Puja’s Untimely Death and the Health System in West Bengal

Puja Sharma had to die even before knowing, what she is suffering from…

This story has been originated only a few months ego. Puja, a promising girl of 18, had just passed Higher Secondary with outstanding marks. She was planning to go for further studies. But, suddenly, her life had turned to lead its way in another direction. Puja suddenly became very seriously ill. Reason unknown.

The blossoming youth had soon been turned into a terrible disease –bitten figure. Unfortunately, her illness couldn’t be diagnosed by the local doctor. So, Puja was sent to Nilratan Sarkar Medical College Hospital. There she had been kept in the general bed for 21 days! Many tests were done. But alas! Nothing could be diagnosed so far! Ridiculously, she was told not to be afraid so much about her health because she was suffering from ‘gastric problem’, which could be easily treated. Puja, being a daughter of a farmer, obviously couldn’t afford to be admitted in a private hospital (Apollo, Ruby, AMRI, Columbia Asia etc.), where fair amount of money buys you the best treatment. So, she had to remain in the hospital bed of NRS, was actually counting her days. Unfortunately, ‘qualified’ doctors were unavailable even to check her properly; diagnosis remained a ‘dream’. Needless to say, Puja was not an exception in this state, where people who don’t have money to buy treatment, have to submit themselves to the mercy of the Government-run hospital doctors! This ‘mockery of treatment’ is going on for years! Nobody feel to protest against this injustice.

Puja Sharma was released after 21 days of ‘treatment’, without proper diagnosis. She remained at home for days after that, without treatment. But, when someone is suffering from a terrible disorder which even may kill him/her, treatment should be started on the first hand after proper diagnosis, which, the Government-run hospital failed to give her! Eventually, Puja’s illness had been increased day by day and she remained at home without diagnosis. But, she knew by herself that she was going to die….

One day, Puja had fainted inside the bathroom. Her stool pattern was obviously giving the alarm to be aware, but her parents failed to notice! But, after the incident, the anxious parents decided to bring her to a private hospital. So, Puja was admitted to Shishu Mangal Hospital.

Needless to say, it was too late for any hospital to do anything at all! Anything! Shishu Mangal tried their best of course, but had to give up after a while. Puja couldn’t breathe properly by then. So, she had to be put in ventilator.

There she remained for 2 days only, senseless…

The blooming youth had to accept her defeat after 2 days of ‘unconscious’ battle. Puja had to submit herself to death, even before knowing, why she had to die. May she rest in peace…

Puja’s untimely demise has raised several questions before us. If this is the scenario, where even a doctor is unavailable to attend the patient, then, this is the high time to think! Is this system needed to be changed? Or, should it be allowed to remain as it is? What kind of system is this, where the fundamental right of a human being to be treated properly is ‘intentionally’ violated? If a disease even cannot be diagnosed in time and the patient has to keep his/her patience only to wait for the right treatment to come, then why are those doctors for?

But, we should not ignore the first and foremost question. Who is responsible for this untimely death, the system or our consciousness? When will we ever learn?

Published on VNN Bangla (October, 2011)

The Broken: A Doppelganger or a Capgras Delusion?

Sean Ellis’s The Broken was actually made as another horror movie, probably to increase the number of movies in the much-clichéd genre of Hollywood film industry. But, when I went to watch the movie, the first and foremost question came to my mind was, what could be the film’s actual subject matter, if it could incorporate the actual phenomenon? Could that be the quasi-abnormal phenomenon, Doppelganger, or the unusual psychotic disorder, the Capgras Delusion?

Before going into depth, I must first introduce the subject-duo, otherwise, it may seem strange to the readers. Capgras Delusion is not actually a phenomenon, but a psychotic disorder. A quite unusual or more precisely, rare psychological disease, but this can happen to anyone at a given point of time. Capgras Delusion is derived from Schizophrenia, which causes a very much unusual phenomenon. If anyone suffers from this kind of delusional syndrome, he or she may confuse his or her spouse with an imposter. The central character’s trauma in The Broken somehow resembles the disorder.

The Doppelganger phenomenon itself has a German orientation. It is used to describe the sensation of one for having glimpsed oneself in the peripheral vision. It has nothing to do with one’s mirror image. It is something like alternate self. In some tradition, it is the harbinger of death.

The Broken by Sean Ellis was released in 2008. The film, starred by Ulrich Thomsen, Lena Headey, Richard Jenkins, starts with a quote from Edgar Allan Poe, ‘You have conquered, and I yield yet. Henceforward art thou also dead—dead to the world, to heaven, and to hope! In me didst thou exist—and—in my death—see by this image, which is thine own. How utterly thou hast murdered thyself.’ In this film, the bizarre things starts happening with the mirror suddenly breaks down out of nowhere, in the birthday party of John McVey. Everybody gets a bit startled and scared at first, but after a while, they manage to laugh.  

After the incident, Dr. Gina McVey, the central character, starts getting confused about her own image. After returning from the birthday party, she gets a hot bath. When she looks at the wet image of herself in the mirror, she gets confused about her own image. And then, the mirror glass breaks down.

Things start getting more topsy-turvy, when, in hospital, the ghostly double of radiologist Gina McVey appears and makes coffee for herself without the knowledge of Gina. Gina feels somebody is passing through the passage, but cannot see her face properly. When Gina sees the coffee cup on the floor, she gets puzzled once again because she did not make coffee. There she meets her fellow radiologist Anthony who asks her, ‘did you forget something? I just saw you leaving to go home.’ Gina answers, ‘No, I was here.’ Anthony then looks more puzzled and says, ‘That’s funny. I could’ve sworn, I saw you leaving the building.’

When Gina McVey goes to call Stephan Martin, her boyfriend, watches with her own eyes her ghostly double is driving her Cherokee Jeep while speaking in a cell phone she gets completely bewildered and follows the double inside Pembridge House. There she finds out her own photograph with her father, John McVey. She completely loses control over herself and blindly follows the double. Thereafter we find her inside the car, driving fanatically, while looking at her own image inside the car-mirror. Lost in deep thought, she crashes her car with another one.

Gina survives the accident, but loses all memories regarding it. She gets a bit disoriented. Some fragments of the memories regarding accident comes and disappears in her mind. Dr. Robert Zachman appears on the scene to get the psychological scar out of her unconscious.

When Gina comes back home with Stephan Martin, she starts getting puzzled about her boyfriend. His behaviour seems strange to her. Her confusion deepens, when the dog bites Stephan. Gina notices a leak upstairs and goes to the lot for fixing it. Stephan catches her there, and he seems to be extremely rude at that time. This is when she seriously begins to doubt him as an imposter. In her imagination, Stephan is superimposed with a violent creature. In her dream, she also begins to see that she is killing herself.

Gina, totally bewildered, goes to Dr. Robert Zachman and says, ‘I don’t think, Stephan is my boyfriend. He looks like him, but he is not him.’ Dr. Zachman appears to be very casual at first and begins to stress on the complexity of love relations, but Gina again repeats firmly, ‘The man in the apartment is not my boyfriend.’

Dr. Zachman gets her words. He clearly explains her; she may be suffering from the Capgras Syndrome. He says, it is a disorder, specially, ‘when people begin to believe, a close acquaintance, generally a family member or a spouse, has been replaced by an identical looking imposter, and the condition in most cases is a direct result of brain lesion.’ In hospital, the brain scan report shows some bruises on the same part of her brain, from where the Capgras Delusion usually occurs.

Doctors say, it is also difficult to diagnose because, the symptoms due to the accident is similar to the mental illness driving from Capgras Delusion. So, doctors get confused, whether the loss of memory and the feeling of disorientation are taking place because of Capgras Delusion or a damaged brain.

Apart from Gina, strange things start happening to other family members too. Her father, John McVey is started being seen by his secretary, Mary, on the street at lunch time. When John is questioned, he replies, he has been inside the office room throughout the day. Mary reacts like Anthony in Gina’s hospital, ‘I could have sworn…’, then keeps the sentence incomplete and goes away for her own work.

Kate, Gina’s sister-in-law, comes back home at evening and begins looking for Daniel, her husband. Failed to get access to him, she calls him at last. We see Daniel inside the studio. He looks strange and stands still, but does not receive the phone. At the same time, a ghostly double of Kate appears in the flat and murders Kate. The scene reminds back the memory of Hitchcock’s Psycho, but the murder takes place without a knife!

At the mean time, the Capgras Delusion seems to gobble John McVey. A puzzled John looks at the photo given to him by Gina, and says, ‘Perhaps, it’s not me.’

When Gina comes back to the apartment to get her things packed, she again tries to find out, what causes the leak and discovers dead Stephan Martin up at the lot. She then was persuaded by the ghostly double of Stephan, (whom she has doubted and doctors diagnosed the syndrome as Capgras Delusion). Gina calls her father, who advises her to stay calm, but just aftermath, he himself is killed by his own ghostly double, whom his secretary Mary has seen on the street. When Gina calls Daniel and tells him that now she remembers fully how the accident has occurred, that she followed a woman to the Pembridge House, who looks exactly like her, Daniel reminds her that Pembridge House is the building where Gina herself lives! Gina rushes to the apartment (her own) and finds out her own ‘dead body’! The ‘fragments’ then become much more clearer and she fully remembers now, how she has murder the ‘woman’ herself, who looks ‘exactly like her’ or the ‘real’ Gina McVey. She by now discovers that she herself is the ‘ghostly double’ of Dr. Gina McVey, the radiologist, whom she had murdered days ago and thereafter she had met with the disastrous accident,  just because she was lost in deep thought and was looking at the mirror to see the blood of Gina all over her face.

The rest of the film is as simple as that. Gina’s double meets with the ghostly double of her father and is completely transformed into another human being, a stranger who looks exactly like Gina, whom Daniel scares of, Anthony does not recognize properly. In the whole film, it is Daniel, who is the only surviving original.  

The film ends here, left us with some questions that remain unanswered. Are they all, except Daniel, suffering from Capgras Delusion? Or, they have all been murdered by their ghostly doubles or ‘Doppelganger’ in another word, throughout the film? If that so, then the film depicts that the ghostly double or the doppelganger only exists after murdering the original (a myth that other films belong to Doppelganger genre tried to depict too).

Dis Sean Ellis try to give us a message by surviving the doppelgangers that in this world of utter corruption, where man kills man for money, the scenario had been changed? That, today evil prevails over the good?

Who knows?

Suchetana Chakraborty

Binoche of Bengal and Bergman’s ‘Nudity’!!

‘Juliette Binoche’ of Bengal is now enlightening our pride by walking on the carpet of Cannes Film Festival.

It may confuse our readers as an eminent French actress like Juliette Binoche has never come to Bengal to take part in a film. Neither are we talking about Binoche herself. This article aspires to discuss about a well-known (internationally) Bengali actress, who compares herself with the worldwide acclaimed superstar. Well, if she thinks, she is the ‘Binoche of Bengal’, we, the people of Bengal should not have any problem with that. But, her meaningless blabbering went beyond that, which made us more confused. Paoli Dam, the actress we are talking about, has recently joined the list of Indian actresses who walked on the honourary Cannes carpet. Her latest film, ‘Chhatrak (Mushroom)’, directed by Srilankan filmmaker Vimukthi Jayasundara, has made its debut in Cannes. The film, on its first appearance, has stormed the media worldwide because of its widespread usage of sexual intercourse. Nice marketing strategy, no doubt! And, of course, in a country like India, it was firmly criticized.

Usage of nudity in art is a worldwide accepted concept nowadays.  Nobody makes objection, if a sexual activity is properly dealt with. This concept has drawn its origin from the artists like Michelangelo, Da Vinci. Nudity in Greek art is worldwide famous. Later, nudity has made its appearance in cinema. Worldwide acclaimed filmmakers like Godard, Truffaut, Passolini, Tarkovsky, Bunuel and Kieslowski widely used nudity as an art form. But, those films never intended to arouse sexual pleasure like pornography. That was never ‘nudity for the sake of nudity’. That was a form of art, which has inspired the film makers worldwide. Godard used nudity to create distraction towards sex. Passolini used excessive perversion, but that was also a different art form. Traffuat’s use of nudity attached another meaning to his creation. Later makers like Giuseppe Tornatore, Bernardo Bertolucci, Nagisa Osima, Michael Haneke, Amos Gitai, and Lars Von Trier used nudity in a different form. The nudity used by Haneke or Von Trier cannot attract anybody. Rather, this kind of creation is meant for creating distraction towards sexual perversion, sometimes beyond tolerance.

Vimukthi’s latest creation is yet to release. But, it has already made its debut in Cannes. The video they have posted on various online video sites like Youtube, created storm all over India. Actress Paoli Dam, who has compared herself with Binoche, has been interviewed by national and regional media for her prolonged nude performance. Her reply to this question was satisfactory. Nudity as a form of art is an acceptable concept worldwide and has been in use since the days of French New Wave. Then why she would not be able to do that? Just because she is an Indian? Right she is.

But after that what she started saying was completely beyond understanding and also humiliating for Indians. Paoli was more than confident and firmly answered to the questions asked by the journalists. (I am talking about an exclusive interview in a Bengali daily). But some things went wrong afterwards. In an answer, she mentioned that ‘Indian audience does not tend to watch international movies’! (Then who goes to watch Kolkata or Goa Film Festivals, Almighty knows!) Her contemptuous reaction towards the audience of her own country has startled the film buffs. This is the point, when her attitude has begun to be in question.
Well, if she would have stopped there, it was better. But, she did not.

Paoli thereafter began to explain, she has been born and raised in a liberal family and is watching international movies. This is very good attitude, no doubt. But, when she was asked to mention 2 or 3 of her favourite international directors who has used nudity as an art form, she confidently mentioned 2 names who had never used or very slightly used (not in a purpose to serve aesthetics) nudity instead of Godard or Passolini. Alfred Hitchcock has once used a partially nude scene (Frenzy) for one or two minutes perhaps for the purpose to describe a rape scene. Bergman has never vividly used any nude scene to serve his purpose. But, Paoli has confidently mentioned these two names where there were plenty of options! Godard or Passolini are old buffs. If she tends to watch international cinema intently, she should have at least mentioned today’s Amos Gitai or Bernardo Bertolucci. They are worldwide acclaimed film directors who use nudity as an art form. Lars Von Trier or Michael Haneke is comparatively new in the genre. Paoli’s answer has clearly startled the Bengal film buffs. Instead of that, Alfred Hitchcock and Ingmar Bergman? Well, this was clearly not expected from an international movie watcher!

 Anyway, best wishes to ‘Chhatrak’ (Mushroom).

Published on International Movie Network (October, 2011)

Mukhtaran and the Mockery of Judiciary

Mukhtaran Mai lives with the fear of retaliation…

It was an incident that shook the world with protest and hatred towards the brutality, inhumanity of the Pakistani village council. Mai had to pay the price for her brother’s ‘illicit’ love-affair with a woman of the same village where they lived. The woman belonged to a rival clan that was the only point of objection. Her brother should be punished. So, the village council decided to give such a verdict, so that nobody ever dares to do the same thing. Some of the men belonging to Mai’s rival group decided to rape the sister instead to establish an instance for ‘an eye for an eye’. Ironically enough, later the ‘crime’ committed by the brother proved wrong, but he was sodomized by the men of the rival gang. The sister too was not spared. How could she be, being such a beautiful young woman?

On June 22, 2002, several men from that village council belonging to Lahore district forcibly dragged Mai in the assembly arranged by the council. Thereafter the ‘punishment’ was decided, and the leader of the rival clan dragged Mai inside a nearby stable, where she was gang raped for an hour or two by those men. Thereafter, she was pushed outside of the stable, wearing only a torn shirt and was forced to roam around the whole village, fully naked…

Her father came and covered her with a shawl and brought the tortured, bruised, traumatized daughter back home. Later, under the inspirations of a local Moulana, and a journalist, Mai and her family lodged a complaint with the police. Pakistani policemen came to the village and arrested the rapists. Mai’s clothes were produced as the evidence to the lower court, where semen strains of at least 2 men were found. A lower court of Lahore sentenced each of the 6 men to death and acquitted 8 others, which was later condemned by the Supreme Court.

But, the fuss began with the sentence given by Lahore High Court. It claimed that Mai couldn’t see the faces of the rapists clearly due to the lack of electricity in the village. Therefore, 5 of the convicts were acquitted and one of them was sentenced to life imprisonment. Everybody was surprised to see the commuting of the sentence, but that was of no use. Pakistan Supreme Court, although suspended the order and retried all of the men, upheld the sentence of the high court on April 21, 2011. Mai’s movement had been restricted by the government during the trial and her passport was also confiscated.

Mai now runs 2 girl’s schools in her village to educate the Pakistani women with the help from all over the world. She also established an organization named ‘Mukhtaran Mai Women’s Welfare Organization’ and proved herself as a staunch advocate of women’s rights. Her autobiography has been listed as the number 3 bestseller in France. She was also honoured by the ‘Glamour’ magazine as the ‘Glamour Woman of the year’ in 2005.

But, behind the success, lies the fear of retaliation. What, if ‘they’ come and avenge the price they had to pay by serving behind the bar? This is the ‘gift’ Mai has got in the name of ‘justice’ from the government of Pakistan and the judiciary.

What a mockery!

Sohini and the curse

Sohini died because she refused to compromise. She is yet to get justice.

It was 10.30 pm, a day in June, 2009. Sohini’s father received a call from his daughter, “Baba, please come here and take me home. I can’t live here anymore.”

He was surprised. When he met his daughter that evening, she seemed quite alright. He wondered, what had suddenly happened to her. Why was she begging him to take her away from the home she was living in with her newly married husband? The tensed father called the daughter back. Nobody received the call. That made the situation even worse. The father was miserable, when his incessant calls remained unanswered. Finally, he received a call from his son-in-law. He was panting in the phone, “Sohini is very seriously ill. We are taking her to Hindusthan Health Point Nursing home in Garia. Please come here quickly.” Sohini’s parents didn’t give it a second thought. They were wondering, what really happened to their only daughter! She was in perfect health when they met her that evening. How could she have fallen sick within such a short span of time?

But…..it was too late. When they reached the nursing home, Sohini was lying there, on a cold hospital stretcher, still, calm…………….dead.

What startled Sohini’s parents most was the way she was dressed when she ‘hung herself to death’ (according to the husband and the in-laws). Many questions arose before the bereaved parents. The mother was not in a state to think. But, the father, Mr. Amal Basu was thinking about the prospective causes that might have killed his daughter. It was very unlikely that a young woman would ‘hang herself to death’ without wearing any undergarment! There was only a kamiz with no salwar to cover her lower body! That was what disturbed the father most who had lost his daughter in such a gruesome way. The parents didn’t waste any time to call the police. The police came, took Sohini’s lifeless body to the morgue for routine post-mortem, handcuffed the husband and the in-laws and left.

The Telegraph, Anandabazar Patrika, Star Ananda, Ekdin were there in full force the very next day. The Metro segment of the Telegraph featured a full page coverage on the mysterious death of Sohini Basu; an efficient public relations professional, within a month and five days of her marriage with her classmate of Rabindrabharati University, from where she did her masters in Mass Communication and Videography. This writer had personally investigated the death mystery on behalf of Ekdin. The apparent cause of this death was ‘suicide’, though, no suicide note was found at the site of death. The media featured the story of a love-affair that met with a brutal death. When the police started the investigation, it was found that Sohini had got married to Arup Ghosh, 2 years prior to the social marriage. Why did she hide the marriage from everybody was not clear. The police also found some undergarments and distorted cloths of Sohini scattered around the room where she lived. That made the confusion surrounding the death even deeper. Thereafter came the post-mortem report; a bamboozled piece of paper that announced the cause of death to be ‘by partial hanging’.  Those mystified words proved nothing. Some torture marks were also found on the body. The police revealed that her palms and feet had cigarette burns and some of her hair were lost as if somebody had ripped them off the scalp. The real cause of death was still hanging from a thread.

The police had learnt that a huge sum of money and some valuable ornaments had been given to Arup as ‘dowry’ at the time of marriage. The amount was nearly 1 lakh in Indian rupees! Sohini’s parents admitted to the ‘mistake’ of giving dowry; but the mistake proved to be too big. Their daughter was gone, gone from this world…..forever…

The Sohini Basu death mystery is still being heard in a lower court of Kolkata. The husband and the in-laws, who had enough courage to describe how Sohini dragged the stool and the rope to the veranda from where she hung herself in front of at least 5 ‘witnesses’, were freed in bail and fled. Yes, they fled Kolkata and their whereabouts remain unknown till date. And, Sohini is yet to get justice….

This incident clearly marks the existence of the dowry system, a curse that has almost engulfed the Indian society, even today. An educated man like Amal Basu had encouraged the curse to prove its existence once again. And, the result is, a brutal, gruesome, untimely death.

Dowry, as a curse to the society has long been regarded as a sinister practice, and is banned according to Indian Penal Code. The Dowry Prohibition Act was enacted in 1961. The law prohibits any kind of ‘gifting processes’ at the time of marriage. The asset value must be higher than Rs. 2,000. In application, it was seen that educated young men are claiming dowry in a roundabout way, avoiding the law. A survey showed, at least 56% of married Indian women die because of the sinister practice. They are either killed by their husbands and in-laws or commit suicide after intolerable torture.

In 1983, section 493 A of Indian Penal Code has been introduced that deals with the practice of dowry and the mysterious, torturous death of a woman that involves dowry as a cause. According to the section, committing torture for dowry is a non-bail- able offence. Indian Penal Code suggests that if a woman dies a mysterious death within 7 years of her marriage, then the death would be regarded as ‘dowry-death’. Section 113 A of IPC would see if the woman was tortured before death, and if that is proved, the husband and the in-laws would be charged with culpable homicide. Section 113 B would see if dowry is involved and the woman was tortured for that cause. If it is proved, that the woman was tortured for ‘not giving’ dowry and she died a mysterious death after that, the husband and the in-laws would be regarded as ‘prospective culprits’. They would be given either 7 years or life-time imprisonment according to Section 304 B of Indian Penal Code. These sections of IPC are very important in dealing with the social curse of dowry-death. But, in reality, we see that it is very tough to prove a ‘dowry death’ committed within the four walls of a house. In most of the cases, the culprits are freed because of the absence of ‘appropriate evidence’.  The parents, on the other hand, do not bother to re-open the case as they are also involved in a punishable act of paying dowry.

These are the causes, for which women like Sohini Basu die an untimely and terrible death. There are many more Sohinis all around us. What we lack is social awareness regarding the curse of dowry. Even educated middle class come along to encourage the sinister practice.

When will we ever learn? How many Sohinis will be there to give their life to prove the existence of a social curse, a curse that curbs women to live, to achieve the utmost level of their womanhood…….to be a human being………