The Grand Seduction (Review)

                               'Welfare checks are there to sustain you, did not last more than 15 days, but you collect shame for a month' is the dialogue in the movie and summarize the theme of this wonderful movie. The movie portrays the struggle of a fishing village to get a Petrochemical company to select their village as the site for establishing their next unit. The positive windfall being the jobs and prosperity for the natives. The only impediment was the unavailability of a registered doctor, a condition put-forth by industry policy. The unfolding circumstances and the concerted efforts by villagers to seduce a doctor makes it a wonderful story to watch.

                           This movie reminds me of another movie titled 'The Englishman Who Went up a Hill but Came down a Mountain', both of these films are on different subjects but have unique undercurrents, making one's watching experience joyful. A touching, charming and funny movie with identifiable characters and breath-taking landscape makes it a joy to watch. Brendan Gleeson is convincing and has impressed with his acting skills. Overall a light-hearted comedy with a simple story, a delight to watch this movie.

Ghost of Modi- RSS

                                                 ‘Everything looks yellow to the jaundiced eye’

                          The above idiom specially holds true for the liberal elites of Delhi. This unique tribe, comprising of middleman, pseudo-seculars, deal breakers, had tumultuous rough ride for last four years . This shrinking, self obsessed and powerful tribe, has never had so bad and the outpouring of filth against govt stands testimony, to the damage inflicted on their reputation and devaluation of their grip on corridors of power. They had been haunted by an imaginary ghost of Modi-RSS and badly in need of their own renaissance. This ghost has troubled this blood sucking tribe for last four years, and they are hoping that exorcism(election 2019) will finally bear fruit and bring some relief.

                       Since 2014, in India , the ghost of Modi is detected everywhere, a soar spot for liberals an outlandish person who doesn’t bow to the diktats of lutyen club. In the eyes of our ‘professional seculars’ the exorcising of the evil spirit from their lives is now, just a few months away. Likewise, the bad, communal people who don’t share the prescribed “idea of India” will be cut to size and put at their respective places. Through innuendos, they have started the intimidation propaganda, all the ‘fanatics’(read Bhakts) who were out there, butchering innocent minorities, media celebrities, urban naxals on social media won’t be spared either.

George Orwell, speaking of liberal journalists, wrote in the Preface to his Animal Farm:“One cannot expect intelligent criticism or even, in many cases, plain honesty from liberal writers and journalists who are under no direct pressure to falsify their own opinions.”

                           Sections of the privileged elites have been engulfed by fear psychosis once Modi took the reins in his hand and not wrongly, they were stripped of their privileges that they so shrewdly held for decades by sucking to the corridors of power. Like the good ‘old days’ when imaginary ‘foreign hand’ takes the blame for governance failure, today the narrative is spun and the extremely helpful ‘foreign hand’ of the bygone era has been replaced by ‘Modi-RSS combine for anything that goes wrong in our country.

                           Ranging from Chinese incursions to terrorist attack not to forget Kashmir conundrum, the party of clown along with bootlickers lutyen club, waste no time in sighting the ghost of Modi-RSS and pinning the blame. Meanwhile, the professional seculars take the lead and bifurcate any travesity to search for communal footprint.

                         Lies, stupidity and deception are the hallmarks of politics today. It’s an ever growing enterprise that has catapulted many to the seats of power. People have lied through their teeth to further their political carrier and unfortunately, it pays handsomely. It is no surprise thus, this time tested formula (award wapsi, intolerance, Church attacks, minorities under attack are some of the many campaigns endorsed and supported by this incestuous club) is again being employed to see the Modi-RSS ghost in Rafale aircraft deal.

                           Just before every state election in the last few years, new controversies are stage managed and are swiftly brushed aside after it serves its purpose. In the similar fashion, Rafale aircraft and winking eye in Parliament are intertwined. It was a precursor to the nasty campaign that is to follow. No amount of clarification will satisfy Congress, who wants people to see the same ghost behind the deal as the elections are on the horizon. How much success will Congress attain in convincing the electorate, only time will tell, but the Congress along with corrupt Lutyens club are confident.

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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
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