain impoverished despite advances in science, technology, and economic leaps and bounds. The rich and those in power will always devise ways to keep them under their thumbs. New laws will be instituted, taxes will be adjusted to accommodate the rich and novel ideas will prop up to entice the downtrodden to dance to the big conglomerates' tune.

The title 'The Grapes of Wrath' may have a Biblical reference. In the Book of Revelation, an angel swung his sickle to the earth and gathered the clusters from the vine of the world, and threw them into the great winepress of the wrath of God [14:19-20]. Grapes, when pressed, will morph into a divine and spirited drink. Hence, when the workers are oppressed for too long, they would rise to wreak justice upon greedy and self-serving landowners and bankers. The filmmakers had to modify the storyline to not arouse legislators' curiosity when Hollywood was mainly targeted for subtly spreading communist's sentiments.

The phrase 'grapes of wrath' also appears in Julia Ward's composition of 1861 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic', a famous American patriotic song.

Roman Charity: Pero secretly breastfeeds her father,
Cimon who is sentenced to death by starvation
Peter Paul Rubens

The word 'Okies' in the 1930s was a derogatory word of sorts. It denoted westward-bound white migrant agricultural workers from cotton-growing states from the east. In 1937, California brought in the 'Anti Okie Law' to make it illegal to bring in any destitute person. It was later revoked as unconstitutional.

Not everyone in the USA, especially the Californians, took in kindly to Steinbeck's book. The idea of Americans treating their own kind with so much scorn and cruelty was too repulsive. The idea of our cooperative type of setup like the one in a communist/socialist nation instead of American democracy in solving the poors' misery was offensive. To top it all, the book presents a character who performs an act of Roman Charity. She nurses a sick and starving man.

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No country for intelligence

Salam - The First ****** Nobel Laureate

(2019 Netflix)

His tombstone was defaced. The epitaph which read 'The First Muslim Nobel Laureate' had, with the Government decree, the word 'Muslim' be removed from the headstone. Professor Abdus Salam, the first Pakistani and Muslim scientist to win the prestigious award, was of the Ahmadi faith. The country felt that he was not Muslim enough to claim to be one. Even Pakistani textbooks do not mention him as a national hero. The younger generation has not heard of him.

His story is of particular importance to a country like ours as we seem to be pursuing the same rabbit hole as their Big Brother Pakistan took when they clawed themselves off Hindustan back in 1947. Instead of speeding forward from the race-line, they took a backward trajectory that may send them back to the Stone Age. Rather than investing in human capital and knowledge-based activities, they have only successfully managed to shoo off intellectual away from Pakistan. Left behind are the blind followers, yeoman, sluggards and conmen. Academics like Pervez Hoodbhoy, the MIT trained nuclear physicist, and Tarek Fateh, the Canadian-Pakistani media-man, can only do so much to knock some semblance of sense into the system. In return, they are labelled traitors for putting down their nation.

The recent turn of events in Malaysia, with their association with the leaders of Turkey and Pakistan, put us in the same basket as them. The joke is on us, but we are too blind to see. This country has become no place for the intelligent and thinking individual. 

One can see the parallelism between Abdus Salam's early life to that of the great modern Indian Mathematician Ramanujan. An apparent child prodigy right from the start, he grew up in humble beginnings in Jhang, a small village in Punjab (which became part of Pakistan). From the surroundings of a ricketty town, at a tender age, he understood everything about electricity even when his village had never received any electricity.

Excelling in every public examination and even writing a Mathematic paper for publication titled ' A problem of Ramanujan' earned him a place in Cambridge around 1946-47. He was financed by a peasants' cooperative scholarship. 

Even though he escaped the turmoil of Partition, he had a tough time in the United Kingdom. Food was a major problem. Surviving primarily on macaroni cheese, he completed his Ph D and returned to Pakistan in 1951 as a professor in Mathematics in Government College in Lahore. He was obviously overqualified and intellectually isolated there. The Ahmadiyya sect was always a thorn in the flesh for the Sunni-majority Pakistan. In 1953 a riot broke out. Their esteemed leader is said to have claimed to be a prophet, the fabled Mahdi and even the Christian Messiah. 

Abdus Salam left Pakistan permanently for a post of Professor in Imperial College, London.

His academic career skyrocketed from then on. At one instance, he almost won a Nobel prize. If only a senior colleague had not shot down his research, he would have published it. His idea was picked by a Chinese physicists duo who received the coveted award afterwards. 

When often asked how we got all the knowledge that he possessed, he would often point up as if he received his revelations from above. This ring a bell to Ramanujan's assertion that he received his formulas from Goddess Namagiri.

Abdus Salam continued involving himself later in developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes for Pakistan as requested by Presiden Zulkifar Ali Bhutto. This did not last long. With the change of leadership as the conservatives held the helm, President Zia ul Haq with the blessings of the religious councils, declared Ahmadis as heretics in 1974.
Another bloodbath reminiscent of 1947 Partition took place. Believers from the Ahmadiyya sect were decapitated, maimed or slaughtered. Scenes of blood-stained train coaches with mutilated passengers gave Pakistanis a deja vu.

In 1979, Professor finally received the elusive Nobel Prize. He went on to develop scientific research in developing countries. He was keen to offer himself as a candidate for the post of the Director-General of UNESCO, but Pakistan refused to back his application.

He finally succumbed to motor neuron disease and was eventually buried in Pakistan.

Garbed in traditional attire during Nobel Prize awards, he quoted a verse from the Quran that suggests that religion and science should not diverge but instead complement each other. He did not see religion as a deterrent to acquiring knowledge but paradoxically a nidus to do so. ©Getty Image.

A very touching documentary which highlights the dangers when stupid people hold too much power. When race and religion supersede rational thinking, the collapse of civil society and social structure is imminent. Like body odour, stupidity is only realised by the individuals around them, not the bearer of the stench or the idiots.


The Persecution of Pakistan's Ahmadiyya Sect

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p025n89c

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.