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