UK Vs India: The COVID-19 Vaccine Vexation!

In the recent cricket Test Series between England and India the 2-1 result in favour of the visitors still hangs in balance entirely due to the fact that a few non-playing members of Team India were found COVID-19 positive which implies that the fifth and the last Test had to be cancelled only because of India’s fault even though not a single playing member of the team got the infection. Now, the change in travel regulations for Indians visiting United Kingdom could be a fallout of the cricket hanger, meaning that the Indians are feared as more prone to getting or spreading the COVID-19 virus with its variants; that India is the originator of the more infectious Delta variant which is again mutating into the Delta Plus; and perhaps also possibly that the handling of the Second Wave of the pandemic in India had been disastrous. Therefore, basically the Englishmen could be feeling insecure with vulnerable Indians loitering around in their territories after sort of achieving the feat of living with the virus and opening up everything including the cricket stadiums to the crowds without the necessity of even masks. They are conveniently forgetting the basic truth that vaccine breakthroughs are possible also for fully vaccinated people everywhere in the world, not just India.

 

What the UK government has done is very wrong, unexpected and absurd: that the Indian travelers, irrespective of vaccinated or not, will have to undergo at least two RT-PCR tests and have to be on 10-day quarantine after arriving there. Apart from the unnecessary inconvenience and exorbitant costs involved, particularly for the Indian students going there to study, this basically implies that the vaccines in India are fakes, and a fully vaccinated person in India becomes ‘unvaccinated’ once s/he arrives in UK. Why? The Indian vaccine Covishield is in fact a licensed product of UK, being the officially valid version of their homemade AstraZeneca vaccine developed by the Oxford University, and in more significantly India had exported millions of doses of Covishield to their country earlier. The fully India-made Covaxin has been proved to be as effective as any other vaccine of the world in preventing at least the serious form of the disease and hospitalization.

 

The Government of India and the Ministry of External Affairs have already lodged a strong protest with the United Kingdom government calling the measures discriminatory and also warned of adopting reciprocal action. If unresolved, this is going to seriously hamper the healthy bilateral relations between the two countries. The UK foreign department has assured India of a relook into it, but so far the discriminatory regulations are not lifted. The World Health Organization (WHO) has also rebuked UK for such actions. However, it is the WHO that has not yet approved either Covishield or Covaxin for emergency use all over the globe despite the former’s link to the approved AstraZeneca and the latter being proven safe and effective. This raises a crucial question about the authenticity of the respective drug regulatory authorities of various countries: are all the regulators only country-specific and not valid for other regulators? This absurd situation must change, if only to give the proper respect to the medical scientists and experts involved tirelessly in the vaccine-making and the approving process in the shortest possible time. And the Indians figure prominently in the number of medical scientists or experts involved in the process across the world, apart from the fact the India has been the largest vaccine supplier to the world.

 

Earlier the discussion had been about ‘vaccine nationalism’; now as the situation warrants we’ll have to discuss about the syndrome of the ‘vaccine superpowers’ and the inequalities emerging out of that with one block denying or not recognizing the other block. For example, the Russian and the Chinese vaccines are yet to be accepted across the globe without WHO approval. Former US President Donald Trump still seems to have the trump card by giving everything, during his last year in office, into the development of the most modern Messenger RNA (mrna) vaccines, namely Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which are available for use across the globe. However, developing countries like India and other poor countries cannot afford these vaccines due to very high prices and the storage hassles. Ultimately, the WHO has to take up such vexing issues as it had earlier made international sharing of the ready vaccines compulsory for all countries.

 

The absolutely wrong and the discriminatory measures of the United Kingdom, almost smacking of racism, must be lifted as soon as possible and the WHO must expedite the approval process of the Indian vaccines and other proven vaccines of the world. The priority should be completely on freeing Planet Earth from the curse of the pandemic in the fast track, and definitely not on rivalries, racism, nationalism and bilateral or international fights or skirmishes.

As per latest reports UK has included Covishield in their list of approved vaccines which would take effect only from 4th October 2021. But to confound matters further the authorities have refused to accept India's CoWin vaccine certificates, and this means the 10-day quarantine plus tests continues still for Indian travelers. 

OTT Platform Watch: Movie ‘Bell Bottom’ Disappoints, Series ‘Mumbai Diaries 26/11’ Well Made, And More!

 

I have been a movie buff since my childhood days, also so passionate about it that I wanted to be a filmmaker and did indeed try in that direction to some extent, still nurturing that ambition. And I always enjoyed the movies on the big screens including those silver screens of the traditional single-screen cinema halls of yore that fitted ideally the 35mm film format and whenever the occasional 70mm films came the frames used to spill over to the sides. I find this very tragic, of course no match to the horrors and sufferings of people due to the pandemic, that for over 18 months now I’ve been deprived of the normal cinema theatre visits and really missing the action. The OTT (Over the Top) streaming platforms thus have become the only alternative, for people like me who puts the entire focus on COVID-19 appropriate behaviour and safety. Therefore, I’ve been watching a lot on such a platform since the first lockdown—always selecting the best of movies available and the most-talked about Series—but limited to only one platform as I don’t want to harm my ears with constant use of headphones. Quite a few of movies are of the golden era and most of the modern ones need no special mention. However, recently I had seen three modern movies and web series of which I’d like to talk about a bit. Latest Bollywood movie Bell Bottom (2021) is one of them which attracted me because of the name that was a craze in our college days, and that the movie was in the lines of effective Indian spy thrillers I enjoyed greatly in the last few years in the modern theatres.

 

The hero of the movie Akshay Kumar is one more attraction as he was cast in several successful thrillers made by filmmaker Neeraj Pandey like Special 26 (2013), Baby (2015), Rustom (2016) and Naam Shabana (2017). Of course, this movie Bell Bottom is not one of his, but as I said the format seemed to be exciting. Watching the movie I was disappointed in the overall sense: it had an explosive plot that got terribly affected by an inept script. The basic theme of the film, a hijack drama of an Indian Airlines plane (based on a true event during the last term of the then Prime Minister of India, late Indira Gandhi.), got impaired unnecessarily by the prolonged flashbacks, and finally when the plot seemed to be picking up there was not enough time to bring it to a worthy climax. Although the film has similarities with another successful hijack thriller, Zameen (2003) directed by Rohit Shetty, its ultimate climax turned out to be very simplistic and sort of rushed through.

 

The film no doubt has its high octane moments with the RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) agent, played by Akshay Kumar whose code name is Bell Bottom, going through the investigations and raids on the terrorists’ dens. His RAW boss, well played by Adil Hussain, is but a pale shadow of the intelligence boss in Baby played by Danny Denzongpa who almost lived through the supercharged drama and action. The characters of the hijackers were also not given sufficient attention with all of them failing to scare the viewers like they did in movies like Baby and Neerja (2016), the latter being very ably directed by Ram Madhvani. The Pakistan intelligence counterpart was also shown half-heartedly. The last twist involving Akshay’s wife, played by Vaani Kapoor, sharing a secret with the RAW boss was only superficial. Some critics are also pointing toward factual errors, but those can be overlooked as ultimately this is a work of fiction. Therefore, the movie Bell Bottomdirected by Ranjit Tiwari, though handled well to some extent, fails to be as engrossing and gripping like those movies of the same genre mentioned here.

 

A surprise was in store when the new OTT web series Mumbai Diaries 26/11, made by known filmmaker Nikhil Advani, became available on air. Having lived through every agonizing moment of that horrific Mumbai Terror Attack on 26^th November 2008 through my work in the media, anything about that attack always caught my attention. However, all of the films made on the attack so far were lame attempts, failing to do justice to the terror unleashed. So I started watching the 9-episode Mumbai Diaries 26/11immediately, and to my great surprise found it very engrossing and doing full justice to the genuine scare still felt by both victims and general people, for the first time. Although it is made from the medical point of view, narrating the story of a Mumbai hospital that finally came under the terror attack, almost all of the horrific moments of the actual three-day reign of fear are being ably captured and presented. Aided by a powerful script the characters, including most prominently the doctors and staff of the hospital, are portrayed with excellent ease and brilliant performances by all actors.

 

The web series also pointed out the much-discussed ‘media involvement’ that was giving constant leads to the Pakistan control room of terror who thus guided the terrorists in action in Mumbai, and the tragedy unleashed by an overzealous news reporter in this work of fiction was shown with honesty and efficiency. If the chronology of the actual series of events was not followed to details, this was never felt while watching, and again, finally it being a work of fiction such complaining is not necessary. More positively, the Series does not indulge in any gory violence or the glorification thereof and explicit sexuality that have been the hallmark of almost all OTT Web Series streamed in India. In all, the Mumbai Diaries 26/11 is thoroughly watchable for all types of viewers of any age who want to feel the reality of the dastardly terror attack again.

 

Finally, a Hollywood movie Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021), directed by Taylor Sheridan. With Angelina Jolie in the lead and an interesting storyline of smoke-jumpers for forest fires I watched the movie as soon as it was streamed on my subscribed OTT platform. To my surprise again, I enjoyed it thoroughly, finding not a single slack moment in this slick thriller. What I found refreshing is that the film followed the thriller-genre of the nineties religiously and to exactitude with an immaculately tight script. Of late, most of the Hollywood movies have been devoted to the super visual effects treatment—either showing all-destroying monsters or catastrophe or unimaginable sci-fi stories mostly covering the outer world and the universe. It kind of vindicated my wish, nourished for long years, that Hollywood should come back to basic human dramas which are always acceptable the world over. All the people with a mind-set of this ordinary mortal should, therefore, not miss watching Those Who Wish Me Dead at any cost. Those who can visit the theatres in full safety are the luckiest. (All photos: wikipedia.org)

Dr. Aswini Kumar Sarma: A Year After A Devastating Personal Tragedy!

That was sometime in the month of May 2018. I was a bit late to wake up and my brother-in-law had already left. He had to attend a high-level meeting in Guwahati and so had to leave very early in the morning. I got up immediately and looked out of the window that opened upon the front side of their quarters, and was just in time to see my brother-in-law getting into the car and the car moving slowly away. As it turned out that was the last time I saw him. Of course, he called me up several times during that day inquiring about the status of my wait-listed train ticket for which he trying with the railway officials, and finally, in the afternoon he only informed me that the reservation was confirmed. As I was seen off by my sister in the Bongaigaon railway station for my journey back to Kolkata I felt unusually sad, didn’t know the reason why.

 

I visited my hometown Guwahati in May 2018 as my mother, Urmila Chakravarty who continues to write books even in her early eighties, was serious and hospitalized recently. The day I arrived she was already back in my sister’s house with a heart monitor attached to her which hang from her arm like a handbag. After my arrival at my sister’s house in the car sent by her to the station she informed me that they had decided to take mother to their Bongaigaon quarters, because there she would get constant attention from my brother-in-law and the township hospital nearby where my brother-in-law was the Chief Medical Officer. So we left for Bongaigaon the next morning and I spent three days with them before going back to my workplace as mentioned above.

 

By brother-in-law Dr. Aswini Kumar Sarma (Sunny, as I used call him lovingly) was married to the eldest of my two younger sisters in 1989 when Sunny was a doctor with the Assam state health services during which time he also completed his MD in medicine from Dibrugarh Medical College and Hospital. Two years later he got an opening in the medical wings of the Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. (IOCL) and joined as a doctor. He was very happy in his new job and often talked about the facilities there in all respects of life. When he was serving in the Begusarai (near Barauni in Bihar) Refinery township hospital we visited them twice and in the second visit we did some medical tests and investigations both for me and for my wife Ragini under Sunny’s active supervision. My sister Mitali Chakravarty Sarma had been serving as a college lecturer after her post-graduation and gave it up post marriage as the post was still not sanctioned. They have two lovely sons, Sagarneel or Papu as is called at home (now working in the US), and Akashneel (graduated from St. Stephens in Delhi and now doing PG in JNU as well as appearing for civil service examination). Akashneel or Piu as he is called at home has been a constant help to his mother in the traumatic years that followed from 2018 onward, when I felt unreasonably sad after leaving their home.

 

Later in 2018 I was shocked beyond measure when Mitali informed me that Sunny was severely ill after his blood sugar shot up uncontrollably without any clinical reason as he has always been a healthy and cheerful person, and a very intelligent student, since his childhood days. He had to be shifted to a hospital in Guwahati where it was found that his liver got damaged almost irreparably. In a very critical condition he was later airlifted to a Delhi hospital where my younger brother Jyotirmay Chakravarty (an IPS officer who took voluntary retirement in 2020) helped them in every possible way. His life was saved and after a few more days they came back to Guwahati and then to his workplace in Bongaigaon Refinery township. What followed was one of the scariest and the most unusual experiences I ever had in my life.

 

During the time when he was severely ill, I was wondering about what could have actually contributed to it. Having a very close and endearing relationship with him since 1989 I came to a few causes that could or could not be true or entirely false. When in Barauni Refinery township hospital and during the official visits he paid to Mumbai at which time I was working there, I found him to be very ambitious wanting to serve in important cities of India outside of Assam. However, after his transfer to Guwahati where he had bought a flat he was transferred around only in the small towns of Assam, and he had to stay away from his family staying back in Guwahati most of the time. This, I found to be crucial, because he was always very fond of staying with family/kin and enjoying social mixing immensely. His requests for a transfer back to Guwahati were ignored all the time and instead the company put him up in Bongaigaon, his final posting eventually. My worst doubts were confirmed a bit later as I mentioned above.

 

Dr. Aswini Kumar Sarma, a very able, efficient and patient-friendly -physician-doctor, was no longer allowed to work peacefully in his workplace in Bongaigaon that he really worshipped. Due to the possible envy and rivalry of a few medical colleagues a kind of harassment in workplace haunted him constantly making him scared to go to office. After trying several times to work normally he failed and started staying at home indefinitely. Almost the entire year of 2019 and the pandemic-infested 2020 had been spent in extreme pain and trauma for him and his family. On numerous phone conversations with him I always tried my best to encourage him to take his rivals head-on and do his duties normally. Although on many occasions he sounded positive and spirited nothing concrete happened as my sister used to inform me occasionally. During that traumatic time he visited Delhi to appeal to the higher-ups of the IOCL for a transfer to Guwahati under genuine medical grounds, but there he was insulted and humiliated in front of his wife. Even then, he never preferred  going against his company and prevented his wife from any complaining outside, so sincere and dedicated he had been in his career.

 

His absence from office was considered unaccounted, and Sunny was now very much concerned about his future benefits after retirement and did not want to take voluntary retirement because of the same uncertainty. His due promotions were also denied. On several occasions he visited his office along with his wife, and literally begged them for being allowed to work and to regularize his unauthorized leave. But every time the in-charge who superseded him in an improper way insulted him calling him unfit and to go and sleep at home. There were many other allegations made against him and his family. The ghosts of uncertainty continued to haunt him till the 17^th of September 2020 when a threatening email was sent to him to explain his unauthorized absence from work.

 

And then came the 18^thof September, 2020, a black day for our larger family and friends. In the afternoon that day when I was sitting listlessly looking out of the balcony in Mumbai, my brother called me and to my horror of horrors informed me that Dr. Aswini had passed away suddenly. I called up Akashneel immediately and came to know of the tragic demise. All was over in just five minutes: he took his lunch normally and in quite a good spirit and went for his usual afternoon nap. Moments after Mitali joined him he suddenly shook violently, and by the time he could be taken to the hospital he was declared dead. He could not even utter a single word about what happened to him, being a doctor himself. My sister said later that the hospital staff did not cooperate as was expected in an emergency. The final diagnosis was a massive cardiac arrest. A doctor died, in the prime in terms of his future services to his loving patients all over.

 

A year passed, and during that time there was not a single day when Sunny’s smiling face did not come to my mind, and more tragically, because of the raging pandemic and I being a senior citizen, we could not even visit the bereaved family and relatives till now. I only solaced myself through writings and my active help in the struggle for justice launched by Mitali and Akashneel who were also helped by one of my paternal first cousins, Debashish Thakur who is a lawyer, my youngest brother-in-law Sasankagupta Kashyap and Aswini’s youngest brother Utpal Kumar Sarma. I also activated a few friends in the IOCL. Some consolation came recently with the IOCL finally acknowledging some wrongdoing in the refinery, promising to look into it, and the company regularized Dr. Aswini’s all unauthorized leave and also announced a one-time compassionate financial grant. But all came too late, as we lost a good doctor unnecessarily and under most tragic circumstances.

 

On the first death anniversary of Dr. Aswini Kumar Sarma we can only share the pain with all family and friends, particularly Sunny’s mother who lost her eldest son and more shatteringly lost her first daughter to COVID-19 recently, and my mother who lost his first son-in-law. Sunny always took full care of all of us starting from my grandparents to ourselves, and my mother had been under his medical supervision till the end. Today we pray for him and for all other doctors who died prematurely due to various reasons including the fight against the pandemic, while serving for the better of us all the time.