chaotic order

Jottings  -  Slice of life  -  425 ( Coma -  the movie, and a few thoughts on the moral dilemma of medicine, doctors, and hospitals) One of my haunting cinematic memories is that of a large secure hall suffused with mellowed chromatic light, containing dozens of pale naked bodies of men and women suspended in mid-air on translucent pipes feeding oxygen, and a control panel adjacent to the bodies designed to regulate the homeostatic condition — flipping the blood flow this way or that, or increasing or decreasing the oxygenation levels — to keep the organism barely alive, and nothing more. This scene is from the movie Coma, released in 1978, and it is based on a wonderful 1977 book by Robin cook —  a medical doctor turned novelist.  I remember watching this movie in Coimbatore with family. We were warned that it is a disturbing film, and it definitely was. For several nights, the image of those floating bodies terrorized my dreams as a horror film would, but, little did I realize the tr

Jeffrey Toobin, the CNN legal analyst and a fabulous writer for the Newyorker magazine, is under the spotlight the last few days for his accidental act of indiscretion on Zoom. Toobin was found masturbating during a routine internal video conference with his colleagues. His defense is that he didn’t realize the camera was "on" during a scheduled break out session. Mistakenly assuming the camera was not on, he continued to chat on another line while simultaneously pleasuring himself. The participants in the call, out of deference for the man, and his awkward predicament, kept quiet during the call; but later registered the issue with the Magazine on Toobin’s conduct. Given the hype and sensitivity on acts of sexual misdemeanor of any kind or proportion, especially by a male, it came as no surprise that both CNN and the Newyorker promptly suspended Toobin without much deliberation, and the man himself has now declared he is on professional sabbatical, after offering a sincere

In 2014 the BJP came to power in India, and in 2015, a brilliant Tamil novelist and a lecturer by profession published his suicide note as an author on Facebook and went into hiding. His note was stark, poignant, and ominous of the times. It read “Author Perumal Murugan is dead. He is no God. Hence, he will not resurrect. Hereafter, only P. Murugan, a teacher, will live,”. It shook the literary community and reading public to its roots.  Perumal Murugan was not a novice writer, he had started publishing fiction when he was twenty-five years of age, and his first novel was published in 1991. His fertile mind and facile pen have since then produced ten full-length novels, five collections of short stories and poems, and another ten volumes of non-fictional essays on Tamil language and culture. In 2010, he wrote a sensitive novel titled “Madhorubagan,"  which was beautifully translated into English as “ One part Woman” by Aniruddhan Vasudevan in 2013. With this translation, Murugan’s

The American Presidential debates is a wonderful democratic process. It gives the people an opportunity to witness prospective leaders to articulate their thoughts and vision for the country. While the electioneering campaigns and propagandizing pulpits that precede the elections are often about framing the political stand of the respective parties and glamorizing their nominee; the presidential debates themselves, held during the last weeks leading up to the election, holds a truer mirror to how the candidates feel about sensitive issues, and how they respond to each other on important national and international priorities. Standing alone on that big stage under the glare of spotlights, for three nights staggered over few weeks, facing each other, and addressing an audience — both live and television — that can run into hundreds of millions, the presidential nominees are expected to answer and rebut spontaneously, with wit and grace if possible, but always with intellectual rigor and

(In writing this piece, I am not swayed by any party affiliation. I love the process of senate hearings to confirm the supreme court justice, and how a nominee must face the barrage of questions on every major decision made during their career, with confidence, legal finesse, and expertise.  It's a grueling four-day process with short breaks in-between. Even a single inadvertent verbal slip on any one of the answers to the multitude of questions raised by the senators, however intimidating they may be,  could become national news and jeopardize the entire confirmation process. In my opinion, anyone who gets to sit in the nominee’s chair, whatever the outcome may be, deserves our applause and awe. They bring a lifelong worth of commitment, dedication, passion, and in-depth expertise to the administration of justice. That there may be an element of political partisanship in the nomination itself, in no way diminishes the quality and eligibility of the nominees. I request my readers t