Of Oil, Fertilisers and Haber process!

In the Heart of the Sea (2015)

Director: Ron Howard

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/in_the_heart_of_the_sea

I had to remind myself of these two points while watching this film. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, when people discussed oil exploration, they often referred to whale hunting. Petroleum had not yet been discovered as an energy source, and the Industrial Revolution had not yet begun. 

Whale oil was used in the Western world for street lighting, to illuminate homes, street lamps, and offices, for industrial lubrication, and for manufacturing soap as well as margarine. It was also valuable in the production of explosives. With the discovery of kerosene as a cheaper alternative, whale oil fell out of fashion. 

Another thing we often take for granted is agricultural fertilisers. We assume they have always been synthetically produced. Wrong. In the 19th century, the best fertilisers in the world came from the 'Guano Islands', a land made of bats and birds' droppings. As the world recognised its importance in farming and the need to feed the growing population, guano was also known as White gold. The same title was also given to cotton later, as it also drove the US and British economies. 

Essex
https://essex.nha.org/the-whaleship-essex/

Great imperial powers, including the US, Britain, France, and Spain, competed to control the numerous Guano islands off South America. Chincha Island, near the coast of Peru, became a key location that served as the centre of the alliance among Spain, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Ecuador. Spain lost this war, marking the start of its decline as a superpower. Peru became impoverished when the guano reserves were depleted and the accumulated debt became unsustainable. The global guano trade inspired Haber and Bosch to develop their Nobel Prize-winning process for producing ammonia on an industrial scale. We also know how that turned out for the production of TNT.

This film depicts the true story of the ill-fated whaling ship Essex, which sank in the Pacific Ocean in 1820, after being struck by a giant sperm whale. Its crew of twenty escaped in three whale boats, but only seven of them ultimately survived, enduring a gruelling ordeal of hardship, dehydration, hunger, and resorting to cannibalism. One of the surviving boatmen, the youngest at fourteen when he embarked on the voyage, lived to tell his story to Herman Melville, who later wrote 'Moby Dick' in 1851.

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...and they think they can get away with it!

American Murder series
The Family Next Door (2020)
Laci Anderson (2024)
Gabby Petite (2025)

Watching true crime dramas, I am convinced that there can never be one perfect crime or one perfect murder. The audacity of it all is that people still commit crimes, thinking that they can get away scot-free. Forget the fact that God is watching their every move. Anyway, He is not going to be summoned to give His evidence in the court of Law. Even though we were taught that no one can escape God's justice, every day we are persuaded that justice can be bought with the best money one can afford to lose. In the immortal words of Swami Nithyananda, who was caught on CCTV misbehaving with his female follower, "It is not God that one should fear, my friends, it is the CCTV that one has to answer to!"

In the digital age, one cannot escape being captured by digital technology. Even if one can dodge the viewfinder of a paparazzi or the mobile phones of friends, acquaintances, or bystanders, one cannot escape being recorded by public monitoring devices. The mobile devices we own make it extremely easy to track our every movement, either to prove our innocence or, conversely, to put us in the spotlight, caught with our pants down. 

Suppose traditional police investigative work involves visiting the crime scene, collecting evidence, and interviewing potential witnesses. In that case, the first thing the police would do is seize the hand devices of all involved and review all available CCTV footage in the vicinity. 

In the first of the American series, 'The Family Next Door' (2020), Chris Watts called the police, reporting that his wife and two children were missing. He put up a straight face, fooling the police and joining the search team. Unbeknownst to everyone, a mistress is involved, and Chris finally confesses to killing his pregnant wife and his two daughters. The wife's fixation on documenting everything that happened in her life online helped investigators gain insight into her domestic life.

In the second offering, 'Laci Peterson' (2024), an 8-month pregnant wife is reported missing by her husband on Christmas Eve 2002. She had apparently gone out to walk her dog and never returned. The husband, Scott Peterson, was in the midst of things, searching for his wife. His suspicious demeanour prompted the police to investigate and discover another woman at the scene. Scott had apparently killed his wife and dumped her in the river. Her decomposed corpse and her expelled fetus were eventually found.

 In the third documentary, Gabby Petito and her boyfriend decided to invest all their little savings in a van and go travelling around America. Gabby chose to keep a travelogue, updating it with all their travels. Trouble was first detected when someone in Utah spotted them and reported a physical alteration to the local police. Almost two months into their travel, Gabby went missing, and her mother made a police report. The boyfriend became the person of interest. Gabby's remains were found later, determined by the forensics to have been strangled. The boyfriend was on the run and was later found dead by a self-inflicted gunshot wound, leaving a confession in his notebook.

Two things stand out in the cases above. All that we see on social media is fake. Those seemingly happy, smiley faces that we see are often masks that cover inner unhappiness. We may scream till our throats go dry that we value our privacy and have drafted laws to protect it. In fact, we can all be read like an open book. There is no deception involved. As a matter of principle, we signed it all away in the fine print of the online agreements that we never read anyway.

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Just Passing Through...

https://borderlessjournal.com/2025/10/14/just-passing-through/

During my early days of cycling, as I trained during the early hours before dawn, my greatest fear was not the darkness. Beyond fearing fear itself, the next thing that frightened me was the possibility of a head-to-head encounter with a pack of stray dogs that throng the country roads leading up to Genting Peres, the border between the districts of Hulu Langat in Selangor and Jelebu in Negeri Sembilan. ...

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Time to go?

Awakening (1990)

Director: Penny Marshall

In this film, we see Robin Williams portraying his Patch Adams character. To be honest, he adopted the Patch Adams role much later, specifically in 1998. Here, Williams plays the part of a doctor, Dr Malcolm Sawyer, who has social anxiety and works at a hospital with patients suffering from chronic illnesses, predominantly post-encephalitis cases. It is based on a true story that took place in a Bronx hospital during the summer of 1969. 

He develops a keen interest in a man, Leonard Lowe (Robert De Niro), who had been in a catatonic state for 30 years following a brain infection. Dr Sawyer uses a newly discovered drug, L-DOPA, originally used for Parkinson's disease, to try it on his patients. He achieves remarkable results. All the post-encephalitis patients—those who contracted the illness during the 1930s epidemic—in that centre recover, striving hard to adapt to the chaotic world of the late 1960s.

Soon, the effects of the medicine fade, and the patients slip back into their previous dull states. The core of the story revolves around Leonard, who, having arrested development at about eight years old, is thrust into a life thirty years ahead, akin to being tossed into the deep end of the pool without floaters. Before he can settle into his new life, it is time to go.

The story is an allegory of life itself, suggesting belief in rebirths. One is thrust into this birth, essentially with a clean slate. As the ancient Greeks believed, as mentioned in Plato's Republic, the souls of the dead must drink from the River Lethe to forget the memories of their previous births. The process of birth is a process of re-learning knowledge, in other words, re'mind'ing ourselves about life on Earth. 

Similarly, the characters in the film, who recover from the stupor of the unknown realm, are given a chance to live life. Before they become comfortable in their role, the opportunity is taken away unceremoniously. Such is life. One has a whole lifetime to learn how to live. When they are at their most vigorous, they lack wisdom. When wisdom arrives, the body loses its vigour to fight. This recurring cycle of forgetting and re-learning is an exercise in futility. If the karmic cycle is meant to punish past shortcomings, where will learning from and correcting previous mistakes take effect if memory is wiped clean? Only a select few souls are given the choice to draw from Mnemosyne (the River of Memory) to recall past life experiences and thus reach the end of the transmigration journey more swiftly. 

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The Wall has crumbled!

Good Bye, Lenin! (German;2003)
Written and Directed by: Wolfgang Becker

The day the Berlin Wall came crashing down was indeed an earth-shattering moment for those who lived through the era when Berlin was divided into two: between the communist East Berlin and the capitalist West. The Communists guarded the border with their lives, and they convinced their citizens that they were indeed better than their greedy capitalist cousins across the border. The Communist Party, with its secret police, the Stasi, dealt severely with those who were not convinced by the propaganda and wanted to get out to the free world.

The film recounts a pivotal moment in 1989, when the Berlin Wall was on the verge of collapse. Many youngsters throng the streets to express their displeasure at the political situation in their country. Amongst the crowd is Alexander Kreiner, a young adult, holding placards and chanting anti-government chants. The irony of it all is that Alexander's mother is a high-ranking member of the communist party. Alexander is arrested, and upon seeing this, his mother, who happened to be passing by that way, suffers a heart attack and collapses.

Alexander's mother, Christine, stays unconscious in the hospital for nearly eight months. During those eight faithful months, many things happened. The Wall collapses, Germany unifies, the border opens, the leader is ousted, and capitalism moves into East Germany. Miraculously, Christine regains consciousness one fine day. Warned by the doctor not to give her too much excitement in her life, and that is precisely what has happened in the country, Alexander decides to recreate a false environment, right down to the minutest detail, to show his mother the exact environment the city was before her collapse. He tries to portray an image of communism still being very vibrant in Berlin. Hilariously, he tries to get his mother's favourite East German brand, which is obviously out of production. 

Later, we discover that the mother also harbours a secret about her husband, who allegedly abandoned Alexander, his mother, and his sister to start a new life in West Germany.

The movie ends with the mother succumbing to another attack. Alexander thinks he managed to shield the changes in the country from his mother, but the fact of the matter is that his girlfriend may have laid everything bare to her. Is ignorant bliss or information King?

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Rom-com of yesteryear

The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Director: Ernst Lubitsch

https://www.rosendaletheatre.org/movies/
the-shop-around-the-corner-1940/

It is interesting to observe how the concept of a romantic comedy (romcom) has evolved over the years. The idea of a rom-com in the 21st century is one where the protagonist is between relationships and finds perfect love most romantically. It could be a comedy of errors, a mix-up, or occasionally it could start with both parties not looking eye-to-eye on something, but later get closer and then decide to be a couple. Along the way, that would be casual sex, nudity, crisis and resolution. That is the sure formula for a box office blockbuster. 

Refreshingly, a light romantic drama from yesteryear does not reveal too much of their intimacy. In this 1940 film, there is hardly any physical contact. Still, the spark was obviously electric between the protagonist, a young James Stewart, who is well known for his feel-good Christmas films, and the lesser-known co-star, Margaret Sullavan. 

The festive atmosphere remains in the film. The setting is a gift shop in Budapest during the lead-up to Christmas. The owner and his staff share a warm and friendly rapport as they run the shop. A new staff member, Sullavan, joins the team. She does not get along with Stewart, the clerk. Unbeknownst to them, they are pen pals who enjoy each other's company through their correspondence. Meanwhile, the shop owner learns through his private investigator that his wife is unfaithful.

Everything concludes happily in this feel-good film. It is quite a cheerful movie that finishes on a positive note. Despite being vintage, the film remains fresh and relevant as ever.

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Carpe diem!

Four Years Later (2024, Mini series S1, Ep1-8)
Australian-Indian Romance Drama

imdb.com/title/tt31632538/

We are given one life and are expected to make the best out of it. Sometimes, one gets one chance; sometimes, one gets a 'get-out-of-jail' free card. We can seize the opportunity to mould ourselves into better versions or just brood about it. We can blame everyone else for the lost opportunity or give it another go. At the same time, we need to take advice from people who have traversed a similar path. We do not want to leave a trail of enemies behind us. Neither do we want to leave behind a stream of people who believed in us with shattered dreams. Nevertheless, their advice may be archaic, and on top of that, it is our dream too.

This is the story of the son of every middle-class Indian family, yours truly included. The parents would work hard, instil discipline and build an impossible dream via education. They would drum into the kids all their life problems once the coveted degree is attained. The children will soon realise that they have been sold a fake narrative. Nothing changes.

A communist would blame all the problems we encounter in our lives on someone else. He would blame it on societal pressures, patriarchy, and capitalism. He would adopt a victim mentality and vehemently refuse to accept any blame for these issues. In reality, our lives are in our hands. We write our destiny. We reap what we sow.

This is an enjoyable miniseries, written, produced, and directed by second-generation immigrants of the Indian diaspora, that tells the story of an Indian doctor from Jaipur who hopes to pass his anaesthetic examinations in Australia. What makes this production interesting is the storytelling, the nuanced characters, and the depth with which the characters and their emotions are explored.  

In the typical Indian fashion, the doctor is match-made and is married off. Soon after the wedding, his application to join his job in Australia comes through. The patriarchal leader of the family decrees that he should leave for Australia alone, as bringing his newlywed wife would be a distraction. This sets the stage for the problem that would drive the miniseries to eight episodes. Our hero starts a fling with a fellow immigrant who works on the hospital cleaning team. The series begins with the newlywed wife making a sudden trip to Australia, unsanctioned by her in-laws.

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