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How ISIS terrorists neutralise guilt to justify their atrocities

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Terrorism
Viewing the acts from a criminological, rather than theological, perspective offers some insights into the fighters minds.
File photo: PTI
Bertrand Venard, Audencia Nantes Torture, suicide bombings, beheadings, mass killings, sex slavery – these are among the horrors that ISIS uses to terrorise people and countries. While most people feel this is just a new genocide with brutal criminality practised under a fake umbrella of religion, a few extremists believe such actions are necessary to establish the religious, social and political power of the Islamic State. And the perpetrators of the violence? Well, they probably don’t feel guilty at all. Viewing ISIS’s acts from a criminological, rather than theological, perspective offers some provocative insights into the minds of its fighters. Studies have shown that criminals commonly use five techniques to justify their acts – allowing them to effectively neutralise their guilt. Denial of responsibility and injury The first recourse is the “denial of responsibility”. In this way, terrorists might refer to forces beyond their control, relieving them of responsibility for their actions. After declaring the founding of a new Caliphate in June 2014, one of ISIS’s most senior officials, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani declared a compulsory oath for all worldwide Muslims to vow their absolute allegiance to the Caliph Ibrahim, leader of ISIS and since 2014 the head, or caliph, of the Islamic State. This means, in effect, that the ISIS power structure is an authoritarian one in which the caliph holds total, tyrannical power over his followers. Second, ISIS terrorists employ “denial of injury” to justify violence. This technique of neutralisation centres on the injury or harm involved in the delinquent act. Any acts of cruelty hurt people, of course, and it is hard to deny the injury done by terrorists to their victims. But terrorists may believe that their actions will not have consequences to themselves since their cruelty will lead them to paradise, a better world under the Islamic rule of ISIS. In 2015, for example, the ISIS online magazine Dar al-Islam claimed: the one that follows the path of Islam and then Jihad should know that the road is long … and could lead him, if Allah wants this, near him in his Paradise. Just deserts and condemning the condemner The terrorists also use a technique called “denial of the victim”. For zealots, the population in the United States, France, Spain, United Kingdom or Germany deserves punishment; any injury is just retaliation for their society’s hatred of Muslims and Islam. Many jihadists even consider the civilians of Western countries as enemy fighters, since they support the politicians leading the war against ISIS. In an adjunct attack to the January 2016 Charlie Hebdo attack, for instance, the perpetrator who attacked a Jewish supermarket in the surburbs of Paris, Amedy Coulibaly, justified killing a police officer and his deadly hostage-taking by claiming that the French government had decided to attack jihadists in Mali. He declared in a video that the French population was supportive of this French military action therefore, attacking French civilians was, for him, a “normal punishment”. Similarly, in a recent audio message, Abu Muhammed al-Adnani, the Islamic State spokesman, said: Know that in the heart of the lands of the Crusaders there is no protection for that blood, and there is no presence of so-called civilians. The fourth tactic used by criminals to neutralise their guilt is to “condemn the condemners”. Rather than explain their actions, terrorists attack those who disapprove of their deviance. For them, the condemners – journalists, judges, police officers, and the like – are corrupted, depraved, brutal hypocrites and deviants, because they are kafir (non-believers). Thus the jihadists widely employ takfir - the branding of others as infidels who deserve death. A tribute to the 12 victims of the January 2015 shooting at French newspaper Charlie Hebdo, and the adjunct attack in the supermarket, in Paris. Stephane Mahe/Reuters To justify such atrocities, ISIS members will call their victims infidels, crusaders, fornicators, drunkards, sodomites, and so on. This neutralisation technique allows criminals to shrug off denunciation of their actions by questioning those segments of society that critique terrorism. Appealing to higher loyalties Finally, terrorists appeal to “higher loyalties” to explain their crimes. Social control may be neutralised by sacrificing the demands of larger society for the demands of smaller social groups to which the terrorists belong, such as ISIS and its sibling groups. The rhetoric of Islamic State makes much of its promises of brotherhood and friendship, and assures that ISIS endows its fighters with the gift of a shared higher meaning in life. Dar al-Islam said in a 2016 article: When they sacrifice their life for their religion, for their brothers and their sisters, we cry for them, really knowing that they are now with our Lord in his Paradise. In such a situation, the terrorists can neutralise any sense of guilt by demonstrating the noble spirit of their criminal actions, carried out as a sacrifice at the request of their small, tight-knit group community (ISIS). Acting for the sake of your “siblings” in terrorism is portrayed as an honourable act of loyalty. As these diverse neutralisation techniques show, it’s unlikely that even the most violent ISIS members suffer any feelings of guilt. Using total justification in their quest to achieve ISIS global domination, terrorists give themselves free reign to strike any supposed enemy, by any means necessary - even to kill innocents, non-Muslims and Muslims alike. Bertrand Venard, Professor, Audencia Nantes This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
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Stories from Holocaust prisoners who worked in gas chambers should be heard, not silenced

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History
Post-war discussions of the Holocaust have had little to say about these writings by prisoners.
The former concentration camp in Auschwitz
Dominic Williams, University of Leeds On October 7 1944, a group of prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau took up tools and stones and attacked their SS guards. Some attempted to flee, others ran into a nearby building and set it on fire. Another section of their group stationed some half mile away killed a kapo, or prisoner-overseer, broke out of their building, cut the wire fence and escaped into the countryside. Before they had covered more than a few miles, they were tracked down and killed. This revolt was the largest and most determined uprising that happened in Auschwitz-Birkenau. But it met with little success. It certainly did not save the lives of those who took part in it: about 450 members of their work group were killed in the uprising or in retaliation for it. Nor does it seem to have had much effect on Birkenau’s killing capacity. But this probably does not account for the relative obscurity of the revolt. Instead, the status of those who were involved in it often causes people to hesitate before discussing them. This work group, or “special squad”, is more often known by its German name, Sonderkommando. They were slave labourers, almost entirely drawn from Jewish arrivals to Auschwitz, who were forced to process and dispose of the bodies of those murdered in the gas chambers. They were marked for death in their turn. Indeed, their revolt was a response to the imminent threat of being deported and murdered. Cut off from the rest of the camp, the Sonderkommando became objects of queasy fascination even before its liberation. Myths of them as unfeeling drunkards who had given up their humanity for a few more weeks of life circulated between prisoners, and were perpetuated afterwards. Photograph taken secretly by Sonderkommando member and smuggled out of Auschwitz. In fact, their resistance to their “work” went far beyond the last minute scramble to save their lives on October 7. They made efforts to record what they saw in photographs smuggled outside the camp and writings buried in the grounds of the crematoria. The photographs are the only ones taken of the extermination process within Birkenau. The writings, sometimes called the “Scrolls of Auschwitz”, discovered between 1945 and 1980, show them to have been planning a revolt for months, but also to be agonisingly self-aware, and concerned with communicating their knowledge to the outside world. Post-war discussions of the Holocaust have had little to say about these writings, however. While few historians have said much about the Sonderkommando (with the major exception of Gideon Greif), literature and film have taken some interest, but in ways that serve to circulate the myths. Sonderkommando stories In some of the earliest novels in North America to address the Holocaust in the 1950s and 1960s, characters who are former members of the Sonderkommando function as archetypal survivors: psychologically damaged but also morally suspect. Holocaust survivors in general were often greeted with unease, facing questions of what compromises they had made and at whose expense. The Sonderkommando clearly stood for this moral dilemma more than any other figure. By the 1980s, a very different set of ways of presenting the Sonderkommando arose. Greater knowledge of the specific details of the Holocaust produced more of a sense that the Holocaust was a uniquely total attempt to exterminate a people, and a concomitant belief that it tested the capacity of art to represent it. Claude Lanzmann placed one member of the Auschwitz Sonderkommando, Filip Müller, at the centre of Shoah (1985), his nine-and-a-half-hour documentary film about the “final solution”. For Lanzmann, Müller’s story could only be told through testing the boundaries of film making, stretching it out almost beyond the limits of an audience’s endurance. Müller’s speech rhythms were slowed to a glacial pace, the spliced-in silences resonated with the emptiness of the landscapes over which it served as a voice-over. And Primo Levi devoted part of his essay “The Grey Zone” (1986) to the Sonderkommando. For him too, silence was the only possible response. He urged readers to dwell on rather than pass over the Sonderkommando’s situation, but argued that such meditation could only end in the impossibility of judging them. New voices In the 21st century, with the distance of time and a greater sense that it is possible to draw links between the Holocaust and other genocides and atrocities, the story of this group has become more readily tellable. The fiction film The Grey Zone (2001) and an X-men comic, for example, both dared to present narratives of their lives within the crematoria. But they did so by working with rather than against generic conventions, casting them as anti-heroes. As these examples show, this new readiness to tell stories about the Sonderkommando does not mean that their voices are listened to. In Martin Amis’s Zone of Interest, a fictional Sonderkommando quotes one real member’s writings and calls them “disgusting”. The first part of Sebastian Faulks’s A Possible Life, a tale of a British POW who is forced to work in a camp crematorium, is based on a fake memoir. Even the far more thoughtful and impressive Son of Saul (2015), for all its formal strictures of filming, tells a story with a well-defined plot: one protagonist on a quest to bury one child. And this premise was adapted from an account recorded by Miklós Nyiszli, who knew, but was not part of, the Sonderkommando. But there are stories from the Sonderkommando themselves – found in the “Scrolls of Auschwitz” – that show them mourning and memorialising relatives and friends, not as the traumatised, unfeeling automata of legend. Zalman Gradowski dedicated the beginning of each section of his manuscript to the dead members of his family. Leyb Langfus powerfully recorded his own feelings of helplessness when he was unable to protect his son, devoting a chapter in his account of the extermination of his home town. Zalman Lewental, who recorded a history of the revolt, also took the time to list the names and even sketch out the personalities of those he saw as the main figures of the resistance. All of them devoted material and creative resources to conveying how they felt to future audiences, not simply to provide them with the necessary facts, but to allow their readers to gain insight into them as human beings. So the increasing interest in the Sonderkommando should be taken as an opportunity to attend to the stories they themselves told, rather than simply placing them within easier, wider narratives. Dominic Williams, Montague Burton Fellow in Jewish Studies, University of Leeds This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
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Beyond Sherlockean dramas: What it's like being a private investigator in the real world

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Private investigators
Indian private investigators on absurd requests, cases and the challenges they face.
Image for representation
Think ‘detective’ or ‘private investigator’ (PI) and what comes to mind is the shadowy image of a man in a trench coat prowling the streets. Or if you’re inclined to the classics, there’s Sherlock Holmes with his deerstalker hat and trademark pipe.   But what is it like being a private investigator outside Sherlockean dramas, in the real world? “For starters, it requires a lot of patience,” says Stanley Pokish, who has been a PI for 45 years. The 70-year-old is the director of Sharp Detectives and was perched on a tree for a surveillance assignment when he spoke to TNM. “Mostly, our job mandates shadowing the subject (following people to collect mostly photo or video evidence of their activities) which means, we have to be as discreet as possible. And it can take many hours for the subject to make a move, so we may have to wait for a long time,” he says. Cases Unlike filmy fantasies, PI’s aren’t always on a mission to uncover massive conspiracies. The most common cases they get are pre- and post-marital investigations. The former involve background checks, relationship history, and so on. Post-marital investigations usually involve estranged couples where one spouse suspects the other is having an affair or is gathering evidence for divorce, men who do not want to pay alimony, or even cases of domestic abuse. Tharun Thimmaiah, Managing Director at Bengaluru’s Eagle Detective Agency, points out that their clients include a growing number of women from middle and lower-middle class, and 90% of the time, their suspicions about an affair are spot on. “But the sad thing is, they end up compromising, especially those who belong to the lower middle-class background. Financial dependence and/or the presence of the child deters them from separating from cheating husbands. 80% of them even come back after a year or so with the same case,” Tharun observes. Men on the other hand, come with their mind made up for divorce and are just looking to gather evidence, says Tharun. He has also seen many cases where men have been slapped with domestic abuse charges and want to get out of them by gathering evidence against the wife. “In some cases, women have actually filed the case wrongfully, but in the others, the men get off on a technicality. For instance, a man may say that he did not assault his wife on a particular day because he was out of station, but he may have done it otherwise. Our problem is that we are only privy to one side of the story and since the man is our client, we try to help him in that window itself,” Tharun explains. Then there are also unmarried couples who want loyalty checks on one another, but these cases are a much lesser in number. The other major area is clients wanting background checks on employees or suspecting corporate espionage. So why don’t people approach the police in these cases? E Nixon, founder of Leo Investigation Private Detectives, says that people are afraid of the police stumbling on to other secrets, or because they want to keep the issue private. “Many clients approach us to investigate family disputes as well,” he says. Technology The advent of technology has helped PI’s track subjects more easily. But clients increasingly want to employ this technology themselves too. Tharun says he gets many requests for putting CCTV cameras inside homes to track what spouses do when they are alone at home. “The rumours always come from the domestic help, the clients tell us. They ask us if they can put a camera in the house. It’s their house so it’s up to them to put a camera there but we don’t do it,” Tharun says.   Agencies also get plenty of requests, mostly from women, for apps that intercept calls or messages on a phone. “Most of these softwares don’t work though. And you need access to the handset to put the software there, which is very difficult. And people generally use WhatsApp, social media and other internet-based apps for communicating now. So the apps, if they work, aren’t of much use,” he explains. While Tharun keeps his distance from the camera business, Nixon thinks that installing cameras can solve many problems for his clients. He doesn’t install cameras or access their evidence himself, though he suggests the idea to his clients. “We cannot infringe on someone’s privacy. But I make the suggestion to people. Whether they install cameras is up to them,” he says. What is it like being a PI? Patience, most investigators agree, is virtue for a PI. But the business is time-consuming and tiring, even for the most dedicated. Which is why Tharun makes sure his detectives work in teams of at least two people, so nothing gets missed. Honesty is the next thing Nixon looks for. The 41-year-old has been with various agencies for about a decade and seen many investigators misusing the information they collect to blackmail and extort people. The job is also not about adrenaline-filled car chases. “It’s actually quite impractical to shadow someone in a car. You need to be on the ground and so a bike is handier. What if the subject is walking and the road is a one-way? Then the pillion rider can at least shadow the person while the one on the bike reroutes,” Nixon says. Then there’s the stereotype of disguises and trench coats, which Stanley says doesn’t work outside films. “If I have to shadow someone, I need to be inconspicuous. So I obviously can’t strut around in a trench coat,” Nixon laughs. This is also why Tharun says they don’t hire someone who stands out – like someone really tall or good-looking. “He’s got to be your average joe,” he insists. But despite all their efforts, some subjects do figure out that they are being followed. “We’ve had cases where the subjects have taken us for quite a ride – literally. They’ll keep driving through winding routes and sometimes, even lure our investigators into a secluded location where they have already called their friends. A few of our guys have gotten beaten up like that,” says Tharun, who oversees a team of six investigators, including one woman, at present. While both Stanley and Tharun’s families are at peace with what he does, Nixon has had to tone down his cases after he got married. “I used to take whichever case came my way when I was a bachelor. Now I don’t want to put my wife and 7-year-old daughter in danger because of my job, so I don’t take cases involving high profile people and those which I know can have messy endings,” Nixon says. Tharun has even taken his wife on some of his shadowing assignments. “If the subject is going into a pub for example, stags are usually not allowed. So my wife and I go inside as a couple and because selfies are so common these days, taking pictures becomes easier,” he chuckles. For Stanley, the challenges of the job make it worthwhile. “Sure, I’ve got my set of ridiculous requests where someone has asked me to find their lost phone (which I did not take). But I do this because it challenges me. Because when there’s no challenge in your life, what’s the point?”
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These pics of a bike trip from TN to JK will make you want to hit the road

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Travel
He covered a staggering 11,124 km in his 77-day long solo trip.
dopamine86/Imgur
A Coimbatore man's amazing photographs capturing his bike journey from Tamil Nadu to Jammu and Kashmir and back has got many internet users impressed and inspired.  He covered a staggering 11,124 km in his 77-day long solo trip.  Sharing the album, the user named dopamine86, wrote on Reddit,"I quit my job early this year and moved back to India with the sole intent of travelling. So with my trusted Thunderbird 500, I rode all the way from Coimbatore to Leh via the West Coast. The ride and the experience cannot be described in words. I stayed for 14 days in Leh and made my way back to Kanyakumari via Central India. I have a lot of memories that will last a lifetime." The post has received scores of comments from people congratulating him for pursuing a trip that many people only dream of.  The user revealed that all the pictures on the album were shot with his iPhone, though he also carried a 5D camera on his journey.  It cost him Rs 1.3 lakh to complete the journey and most of the funds was crowdfunded. "... well actually most of them were relatives and friends."  He also spent the most on fuel. Responding to a comment on how much fuel was used and the distance covered, the user said he had a 20lt tank. "So I'd fill it up almost every day and would try to cover 300kms or less per day on the plains. I got a mileage of 28-30 kms/lt. Total distance covered was 11,124 kms." India Trip 2016
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Can drinking eight glasses of water a day harm you?

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Health
Researchers say too much water can intoxicate you.
Challenging the popular notion that we should drink eight glasses of water a day for good health, researchers have found that drinking too much water can put people in danger of water intoxication. Researchers from Monash University in Victoria, Australia have found a mechanism that regulates fluid intake in the human body and stops us from over-drinking.  The findings showed that excess of water in the body can cause water intoxication or hyponatremia -- a condition that occurs when vital levels of sodium in the blood become abnormally low. The condition can potentially give rise to symptoms ranging from lethargy and nausea to convulsions and coma. The study revealed that a 'swallowing inhibition' is activated by the brain after excess liquid is consumed, helping maintain tightly calibrated volumes of water in the body."If we just do what our body demands us to we'll probably get it right - just drink according to thirst rather than an elaborate schedule," said Michael Farrell, Associate Professor at Monash University. For the study, the team asked participants to rate the amount of effort required to swallow water under two conditions: following exercise when they were thirsty and later after they were persuaded to drink an excess amount of water. The results showed a three-fold increase in effort after over-drinking. Further, the team used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and found that the right prefrontal areas of the brain were much more active when participants were trying to swallow with much effort."We found effort-full swallowing after drinking excess water which meant they were having to overcome some sort of resistance, as the swallowing reflex becomes inhibited once enough water has been drunk," Farrell said. The study was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 
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Review: In 'Idolle Ramayana', a 'respectable' man learns modest life lessons from a sex worker

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Film Review
Prakash Raj's nervous energy and Priyamani's spirited performance make the film a good watch.
Screenshot from trailer
“Idolle Ramayana” has that singular quality that has often made Kannada cinema such a pleasing proposition in the past – charming modesty. Directed by and starring Prakash Raj, the film won’t be winning any prizes for great new insights into the human condition. But watching “Idolle Ramayana”, you get the idea that the film doesn’t so much want to overturn and shipwreck our popular moralities as give them a gentle nudge in a different direction. And it is this restraint from over-promising that makes the film worth a watch. A remake of the Malayam film “Shutter”, “Idolle Ramayana” revolves around Bhujanga (Prakash Raj), the Dubai-returned, god-fearing, conventionally moralistic patriarch who finds himself disturbed by his daughter’s inching towards freedom after she joins college. With his Dubai gains, he has also become the big man around town, sponsoring local religious celebrations and earning the town’s respect. His world, however, threatens to unravel when a drunken impulse one night leaves him locked up with a sex worker in his abandoned shop, one street away from his home and in a busy market area for a night and a day. Petrified by the possibility of discovery and ruin to his name, Bhujanga must keep the sex worker (Priyamani, who remains nameless through the film) in good spirits until his auto-driver and man Friday (Aravind Kuplikar) can let them out without anyone knowing. With a National Award each, Priyamani and Prakash Raj are both more than adequate performers to carry on their shoulders what is not quite a revolutionary change in worldviews but a small yet heartening shift. Predictably, their encounter begins with sparks as the patriarch finds himself undone by the overt, assertive sexuality of the sex worker. By the end of their time together, though, they’ve both discarded their socially-conditioned lenses to see each other with a certain measure of respect and even a hint of affection. And Bhujanga has seen and heard enough to realise that his view of his daughter needs to move to a different track. Prakash Raj’s nervous energy is what makes this encounter worth watching. He brings to the character all of the fragile insecurity of the middle-class male, and some much needed self-deprecation that lets us feel his anxiety even as we see the correction that his perceptions need. Priyamani too ticks many boxes, taking a very predictably written character, and giving her the edge she needs to catch and hold our attention. Perhaps the one irritating part of their encounter is the script’s insistence on having Priyamani’s character repeatedly state that Bhujanga is a good man at heart despite his flaws. Saying it out in that manner actually reinforces the idea of the “good man” that the film is trying to unravel, even if only slightly. Outside of this one-room shop, the camera follows around the mishaps of the man Friday and his reluctant companion on his adventures, a down-on-his-luck director (Achyuth Kumar) who takes on the role of a smug observer to life’s foibles. While these events help keep the interactions between Prakash Raj and Priyamani from becoming too intense, they could perhaps have been given more depth on their own, rather than simply functioning as plot devices and comic relief. Of course, one does enjoy the smugness being wiped off Achyuth Kumar, when he finds his own world being shaken by a revelation at the climax of the film. None of the characters in the film is so affected by the happenings of one night and a day that their lives are altered irremediably. Instead they all come off reasonably unharmed, but slightly nicer to the people around them at the end of the day. And that, perhaps, is not at all a bad journey of a couple of hours for the viewer to make. 
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Invisible heroes: Food delivery boys and their hunger for a better life

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Human Interest
As you tuck into your hot, home-delivered meal, ever wondered what it's like for the delivery boy who brought it to you?
Image for representation only: Flickr/Emran Kassim
This story is the first of TNM's 'Invisible Heroes' series. The series aims to give voice to the people who perform some of the most thankless jobs in our society. It’s 12pm on a Sunday and you suddenly crave for Italian food. With the plethora of food delivery options available today, the only difficult decision you have to make is, which one to choose. Soon, a delivery boy brings the food to your doorstep and while you tuck in to soothe a growling stomach, he immediately leaves to deliver delicious food to other households, come rain, sunshine or traffic.  That is his job for the next four hours. But ever wondered when he finds the time to satiate his own gnawing hunger pangs?  Murthy has been a food-delivery boy for about three months now. His day begins at 10 am and continues till past 11 in the night. “I have lunch at 5pm and dinner around midnight. I feel hungry around the usual lunch time, but can’t do anything about it. We just cannot afford to take such risks during peak hours,” he says matter-of-factly.   This is the story of most food-delivery boys. They travel all over the city with a bag carrying an assortment of dishes for others to eat, but are themselves unable to eat at the usual meal hours.  Murthy hails from Anantapur in Andhra Pradesh. The 24-year-old has completed schooling till Class X, but was unable to study further due to ‘money’ constraints. He landed in Bengaluru five years ago to do his bit to ease his family out of the financial crisis.   He previously worked as a shop assistant at the Forum Mall in Koramangala, but feels that delivering food pays him better. He makes around Rs 18,000 a month and is able to send home at least Rs 4000-5000. “I do miss home sometimes. We have some land which my parents cultivate. I would have loved to help them in the fields, if I did not have to come here to make money. I plan to go back after four months or so for good,” Murthy says, while speaking to The News Minute.   For Dhanashekar, homesickness is not something that bothers him. It is not finding time to spend with his wife and seven-year-old son. Born and brought up in Bengaluru, he works as a waiter at a restaurant on St. Marks Road and also delivers food.  He has tried his hand at odd jobs like painting and working as an office boy, but for the last two and a half years, he has stuck to being a waiter and food-delivery boy. “It’s nice here. We (waiters and waitresses at his place of work) hang out together and even though it’s hard to find time to eat, we frequent small eateries on Cunningham Road or in Shivaji Nagar to have lunch, once peak hours are over,” he tells.   Given that the restaurant does roaring business on weekends, his off-days never match with that of his wife who works as a domestic help. His wife leaves home at 6am everyday, while he wakes up around 10am. He returns home only by midnight which is now his usual dinner-time too.  But by then, his son is already fast asleep.  Usually, he gets Mondays off and uses the day to spend time with his family: “My wife tries to come home by afternoon that day and after my son comes back from school, we  spend time together or go visit my mother at Sarjapura,” he shares.   His eyes light up in delight when he talks about how he loves to play with his son whenever he gets time. “We have a plastic bat and a sponge ball. So it’s either that, or him playing Temple Run on my phone,” Dhanashekar laughs.   Dhanashekhar makes around 13,500 rupees in a month, just enough to see them through each passing day. He however hopes to save enough to buy a car, so that he can next be a cab driver. “My friends tell me the money is better, and that we are entitled to take two days off in a week. That way, I will be able to spend more time with my family, and even take them on long trips,” he sounds optimistic.   Veerbhadra who has been working as a food-delivery boy for eight months, views his job as just a means to raise funds to start his own business, although he’s unsure about what exactly he would like to dabble in. “I like this job, but I don’t want to be in it forever,” he says.   Hailing from Ramnagar village near Bengaluru, Veerbhadra has a vocational training diploma, but could not pursue further studies because of financial issues at home. He goes home to visit his parents once a month. They do not know that he is a food-delivery boy. “They are uneducated, so a concept like food-delivery is alien to them. They just know I work in a company,” Veerbhadra clarifies.   Job Hassles What bothers the 23-year-old in his present job is the countless traffic jams he daily finds himself in, and the pollution he is inevitably subjected to. “Sometimes they will cancel the order when we’re almost halfway, citing late delivery,” Veerbhadra rues.   In Murthy’s case, it is when the customers yell at him: “'Where is the food? We are hungry,' they shout at me. All I can do is mutter a ‘sorry’ and assure them that I’ll be there as soon as I can. Often, I am caught in a traffic jam or in the rain. So obviously, I run late. But we cannot offer that as an excuse to the customer.”   While Murthy and Dhanashekar do not mind not being able to afford the kind of food they deliver to customers, it does bother Veerbhadra at times. “I do wish sometimes at least, that I too could be at a social level where I could afford such food. But then I tell myself that it’s okay… at the end of the day, it’s just another job that I must do out of sheer necessity,” he remarks.   Also read: Invisible heroes: Bearing the stench to eke out a living, men who keep public toilets clean
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The gems of south India: This year's Sangeet Natak Akademi awardees

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A look at some of the recipients of the prestigious award from the south of India for their lifelong services to performing arts.
Every year the world of Indian classical arts look forward to the most coveted awards given by the Government of India. The Central Sangeet Natak Akademi (SNA) is the official body of the government that recognises artistic merit and bestow them with this honour. The current chairman of SNA, theatre personality Shekhar Sen, the vice-chairman Carnatic Vocalist Aruna Sairam, secretary Rita Swamy Chowdhary and members of the executive and general council of the Akademi announced the awardees for 2015 recently. The awards were given at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on October 4 by the President of India in a glittering ceremony. Let us look at some of the recipients of the prestigious award from the south of India for their lifelong services to music. The Akademi Ratna, the senior most Fellowship award of the Akademi, is given to veteran artistes. This year it was conferred to only one person- veteran Bharatanatyam guru, dancer, musician, and composer C V Chandrasekhar, who is also the world’s oldest performing male soloist Bharatanatyam dancer. C V Chandrasekhar Fondly addressed as "CVC Sir" or "Chandru Anna", he is a graduate of one of the first batches of Rukminidevi Arundale’s Kalakshetra in Madras. He took his training in Bharatanatyam from legends like Sarada Hoffman, Karaikkal Saradamba, S Sarada, K N Dandayudhapani Pillai and Mylapore Gowri Ammal. He also trained in Carnatic music under Budallur Krishnamurthy Sastri, T K Ramaswamy Iyengar, M D Ramanathan, Mudicondan Venkaramana Iyer and Mysore Vasudevachari. CVC taught at the Banaras Hindu University in 1958 and later at Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda for a decade. A number of students trained under him. In fact, most male dancers look up to him as an ideal inspiration to have a long and successful performance career. CVC was honoured with some of the most prestigious awards including the Kalidas Samman and Padma Bhushan. Several Carnatic musicians were awaded other senior SNA awards this year. The first among them are the famous "Rudrapatnam Brothers". R N Thyagarajan and R N Tharanathan are barely known by their names. For the last five decades these brothers have been enthralling audiences across the world with their music. Hailing from a musical family, they were trained by their father R K Narayana Swamy and other gurus like R K Venkatarma Shastry. The "Rudrapatnam Brothers" represent the last of the glorious Carnatic vocal music tradition from the state of Karnataka. R N Tharanathan R N Thyagarajan Shy and charming in her persona, Suguna Varadachari is known more as a teacher and less as a performer. She trained in Carnatic vocal from legendary gurus like P K Rajagopala Iyer , Musiri Subramaniya Iyer and K S Krishnamurty. She is also a trained Veena artiste. For two decades from 1984, Suguna served as a faculty member at the University of Madras. She has also received numerous awards including the "Sangita Kalacharya" award from the Madras Music Academy. Suguna Varadachari Among instrumentalists who received the SNA award this year, the selection seemed scant. The first award was given to Carnatic violinist Lalgudi G J R Krishnan. The son and disciple of the legendary Lalgudi Jayaraman, Krishnan began his training at a very early age form his grandfather Pallavi Gopala Iyer. Krishnan accompanied several stalwarts of Carnatic vocal like Semmangudi and Nedunuri. He currently plays concerts with his sister Lalgudi Viji. Lalgudi G J R Krishnan Krishna has composed music for documentaries and recorded several albums of his own music. He and his sister keep the flag of Lalgudi Bani of violin flying high by training a large number of students across the world. Among the Nagaswaram artistes Mambalam M K S Siva was awarded with the SNA award this year. Siva belongs to the traditional community of performing artistes in Tamil Nadu. He took his training from gurus like M K Swaminathan and Kalakadu Ramanarayana Iyer. Both Krishna and Siva are "Kalaimamani" awardees, the highest culture award given by the government of Tamil Nadu through the Tamil Nadu Eyal Isai Nataka Manram. Mambalam M K S Siva In the category of "music for dance" this year’s SNA awardee is V Rajkumar Bharathi. What would the world of Bharatanatyam have been without his musical contribution? Rajkumar took initial training in music from his mother Lalitha Bharathi. He was further groomed by stalwarts like Valliyur Gurumurthi, Dr Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna and T V Gopalakrishnan. And he is the great grandson of the one and only poet Subramanya Bharathi. V Rajkumar Bharathi Rajkumar was a genius of a prolific concert singer for many years. An unfortunate series of health issues that affected his vocal chords brought his successful performing career to a grinding halt. But that did not stop or discourage him. He channelised his energies towards becoming a music composer for dance. Today, he is the "go to" person for every Bharatanatyam dancer. His musical scores have often enriched many a dance performances. It was however a bit disappointing to note that no recognition was given to India’s national instrument, the Veena. The instrument and its practitioners are on a steady decline. We barely have a dozen decent Veena artistes of any international worth. It would be a matter of great shame and embarrassment if India’s national instrument ends up being a museum piece. Images courtesy : The Central Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi (Veejay Sai is an award-winning writer, editor and a culture critic. He writes extensively on Indian performing arts, cultural history, food and philosophy. He lives in New Delhi and can be reached at vs.veejaysai@gmail.com) Also read: Worshiping the goddess in South India: In poetry, sculpture, dance and song The Master Puppeteer: Bengaluru queen who owns India's largest puppet collection Remembering the magic of Lalgudi Jayaraman, a genius musician and composer How Munshi Premchand made his way into south Indian cinema How Krishna is celebrated in south Indian classical music and dance
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50 million Pakistanis suffering from mental disorders

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Psychology
World Mental Health Day will be observed on October 10.
In Pakistan around 50 million people are suffering from common mental disorders. These afflict 15 to 35 million adults besides 20 million children, according to local media."Approximately 20 million children, or 10 per cent of the population, in our country need attention from mental health practitioners," said Dr Ayesha Mian, Chairperson of the Department of Psychiatry at the Aga Khan University (AKU), during a dialogue held on Saturday. The session on mental health was organised in connection with World Mental Health Day being observed on October 10, the Dawn reported. Mian said there was a perception that people with mental illness were violent, looked different from others, and could never get better or could not be productive members of society."Such misleading stereotypes impact adversely on these people's struggle to cope with their condition," she said."Studies show that people with mental illness are much more likely to be a victim than a perpetrator. Media should come forward and be strong partners against this social bias," she said, adding that family members, friends and the society in general have a vital role to play in helping people recover from mental illness."They need positive attitude and acceptance of their conditions," she added.
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Health Check: is it bad to pop your pimples?

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Health
Squeezing and trying to pop pimples is definitely not the best solution and can actually make your skin worse.
Michelle Rodrigues, St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne To squeeze or not to squeeze? I’ll admit that I’m no skin saint. I have stood in front of the mirror on a number of occasions as a teenager with a big pimple staring right back at me. And yes, despite being advised not to, I have squeezed, picked and popped. But is this really a crime against the skin? The answer is yes. Squeezing and trying to pop pimples is definitely not the best solution and can actually make your skin worse. How pimples form Acne is one of the most common inflammatory skin conditions in adolescents. More than 80% of teenagers battle with pimples. It can also occur later in life for a number of reasons, including an imbalance of hormones called androgens. At the moment, we need more research to fully understand the causes of acne. Oil glands (sebaceous glands), located in the skin at the base of the hair follicle, excrete oil (sebum) to lubricate the surface of the skin and hair. All parts of the body contain sebaceous glands, except the palms and soles of the feet. Acne was previously thought to come from lack of normal shedding of the skin cells that line the sebaceous (oil gland) follicle. This was thought to lead to thickened skin and the formation of small comedones (black and white heads). But there has been a shift in this thinking in recent years. Acne is now viewed primarily as an inflammatory skin disorder. Why you shouldn’t squeeze A pimple is like a little bag under the skin that contains oil, bacteria and inflammation. Squeezing it can result in these contents being pushed into surrounding skin, making the problem worse. It can also lead to infection and temporary darkening of the skin in that area. On top of this, the inflammation can become so bad that scarring is left behind when the pimple finally settles down. And scarring (unlike the pimple) can be permanent. If you resist the urge to squeeze, pimples will usually resolve over a week or so without scarring. The “white” contents will also settle down or spontaneously pop when ready. If large pimples require urgent treatment, a dermatologist can get rid of the contents of a pimple safely. They may also give it an injection that decreases inflammation and the pimple in a day or so. If pimples are something you battle with even on a monthly basis, it is advisable to see a dermatologist to find out what can be done to control the flares. How to prevent pimples If you want to avoid pimples, here are some ways you can have healthier and clearer skin: Eat a healthy, well-balanced diet low in sugar. This includes nuts, legumes, fish, red meat, fruits and vegetables. A number of well-conducted trials support the benefits of a diet with a low glycemic load for patients who have acne. Some studies suggest a higher risk of acne with frequent milk consumption, but more research is needed before dietary recommendations can be made. It’s advisable to keep a diary to see if any of these foods directly aggravate acne and avoid them if this is the case. Avoid excessive scrubbing, cleansing and exfoliating. Acne doesn’t happen due to accumulation of dirt and grime on the skin and can’t simply be washed away. Using many products can increase skin irritation and dryness and compound the problem. Choose oil-free cleansers, moisturisers and sunscreen (these are usually labelled “non-comedogenic” on packaging). Choose silicone-based hair products rather than greasy ones. Greasy hair products can make more oil and grease accumulate on the skin, which will make acne worse. And if you do get pimples, try to resist the urge to squeeze! Michelle Rodrigues, Consultant Dermatologist, St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
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Invisible heroes: Bearing the stench to eke out a living, men who keep public toilets clean

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Human Interest
While people come out of the toilet with a sense of relief, many don’t leave before complaining about how badly maintained the toilet is.
This story is the second of TNM's 'Invisible Heroes' series. The series aims to give voice to the people who perform some of the most thankless jobs in our society.  Muthu sits in a small room which barely accommodates his rusty chair, the stench of the urinal inside not so easy to bear. There is a regular stream of people. Most of them pause at the entrance and scan the toilet before walking in. They come out with a sense of relief, very evident on their faces, but don’t leave before complaining about how badly maintained the toilet is.   Muthu’s usual response is a nod of acknowledgement.   For the past six years, this has pretty much been Muthu’s professional life, working to maintain one of the public-use toilets at Halasuru in Bengaluru.   “The man who used to sit here before me fled one day, and the toilet remained shut for weeks together. After I took up the job, I have been able to renovate at least some part of this toilet and clean the toilet once every day,” Muthu says.   He then dips his towel that had once been spotless into one of the buckets in the toilet. After dabbing the wet cloth on his arms and face, Muthu sits down to narrate his story.  “The water comes only two days a week, I cannot waste much water for my own use,” Muthu explains.   Sunday and Monday are mere words for Muthu, for he works all year. Illness or festival, there is no excuse for him to not run the toilet, or he has to shell out Rs 300 a day to his contractor from his own pocket. Over and above this, he has to bear the water and electricity expenses.  “If I don’t come here one day, the loss is only mine. My entire earnings of the month will be gone in compensating for a holiday,” Muthu says.   The toilet opens at six in the morning every day. A mop and a broom is tucked away in a compartment above his room. When the heat gets unbearable, Muthu covers the grills to his room with a cloth. An uneven opening, just enough for a hand to pass through, is made on the cloth to make the "transactions."   Forty-five-year-old Muthu declares that he is satisfied with what he does.  "After all, Thalaiva was a bus conductor before he went on to become a Superstar," he smiles joyfully, pointing at the many Rajnikanth posters on the aluminium door that separates his room from the public toilets.   Unlike the rusty doors of the toilets that speak for how old they are, the door to Muthu's room shines with many posters from Rajnikanth films. Thalaiva with grey hair, Thalaiva with a gun, and of course, Thalaiva as Kabali.  A few posters of actor Vikram also find a place. "That's Mani's doing," Muthu says, pulling his 17-year-old son close to him. Mani spends most of the day with his father at the toilet and goes to an evening college in Shivaji Nagar later. "It is a relief that he is there to keep an eye when I take a break for a few minutes after lunch," Muthu says.  Occasionally, Muthu lets Mani ride his motorbike, which serves as a motivation.  “I have grown used to this work now, it has been so long," Muthu laughs wryly, the disappointment evident in his voice.   Muthu's grandparents lived in Tamil Nadu, but he has never visited his hometown, as he was born and brought up in Karnataka. He used to be a goods van driver until a few years ago, when the vision in his left eye began to diminish.  "I used to earn fairly well when I was a driver. But since I partially lost vision in one eye, I had to quit driving. I have been a driver all my life, and I never got a chance to learn something else. What option do I have other than to settle for this work?" Muthu asks.  His wife, who works as a domestic help, also supports the family of five. After her work ends in the evening, Pushpa sits at the counter along with her husband and son.  Though Muthu does not harbour any cinematic dreams, Rajnikanth films keep him company all day.  "People don't generally make conversation when they come here. They pay, get their stuff done and leave. The only time people stop to speak to me is to complain how dirty the toilet is," Muthu says.  Muthu wants his son to land a proper job, unlike him: "Though it is a relief that he covers up for me at times, I don't want him to spend all his life in here.” It is the promise that tomorrow will be different that keeps him going, Muthu believes.  For 32-year-old Arjun Singh, a 5x5 sqft room inside a public toilet in Bengaluru doubles up as his home and place of work. For the last five months, this Bihar native has been running a public toilet located on a busy road at Jeevan Bima Nagar in Bengaluru.  Arjun came to Bengaluru eight months ago in search of a job. A month earlier, he’d fallen from a rooftop while repairing a broken pipeline and fractured his left leg. The surgery left his injured leg shorter than the other. At that time, Arjun was in Gujarat where he’d been doing plumbing work for four years.   “I don’t know the exact problem, but since then I have not been able to stand up for too long, or move around as swiftly as I used to. Because of this, I could no longer go in search of work every day,” Arjun says.   The decision to take the first available train to the city happened in no time.   “I didn’t bother about what the work was. All I wanted was to earn money as soon as possible, because after my accident and treatment, I hadn’t been able to send money back home,” Arjun states.   One of Arjun’s friends, also from Bihar, received a tender to manage BBMP-run public toilets and public parks in Bengaluru. He informed him about a job that wouldn’t require him to travel or walk around much - a security-guard at a park.   “The work was fine, I had to guard the park all day. But then, I wasn’t being paid on time. Most months, the payment would come after ten days. I couldn’t afford to wait, because I had to send money back home at the beginning of every month, and this job wasn’t giving me that,” Arjun recollects. He left tha job in three months.  “Here I get paid on a daily basis. And it is convenient for me to send money to my family on time. That is all I care about at this point,” he says, pointing at the toilet building.   With the rates remaining unchanged for many years, the toilet charges Rs 2 for urinals and Rs 5 for “both”. A day’s collection would add up to nearly 400-odd rupees, out of which he has to pay Rs 400 to the man who has taken tender for the maintenance.   By the end of the month, Arjun manages to earn Rs 700. Out of this, Rs 600 goes to his family back in Bihar, he says.  The building has four toilets each for men and women, with Arjun’s cabin separating the two. A black handbag, two shirts and a trouser hang inside the room.   For most part of the day, Arjun sits on a stool placed outside the building.  “I sleep inside the room itself, sitting on my chair. Why would I want to spend the whole day in there? I sit here on the stool during the day,” Arjun says.  "I left home at the age of twenty, and have worked in many places including Delhi and Gujarat before coming here. I’m not educated enough to work elsewhere and I don't complain about that. This is my job, this is what helps me run my family, and that is all that matters," Arjun asserts.  Arjun is uncertain whether fate will take him to another city. He says, “What do I say, for people like me, home is where there is work. And we have to do the work, whether we like it or not.”   Both Muthu and Arjun took up the job for the sheer lack of alternatives. The need for money was one compelling reason.  However, A Narayan, Founder Director of Chennai-based Change India believes that there is more than just poverty for their choice of occupation.  In a country where the caste and class equations are intricate, some communities are forced to take up and continue certain jobs - mostly sanitation works - that are deemed to be dirty and unclean.  “In places such as UP and Bihar, the alarming rate of unemployment forces them to leave their natives and go in search of jobs. These jobs may also be something they would never do in their native. The anonymity that a city like Bengaluru gives to them enables them to take up maintenance jobs at public toilets, something they might otherwise not do in their own home state,” Narayan points out.   With many organizations carrying out efforts to empower people from lower castes, the jobs they traditionally did is now open to people of other communities.  Also read: Invisible heroes: Food delivery boys and their hunger for a better life 
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Too much testing? Why you don't need to undergo a whole body check to stay healthy

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Books
Many diseases are self limiting and don’t need any specific treatment. Doctors wouldn’t tell patients this for fear of losing business.
By Dr Kamal Kumar Mahawar If you live in Delhi and listen to the radio, you must have heard these adverts from a famous local diagnostic facility—how you must have a number of blood tests carried out every so often to maintain good health. I am not sure if there is any scientific evidence behind this. One does wonder where the advertising regulator is and what rules apply to diagnostic facilities when they make such scientifically questionable claims. India is perhaps unique, in that any individual can go to any diagnostic centre and get any test done. Some tests such as Xrays and CT scans may even have harmful physical consequences. Certain others like positive tests for HIV (AIDS virus) or cancers may have adverse psychological and social consequences. Whether or not you as a patient can interpret a positive or a negative result, you are being encouraged to undergo whole body checks every now and then to ensure you stay fit! Now, here is my opinion as a doctor, and one that I think most doctors in the world would endorse—you don’t need tests to stay fit. What you need is to follow a healthy lifestyle, live in a clean environment, take sensible precautions, and see your doctor when you have any problem. Not only can unnecessary tests cause direct financial, mental and physical damage, they can also lead to fraudulently wrong reports, unnecessary and sometimes dangerous treatment, and inevitable significant increases in health care costs. The same is true of the custom of routine health checks being vigorously promoted by many corporate hospitals. As a patient, you will think this is a good idea. You go to a doctor. They examine you and conduct tests, diagnose disease at an early stage, and you stay healthy. However, what you may not know is that the evidence for such routine health checks is not undisputed. Many of the diseases identified in these checks may never cause any significant harm to you whereas the adverse consequences of additional tests and treatment they inevitably demand are real. In addition to a significant financial burden on the health care systems and psychological distress to the individuals, routine health checks may not even translate into improved health outcomes. Screening of asymptomatic individuals is a significant issue that policy makers and professionals need to examine in some depth. The purpose of all screening is to diagnose diseases at an early stage to improve treatment outcomes. Though screening is routinely recommended for many diseases in Western countries, we lack studies establishing their benefits in the Indian context. This is one of those areas where data cannot be directly extrapolated (not that any data can ever be directly extrapolated across populations), as there are significant differences in lifespan of individuals, genetic makeup and ability of health care systems to cope. There is a lot that India needs to fix in its health care scenario before we start screening normal individuals for diseases. Now, I am not suggesting a blanket ban on all screening in India. What I am trying to argue for is that we make a convincing case for any screening and also define the population to which it will be applicable. The Indian population is a very heterogeneous mix and one of the responsibilities that fall to the planners and the professionals is to come up with different solutions that suit different groups. Moreover, health care resources are finite and societies must decide for themselves how they wish to use them. Screening has significant cost implications for both publicly-funded and insurance-funded health care and usually ends up making health care more expensive for everyone. It may be that we recommend screening only for self-funded individuals who can bear the costs not just of the screening but also of the (usually negative) tests and treatments that follow. Such an approach will also act as a future cohort in studying the benefits of screening for the Indian population. No two individuals are the same. This fact doesn’t prevent some doctors from treating accepted variations in physiological parameters as diseases. Prescriptions for tonics for thin individuals, nutritional supplements for tiredness, treatment of low blood pressure, medication for slightly high cholesterol—all fall in this category. What can be corrected with simple dietary advice is often treated with a tablet. If you have some cold and cough, irrespective of the fact that a vast majority of these are viral infections, a large number of doctors will prescribe antibiotics. Part of this comes down to patient psyche—some patients only value a doctor who prescribes a few tablets. Medical advice itself often counts for nothing. The medical community has responded, not by launching mass health education campaigns, but by giving in to the public clamour for capsules. There is another angle to this debate. Doctors are working in a market. If patients do not get quick relief, they will go to somebody else. Doctors often treat a number of conditions simultaneously, to avoid missing any. If you visit a doctor with fever, your doctor will often treat you for a number of common causes simultaneously. Furthermore, many diseases are self limiting and don’t need any specific treatment. Doctors wouldn’t tell patients this for fear of losing business. Hence, they prescribe symptomatic treatment and proclaim a cure while nature takes care of the disease. Practising systematic and evidence-based medicine, in absence of respected local guidelines that both patients and doctors can trust, is a luxury that very few doctors can afford. Here, if a patient is not cured in a couple of days, he changes the doctor, and doctors are continually worried about surviving in a tough marketplace rather than honing their professional and academic skills. We must understand that medicine is both a science and an art. It often takes time to get to the correct diagnosis and doctors usually develop safe algorithms in their areas of practice. If you, the patient, don’t accept this, you will indirectly end up pressurizing your doctor to treat you for all possibilities. This causes real harm and inflates health care bills. Nevertheless, patients are not entirely stupid and it is important to understand the rationale underlying observed patient behaviour. In a country where it can be difficult to differentiate quacks from doctors; where fresh pass-out doctors are given the licence to practice without any further training; where unethical medical practices are rampant and the medical regulator itself stands accused of corruption, how can any patient really be sure that correct treatment is being given? Trust lies at the rock bottom of the doctor–patient relationship and that is the fundamental issue in this analysis. A series of bold and determined initiatives will be required to restore that trust. Excerpted with the permission of HarperCollinsPublishers India from the book “The Ethical Doctor” by Dr Kamal Kumar Mahawar. You can buy the book here.
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Would have liked 'Saanvri' to be a movie but turned it into a book: Filmmaker and author Vinod Pande

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Books
'Saanvri' is the story of a woman who learns to use the carnality of men.
By Vishnu Makhijani Shaken by the killing of Dalit midwife Bhanwari Devi in Rajasthan four years ago, filmmaker-author Vinod Pande, best known for the seminal "Ek Baar Phir", said lack of funds prevented him from taking it to the big screen but eventually turned it into his second book, "Saanvri - the story of a concubine"."Saanvri" (Niyogi Books/pp 264/Rs 250) "is entirely an original work of fiction which draws inspiration from multitude of unfortunate incidents of human misery in a conflicted and still regressive society. Any similarity is merely coincidental and not at all judgemental of any specific occurrence," Pande told IANS in an interview on his second work of fiction. How then did the book come about?"Creative people often get motivated by something that might be happening around them at any given point of time. I am no exception. A dramatic and highly disturbing situation that had occurred in Rajasthan some years ago stared me in the face for its human value in a society still struggling to clear its cobwebs."There was no way that I could have turned away from it. First I wanted to make a film on the subject, but wherewithal not materialising, I opted for the book first, which, in any event, gives one a greater freedom to let go with his creative juices," explained the multifaceted Pande, who, along his journey in life, served as a civil servant with the British government, broadcast for the BBC and made several documentaries and ad-films. It's this thinking that gives "Saanvri" such a sweep: In a small North Indian town one night, a nurse disappears while visiting a patient. The police suspect abduction but there is no ransom demand. The CBI and police are at their wit's end when the mysterious layers of the story begin to unfold through the reflections of those closest to the protagonist. What emerges is a moving saga of a young girl of the Nat tribe. It's a tale about decadence in the high realms of power; the story of a woman who learns the use the wanton carnality of men as a means of gratification and a weapon for ascendancy in a society that uses and abuses her. It is also about the three most important people in her life -- all of who used her with impunity: The one she wed, the one she loved and the one she chose to manipulate with unbridled impudence. This paved the way for her unique translation from a victim to an exploiter."Motivation for any creativity," Pande explained, "does not necessarily mean copying the thing or the incident or the situation that may have spurred it. It could be operative on an inspirational level alone. From one single inspiration, hundred different plots or stories can be constructed, as often is the case. I emphatically state that it is not the 'true story' of Bhanwari Devi or any other," added Pande, who is now working on his third book, "Destiny". This book "traverses far more complex and far more tantalising highs and lows of human relationships in terms of emotions, morality, passions and dilemmas of integrity"."Structured in the crucible of political machinations, it is at once a peephole view of the personal and private relationships of an imaginary legendary politician clashing with the societal morality as well as his travails as an iconic figure confronting the oppressive demands in his public domain," Pande explained. How did he transit from a filmmaker to an author?"As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. In my case, it became a little more. It turned into an opportunity for reinventing; moving towards what I always secretly aspired for. I always used to tell myself that some day I shall author novels. In fact, I was already closet-writing another rather ambitious novel, 'Beyond Frontiers', which I have put on hold for the time being."Because, when the finances for making films dried up and even the TV opportunities became evasive, I had to discover newer outlets for expression as well as, if possible, options for livelihood. But for this, I had to strategically think of first going for easily achievable and more 'popular' plots. Thus, I opened my vista as an author with 'Don's Wife' and now the second one," Pande explained.  Any film projects in hand?"I am presently concentrating on short films for our YouTube channel VPEOrg. We have recently completed and uploaded our first short film 'Panaah' which was also shown in the recently held Jagran Film Festival. Soon, I am going to begin shooting for a web-series 'Office Affairs' for our channel, which already has many of our films and video-blogs uploaded for free viewing," Pande said.
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Why do you vilify and sexualize our profession? Nurses ask filmmakers

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Cinema
The character of the nurse in Indian films is loaded with sexual innuendo.
The nurse in Indian movies usually appears in a comic role that is routinely loaded with sexual innuendo. From the uniform to their behaviour with the patients and the doctors, the nurse is portrayed as either a woman of loose morals or someone who can be exploited sexually without raising any eyebrows. Very few films like "Engeyum Eppothum" have shown the nurse as a respectable woman. Even when a male actor cross-dresses as a female nurse, as in Sivakarthikeyan’s “Remo”, constant references are made to the character’s body and “she” is shown to excite patients and the public sexually.  Sample this: 25-year-old Sneha’s* voice trembles when asked how she feels about such portrayals. “I never wanted to become a nurse,” she says. “My parents pushed me into this job because they thought it was a noble profession. But now, everyone treats me like I’m a sex worker.” Sneha has been working as a nurse for the past five years in different cities in the country. She’s currently employed at a hospital in Chennai. “The field has become very sexualized,” Sneha says. “The wards boys, patients and even the doctors think that they can say whatever they want to nurses and get away with it. The harassment is so bad but we cannot complain about it to anyone.” Sneha, who works as many as 12 hours a day, carrying out difficult and exhausting tasks in the hospital, says, “People, especially elderly men, have such a bad impression of nurses. They try to touch me, talk to me in a suggestive way. I’ve not seen even one film in which the character of the nurse has been shown with dignity. All this affects how people see us. I get fed up and frustrated.” Sneha feels that since nursing is a feminized field, people sexualize it automatically. “Even in other countries, sexual exploitation of nurses is quite high. I know many nurses who’ve come back because of this,” she observes. “It’s quite scary to enter the private rooms of patients. We don’t know what sort of patient we’ll find…how he will treat us. They think it’s okay to put their hand on my shoulder, ask if they can lie down on my lap!” Sneha does not understand why filmmakers continue to show nurses in such poor light over the years. “Nobody wants nurses as wives,” she says. “Once, when I refused to do something that a male patient asked me to do, he said ‘I know you’re here just for the money, what’s your problem?’ I felt devastated when I heard that.” 27-year-old Mridula* was a nurse but when she decided to get married to her boyfriend of eight years, she had to quit the profession because her in-laws were not comfortable with her working as a nurse. “For four years, I worked in a tiring schedule, serving people. It was very pressurizing but I enjoyed it. I was posted in a rural area too and I took up the challenge,” Mridula says. However, what Mriduala considers to be a noble profession is not how it’s seen by the public: “My mother-in-law feels ashamed to tell people that I’m a qualified nurse. She just says that I’m sitting at home when someone asks her what I do.” Mridula worked primarily in the Intensive Care Unit where the patients were very sick. “I did not face much harassment from them, but nurses who take care of the general ward and so on have a tough time,” she says. “When I see the way my profession is shown in films, I get really angry,” Mridula exclaims. “It’s so dirty, the way they imagine that doctors and nurses are sleeping together at the hospital or that the nurses are doing patients sexual favours. It really hurts me when I see that.” Mridula claims that whenever she tells someone that she’s a nurse, there’s a certain judgment she can see in their eyes. As a man in a profession that is considered to be exclusive to women, Mani* has observed a lot of sexism at the workplace. “I’m a male nurse and I know how much disrespect patients show to nurses in general. But it’s far worse for a female nurse. I’ve heard patients making nasty comments on their clothes, calling them to do unnecessary things,” Mani states. Mani, who has a son and daughter, is very clear that he will not encourage them to take up nursing: “You have to put in gruelling hours and in the end what do you get? Low pay and no respect. Especially when it comes to my daughter, knowing how badly women nurses are treated, I will not tell her to take this job.” Mani is convinced that the image of the nursing profession has been damaged a lot by how it is portrayed in popular media. Given that they are in a demanding service that requires them to work inhuman hours to do a humane job, these nurses question why they must be demonized by popular media. “After all, when people fall sick, they will need nurses. Even if they happen to be filmmakers. And we will still look after them…despite what they have done to us,” says Mridula.  *Name changed to protect privacy  
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Invisible heroes: What it's like to examine corpses and live with death each day

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Human Interest
‘However much I try to scrub the stench of decomposed bodies off me, it stays.’
Image for representation: Ralf Roletschek via Wikimedia Commons
This story is part of TNM's 'Invisible Heroes' series. The series aims to give voice to the people who perform some of the most thankless jobs in our society. “Wash, cut, stitch and package,” says Govinda*, the staccato tone of his voice making the job seem boring and mechanical. That there could be other reasons for the tone only hit you when you realise that the objects Govinda is speaking of are human bodies and not cloth. Govinda works as an assistant in the Forensic Pathology and Toxicology department of a reputed government hospital in Bengaluru. This is the department that conducts all post-mortems in the hospital, and as part of his job, Govinda has to dissect a number of dead bodies and stitch them back up each day. Think of some of the most disturbing images you can imagine – bloodied, decomposing flesh, sometimes even covered maggots – and 47-year-old Govinda says that he has dealt with it all on the job. "When I was transferred to the forensic pathology and toxicology department, I was initially made to handle only decomposed bodies, sometime exhumed bodies too. The first few days were difficult, because of the smell that emanated from the bodies, and the difficulties of dealing with maggots and flies. But I got used to it in three days,” he says. Despite his claim, however, Govinda has habits that suggest he hasn’t completely made peace with all the elements of the job. For instance, he has to take a shot of alcohol after the day's work has ended, he says, if he has to keep himself from thinking about the mortuary when he goes back home.  And although he says he has grown used to the sights and smells of his job, it all comes back to him in public or social situations, like in a crowded bus. “We take a bath after work. But however much I try to scrub the stench of decomposed bodies off me, it stays. It is like I am carrying the scent of my workplace always.” This odour, combined with their imagination of what he and his job are like, sometimes leads people to steer clear of him. “People used to comment about the odour. Some people in my family also prefer not to talk to me. They think, ‘What will a person who deals with dead bodies talk about?’,” he says. Lalith* a forensic pathologist from the same hospital, says the physical sensations are difficult, but it’s possible to adapt to them. What he has trouble dealing with are the negative feelings that come with the job. Over the years, he says, he has come to believe that, “Death is the ultimate truth”. For all the hard work that goes into his job, he says, “This is not a job where someone appreciates you. We aren’t saving lives here.” Adding to this is the misconception many people have of pathologists, says Lalith, that they illegally harvest organs from the dead. “Organs can only be removed from bodies of people who are brain-dead, and then only with prior approval. And the casualty ward would not send bodies to us, unless the person had registered himself or herself as a donor. So there is no question of stealing organs,” he explains. Despite these perceptions, Lalith says he has never felt less as a doctor. “My job is important when it comes to getting justice for innocent people,” he explains. But even as that feeling of bringing justice can be rewarding, Lalith, who spends three days a week in court as a forensic witness, says that it is one of the most tiring aspects of his job. “I would have conducted the post-mortem, which would have revealed some vital evidence for the case to be of murder. I would have been grilled for a long time by the defense lawyer during the court proceedings. But everything will fall apart when the witness turns hostile,” he explains, adding that he has seen too many cases end this way. The one thing both Govind and Lalith dread doing is conducting a post-mortem on children. Lalith says that it is most heartbreaking when children die of negligence. “Once a toddler had drowned in a bucket of water because he fell into it. It turned out to be an accident. I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days.” *Names changed on request   Also Read: Invisible heroes: Food delivery boys and their hunger for a better life Invisible heroes: Bearing the stench to eke out a living, men who keep public toilets clean 
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Places you’ll pray: This photo series captures the omnipresence of prayer

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Photography
The series capture Muslims observing their daily prayers at various public places - beaches, libraries and restaurants to name a few.
In a world where Muslims are being increasingly associated with religious extremism by virtue of their faith, Sana Ullah, an American-Bangladeshi based in Florida decided to do her bit to change this perception.  In January 2015, she started the 'Places You'll Pray' project, an initiative which captures Muslims observing 'salah' or their daily prayer in public spaces. And thanks to social media, the trend was quick to catch on and became a hashtag. It features pictures from all over the world, of young American Muslims performing their their daily prayers at various public places - beaches, libraries, restaurants and roadsides to name a few. The photos are available on Sana's Instagram page 'placesyoullpray'."With this project., I want to encourage the public (Muslim and non-Muslim alike) to have educated, open-minded discussions about Islam, Muslims, identity, and spirituality,” Sana told TNM. Sana also wants to highlight with this series a side of Muslims that is rarely covered in the media. “(The) majority of Muslims are not the evil that hurts this world and its people on it, but rather Muslims (are) constantly taught to love it sincerely and find peace with themselves five times a day,” she told Buzzfeed in an interview. Here are a few of the photos:   Seen praying by the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. Photo shared by @sleazy_s  A worker praying the Isha (evening prayer) in a warehouse in Manama, Bahrain. Photo shared by @f_algosaibi   Seen praying in the Kew Gardens of southwest London, England. Photo shared by @andala_j  Seen praying for her first time in public on a parking lot in Nanyang Polytechnic, Singapore. Photo shared by @s_adnin  Seen praying in Petra, Jordan. Photo shared by @yasinv  Seen praying in Riad Imsouane, Morocco. Photo shared by @hksiddiqui  Seen praying at a gas station in Clewiston, Florida after leaving a farm on Sunday, September 12, 2016: Eid Ul Adha  Seen praying at the top of Forest Falls in Mpumalanga, South Africa. Photo shared by @zaakirahvadi  Fisherman seen praying in his boat in Bangladesh. Photo shared by @naturalbangladesh  Seen praying in Jateng, Indonesia. Photo shared by @ulil_usrock       
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China and India's race to dam the Brahmaputra river puts the Himalayas at risk

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Blog
The waters that flow from the Himalayas know no borders.
Many locals also earn a livelihood from the river
Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati The mighty Himalayas act as the water tower of the South and Southeast Asian region. More than ten major rivers originate from the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China. And for the past decade, India and China, the two biggest geopolitical forces in the region, have engaged in a hydro-power race to harness this power. The waters that flow from the Himalayas know no borders. These rivers include the Brahmaputra, the Yangtze, the Mekong, the Sutlej, the Indus, the Salween, and the Huang Ho, which is also known as the Yellow River. The Brahmaputra has a total length of 2,880 kilometres with a total drainage area of 5,73,394 square kilometres. It is shared by China, India, Bhutan and Bangladesh. The river is known as the Yarlung Tsangpo in China, the Siang and the Brahmaputra in India and the Jamuna in Bangladesh. The Brahmaputra is the lifeline for communities living along its banks. The Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers cross borders in the Himalayas. Pfly, CC BY The path of the Brahmaputra has sculpted the natural and human landscape of two north-eastern Indian states, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam. The river nourishes the young and fragile ecology of the Eastern Himalayas and the rich diversity of people and languages in this frontier space. In recent years, the central governments of India and China have decided to tame the Brahmaputra, by building hydropower dams. Among them are the Lower Subansiri Project and the Dibang Valley project. As many as 168 memoranda of understanding have been signed between the Arunachal Pradesh state government and private and public dam-building companies to build medium and large dams in the state. The Siang in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam offers a rich biosphere, yet to be fully explored and studied. Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman, Author provided The legendary 20th century Assamese singer and composer, Bhupen Hazarika, mentions the Brahmaputra river in one of his popular compositions Bistirno Parore. He was influenced by the American standard, Ol’ Man River (Show Boat, 1936), sung by African-American artist Paul Leroy Robeson, who was involved in the American civil rights movement. In his song, Hazarika asks the mighty Brahmaputra the reason for its quiet and unbounded flow, amid the suffering and pain of the people living by its banks. Today, the song can be reinterpreted to reflect the great uncertainty and fear among the communities living in the Brahmaputra river basin, exhorting the river to answer back and not keep quietly flowing amid all the dam building. In upstream Arunachal Pradesh, and downstream communities of Assam and Bangladesh, concern is widespread about plans to construct mega-dams by both China and India and water diversion infrastructure projects by China along the river system. Map of India’s proposed dams. Author provided The size and scale of proposed infrastructure developments on this river, and the wider region, is unprecedented in the development history of northeast India. Indigenous communities of the region are worried they will face tremendous social and economic upheaval if the projects go ahead. This may not go down well with Beijing. India’s policy of pursuing hydropower development in Arunachal Pradesh could have a negative impact on bilateral relations. New Delhi is essentially using this critical biodiversity hotspot to legitimise its sovereignty claims over Arunachal Pradesh by building mega hydroelectricity projects. Local communities leaders are wary of the impact of upstream Chinese dams. But what about Indian dams? Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman, Author provided The Indian government’s hydropower obsession has led to great fear among local communities in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, for the first time significantly overriding existing concerns about upstream dam building projects by China. Recently, local people have taken to the streets in large-scale protests to voice their dissatisfaction. The conversations around the Brahmaputra have been dominated by the Indian state, and this sits at odds with how the local communities think about the role the river plays in their own lives. India has to balance its strategic development interests with local community interests. Instead of its current aggressive approach, the government could assume a leadership role to initiate a basin-wide dialogue involving all the riparian stakeholder countries. The way forward must be to highlight the Himalayan environment as an area of cooperation between all the South and Southeast Asian countries that share the transborder water resources in the region. The only way to understand the Brahmaputra better is through a mix of modern research methods and traditional community-based knowledge systems. This approach should be central to any dialogue between and within the countries served by the river. An emphasis on multilateral cooperation will dispel the prevailing sense of conflict on this crucial river. The Brahmaputra, meanwhile, meanders along ceaselessly, shifting between its moods of ferocious rampage and eternal quiet flow. This is the first instalment of our ongoing series about water conflicts. Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman, Researcher in anthropology and political sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
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If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be here: Deepika's emotional speech on depression

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Mental Health
Deepika was speaking on the occasion of World Mental Health Day.
Fac
On World Mental Health Day, an emotional Deepika Padukone spoke about her battle with depression once again. Recalling a day two years ago, when her mother had asked her if she was okay, the Bollywood star went on to thank her parents, her sister and her friends who stood by her as she fought against a mental illness that is heavily stigmatized by society. "If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be here," she confessed, acknowledging that it was her mother's insistence on knowing what was going on that helped her come out. Following her disclosure about her depression in an interview with NDTV in 2015, Deepika had started The Live Love Laugh Foundation (TLLLF) in Bengaluru. The initiative spreads awareness about mental health. This year, a #DobaraPoocho campaign has been launched, encouraging people to be alert to spotting symptoms of depression in their loved ones and asking if they are really doing all right till they get an honest response. While there were the usual trolls who said that the actor was doing "drama", others like Saina Nehwal came out in support. Great work @deepikapadukone #worldmentalhealthday @TLLLFoundation https://t.co/UkpzP3699c — Saina Nehwal (@NSaina) October 10, 2016 Brave @deepikapadukone Breaks down,talking ab Depression.But her openness will inspire many@India_MSM @Shehzad_Ind @upma23 @nanditathhakur pic.twitter.com/rzB0kRLKZZ — Akash Soni (@Akashtv1) October 11, 2016 Women are conditioned to feel guilty about doing something for themselves, to care for themselves: @deepikapadukone on battling depression — Suparna Singh (@Suparna_Singh) October 10, 2016 @deepikapadukone Thank you for speaking up about Depression and Mental health. Very rarely is this subject tackled within Bollywood. — Nafeesa Shaikh (@Nafsooni83) September 30, 2016 Watch: #WATCH: Deepika Padukone breaks down while sharing her personal struggle, at national public awareness campaign about mental health in Delhi pic.twitter.com/z09ngrHsOi — ANI (@ANI_news) October 10, 2016
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Yoshinori Ohsumi: A deserving winner of the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine

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Science
Ohsumi’s experiments with yeast in the 1990s led to the discovery of biological processes that are needed for autophagy.
Image: Facebook/Yoshinori Ohsumi
David Rubinsztein, University of Cambridge I am delighted that Yoshinori Ohsumi won this year’s Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. His pioneering work in yeast led to the discovery of genes and biological processes that are needed for autophagy. Autophagy (from the Greek for “self-eating”) is the mechanism by which cells break down and recycle cellular content. Without this vital housekeeping role we’d be more prone to cancer, Parkinson’s and other age-related disorders. Although scientists have been aware of autophagy since the 1960s, it wasn’t until Ohsumi’s experiments with yeast in the 1990s that we began to understand the important role of this biological process. The autophagy process is remarkably similar across lifeforms. One function that is the same, from yeast to humans, is to protect cells against starvation and related stresses. In these conditions, autophagy allows cells to degrade large molecules into basic building blocks, which are used as energy sources. The discovery of key yeast autophagy genes that was led by Ohsumi was particularly powerful because it helped scientists to quickly identify the genes in mammals that have similar functions. This, in turn, has provided vital tools for laboratories around the world to study the roles of autophagy in human health and disease. With the knowledge that various mammalian genes are needed for autophagy, researchers could then remove these genes from cells or animals, including mice, and examine their functions. These types of studies have highlighted the importance of autophagy in processes including infection and immunity, neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. The importance of Ohsumi’s findings My laboratory, for example, found that autophagy can break down the proteins responsible for various neurological diseases, including forms of dementia (caused by tau), Parkinson’s disease (alpha-synuclein) and Huntington’s disease (mutant huntingtin). We are pursuing the idea that by increasing the autophagy process we could potentially treat some of these conditions. A tau protein fragment. molekuul_be/Shutterstock.com Another important consequence of Ohsumi’s discoveries is that they allowed subsequent studies that aimed to understand the mechanisms by which autophagy proteins actually control this process. Indeed, Ohsumi’s group have also made seminal contributions in this domain. This Nobel prize highlights some other key characteristics of Ohsumi and his work. One is that his laboratory works on yeast. At the time he made his discoveries in the 1990s, no one would have guessed that they would have such far-reaching implications for human health. Essentially, he was studying autophagy in yeast because he was curious. This basic research yielded the foundation for an entire field, which has grown rapidly in recent years, especially as its relevance for health has become more apparent. This should serve as a reminder to those influencing science strategy that groundbreaking discoveries are often unexpected and that one should not only support science where the endpoint appears to be obviously relevant to health. Ohsumi has also nurtured outstanding scientists like Noboru Mizushima and Tamotsu Yoshimori, who have been major contributors to the understanding of autophagy in mammals. Perhaps most importantly, he continues to do interesting and fundamental work. This Nobel prize is very well deserved for the man who opened the door to an important field. David Rubinsztein, Professor of molecular neurogenetics, University of Cambridge This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
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Lone wanderer riding the dream:This biker is on a 1-lakh km drive across 46 countries

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#JourneyofLife
“I travel for a living,” says Rohith solemnly.
When 22-year old Rohith Subramaniam is asked what he does, he replies solemnly, “I travel for a living.” His unusual choice of a career should not be a surprise, given that he prefers to be known as the Lone Wanderer on Facebook or MisfitMagellan on Instagram, probably inspired by the famed Portuguese explorer of yore. Currently in Cambodia “where it has been pouring cats and dogs for the past ten days, and on the verge of entering Laos”, Rohith is living his dream on the roads, quite literally. As part of his solo cross-country bike ride across 46 countries, this nomad hopes to cover almost one lakh kilometres spread over a year and a half. The best part of the whole adventure is that he genuinely loves what he does, and to actually get paid for it is the proverbial icing on the cake. Though Rohith does blog and capture his varied experiences through a lens, ‘traveller’ is who he identifies with more than the ‘blogger’, ‘photographer’ or ‘backpacker’ monikers that usually come his way. Not everyone is lucky to pursue their passion as a profitable career. Rohith firmly believes it is travelling that captures the real essence of who he is as a person. That he uses the same to earn a living is a tribute to his shrewd business acumen, which he sensibly uses to promote various brands which pay him for the same. How the Dream unfurled “It all started as a joke when I was running my startup ‘FundMyDream’ a crowd-funding platform back in Bengaluru. Some market research had shown that no one had actually ventured into crowd-funding to finance travel per se. I was willing to take the risk to ask for funds to pursue my travel dream on a bike, and started the campaign online which fortunately met with instant success,” he recalls. Sounding genuinely awestruck, Rohith goes on: “It's one of those classic fairy tales, where I woke up one morning, sold everything I had…not that I had much to sell, and started on a journey towards unknown lands spread over an infinite timeline.” He first rode around the whole of India for an uninterrupted stretch of a hundred and fifty days, covering all the states and union territories. That translates into 32,000 kilometres of sheer travel bliss. “It was special for two reasons. First of all, I never had to stay in either a hostel or a hotel during the entire ride. All along the way, people opened their homes to me, a total stranger. When a host was unavailable, I preferred the comforts of a petrol station, police station or a bus stand or any such public utility area. Secondly, I took up a new job in each of the states I passed through. So I have worked as a farmer, a waiter, a bartender, and even a chai-wala and a vada-paav vendor!” he chuckles. Right now in the midst of the South-East Asian leg of his tour, Rohith hopes to finish the same by the end of this year. “I started ten months ago from Singapore and then went on to cover Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. I am about to enter Laos. I will be back in India next month for a few days before I hit the road again to ride across Nepal, Bhutan and Myanmar,” he hopes. 2017 too looks exciting for Rohith, as he plans to an Oceanic leg of Australia and New Zealand in the first half of the year, while the second half would see him gear up for a long European ride and finishing the year in South America.  “But that is too far away in the future. Life on the road teaches you a lot, and you need to be sensitive to every passing moment. So I focus on the moment and live just one moment at a time,” he says. According to Rohith, the perk of travelling around the world is first and foremost the tremendous exposure one gets from being able to mingle with different people and disparate cultures. “It's indeed amazing when I think of just how many times in the course of my travel, I have effortlessly communicated with the people around me without knowing a word of the local language. People are essentially kind at heart and amazing, and this applies to wherever you find yourself in the world at any given point in time. This world is truly a wonderful place to be in, and I am so glad to be able to keep wandering and exploring its mesmerizing ways.” Magical is the word he chooses to describe his ‘job’, if you can call it one. “I simply love every moment of it. It does get tiring at times, as I seem to be travelling almost all the time, but hey, this is what I want. And when I have been ‘gifted’ with this life, and knowing how hard I worked just to get here, I really can't be cribbing about it now,” he grins. (All pics courtesy: Rohith Subramaniam)
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