A Walk Among the Tombstones (Review)

                                 An intense and gripping story about two deranged sadistic serial killers who also extort money from victim families. The brutality of killers and depiction of severed body parts though in graphic and obscure make one feel uncomfortable. The story revolves around an alcoholic retired police, 'Liam Neeson' , now unlicensed detective (had past history of a cop), who reluctantly decided to pursue the case of abduction and murder of a wife of drug dealer 'Dan Stevens'. As the story unfolds, many intriguing and frightening details about serial killers start emerging who were unfazed by their ghastly murder hogging media attention.

                               Liam Neeson has continuously impressed me for long with his acting skills and is impressive in this movie as well. The story keeps one captivated, although some unnecessary additions can be very well avoided, but unperturbed by such distractions, the story flows swiftly. It is a good movie to watch. 

River Ganges

The majority of this text is taken from another article on this topic. I have added some commentary and notes in some places, but the content has remained broadly the same. 

             The river Ganges with its source in the mighty Himalayan mountains is considered to be the most sacred river by Hindus. The waters of Ganga is believed to be self cleansing in nature and it is said that a single dip in the waters of this holy river can wash away one’s sins. However, people tend to attribute this to religious / theistic reasons and an objective scientific analysis of this has rarely been done, and in cases where it has been done, its results are not known to most people. The objective of this article is to share some scientific insight for the alleged purity and “cleansing property” of the water of river Ganges.

              It is almost bizarre that even though the last rites of the thousands of Hindus are performed at the numerous ghats along the shores of Ganga at the holy sites like Kashi, Varanasi etc, even though thousands of human bodies are consigned to this river and even though Millions of Hindus take bath in the waters of this river everyday – there is no sign of contagious diseases spreading from person to person due to contact through this river water. Nor is there any reported and statistically significant sign of skin disorders etc after bathing in the Ganges. So what is the secret behind its water?

                In 1896, E. Hanbury Hankin (a British physician) after testing the water of Ganga wrote in a paper published in the French journal Annales de IInstitut Pasteur. The bacterium Vibrio Cholerae which causes the deadly Cholera disease, when put into the waters of Ganga died within three hours. However, the same bacteria continued to thrive in distilled water even after 48 hours. He went on to suggest that the water of this river and its tributary Yamuna were responsible for containing the spread of this deadly disease cholera in the region in those days. C.E. Nelson, another British physician noticed that, the waters of Ganga when taken even from one of its dirtiest mouths at Hooghly in Kolkata, by the ships returning to England, remained fresh throughout the long journey. Normally river water begins to become stale over a period of time due to lack of oxygen which promotes the growth of anaerobic bacteria, which in turn gives rise to the smell of stale water.

                 In 1927, Flix dHerelle , a French microbiologist, was amazed when he saw that only a few feet below the bodies of persons floating in the Ganga who had died of dysentery and cholera, where one would expect millions of germs, there were no germs at all. In other words, people had for thousands of years rightly believed that Ganga purifies the dead bodies, which is why probably the bodies of even those who died of infectious diseases were offered to this river for purification!

Recent Research.

Recent Research

                             D.S. Bhargava, an Indian environmental engineer/professor of hydrology has spent a life time studying the amazing properties of Ganges. He measured the remarkable self cleansing ability of Ganges in an exhaustive three year study which showed that Ganges is able to reduce its biochemical oxygen demand levels much faster than other rivers. Bhargava says that the self-purifying quality of this river leads to oxygen levels that are 25 times higher than any other river in the world.The Ganges cleans up suspended wastes 15 to 20 times faster when compared to other rivers! In a study conducted by the Malaria Research Center in New Delhi it was observes that the water from the upper reaches of Ganga did not host mosquito breeding, and also prevented mosquito breeding in any water it was added to. On the other hand, water from other rivers were shown to allow mosquito breeding!

                         There are two major factors which give Ganges its unique abilities
1. The presence of Bacteriophages which gives it the anti-bacterial nature.
2. An unknown factor which gives this river an unusual ability to retain dissolved oxygen from the atmosphere. This might be due to its high concentration of bacteriophage, but this link has not yet been established

What is Bacteriophage ?

                                       Bacteriophage are those viruses which kill bacteria. What a cat is to a mouse, the bacteriophage is to a bacterium. In fact what Hankin reported in 1896 about the antibacterial nature of Ganges was the first modern observation/documentation of a Bacteriophage It was Herelle, (who again observed the anti-bacterial nature of Ganges) who coined the term Bacteriophage (meaning bacteria eater ) for these viruses. The high levels of oxygen in the waters of Ganga gives it the unique ability to remain fresh over a prolonged period of time. The waters of Ganga when added to other water resources in adequate amount, causes the bacteriophage in it to quickly multiply cleaning the new water resource of any bacteria present in it. Which is why the ancient Indians used to take Ganga jal back home to clean their local water resources. People practice it even today, except that most of them dont know the actual reason.

                               In other words, the water of river Ganga can be an alternative for using antibiotics to treat bacterial diseases. In fact it was in the former Soviet Union that the most active research about using bacteriophages to treat bacterial diseases was done at the George Eliava Institute ! This research institute was co-founded by George Eliava and Felix DHerelle after D’Herelle introduced Eliava to the wonderful world of Bacteriophages following his experiments with the water of the Ganges.

The death of anti-biotics?

                                 Today more and more bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics. The world is running out of antibiotics! We need an alternative, & a potential alternative is Bacteriophage therapy.

The emergence of pathogenic bacteria resistant to most, if not all, currently available antimicrobial agents has become a critical problem in modern medicine, particularly because of the concomitant increase in immuno-suppressed patients. The concern that humankind is reentering the preantibiotics era has become very real, and the development of alternative anti-infection modalities has become one of the highest priorities of modern medicine and biotechnology. - Source Phage International

Phage Therapy Research in India

GangaGen Biotechnologies , a bio-medical research company based out of Bangalore, is now leading the alternative therapy of Bacteriophage based treatment for antibiotic resistant bacteria. It is the first firm to have developed bacteriophage based commercial products. Their first bacteriophage based product was to treat the problem of E.Coli in Cattle.

The content of this article is almost similar to its original article.
Source - Google
Image source - Google
You can write to me at- garv560@gmail.com

The Taking of Pelham 123(1974)

                                           The Taking of Pelham 123, is a 1974 action thriller movie with an outstanding performances by Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw. Four armed men, hijack a New York City subway train in the middle of the day holding 17 passengers hostage. They demanded $1 million dollars ransom, which must be delivered in 1 hour, failing which, they would start executing the passengers that were held hostage. The characters didn't shied away from the consequences with very clear-cut thought process which is at times ruthless.

                                        The story is simple, gritty, fast paced and the performance outstanding which makes the movie unique and watchable. The brilliant flow of the movie and skillful narration doesn't make it feel old and is refreshing to watch.

Perception Vs Reality

                                    Politics is all about perception, manipulating peoples thought process, create smokescreen to deceive. Similarly, it is very difficult to fight perception which once created by concerted and continuous efforts of decades. I would love to put you in the ditch through concocted stories and wouldn't let you come out of it, as my crown depends on blemishing your image.

                                It is no coincidence, that the Western governments and countries respectively, focus too much attention on improving their image and jealously guard their reputation. On one hand they are the biggest human rights violators, warmongers, arms suppliers etc. while on the other sermonize world on peaceful co-existence . They have vested interest in creating war hysteria, as manufacturing arms is the major component of their economy. Selling arms and ammunition to the third world countries while preaching ‘Human Rights’ isn’t just diabolical, but a classic case of running with the hare and hunting with hounds. Isn’t it ironic, that Obama got a Nobel Prize for peace while during his reign in 2016, US dropped 26171 bombs in 2016 alone on sovereign nations, that's 72 bombs a day,1 bomb every 20 mins. By the western standards itself, he was the biggest perpetrator of War crimes and should have been prosecuted in International Court of Justice like Slobodan Milosevic, but USA has a reputation of harbinger of democracy, justice and big fat purse to splurge, so all crimes are overlooked.

                          Funny as it may sound, on illegal Rohingya settlers, our own ‘social activists’ are running to Western countries, who readily oblige, by issuing sermons to India against deporting Rohingyas. The same West that invaded “America” and annihilated natives, while narrative of “Discovery of America” is created, preach us. The issue of illegal settlement of Bangladeshis and Rohingyas is spun into persecution of Muslims. The same people who didn’t shed a tear for Kashmiri Pandits (during ethnic cleansing in Kashmir) throng Apex Court to shelter illegal settlers even though, they are changing demography and are a security threat to the nation.

                        Pamphlets asking Hindus to convert to Christianity during Ganesh Visarjan

                     It is all about the perception, when evangelist freely enter Ganesh procession and distribute conversion material (espousing Hindus worshiping wrong god), anyone objecting to this religious terrorism is branded as communal, while evangelicals play victim. The perception of mistreatment of religious minority by majority meticulously created comes in handy here.

                     Isn’t it strange that, hordes of pseudo intellectuals, celebrities rushed to cash in and defame Holy place of Hindus (Jammu) due to horrible rape of an innocent girl(as victim was Muslim & accused Hindus) but maintain conspicuous silence when scores of orphans were sexually exploited in an illegal Christian orphanage at the same city. The recent case of multiple rape cases of “Nuns” by “Bishops” also didn’t draw any ire from same group of social warriors. Such is the travesty of money power and controlling media through which fake propaganda is spread.

                     In our country, the onus to prove innocence lies at the doorsteps of Hindus, and this technique got accentuated ever since BJP usurped power at the center. Even though BJP shrewdly remained indifferent to plight of Hindus like Congress, (however, it provided lip service on certain issues at opportunistic timings )but a mass hysteria is created prophesying, that supposed RW party will undermine secular ethos of India. Suddenly, India(read Hindus) became intolerant, casteist, anti-woman etc. Even Indian Army wasn’t spared. It is smudged or castigated for human rights violation of terrorists.

                   In the end,wise to say that it is all about creating narratives, fabricating stories, controlling minds, its all about creating perception and unfortunately one side has faired poorly despite being at the receiving end of this malicious propaganda for centuries.