Life Talks in a Metro Station
Authored by Harsha Jagadeesh, Experimentor (CARBON), Science Gallery Bengaluru
Imagine a morning in Bengaluru! You are navigating the Bengaluru traffic to get stuffed into a metro like cattle in a van, with the cabin smelling like a mix of sweat and different quality deodorants and sprays. You fight your way out when the metro reaches your stop and speed fast to the exit, hoping to make it on time, only to be stopped by a girl in a black t-shirt. She greets you with a smile and asks, “Do you have a minute to talk about life?”
Hi! I am Harsha, and that girl was probably me. Now, how did I end up there, and what did I do there? This article is a small peek into that.
In June of 2023, I joined the full-time Mediator Programme (now renamed the Experimentor Programme) of Science Gallery Bengaluru’s CARBON exhibition-season. The first two months of the Programme were the training period to familiarise us with the CARBON exhibition themes and exhibits. Post the training, our first task was the ‘CARBON in the City’ project that took four exhibits from the CARBON exhibition-season into metro stations, with us mediators in each station to ‘mediate’ the exhibit. Jivanu was one such chosen exhibit, displayed at the Indiranagar metro station.
Now, what is Jivanu?
Life as we know it comes from pre-existing life. A mother gives birth, a chicken lays eggs, new plants sprout from the parent plant, and a cell splits into two new cells. But, for the first time, how could life have originated? Did it come from outer space? Was it formed in our oceans? Or, did God create it by speaking it into existence? In the 1960s, two Indian scientists Krishna Bahadur and S. Ranganayaki conducted experiments in the Allahabad University to create life from non-living things for the first time and to put an end to these questions. Their experimental setup was simple — mix water with ammonia, salts, and acid, along with a carbon source and a catalyst, molybdenum dioxide, to create a primordial soup. Leave the soup in the sun for a few days, and small cell-like particles will start to emerge. They called these particles Jivanu!
The finding was revolutionary and brought so many questions to the forefront. Is Jivanu living? Can we call Jivanu the first form of life? What is the definition of life? Unfortunately, all these questions died down after NASA questioned the scientific credibility of the findings. NASA claimed that the experiment is not reproducible, and questioned the citation of Vedic texts in the research paper. The research didn’t survive the criticisms. Thus, a revolutionary finding on the origin of life was lost in time. Until it was picked up by Nayan Chakraborty, the then PhD student in Shashi Thutupalli’s lab at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) Bengaluru. Nayan Chakraborty recreated the experiment and produced Jivanu! This ongoing experiment is the Jivanu exhibit, and the questions around it, made it my favourite exhibit to ‘mediate’.
But what does “mediating” an exhibit mean?
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As the dictionary definition of ‘mediate’ goes, it means helping to solve a disagreement by talking to the groups involved. In this context, it is to talk to the visitor to help them solve any disagreements they have with the exhibit’s theme or topic. It is in my attempts to solve the disagreements or mediate an exhibit that I have had some of the most interesting conversations. (As an ex-mediator, here is a secret — it is more fun and sometimes more important to create a disagreement or rile up the existing one than to help solve it!)
To mediate Jivanu, we lined up round-bottom flasks with the blue primordial soup and black jivanu particles at the Indiranagar metro station. The setup was accompanied by a blackboard on the side that read, “Today’s Special: Jivanu”, and the instructions to prepare it. People started stopping by — some were curious about the flasks, some were intrigued by the board, and others just wanted to know the direction to Kengeri Metroline (despite the signboard next to us!). However, we talked about Jivanu to everyone! We asked them the definition of life and to speculate if Jivanu is living or not based on it. We made a small activity out of it to collect these answers as data points! On the back side of the blackboard, we wrote in big bold letters — “What is life?”.
People started writing down their answers — movement, energy, breathing, death, water, and the answers went on. Now, here is the interesting thing about defining life: It does not have a universal definition. Any definition you come up with can be negated by counter-examples. That’s exactly what I did while mediating! Movement — corals don’t move! Energy — electricity is a form of energy, is it life? Breathing — fire also changes oxygen into carbon dioxide. Death — stars also die, does it mean it is alive? Water — AI needs more water than you and I do. And the disagreements continue, opening up more and more conversations and discussion topics. I have to admit, there were answers that I couldn’t counter. One such is when a kid wrote that life is cricket (the game, not the insect)! Interesting definitions of life were filling the board, and we had regular visitors who came in just to read that day’s answers! In the answers, movement and breathing were the most repeated ones, and I have always wondered why. However, my favourite answer of all was reproduction.
Is reproduction a necessary condition for life? If someone died without having kids, was the person never alive? The disagreement starts there, and the role of the mediator is in full swing now! They come back with arguments of the ‘potential’ to reproduce, and there comes my favourite counter-example of the Mule. The argument moves to the cellular level, and things get messy. Are you living, or are the cells in your body living? Since your neurons don’t reproduce, were they never living? Is cancer then another life altogether? Is a fetus living? Oh! There, the conversation just got political. (Well, a conversation on the origin of life is always political.) And in all these discussions on the reproductive property of life and jivanu, one of my all-time favourite responses from a visitor is: “…if Jivanu is not replicating it is because of its choice and should not be of anybody’s concern.”
The politics of an experiment like Jivanu is a strong but risky topic to venture into during mediation. It starts with patriotism walking into the conversation uninvited as they hear about a NASA-rejected experiment being successfully redone in a lab in Bengaluru. Religion arises at the mention of Vedic literature being cited by Bahadur, and how it prompted the scientific community to question its credibility. Finally, God follows, as the visitor is reminded of creationism at the mention of the origin of life. It is, of course, safe to avoid a conversation on religion in the current political climate. (But I am never the one who chooses peace!) However, I went ahead and discussed God and religion before the science of the origin of life. Visitors told me the stories on the origin of life that they grew up hearing, and let me mediate their disagreements with the science of the exhibit. We talked about creation, evolution, the matrix theory, aliens, and the possibility of a grand plan by God. It was fascinating to see how, in their worldviews, science and religion fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. The arguments they made were never illogical. One discussion that still left me wondering is: if Jivanu is found to be living, then its existence means that life can be created. Would that make us God?
In my experience, in a country where the people who fund scientific research are kept away from it, the public is doing a tremendous job of being informed the best way they can. The strongest politics of this exhibit is how it came out of the lab and into the people’s lives, as a conversation they had on a random Wednesday morning while getting in/out of a metro station. It gave people the opportunity to learn about the research happening in their city. They could question its findings and reflect upon what it means for them. More importantly, it brought out important questions that need to be asked politically. My favourite of them being, “How am I benefiting out of this research that is funded by my tax money?”
The opportunity to ask questions, without bearing the burden of finding the answer, is the most beautiful thing about mediation. In the three months we were in Indiranagar, around 3,000+ visitors stopped by to talk about Jivanu. I asked them questions and made them ask questions. Is the sun living? Is the atmosphere living? What is death? Is death a necessary condition for life? If Jivanu were to become living, what would the ethics of experimenting with it be? Will the pro-lifers fight for Jivanu’s rights? Or does it have to be inside a woman’s uterus for them to be interested? Somewhere down the line, they might find answers, or they might not. But as mediators, we can only ‘help’ solve disagreements. (or create it, right?)
Each question gave me a small peek into their world, their beliefs, values and views. The questions led to hours of discussions and conversations. They shared their life stories, their long-lost dreams and hopes for the future. Sometimes, people who overheard the conversation joined in with their own inputs and a whole bunch of new stories. And for a brief time, I got to ponder about life as a group of storytelling apes.
For that, I stood in a metro station and later in a gallery, asking people the age-old question — What is life?
And I am still looking for an answer.
