Race doesn't matter? Yeah, right!

What would you say about a technology that helps law enforcement officers track suspects with near-100% certainty on the basis of their racial characteristics? Brilliant? Maybe not, according to some of America's colleagues-at-law.

For a lot of people, any chance that police officers get to narrow down their list of suspects in an effort to nail the culprit would be a welcome improvement in forensics. But for the man behind this latest bit of progress in genetic applications, it's highly frustrating, and not merely because many people don't think that his science is up to snuff: the company that he founded may face closure if his novel genetic technique is not more widely called upon to help investigators gather clues about the culprits, because until the time that the drug that he has pioneered passes FDA approval, the company needs to stay afloat and is pinning its hopes on crime investigators using its often-misunderstood technology to identify clues about the identity of the criminal.

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Maya and The Matrix

A long time ago, more than seven years ago in fact, I was in Coimbatore (a S. Indian city famous for its industries) visiting a friend of mine. There was this English movie that had just been released and which had a rather fascinating story. The Friday review on The Hindu was favourable, and so my friend and I decided to watch it. Later that evening, we went to this theatre called Central, waited in a queue for nearly ten minutes (there was quite a rush since the movie promised some amazing stunts), and finally got into the hall. What we saw, no, experienced, in the nearly two hours or so was absolutely mind-blowing; it came quite close to an ancient Indian concept called Maya. If you haven't figured out what the movie was, well, it was The Matrix.

Since then, I have become a huge fan of that movie, and to a lesser extent, its sequels. How on earth, do you ask, can one become a fan of a movie? If you think that it's not possible to watch the movie over and over again, let me assure you, that thought is quite incorrect. I have, as a matter of fact, watched the movie over a dozen times, and have not grown tired of it yet. In fact, one of the questions that one of my best friends - who is now in the UK - asks me is whether I've seen it recently. Needless to say, I usually answer him in the affirmative ;-)

Anyway, I am digressing. What I wanted to ask you was whether you had noticed how extraordinarily well thought out the whole story is. I mean, starting from the names of the characters, right up to the very end of the movie. The movie's basic premise, or set of premises, to be more precise, is that we are not whom we think ourselves to be, or where we think ourselves to be; we have a veil that's very cleverly drawn over our eyes, thus making it difficult to see the truth beyond it; that we have the power to be whatever we want to be, because there are no limits to what we can do; that the world we think is real may not really be so; that it may be a mere figment of our imagination.

Now, note the parallels with the Indian concept of Maya. We ordinarily identify ourselves with this body. Nothing wrong about that of course, except that it's not terribly ingenious. To summarise a lengthy theory, what's closer to the truth (as per my beliefs, at any rate) is that we are a body-mind-soul complex. Next, we have a veil that's very cleverly drawn over our eyes, etc. If this isn't readily apparent, think about some of the scariest or most vivid dreams that you've had. For the duration of those dreams, have you, even for a moment, ever doubted the veracity of the experience? During the dream period, was not your "reality" all too real and, in extreme cases, overwhelming to the point of making you cry / scream? Now, how do you know for sure that it's your waking life that's not the dream? That the whole world as we know it would not vanish like a, well, dream the moment we wake up?

The truth beckons, and is out there, as they say, but are we prepared to accept it? What is the truth? Unfortunately, to paraphrase Morpheus, no one can be told what the truth is; you have to experience it for yourself.