’The foetus was suspended in a wide mouthed, dusty glass bottle with an aluminium seal…. Neglected, vulnerable, ashamed. A dead human being. A human non-being… Stillborn…. It was not obviously human. Not “us”’
This impression of the foetus by the female protagonist, Poorva Pandit, still sends a tingling chill up my spine. Probably this exquisite thriller wouldn’t have asked for a better epithet than its title.
Stillborn dominantly, is a medical thriller, which commences in a hospital ward, where Poorva Pandit, a medical reporter in Bangalore is recovering from recent accident injuries and eavesdrops on a conversation about contraceptive vaccine research, unwanted pregnancies and a missing malformed foetus in her ''perceived'' sedated state. And thus darts off her inexorable crusade against the sudden boom in the worldwide pharmaceutical industry to produce the ultimate contraceptive.
~~Stillborn is all about Indian journalism at its fiercest. The come-what-may attitude, the charm, the privileges, the liberties, the tactics, the diligence, the fame, the sweat, the tension, the investigation, the enthusiasm, the passion, and the pine to excavate the truth—all surface through wondrously by the book’s pivotal character—Poorva.
~~Stillborn is all about the violently thriving Indian pharmaceutical industry with investors laughing all the way to bank what with unhindered duplication of international drugs under the umbrella of obsolete Patent laws which imply patenting of processes rather than product. The cut-throat attitude to dominate the market, collaborative researches, suppressed information, international investments, mergers all snake through the book, as Poorva reveals the innards of this business one by one.
~~Stillborn is all about ethics being dallied and manipulated as researchers machinate trials on innocent humans toying with their bodies, fabricate information to traverse the stringent inspections and subsequently threaten millions of lives in haste. It validly questions whether illiterate tribals even know the meaning of “informed consent” or the risks involved in clinical trials through the three victims—Madhamma (mother of a stillborn, deformed baby), Shaili (undergone an abortion and mother of a deformed foetus) and Ketamma (pregnant with a severely contorted baby but has resolved to give birth to it).
~~Stillborn is all about the ever-tumefying scope of medics as the cognitively overwhelming dimension of immuno-contraception is divelged into. Unlike the invasive abortifacients, the sheer concept of raising the antigens from the glycoproteins on the egg lining (responsible for ovum-sperm bond) and subsequently turning one’s own body immune to it by binding the antigen to an immunogenic carrier, thus absolutely shutting down any probability of conception wonderfully suggests the future of contraceptives which, sadly, is still dangling between one rationale to another. Save for a fabricated vaccine name, even the limitations, inadequacies and potential dangers have been identified without beating about the bush.
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Betrayal lies at the helm of every thriller jotted down, and the revelation of one traitor who continuously double crosses inevitably layers any well-written thriller with the requisite dexterity and this revelation besides corroborating this work to the thriller genre, is its forte. Quite masterfully to avoid being bracketed commonplace, the author reallows the ethical and biological beads of the powerful story to again possess foreground towards the finale and its made certain that the questions raised, the concerns conveyed don’t leave the reader much after he has put the book down.
The book’s genre both rejuvenates and cripples the content though the former effect eclipses the latter goes without saying. Being a thriller, the cyclonic sweep in the narrative is unmistakable and together with author’s firm grip on the subject, the book commands reading sans blinking and becomes simply un-put-downable with a capital U.
Again, being a thriller, the different characters and their psyches aren’t completely matured—most of them purely incidental to the plot—quite rightly so because the clipped-up length doesn’t offer much scope for emotional indulgence and it’s the sequence of events that provide the kicks. The dexterity of the plot, though, helps in adding diverse hues to the sometimes collinear characters.
That said, the emotional roller-coaster of Poorva (the prime character) and her impressions of the menacing world of commercial medics undiscovered hitherto as well as the weak, victimised underbelly of the three victims comes across fabulously. Even the continuous contrast the protagonist is shown drawing of the deformed babies with her muscular dystrophy-inflicted sister is heart-rending and her tantalising affair with a doctor balances the breakneck acceleration of her mission. Any more extravagance and it would have automatically ejected itself from being a thriller.
On retrospection, one might even criticise the coincidence of Poorva’s and her acquaintances’ profession overlapping with the whole scam’s nature and the glorification of a potentially condemnable offence (hacking) midway but nonetheless passing such judgements would only suggest asking for the impossible.
The brisk pace of the book is complimented by the simplistic expression and subtle eloquence in language and there’s little alteration in the voices of characters bestowing the likeliness and normalcy to the text. Imagery at most instances seemed unnecessary, forced and repetitive but thankfully, such moments were limited. Attempts at humour, by contrast, were much alive and Poorva’s constant grudge for Bangalore’s fatal buses, her take on her boss’s obsession with M.F.Hussain’s canvas version of Madhuri and her interpretations of American people and their ways of living (when the plot shifts to New York) is bound to have you in splits.
However, the in-your-face medical education with innumerable nuggets of biological terminology actively thrown in won’t really find you grinning if you aren’t well versed with gene technology, molecular biology, human physiology and the works. To get to grips with those chunks of immensely valid scientific sentences which form the crux here, despite being a non-medico, will require referring to the medical lexicon with every alternate page.
Amusingly enough, Rohini Nilekani’s Stillborn, despite being ghettoised in an unknown literary nook together with Calcutta Chromosome (Ghosh), still remains a worthy niche-carver. I remember wondering at the sheer potential the author has as I turned the last page of this fantastic book considering this was the author’s first and last shot at a novel (she’s reputedly the force behind the Akshara Foundation—an institution for the disadvantaged Indian children.)
The author’s penned a slick medical thriller that doesn’t utilise the term as a mere catchphrase where medical trials are mere replacement for murders (as in roadside detective novels) and successfully merges the adrenaline rush of adventure with technology going plum and emotions of the under-privileged shown a cold-shoulder.
In one word: Stunning! Highly recommended!!
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