HIV Cure*, Modi's Farm-Protest Victory*, Dainik Bhaskar's Brave Act, Self-Care and Fish Kabiraji
Also that Spider-Man problem, Harsh Mander, The Dig and some absurdities
Sometime around December last year, a friend of mine informed me about his friend’s friend who had died of HIV/AIDS. He was merely 21 years old. Yes, just 21. That sent shock waves into me. 21-year-old dying of AIDS my god! For years now, I have been testing myself regularly for HIV and other STDs, and also encouraging others to do so. I was initiated into regular testing by one of my dates who introduced me to an NGO; they took care of your tests in exchange for answering their survey questions. Back then when I couldn’t afford the tests it felt like an easy bargain (a friend from US once told me how HIV and STD testing in India was highly expensive). It wasn’t just a 21-year-old losing life to AIDS that was shocking but what I have been reading and getting to know recently. A friend in Pune informed me about this unpublished survey report which identified a rise in HIV cases in two prominent areas in Pune city. I was in Pune then and we were discussing PrEP while cooking dinner. According to a 2019 report by National Aids Control Organisation (NACO), there are eight new infections of HIV every hour in India. Add to that, HIV (and other deadly diseases’) testing across the world has suffered gravely as SARS-Cov-2 clouded everyone’s imagination for a good time now. And India which has the third-largest HIV epidemic in the world, with 2.1 million people living with HIV, has unsurprisingly fallen back on testing too (you may read about it from Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Kerala, Punjab). “At the current rate, COVID-19 is killing about the same number of people every month as HIV, tuberculosis and malaria combined. However, the death toll from these three diseases will have increased as a result of the knock-on impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic, due to lockdowns, resources diverted to the new virus, and interruptions to lifesaving services. Moreover, some of the countries that have so far been spared the worst of COVID-19 itself may be hardest hit by its economic consequences,” said Peter Sands, Executive Director of the Global Fund. “No country is immune to the spiralling economic costs of the pandemic; prolonged economic shocks leave deep scars, which will have profound effects on people’s health in the years to come.”
So net-net like Covid-19, fewer tests does not mean fewer infections but an absence of positives only, i.e., the untested go about their life without taking extra precautions and may in the process spread the infection further. We are looking at a new abyss. And while the testing is picking pace now, say in Mumbai of tuberculosis and HIV, much still remains to be done to reach the pre-pandemic levels which, to be honest, weren’t great, to begin with.
This note is not to make you scared, which every one of us anyway should be given the distasteful facts, but the note is to nod you to visit a testing centre and get yourself and your partner tested. As long as we test, detect and treat early, we will be good. That reminds me of a tweet that went viral a few weeks ago (and while the tweet is deleted by its author now, the screenshot of it is still being circulated on Instagram and likes).
The tweet and many news reports around this that went with such headlines are problematic. Truth is, a cure hasn't been found yet. If one wanted to term it in easy words then the safest is to call it potentially curative treatment not straightaway cure. Bone marrow transplants success rate is quite low and the cord blood transfusion used is also not always readily available as it was gotten from persons with naturally HIV resistant cells. And the bone marrow used for the curative treatment was also gotten from patients with HIV resistant cells. Only a handful of people are born with this unique gene. So technically a cure hasn't been found yet but regardless a way forward in the right direction. But wait, we have people with HIV resistant cells? Umm, yes. You see the HIV virus needs to see a protein called CCR5 on the surface of your T cells in order to infect it. Some people have a naturally occurring variant in this protein(CCR5delta32) that makes the virus unable to see it, and so their T cells are resistant to infection. It’s super cool when you think of it but also super rare. Extremely rare! 0.1% of the world population rare! And even then, CCR5 gene deletion isn’t a guarantee of HIV resistance or functional cure. People also fail to mention the other patients who didn’t experience remission using the same protocol. Indeed for this to succeed extremely complex and rare set of “perfect conditions” have to align. It’s like saying “People landed on the moon!” Can it be done, yes! Is it feasible for 99.99999% of humans? No!!
The recent Spider-Man movie — Spider-Man: No Way Home — has become the highest-grossing film in the Spider-Man franchise so far. But things haven’t been smooth and shiny all the time for Spider-Man movies. If you're a casual movie watcher, it maybe feels like there's been a new "Spider-Man" movie every other year for the last 20 years. And that's because there has been, on average.
First, there were Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man movies, then there were Andrew Garfield ones with the same story. Garfield was again bit by a spider just the way Maguire was. And now we are in Tom Holland ones. Ever wondered why Sony Pictures was making back-to-back Spiderman movies with the same story some years back? The answer to that is called “the Spider-Man problem” in coolspeak and this NPR podcast is a good way to learn what that is.
How India’s newspapers spun the withdrawal of the farm laws
Narendra Modi took everyone by surprise on 19 November when he announced on national television his decision to withdraw the three farm laws. The laws had been a source of popular unrest in Punjab and Haryana since they were promulgated as ordinances in June 2020. Hartosh Singh Bal writing ahead in his must-read Caravan piece pointed out how the media spun this clear win of the protesting farmers as the win of those who were defeated including the media that vilified the protesting farmers. He wrote — Unsurprisingly, they tried to take credit away from the farmers for the struggle they had waged and instead sought to hand it back to Modi—for doing what, in the end, was the only politically savvy option available to him. The evident loss of face for the government needed to be disguised.
Almost all the editorials and opinion pieces written after Mr Modi’s announcements were sympathetic to the government and thanked the dear leader or they tried to undermine farmers’ victory in one way or the other. Bal wrote — Not one of these articles was written by a person affiliated with any farming community in the country. This disjunct between control of resources such as land and a lack of control of intellectual capital is what largely separates dominant castes in the country from the upper castes. But, in this case, the problem went deeper: several well-known agricultural economists in the country are Sikhs, but most do not toe the neoliberal dogma. Their absence, as of those who hold similar views, from the opinion pages is no coincidence. The line-up of opinion writers in newspapers is a pre-decided game to endorse what the editorials themselves proclaim, much in consonance with the business interests of their trading-class owners.
Hartosh Singh Bal efficiently then goes on to debunk the lies of the security threat posed by such a protest by Punjabis and Sikhs, how media and government have been lying to discredit the protest and are in their way creating divisions between people hoping it benefits them politically. He concludes his piece with,
The idea that Sikhs could be the source of a threat to the nation, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, works for the party. This is an old BJP ploy, a campaign that seeks to evoke the fear of separatism among the Hindus of Punjab and the rest of the country. It may not win them much in Punjab, but the damage it does to the state and the Sikhs in the process is of little concern to the party, which is sure that it will win them some more support in Uttar Pradesh.
Some weeks ago Edward Snowden tweeted this.
It wasn’t hard to search that piece of gold and while the article itself presents just fine, there was this line (or analogy) that I think will stay with me. Now I have heard this in flights so many times but recently when I was advising a friend on how they must prioritise themselves over everyone and everything and, only then should start worrying about their partner and them, I didn’t think of this beautiful analogy.
The standard-issue airline safety warning comes to mind: In the event of an air pressure change inside the cabin, secure your oxygen mask in place before you attempt to assist other passengers you may be traveling with. They don’t say or you’ll both be screwed. But you know that’s what they mean.
And that’s true. For any relationship and ‘us’ to survive, you first have to take care of yourself. Because half of ‘us’ is you and no one knows what you want and how better to take care of you than you yourself. And if you aren’t well your partner won’t feel good too and that in turn would aggravate your negative wellbeing. Your not taking care of yourself would result in a bad spiral. Bottomline, self-care is important whether you are single or in a relationship.
Dainik Bhaskar went against the wave of media houses that folded before Modi and paid for its bravery
As the second wave of COVID-19 ripped through India, leaving the world horrified at the death toll, Divya Bhaskar, a Gujarati newspaper from the Dainik Bhaskar group, published an astounding report. “Gujarat issued 1.23 lakh death certificates between 1 March and 10 May, compared to 58,000 certificates issued in the same period last year,” the report, published on 14 May, stated. The Gujarat government had evidently issued sixty-five thousand more death certificates this year, even though its data “showed that only 4,218 patients had died of COVID-19 during that time.” The government’s mismanagement of the crisis and the ways in which it was trying to cover it up were becoming plain to see.
On 17 June, the New York Times published a piece with the scathing headline, “The Ganges Is Returning the Dead. It Does Not Lie.” It was written by Om Gaur, the national editor of Dainik Bhaskar, the country’s premier Hindi newspaper. He detailed the ways in which his team covered the crisis. In Uttar Pradesh, thirty reporters were dispatched to walk along the river’s banks. “We might never have heard of this tragedy but for the weather,” he wrote. “Rains in early May swelled the Ganges, tossing corpses up to the river’s surface and onto its shores … The rains also laid bare the government’s colossal failure to strengthen rural health care or ensure adequate vaccine supplies—or take responsibility for its shortcomings.”
Over the next month, the Dainik Bhaskar group scaled up its coverage and followed the same methods of reporting in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, publishing significant exposés of the various state governments’ complicity in the crisis. Their reportage on COVID-19 deaths was widely hailed in a media environment that, in the past few years, has become mind-numbingly propagandist.
On 22 July, the income-tax department raided the group’s offices. It alleged that the group had evaded “taxes to the tune of 700 crore rupees over six years, it indulged in cyclical trading of 2200 crore rupees, violated stock market rules and set up several companies to book bogus expenses and siphon funds.” Residential and business premises in Mumbai, Delhi, Bhopal, Indore, Jaipur, Korba, Noida and Ahmedabad had been raided.
All that from December’s Caravan media issue. You can read the report further here.
The Absurd
In one village of Uttar Pradesh, governed (?) by Ajay Singh Bisht aka Yogi Adityanath, the impossible happened. At first, PWD officials came rushing to put up a plaque. Then two ministers in Lucknow logged in to virtually inaugurate the “new road”. All done very fast, for the Election Commission’s model code of conduct was expected to come into effect anytime. Only, there was no road to be seen in the village, Nagla Beru in Mathura district, even after the “inauguration”. One of those who pulled this impossible feat was Deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya who walked out of a BBC interview and later also tried to destroy the interview footage.
“The explanation offered by the complainant that after the perpetration of the act she was tired and fell asleep, is unbecoming of an Indian woman; that is not the way our women react when they are ravished,” noted Justice Krishna S. Dixit while granting bail to an accused in a rape case in June last year. Justice Dixit along with Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi and Justice JM Khazi is hearing whether Muslim girls should wear hijab to schools and colleges. Kannada actor Chetan Kumar Ahimsa contrasted this out in a tweet asking whether Justice Dixit had the required clarity to decide on the matter. He was arrested by Bengaluru police after the tweet. Turns out, you can criticise just everyone but the lords distributing justice. How just!
I wrote about the recent controversy around the Hijab ban and a whole bunch of absurdities in the matter. If interested, do consider giving it a read. I would absolutely love to hear your views on this one.
Take Your Headscarf Off, Show Us Your Hair and Get Your Education – Hindus to Hijab-Wearing Muslim Girls
Harsh Mander
India's Enforcement Directorate, a government agency that fights financial crime, searched Harsh Mander's premises in September last year. Officials said they were investigating a money laundering case against him. But activists and lawyers called the move an attempt to "threaten, intimidate and silence" critics. "We condemn these raids to harass and intimidate a leading human rights and peace activist who has done nothing but work for peace and harmony, consistently upholding the highest moral standards of honesty and probity," over 700 of them said in a statement.
Investigators searched three locations connected to Mr Mander's in the national capital, Delhi - his home, his office in the Centre for Equity Studies, and a children's home run by his organisation.
A writer, researcher and social activist by profession, Mr Mander has been a staunch critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government.
In his writings, he has widely criticised the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for its handling of the coronavirus crisis, the 2020 riots in Delhi, and the "intensifying attack" on press freedom in India.
He currently runs Karwan-e-Mohabbat, a countrywide campaign in solidarity with the victims of communal or religiously motivated violence.
Mr Mander was a prominent voice in the massive 2019 protests against a controversial new citizenship law, which critics say discriminates against Muslims - a charge Mr Modi's government rejects.
The Dig by Simon Stone
Carey Mulligan’s range is a thing of wonder. If you’ve already seen her as an avenging American in “Promising Young Woman,” watching her in “The Dig” may induce something like whiplash. Here she portrays, with unimpeachable credibility, Edith, an upper-class English widow and mother in the late 1930s who is fulfilling a dream too long deferred.
The dream is to dig up her backyard. It’s a big one, mind you, on her estate in Suffolk, dotted by what appear to be ancient burial mounds. To this end, Edith, whose youthful interest in archaeology was squelched on account of her sex, hires Basil Brown, a determined freelance archaeologist played with stoic mien and working-class-tinged accent, by Ralph Fiennes.
Once the work begins, it becomes clear that something big is underground — this movie by Simon Stone, and the novel upon which it’s based, is a fictionalized account of the discovery of the treasure-filled Sutton Hoo, one of the biggest archaeological finds of the 20th century.
That review is from New York Times.
Maybe, just maybe, and who can rightly say it otherwise, the real purpose of this newsletter since the start was to introduce you to Fish Kabiraji.
And this video from Bong Eats, is meditative and as they make it, you will notice, it is so satisfying, each step is so effortlessly done although you know how you and I won’t be able to get this dish right, even the best recipes on the web don’t have this perfect picture of Kabiraji in their review/recipe. It’s just such delight.
Coming to my own Kabiraji story, I was first introduced to the dish by a Bengali friend who went on and on about it but he didn’t take me anywhere to have it nor did I bother myself. It just seemed like another dish and I simply assumed his enthusiasm and passion for any natives for one’s cuisine. Then once another Bengali friend took me to Oh Calcutta in Bangalore. While we didn’t order Kabiraji, we ended up having long conversations about it and then recently I finally tasted it at Sorse, another Bengali joint in Bangalore. The flavour, taste ad texture of it when you cut and place it in your mouth, oh lord in heavens, it is amazing. Then I asked my friend about its name and this ubiquitous Bengali told me how in old days the traditional doctors (called Kabiraji in Bengali) when visiting the houses of the patient were served this special dish and how eventually the dish itself got associated with the doctor or Kabiraji. There’s another story involving the British asking for cutlets from their cooks as they had back home and cooks covering them in egg and this ‘covering’ eventually becoming 'Kabiraji’. Whatever the story, if you are in Bengal by any chance or in any city that had a well-known Bengali joint that served Kabiraji, go have it. If I may add, please go taste it once.
That’s it for this one. Thanks for reading it so far. Do write back with your views, opinions and ideas. Do share it with your network. And to repeat, keep yourself hydrated and safe.