Death by shared psychosis?

The Great Indian Suicide (Tamil, Telegu; 2023)
Director: Viplove Koneti

In the junior years of my training, I had the chance to manage patients who were brought in after suicide attempts. The drug of choice in that demographic was paraquat, a deathly organophosphate herbicide which worked well at keeping weed at bay. Unfortunately, it also proved to be lethal to humans. A tablespoon of the deathly liquid proved lethal. Even if stomach washout and chelation were instituted early, once urinary paraquat was positive, death is inevitable. Within 14 to 21 days, slow death would ensue with organ failure, specifically lung fibrosis. More amount of remorse, regret or prayers could change back time. 

The population that thronged that hospital were plantation workers and had easy access to paraquat. Many of the victims were Indians, and the title of this movie brought the memory of that time of my career. Many of the parasuicides were for feeble reasons, to gain sympathy, to attract attention, to display undying love, for being jilted, scoring bad marks or even after being disciplined by parents. Unfortunately, their choice of drug proved wrong. They mostly, unfortunately, succumbed to the poison. At that time, I thought the Indian movies were to blame as many movies of the 80s included suicide as a selling point. They must have got their inspiration from the saga of Romeo and Juliet, the exemplar of pure, genuine, innocent love!

This movie turned out to be nothing like that. It seems to have been inspired by cases of mass suicide like Branch Davidian and the Waco incident, as well as the Jonestown massacre in Guyana, but with a twist. The components of a femme fatale and sibling killers (spoiler alert) are present.

A coffee shop owner is visited by a young lady offering her biscuit cookies to be sold in the shop. The owner, a young man who grew up in an orphanage, slowly falls for the girl. One thing led to another, and the girl dropped a bombshell. Her family plans to have mass suicide, as prescribed by their family holy man, to reunite with her dead uncle. Our hero marries the girl, goes to her family house, and tries to get to the root of the seemingly bizarre logic that her family seems to hold steadfast to. 

P.S. The movie is based on the Burari deaths in Delhi in 2018. Ten family members, including an 80-year-old grandmother, died in a ritualistic mass suicide. The deaths were determined to be motivated by shared psychosis. Read all about it here.

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Do we really know everything?

Usually, I do not give too much importance to things that are spiritual in nature. I just simply join the bandwagon to keep people, especially my loved ones, happy. Like when I, the first born to my father, was summoned to perform certain rights on the first anniversary of his death, I just obliged. I knew it would make my mother happy to see my father 'sent off' to the ethereal world in a proper manner. It does not matter that my parents towards the tail end of his life, could not stand each other but that is another story for another day.

The purpose of the prayers on the day of first death anniversary is to remind the soul of departed that he is not forgotten here on Earth. By invoking the forces of Nature, appeasing the feminine forces and cajoling the spirits of the ancestors, it is hoped that the deceased will keep a cursory eye on the wellbeing of the living.

Do these things really happen or is it just another mumbo jumbo set up to put the element of fear of the unknown? The guilt of not doing certain rituals could literally frustrate one when something does not go his way. Are our ancestors so vengeful that they would harm us if they are not feted? 

As I was faithfully doing the rituals and reciting mantras as directed, I noticed sporadic unprovoked movements of paraphernalia on the dais. At first thought, I attributed it to wind movement or the blowing of air from the air-conditioners.

When all the formalities were over, the priests sat down to give a pep talk to the attendees on the significance and meanings to all the seemingly pointless gestures that were involved during the exercise. Much to everybody's surprise, he asked the audience whether anyone noticed the sudden movements seen around the photograph of the deceased. In unison, everyone nodded in the affirmative. In his experience, he had noticed such unprovoked movements in most of the ceremonies he conducted. In his understanding, it is nothing more than the sign of the soul being in attendance in the ceremony as he was summoned! Really?

Through the rituals, the living hopes the family ancestors of the same bloodline act as the guardian angels who would keep vigil on the downlines. Or maybe just to give a peace of mind to the living, not the dead!

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Just a job or a calling?

You are made to believe that the way to do it is divine. That, the effort that you put in your work is like serving God. That, you are performing the Almighty's job on Earth. You do not have to display your piety for others to see. All you have to do is to serve, everything else will take care of itself. You follow suit. 

Then you realise that life cannot be all work. The people that you thought you have been sacrificing all your life for suddenly turn their back against you. They start hurling accusations of this and that. That you had been shortchanging them; that that is your job - your only job is to serve them. You, on the other hand, thought they would be eternally grateful to you for you had sacrificed everything for them in the course of your vocation. You thought yours was a calling. It, apparently, was not. It was just another job. You are just another spoke in the machinery of society that moves it forward.

The tale that the people before you told were just to ensure that everyone kept their gab shut and did as they were told. You were the clown cajoled to maintain equilibrium while those in the realm of power did what they did best- flaunt their power. You were suckered into believing that you were doing something right, something noble, something indispensable but... the wrong answer.

Yama's scribe who keeps the record of peoples'

karma. © Devdutt Pattanaik

You had worked like your life depended on it, now you have to work as that is the only work you know. And any remote chance to clear your name depended on it as the pressures of seeking legal representation mounts together with their bills. Your future, your honour, your own self-esteem, removing your name of alleged negligence all rest on it. 

Yours, they say, is just a job. Just like everybody else, you are given a job. But, your duties are not a 9 to 5 pushing buttons or envelopes kind of work. You cannot just wash your hands come punch-out time. In fact, you do not clock out. You are beyond all that and more. 

Hence the dilemma...

You convince yourself that Chitragupta and St Peters are taking the tally.

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After life, what?

Personal Shopper (2016)


Almost halfway through the movie, clueless of its genre, I remained lost. I did not understand why the protagonist, Maureen, was buying expensive clothes and jewellery but not wearing them or rather is forbidden to don them. Maureen is a personal shopper of a celebrity who cannot possibly be seen in public shopping!

Maureen has a genetic heart condition which was shared by her recently demised twin brother. She had not come in term with her loss as he was apparently healthy before his heart attack. Maureen, who considers herself a clairvoyant, tries to communicate with her brother for personal closure. In the interim, she moonshines as a seer to ascertain whether a house is haunted before it is sold. She also gets a mysterious text from an unknown number. The situation gets murky when her employer is murdered brutally, and she is muddled in the police investigations. After she is cleared of any wrongdoings, she continues her pursuit of contacting her dead brother.

Mankind has always wondered at the vastness of the Universe and the waste of space around us if we were the only living beings around. The whole Big Bang could not have happened just for us. People started toying with the idea that, perhaps, lifeforms dwelled in different realms. The ending of life in one plane just transports them to another and another. The 'soul', having unfinished businesses on Earth, may wander around for psychics to be a conduit for the living to say their peace. Whether these experiences are real or quackery is of personal choice. Is it that the dead are desperately trying to relate through obscure methods or are existing ones just convincing themselves that such a thing is actually happening? Are some just too insensitive to observe the subtle changes around them and the others just making something out of nothing at all? 

Are the dead souls out there really looking out for us? Like a guiding star, like a guardian angel. Do they 'scream' at us trying to prevent us from doing something so wrong? Or is life just 'Game Over' and everything goes BLANK! Like a TV station that has stopped transmission.

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Spiritual humanism

The God realisation within us?

DMT: The Spirit Molecule (2010)

Every now and then, humankind experiences leaps and bounds into a higher level of knowledge, maybe not so much of wisdom. Still, they discover, one by one, about things around them; the laws of motion, thermodynamics, nuclear fission and fusion and quantum physics. The more they learn, the more they realise that there are things that they do not know! Perhaps they should now look inwards, introspect into their good selves to reach heights beyond their wildest dreams. DMT seems to be the linking bridge towards this end.

DMT, N, N-dimethyltryptamine, is a compound widely found in nature; in plants and animals alike. It has a ring structure with four attachable poles and is converted to tryptophan, a building block of life. Scientists are wondering if it is indeed the common language between beings.

Dr Rick Strassman, who spent a good five years of his life experimenting on this hallucinogenic agent which is an analogue of serotonin and melatonin. As it alters perception and consciousness, it is said to be somehow involved in our of body experiences, alien abduction, communication with alien life forms and perhaps understand birth, life, death and even God! Practitioners of Kabbalah and even Descartes pointed to the pineal gland as a gateway to Divinity and a bedrock of morality and understanding life.

In humans, DMT originates in the pineal gland and is secreted in certain situations. Interestingly, all over the Hindu scriptures, the pineal gland is the centre of the human energy and one who can control that organ, which appears as the third eye in Lord Shiva, has attained divine realm. The pineal gland is also the highest of chakra of Man's inner energy. Being the organ with the highest rate blood flow and rudimentary photopigment cells, it may indeed open the mystical third eye to more significant inspiration, intuition, and inner vision to improve our existence.

DMT potions have been prepared by Native Americans for shamanic rituals for ages. Their hallucinogenic drink, Ayahuasca, helps to create a psychedelic experience that forms a doorway to a plane quite different than our dormant pure mind can comprehend. Aztec descendants still brew this concoction for their annual ultramarathons in the deserts.

Of late there has been a resurgence of usage of psychedelic drugs in medical treatment. After marijuana has been accepted for treatments of uncontrollable childhood seizures and terminal cancer patients, psilocybin (mushroom)  and LSD are lobbied to be returned to mainstream use, not so much as for recreational reasons but for specific indications like bipolar disease and as a form cognitive therapy. Latest studies even find it not as addictive as previously thought. Nobel prizes winners, like Francis Crick, used LSD to explore the secrets to the seed of life. Steve Jobs and Beatles' members are great uses of this drug for their creativity and groundbreaking feats in human history.

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” -Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860.

"Things in nature are not to be feared. They are to be learnt." -Marie Curie.

“Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation.” -George Carlin. 

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