EUTHANASIA

Euthanasia means mercy killing i.e. ending the life of a person to relieve him from pain. It usually involves removal or withholding of life support system on which a patient is dependent. There is a large ongoing debate on whether to legalize euthanasia, also called assisted suicide in many countries. It is a complicated thing because the issues relevant are many. The objective of assisted suicide is definitely to relieve the patient of the unbearable pain and suffering wherein the chances of a life ahead don’t seem to score in the trade-off. But still the basic complication comes that whose consent should count, even if we are considering such an ending of pain ethical. Should it be the patient (who in some circumstances might not judge his situation correctly and would be driven by the inflicted pain) or his relatives (who are free from the pain to be unbiased and deserve to take decisions for the suffering patient to some extent) or the doctor (who can also make a neutral decision, medically guided)? Again, the answer can’t not simply be doctor and/or relatives as it would be unfair to the patient. The neutral guys are actually not undergoing the pain to understand it fully. This sort of makes it a difficult loop of reasoning. Also, in some cases, it might not even be possible to procure what the patient wishes. This then puts the decision-makers in a problematic position. The other side of the coin says that the very concept of ending life like this is unethical, the very same argument that holds for suicide. In fact, one of the arguments even goes like “If you allow assisted suicide, then suicide shall definitely be legal as the difference between the two is simply that of physical and mental suffering.” I completely disagree with such a form of reasoning. The kinds of pains involved are not so directly comparable and there lies a huge difference, according to me, in the coping powers of our mind and body.
In most of the countries, assisted suicide is illegal. However, in recent times, there have been countries who have legalized it like Netherlands, Belgium, Norway etc and in many, there are organizations supporting to get it legalized. However, one interesting thing is that attempted suicide is not a direct offence in many more countries, but still assisted suicide is. The reason behind that is that it is viewed more like a kind of homicide than a suicide really. This mentality shall change in the coming time, but obviously with such a framework that takes into account the ‘loop’ I was talking of and also seeks the answer to a greater extent from medicine side.
Please post in comments as to what you think, as this is rather a topic to discuss than write about.

HUMANS AND SOCIAL LIVING

This thing occupied my mind sometime back when I read two books Into the wild and Walden. In their own ways, both the guys wanted to be away from living in the so-called society. They wanted to uncover a life, more at ease and real than the one they were living. The question that came to me was: Wouldn’t living in solitude solve many problems for a person? Then, it started appearing in a logical fashion why ‘society’ at all and what does social living entail? It’s pretty clear that it is possible to exist as a species without collective living. The first kind of collective living started way before man and in fact in very early beings too. This must have happened in two stages: first, the concept of a mother (birth giver) and later on a father and family would have come. Sometime later, animals started living with each other for very fundamental reasons like security and sharing food, which enhance survival chances. Social living in short is a favorable notion from the perspective of evolution and hence its place in the world today. What are the negative sides to society: since beings have evolved to a whole new complexity level and with so many changes, the role of society can’t be so directly assessed. It still benefits the living of us present humans in countless dimensions, but some feel the other negative side too: need to be unnatural at times, obligation for some conventions like believe what others do, live with people affecting your life at times beyond your control etc etc. It is obvious that what one is today is what he is by himself and what others have made of him all these years. There is a coexistence of such two entities inside us and some people want to be one edge and some on the other. Lets further clear what these parts really are: I’ll take some broad things/ topics that relate to our living significantly and see which entity it belongs to. Politics/War/Law, religion, language (communication), commerce/economics, some complex emotions like jealousy etc are things that one would not see if we lived as loners. On the other hand, there exists a list of things that are innate to a being: basic emotions/drives, ideas/cognition, arts/entertainment, curiosity, interaction with environment and other species. These would have been irrespective of whether we live as a social being or not. They might have shaped pretty differently however in absence of collective living. I don’t hold either of the extreme side views and think both, living as an individual and living as a piece of a machinery have their importance. There is no conclusion I really got to and neither was I seeking one :) So, was there any alternative possible in the history? Well, when it comes to the question of collective living, there are only two possibilities (YES/NO) and one is favored by natural selection, so it just had to happen. However, societies can still be shaped in many ways, there is no unique prototype like the kind of picture we have of our present. And so has been the case. Anthropology has shown that all the kind of societies that have existed in the past have been pretty diverse in their features. Across time and space, nature has tried and will continue to do her experiments with the kind of way we live. The survival is of course, of the fittest.

Anyone interested in nature related topics, read Discover magazine (I go through its online blogs) and NatGeo magazine’s blog. They are worth following.

READING UPDATE

Anyone interested in history (not just wars and empires) can pick these books:

• A short history of the world- H.G.Wells: This book is a collection of facts related to our world right from the time earth came to existence and origin of life to growth of civilizations and up until world war II
• Guns, germs and steel – Jared Diamond : Despite its weird title, the book is on the same line as previous one but is more of a reasoning book as compared to that by Wells. The author tries to unravel events arguing why things today are as they are.
• Glimpses of World History- Nehru: This is a real big collection of letters written from prison to Indira Gandhi. Being letters, the content is most like one-to-one conversation (though we see only the teaching side) but still speaks about history in a number of dimensions. I am reading this one right now.

With such books nowadays, I really see the history curriculum we had as mere waste of time. Such a fine topic, if taught with the right attitude, can attract a majority of people and not seem “boring”.

SEX, MORALITY AND CENSORSHIP

This is the play I saw at Prithvi theatre yesterday. A very good piece of satire supplemented with nice music and humor. The story was an insight into the 1970’s conflict of the modern, unconventional outlook on stage (represented by the director of the famous Marathi play “Sukharam Binder”) and the censor board, representing the government and majority of the society who couldn’t accept a radical change in the way things were shown on theatre. The play highlights the hollow and baseless opinion of the censor board when it banned “Sukharam Binder” and also shows how one always has to struggle to get an unorthodox thing onboard a ship laden with conventional, used-to things. The performances of all the actors were commendable, particularly Nagesh Bhonsle and Ketaki Thatte. The play has its highs, makes you feel you are there with the characters and I loved the hair-raising moment when the Shiv Sena guy broke the matki….The fun-filled, longer first half smoothly laid the foundation for a shorter but impactful second half. Overall, a fine play with colorful characters (though borrowed :P), good screenplay, and most importantly a message. Go Mumbai junta, it’s a must-watch!

SAHYADRIS THIS SEMESTER

Trekking is an adventurous blend of adrenalin and nature. Till now, I have been to 6 amazing treks in the Sahyadris this semester and most of the time, it has just been the two of us: me and gidz. We started with going to the ones easily reachable by locals like Peb fort and Mahuli and ended with the awesome 2-day trek in Ahmednagar covering Kalsubai and Ratangad, which is like more than 200 kms from Mumbai. There were a couple of things that made this last trek special. Firstly, both the treks were completely cloud-less. Second, there was a navratri mela going on at Kalsubai and village people doing the hike just humbled me. There were ones without any footwear, there were women (a broad age range) in their saris and there was even a man suffering from Polio!! Third, we stayed in a village house for one night, ate village food, even attended the nature’s call in the open and the whole experience was memorable. For the trekkers, here are my stats/facts:

Trek	Base Village	Region	Difficulty	Staying overnight?	Waterfall?
Peb Fort	Fanaswadi	Karjat	***	Yes	Yes
Mahuli	Manas Mandir	Asangaon	***	Yes	Yes
Matheran	Bhivpuri Road	Karjat	****	Yes	Yes
Harishchandragad	Khireshwar	Malshej	****	Yes	Yes
Kalsubai	Bari	Igatpuri	***	No	No
Ratangad	Ratanwadi	Igatpuri	***	Yes	Yes

I have done some treks in earlier years but never with this level of enthusiasm and thrill. I do feel bad about not exploiting the first 3 years to this extent, now I am not going to leave this passion of mine for years to come. Of course, the next thing to do after the Sahyadris is to go straight north: Himalayas and before that, learn Rock Climbing. There’s also a very wonderful thing to try out: Waterfall Rappelling (The professional trekking groups of Mumbai do it in the monsoons). It’s basically rappelling down a gushing waterfall. Doesn’t that just sound awesome? Some of the things trekking has taught me:
1. Trekking in monsoons (particularly sun covered by clouds) is way too different than trekking in the sun. We first truly realized this in the Matheran trek, which anyways was a long enough trek. Also, the former is usually more fun.
2. It’s not just physical strength that counts, mental strength plays a bigger role sometimes. It’s one of the very important thing you can learn from a trek and apply in life generally.
3. Trekking in a bigger group always takes more time. So, until one really is a big-group kind of a person, trekking in lesser numbers is better.
4. Other than the climbing part, one can get to enjoy a flavor of rural life too in these treks. It is also a very good option for almost all treks to reach previous night at the base and start hiking the first thing in the morning.

LOST

I started watching Lost near the end of my intern at Bangalore, where there was a need for something or the other to keep myself occupied post-dinner. I had heard about this series from a couple of friends but actually never got myself to watch any TV series (except FRIENDS of course) completely. However, what started in Bangalore as a need to fill time became an obsession as I observed myself in weeks to come. I continued the series after coming back to Bombay and finished the 5 seasons in less than 5 weeks. Not just any Drama-Thriller, it is one of the most awesomely finished entertainment products I have ever witnessed. I am truly a fan today and feel bad that the last season is yet to come. What a shame it would be to wait every week for a single episode during the season also when I have enjoyed the luxury of playlisting as many as 9-10 episodes some of the times. The most amazing thing about the show is how the scriptwriters have maintained it over seasons, avoiding redundancy anywhere and keeping each episode as thrilling and mysterious as possible. The show not just portrays the people on the island as LOST, it gets you LOST in the story too. The way the tit-bits are intricately woven to make the whole story is mesmerizing. Though it has been weeks now that I watched the last episode, I still remember each character so very well established in my mind. Gone are the days there was a concept called Flashback, LOST has proved to be unconventional wherever it could be.

THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES

I re-read The Motorcycle Diaries (Ernesto Che Guevera), an account of a long, adventurous journey of two Argentines through Latin America back in the 1950`s. Why the book again after almost three years: I thought I was not competent enough a reader back then to get the book well. This time, I did like the book and actually finished in almost two sittings. The 9-month long journey of Ernesto (23 then) and Alberto is a very fine read for any adventurer. The first thing that I could think of after finishing the book was to unravel India on a bike, which whenever I do, would be the most amazing thing of my life. However, the story has another aspect to it than being daring and venturesome: the social aspect as I call it. Ernesto, a medical student at the time, is heavily moved by the terrible conditions in which the people of the subcontinent live in. The journey, an unplanned one as it was, eventually became the first major event for this most-celebrated Hero, influencing the ‘bigger journey of his life’ he was about to embark on and affect millions. However, what I feel as a reader is that not being a person from that part of the world, I couldn`t well appreciate the book on levels of non-adventurism. As I compare it with my last read “India after Gandhi” (which not only I liked reading as a story, but also affected me on numerous occasions), the difference here lies only on the point on how much I could link to the story.