Monthly Archives: February 2022

Puravankara said that Provident Housing (PHL), a 100% subsidiary of Puravankara Group, will be debuting in Kerala with its first residential offering Provident Winworth in Kochi.

The project value of the same is Rs 3000 crore. It is one of the four projects for which Provident has received an inflow of capital from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the IFC Emerging Asia Fund.

Over the last decade, Kochi has evolved into a highly desirable residential destination. The budding IT landscape, thriving commercial centres, and admiration for art and cinema have truly transformed the city into an urban utopia.

The changes within the metropolis are evident in the aspirations of its residents. With its latest offering, Provident Housing aims to fulfil these emerging needs of the newage consumer.

Ashish Puravankara, Managing Director, Puravankara Limited, said, One of the driving forces behind Provident Housing is upending the notion that luxury and affordability are mutually exclusive. We are delighted to debut our first premiumaffordable offering of Kerala in Kochi. Over the last few years, we have witnessed the city scale its infrastructure and simultaneously position itself as a cultural capital.

With this new venture, we aim to create a landmark in the city while providing an unmatched living experience for its residents.

With Abhishek Kapoor, the CEO, Puravankara Limited and our newest leader, Mallanna Sasulu, the COO, Provident Housing Limited, I am confident that the project will be a tremendous success. I am excited to begin our new chapter in Kerala.

Abhishek Kapoor, CEO, Puravankara, said, Provident Winworth is a balanced intersection of architectural value and the city's ambition. It will be the largest mixeduse development in Edappally with retail and commercial elements, making it inclusive and accessible."

The project will be introduced in the market through an innovative Quasi Book Building method. Fundamental 'demandsupply' metrics will drive the price discovery process. The prebooking process offers comprehensive product information to prospective buyers, along with a 'priceband' for each type of unit. Expressions of interest (EOI) from prospective buyers help gauge the project's demand and achieve a datadriven pricing decision.

Provident Housingvis one of the pioneers of premium, affordable homes. The company has Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Kochi, Goa, Coimbatore and Mangalore projects.Puravankarais a real estate conglomerateheadquartered in Bengaluruwith a pan India presence.

Puravankara's consolidated net profit declined 90.77% to Rs 1.23 crore on a 13.97% fall in sales to Rs 220.60 crore in Q3 FY22 over Q3 FY21.

The scrip lost 0.12% to currently trade at Rs 123.20 on the BSE.

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Puravankaras subsidiary to debut in Kerala with its first residential offering - Business Standard

While were waiting on a start date, HBO have released a few shots of the shows main cast.

Here at CultBox Towers, Steven Moffats take on The Time Travelers Wife is hotly anticipated. We may have mentioned it once or twice.

Not just because we loved the book (and struggled with the movie), but because of the pedigree of those involved behind the scenes: while Steven Moffat has adapted Audrey Niffeneggers novel, its being produced by Hartswood Films (Sherlock, Dracula) and directed by Game of Thrones David Nutter. Moffats Capaldi-era Doctor Who collaborator Brian Minchin executive produces too, as well as David Nutter and Joseph E. Iberti.

The new images released give us a look at each of the principal characters.

First, theres Theo James (Sanditon) as Henry DeTamble the unwilling time traveller whose Chrono-Displacement Disorder causes him to bounce around within his own timeline. Like Sam Beckett without the moral obligations.

As we see him with a girl in shot, its doubtless a young Clare (either Caitlin Shorey or Everleigh McDonell).

Rose Leslie (Game of Thrones, Vigil) plays the grown-up Clare Abshire.

The other two characters we have images for are Gomez and Charisse. Desmin Borges (Utopia) plays Gomez and Natasha Lopez is Charisse. The pair are Clares best friends who are suspicions of Henry but grow to become allies although there are complications.

Theres still no release date as yet for the show, but were expecting it in the spring. So theres still time to re-read the novel in anticipation!

The Time Travelers Wife will air on HBO Max in the US and on Sky Atlantic in the UK. Well keep you posted.

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The Time Traveler's Wife - new images of the cast - CultBox

EPIXs new mystery box horror series From is set to premiere on Sunday, February 20, and a spooky new clip from IGN today previews a nightmarish monster from the series.

Meet one scary grandma down below

Meagan wrote in her From review for BD, Only four episodes in, its already a gripping series that makes you eager to tune in to see what happens next.

The series unravels the mystery of a nightmarish town in middle America that traps all those who enter. As the unwilling residents fight to keep a sense of normalcy and search for a way out, they must also survive the threats of the surrounding forest including the terrifying creatures that come out when the sun goes down.

Created and executive produced byJohn Griffin(Crater), directed and executive produced byJack Bender(Lost, Game of Thrones, Mr. Mercedes), and executive produced by ShowrunnerJeff Pinkner(Fringe, Alias, Lost), From features a stellar ensemble cast led byHarold Perrineau(Lost).In addition to Perrineau, the cast includesCatalina Sandino Moreno(Maria Full of Grace, The Affair),Eion Bailey(Band of Brothers, Once Upon a Time),Hannah Cheramy,Simon Webster,Ricky He(The Good Doctor),Chloe Van Landschoot, Shaun Majumder, Corteon Moore(Utopia Falls),Pegah Ghafoori, David Alpay(Castle Rock),Elizabeth Saunders(Clarice),Elizabeth MoyandAvery Konrad.

Fromis a co-production between EPIX Studios and MGM International Television Productions, and is produced by Midnight Radio and AGBO.

Executive producer Jack Bender directed the first four episodes. Alongside Griffin, Bender and Pinkner as executive producers are Josh Appelbaum, Andr Nemec and Scott Rosenberg from Midnight Radio, Anthony and Joe Russo and Mike Larocca from AGBO and Lindsay Dunn. Midnight Radios Adrienne Erickson will serve as co-executive producer.

Excerpt from:

True Detective Season 4? Sounds Like HBO Has Something in the Works - Bloody Disgusting

FLINT, Michigan Black genius is on display. It is radiant and infectious, cementing the fact that the hashtags #blackgirlmagic and #blackboyjoy were always present even before they became part of the modern mantras of African American people. Laughter is abundant as each guest arrives on the call, greeting one another and me as if we were old acquaintances, classmates, kinfolk.

These adorning faces belong to Josh Wilder, Jeremiah Davison, and Madelyn Porter the writer, director, and actor of The Flint Repertory Theatre's newest world-premiere play, Wrong River. Together, they possess an indescribable aura that ties together the many reasons why Black people continue to push forward despite incredible opposition.

Through our conversation and connection to Blackness, I learned what inspired Wrong River, how Davison became the anchor to hold everyone together, and Porter's gift of storytelling.

"It all started from Facebook," says Wrong River writer, Philadelphia native Josh Wilder, commenting on the catalyst that made him write it. "I realized once children are lead poisoned, their lead-poisoned for life, and to try to attempt to take away their futures, that's when we stand up as a community, as a people."

For Davison, directing a play about his hometown of Flint was a "dream come true. It means the world to me. I feel like I brought Flint's natural flow and perspective. With anything you do, that heartbeat has to be from the source."Theplay follows the story of a young Black family's experience in Flint as the Flint Water Crisis begins to make national headlines."But I believe in my heart that as an artist, you have an obligation to use your craft and skill to speak up, speak out, and to send a message," remarks Porter. "Wrong River is a form of protest, and we're soldiers of the arts."

In the words of The Rep, Wrong River is an "edgy new drama [featuring] thrilling magical realism moments born from the imagination of a 10-year old girl." The play, featuring an all-Black cast, highlights 10-year-old Dayla, her family, and grandmother June, played by Porter, as they explore and deal with the traumatic effects following the Flint Water Crisis. An event that left thousands of Flint residents without clean water, infected for life with elevated lead levels, and once again searching for the light within the darkness.

It is a brilliant emotional rollercoaster as it positions Dayla and her family front and center to grapple with her new reality of living a life sustained by the boxes of Fiji water that litter it unable to bathe or drink from the now leaden pipes. To me, Wrong River is a social commentary of how a government-sanctioned disaster impacted a predominately Black city and added to the evolving narrative of what it means to be Black in America, for better and for worse. But for Wilder, Davison, and Porter, it means all that and then some.

Philadelphia native Josh Wilder serves as the playwright for 'Wrong River.'

"Wrong River is symbolic to me because as Black folk, we [have] been going up the 'wrong river.' I think about slavery. I think about the Nile River. I think about the West coast of Africa," says Porter as her own life experiences and that of her family come to the forefront. "I think about how many 'wrong rivers' as Black folks we had to cross and had to pull the gunk out of."

"They have to see us to believe us. Black people aren't believed when we're in pain," says Wilder taking time to ascertain the weight of his work. "I think the representation of our imagination is seldom on stage. I think the play pulls the curtain back on us and how we're able to love each other through crisis and how quickly we have to grow up."

"It is showing insight on a Black family in the Midwest and our ability to dream and keep dreaming. It's not just, oh, they're Black, and they're struggling," explains Davison offering insight into his directorship. "It brings together and represents our ancestral unity. How we are so intertwined with our ancestors and how that can help us continue to move through life."

Emotions run hot in Wrong River. Relationships become strained, and love and survival are intertwined. But to process this new reality, rationalize her decisions and push forward, Dayla must turn to what continues to be a child's greatest gift and the thing many adults strive to rekindle imagination.

With incredible displays of sound, lighting, and visual work brought to life by Davison, he pulls audiences into the mind of Dayla, where they must grapple with the question of what is right and wrong. But bringing the imagination of a 10-year-old to paper and then to the stage took everyone into inspiring spaces and allowed them to tap into their inner child.Jeremiah Davison is a native of Flint and the director of 'Wrong River.'"I had to tap into the mind of what Dayla's imagination was first. You never stop being a kid as an artist, I feel. A lot of this sparked from figuring out, what is the playground that we have? How do we go into these and create these worlds," explains Davison, who loves talking technology. "How do we create the atmosphere, lights, and implement reality and the magical world of [Dayla's] brain. Then, as a sound designer, how do we wrap ourselves into this space?"

But the production of Wrong River is nothing without its cast and crew, says Wilder, one of which is Porter, having under her belt 30 years of experience in the business, is home on stage, bringing to life her portrayal of June. Porter's used the acting to offer insight and educate audiences particularly the youth of African experiences. However, she tells me with several laughs and powerful oratory that storytelling runs in her family. Growing up, she was labeled "weird" and "crazy" and listened to her aunt tell stories that took "reality, surrealism, and realism and mixed it up."

Those experiences bring the richness of old African griots to the current generation and helped flesh out Wrong River's narrative. Wilder and Davison explicitly state the time spent researching, getting case studies, listening to the stories of Flintstones, and talking with Davison's family to make sure the story was as authentic as possible. The storytelling, whether through Wilder's written work, Davison's directing and usage of tech, Porter's and the cast acting, and the backstage crew, push the collective conversation forward.

Through Wrong River's final moments, the quintessential reasoning, or the seed that binds this all together, of how and why African American people continue to advocate, march, push boundaries throughout education, sports and entertainment, the creative landscape, and have advanced as far as have is revealed hope. We bow our heads or raise them to the skies calling up our ancestors, tapping into our spiritual connections, giving our hopes, fears, praise, honor, and glory.

Wrong River is not a story for European Americans to finally see Black people for who we are. Quite the opposite. It is for us to see and know who we are. To tap into the unconscious imaginative realm that Dayla so powerfully commands to change our realities and create the unseen.

"For generations, as Black people, we've always crafted. We always take something traumatic and make it into something beautiful for us. I think the spirit and the seed are within the journey of Dayla and her grandma in the wrinkle in times," says Davison.

"The key at the very end of this show, there's hope, and there's a utopia in our minds," remarks Porter.

"My idea with writing this piece was to create a timeless piece of drama that can last for centuries. I want to [write about] the Civil Rights Movement of today," exclaims Wilder.

You can learn more and see Wrong River at The Flint Repertory Theatre live before its end date, February 20. Tickets are on sale now.

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A conversation with director, writer, and actor of the soul-stirring stage play 'Wrong River' - Flintside

EPIXs new mystery box horror series From is set to premiere on Sunday, February 20, and a spooky new clip from IGN today previews a nightmarish monster from the series.

Meet one scary grandma down below

Meagan wrote in her From review for BD, Only four episodes in, its already a gripping series that makes you eager to tune in to see what happens next.

The series unravels the mystery of a nightmarish town in middle America that traps all those who enter. As the unwilling residents fight to keep a sense of normalcy and search for a way out, they must also survive the threats of the surrounding forest including the terrifying creatures that come out when the sun goes down.

Created and executive produced byJohn Griffin(Crater), directed and executive produced byJack Bender(Lost, Game of Thrones, Mr. Mercedes), and executive produced by ShowrunnerJeff Pinkner(Fringe, Alias, Lost), From features a stellar ensemble cast led byHarold Perrineau(Lost).In addition to Perrineau, the cast includesCatalina Sandino Moreno(Maria Full of Grace, The Affair),Eion Bailey(Band of Brothers, Once Upon a Time),Hannah Cheramy,Simon Webster,Ricky He(The Good Doctor),Chloe Van Landschoot, Shaun Majumder, Corteon Moore(Utopia Falls),Pegah Ghafoori, David Alpay(Castle Rock),Elizabeth Saunders(Clarice),Elizabeth MoyandAvery Konrad.

Fromis a co-production between EPIX Studios and MGM International Television Productions, and is produced by Midnight Radio and AGBO.

Executive producer Jack Bender directed the first four episodes. Alongside Griffin, Bender and Pinkner as executive producers are Josh Appelbaum, Andr Nemec and Scott Rosenberg from Midnight Radio, Anthony and Joe Russo and Mike Larocca from AGBO and Lindsay Dunn. Midnight Radios Adrienne Erickson will serve as co-executive producer.

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When Will HBO's "The Last of Us" Premiere? Not in 2022 - Bloody Disgusting

Prior to my interview with Hanya Yanagihara, an email arrives from her publicist. It warns that the blockbuster literary author of A Little Life, and now To Paradise, does not read reviews of her books or pieces about herself. This, explains the publicist, can cause a frustrating frisson during interviews, because journalists will press Yanagihara to respond to critiques of her work she has not seen.

What intrigues here is that Yanagihara, 47, is not some literary recluse in the JD Salinger vein: she defines her novel-writing as her night job; her day job is editor-in-chief of the New York Times style magazine, T. How, I ask Yanagihara, when we speak, does she contrive to ignore herself, given that her job is to predict the zeitgeist and she is such a talked-about novelist?

Its quite easy, she insists. Like smoking, right? Its much easier to have never started, than to start then stop. Writers are very self-involved and they probably need to be, but editors need to turn their gaze outwards.

We are speaking ahead of her appearance this Sunday at Londons South Bank Centre. Queen Elizabeth Hall is the first stop on a UK then European publicity tour for her monumental third novel, To Paradise. The trip also incorporates 10 days at Paris Fashion Week. Yanagihara travels lightly, but not without apprehension. Ive been sick about six times since October. Not with Covid, with everything but Covid.

To Paradise was published last month to fevered expectation: a New Yorker profile, rave but also perplexed reviews, and a couple of hatchet jobs in the younger, more attitudinal American cultural zines, Vox and Vulture. Despite being a complex, multi-stranded 700-page hardback, it went straight to number one on the Sunday Times bestseller lists. The reason? Yanagiharas last novel, the 2015 Booker-shortlisted A Little Life, has become a 21st century key text. Type A Little Life into TikTok and videos appear of ardent millennials weeping at the fate of Jude, the novels anguished protagonist.

That contemporary New York tale of four male friends, told over the three decades, also divides audiences. Detractors accuse the unwieldy tome of being torture porn, a voyeuristic gothic text luxuriating in operatic misery. They balk at the novels disquieting cocktail of self-harm and aspirational lifestyle. Like F Scott Fitzgerald or Jay McInerney before her, Yanagihara sets her story of rich, attractive, unhappy Americans against a sumptuous backcloth of gourmandising and globetrotting. Here is trauma, but with a high thread-count, probably a pillow menu. Making much of Yanagiharas editorship of T, and before it Cond Nast Traveller, Vultures recent takedown by critic Andrea Long Chu deemed A Little Life an unapologetic lifestyle novel. Others have accused it of that most contemporary of sins: appropriation. After American author Garth Greenwell hailed A Little Life as the long-awaited great gay American novel, not everyone loved that its author identified as straight and female.

To Paradise is told on a far more expansive, ambitious canvas than A Little Life, but is also predominantly peopled by gay men. Yanagihara is vague about why that might be. It was never a sort of intention, she says. It was just who the characters happened to be. She is robust, however, about her right to write those characters. Appropriation suggests that you must write according to your own tribal identities, and I think that is a dangerous thing for any artist to feel compelled to do. I am no more or less an expert on being an Asian woman than any other Asian woman, says the author, a fourth-generation American, of Japanese and Korean heritage, raised mostly in Hawaii.

There is an expectation of female artists, she feels, to bare the body, to talk about womens lives in a way that feels confessional. And thats not something Im interested in. There are great examples, but Im more interested in female artists who resist by choice or just by inclination that exposure of the self.

Sometimes, more is revealed about the universal by writing in the skin of another, she adds. It forces you to be less self-absorbed, more observant and aware of the connections amongst humans, beyond, despite of, and because of their tribal identities. She cites playwright Tony Kushner, who said of his screenplay for West Side Story: One of the great pleasures of art, and one of the reasons we have it, is to be able to witness leaps of empathic imagination.

To Paradise has many leaps of empathic imagination, but is partially inspired by contemporary Americas convulsive recent politics and polarising debates about identity. After the 2016 election, I started thinking actively about what America was, and what it liked to fancy itself as being, says Yanagihara. The January 2017 Trump Muslim ban, a travel directive that forbade people from certain, predominantly Muslim, countries entering the US, was a catalyst. Part of Americas central mythology is that it is a paradise for those who cannot stay, for whatever reason, in the country of their origin, she says. But that ban got me wondering if that central mythology was correct? The original concept of Paradise is of a walled garden.

Writers are self-involved and they probably need to be, but editors need to turn their gaze outwards

The novel imagines three parallel, alternate visions of America (in 1893, 1993 and 2093). The first book, Washington Square (a nod to Henry Jamess novel of the same title) has a 19th century hierarchical society setting. Yet in this hall-of-mirrors distortion same-sex marriages flourish. The conceit is not that theyre in a gay utopia, says Yanagihara. But a version of America not founded according to Puritan philosophies. Gay people have equal rights, but black people and Native Americans do not. This idea that what can be a heaven for one group is not necessarily a heaven for everybody is something I wanted to explore.

In the second tale of the book, in 1993, Washington Square is the scene of a lavish party, gathering the citys gay elite; AIDS is the uninvited spectre. The novels final part, set in 2093, is dystopian: Manhattan has become a bulwark against waves of pandemics. Yanagihara did not write this reflectively, inspired by Covid, but prophetically: she first interviewed virologists in 2017.

In New York, Yanagiharas life is compartmentalised between her high-profile public day job, and her private evening existence as an author. She lives in a former bottle factory in Soho, with expansive rooms and high ceilings. A downside, though, is that the loft apartment buildings steel frames block wi-fi. But its a good apartment to be a nighttime writer in, she says. Its very quiet and faces the back of another building; a cocoon-like burrow made for darkness. Her writing of A Little Life was disciplined: nine to 12 on weeknights, and six hours on a Saturday and Sunday. With To Paradise, she was less regimented. In a way, being sent home in March 2020 was a boon, because I automatically gained an hours commuting time, and wasnt going to the theatre, or out to dinner. When I had wind in my sails, I would stay at my desk for as long as I physically could.

Yanagihara seems happier talking about visual culture ceramicists, experimental land artists, those leading figurative portraitures resurgence than fellow authors. I dont follow the contemporary literary scene or whos on it, she says. Asked whom she has been reading, she mentions only dead white British men: Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Trollope. Her plans for her visit to London this week are more visual than bookish: to visit the John Soane Museum, the New Craftsmen shop and the studio of floral installation artist Silke Rittson-Thomas.

Critics have found To Paradise, with each of its discrete novella-like books ending on a cliffhanger, depressing. Yanagihara thinks it quite hopeful. People endure: they learn how to adapt to even very bad circumstances. They push onwards; all these characters possess the idea that they will go someplace better; that they will finally find the person who makes them feel less lonely. She finished it over a summer in Hawaii, which she still calls home. She is more ambivalent about New York, her base since 1995. Many people I love are here, but in all honesty, Id rather be somewhere else. Hawaii? Europe? No, I think Id like to live in Asia. A farmhouse outside Kyoto would be nice.

Does she believe in this idea of the great American novel? I think every American novel is a great American novel, she quips. With To Paradise she may have written one.

Hanya Yanagihara in conversation with Neel Mukherjee at the Southbank Centres Queen Elizabeth Hall on Sunday, 15; southbankcentre.co.uk

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Hanya Yanagihara on why she never reads her own reviews - Evening Standard

While the rich often die 'overtreated', sequestered from loved ones, more people remain untreated and die of preventable causes, with no access to palliative care

"While many people are 'overtreated' in hospitals with families and communities relegated to the margins, still more remain undertreated, dying of preventable conditions and without access to basic pain relief."

The latest report of the Lancet Commission, "Value of Death: Bringing death back into life", finds that death and dying is, in fact, a "story of paradox" in the 21st century. This report works as a guide for our current understanding of death as an individual and what it means for our healthcare professionals, academicians and governments.

The Lancet report limits itself to the scenario of death when a person develops a life-limiting illness or injury through their death and into the bereavement affecting the lives of those left behind.

Those who worked upon the report included health and social care professionals, social scientists, health scientists, economists, philosophers, political scientists, patients, carers, religious leaders, activists, community workers, and a novelist.

Over-medicalisation of death

The report states that the death of an individual is not an exclusively family matter now. It has moved from home settings to health systems, i.e. ICUs, hospitals, hospices. Terminally ill people are taken away to these medical facilities. The roles of their families and communities in the decisions making about their lives have receded.

The report calls it over-medicalisation of death, where people are often dying alone and unable to communicate with their family members except electronically. This has been a familiar phenomenon during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The report also recorded the personal experiences of those who shaped this report. It mentions an incident of the life of Dr MR Rajagopal, who is chairman of Pallium India, the NGO that provides palliative care to the people of Kerala. The report mentions that most children would have seen a dead body two generations ago. People may now be in their 40s or 50s without ever seeing a dead person. The language, knowledge, and confidence to support and manage dying are being lost, further fuelling a dependence on healthcare services.

Trials of Immortality and Control

According to the report, this is our delusion that we are in control of dying. Large sums are being invested to dramatically extend life, even achieve immortality, for a small minority in a world that struggles to support its current population. Health care and individuals appear to struggle to accept the inevitability of death.

Rebalancing the Death Systems

The Lancet report advocates the rebalancing of the death systems of our society. These systems are many interrelated social, cultural, economic, religious, and political factors that determine how death, dying, and bereavement are understood, experienced, and managed. Income, education, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and other factors influence how much people suffer in death systems and the capacity they possess to change them.

According to the report, a death system should be the portal of knowledge by which death and dying are understood, regulated, and managed. The report provided an illustrative map that centres around two key events impending death (based on knowledge of death) and death itself. The map goes beyond physiology to function and health capabilities, including well-being and the capacity to achieve. It further adds that a perfect map of a whole death system would include much more, such as the systems for preventing death and funeral customs.

The report indicates that these death systems are run and controlled by power, thus have been a source of discrimination and inequity in death. Experience of death and dying has become a result of a constellation of factors such as political unrest or conflict, access to and trust in healthcare services, relationships, discrimination or oppression, poverty, education, and many others. The report also provides examples of when power was used in Covid-19 scenarios.

Death Positivity is Good

The report welcomed the death positivity movements for death awareness around the world. These movements are taking shape in the form of death cafes, festivals, or campaigns and the publication of books. It says, Evidence suggests that talking collectively about these issues can lead to an improvement in peoples attitudes and capabilities for dealing with death.

A Good Death

The report also mulled over the question of what is a good death. It concluded that a good death is when it fulfils 11 conditions. These conditions are relief from physical pain and other physical symptoms; effective communication and relationship with healthcare providers; the performance of cultural, religious, or other spiritual rituals; relief from emotional distress or other forms of psychological suffering; autonomy with regards to treatment-related decision-making; dying in the preferred place; life not being prolonged unnecessarily...

Assisted Dying

The report also raises societal and policy questions regarding assisted dying. What are the societal costs of legalising and not legalising? Does legalising assisted dying increase or decrease suicide rates? Does not legalising encourage underground practices (as with illegal abortions)? Is trust in doctors affected? What safeguarding measures are needed? What are the economic costs and benefits? Does legalising assisted dying undermine palliative care? Should those undergoing assisted dying be allowed to donate organs?

It stresses that without asking these questions, assisted dying legislation cannot guarantee human rights in death.

Overtreatment

The report also touched on the question of overtreatment and its relation to the economics of a death system. According to experts, people extend the treatments without assessing their outcomes. Doctors are also biased in their assessment of the benefits of treatment for patients with life-limiting conditions.

And that is why the expenditure on treatment of a person facing terminal illnesses increases manifold during the final days. According to experts, Many new treatments do extend life only marginally and have low success rates and yet are very expensive.

Palliative Care

Experts involved in making this extensive report found that palliative care is accessible only for 14 percent of people worldwide. They recommend that palliative care services be available universally to all at the end of life. Ideally, these services should be part of statutory or public health services, which is not the case now.

Kerala case as Realistic Utopia

In their assessment of death and dying systems around the globe, the Lancet report recognised that end of life services being provided in Kerala is the system closest to their realistic utopia.

Kerala has emerged as a symbol of hope for low cost, equitable, and participatory palliative care, including end-of-life care. The success of this model rests on a series of paradigm shifts relating to how illness, dying, caring, and grieving are viewed within the state.

The report lauded the case of Pallium India, an NGO formed in 1993 intending to manage the pain and other symptoms of people with serious illnesses. Through this, death and dying have been reclaimed as a social concern and responsibility through a broad social movement composed of tens of thousands of volunteers complemented by changes to political, legal, and health systems.

Vision of Death and Dying

The report proposes five principles of a Vision of Death and Dying. According to the experts, these principles are: The social determinants of death, dying, and grieving are tackled; dying is understood to be a relational and spiritual process rather than simply a physiological event; networks of care lead support for people dying, caring, and grieving; conversations and stories about everyday death, dying, and grief become common.

Finally, the report recommends that death and dying must be recognised as normal and valuable. Care of the dying and grieving must be rebalanced. The Lancet plans a diverse programme of events in this year aiming to embed its recommendations globally and to see the realistic utopia take shape in practice.

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The Lancet report: How death and dying is a story of paradox in 21st Century - Firstpost