LETTER OF THE MONTH
Unsolved mysteries
I love a good conspiracy theory, and enjoyed the way Rob Attar explored the reasons they are so prevalent (March). I think it’s human nature to want closure – and if we can’t have that, we would rather be part of the secret societies that cause the greatest mysteries of our times. After all, it’s uncomfortable not knowing: maybe part of our brains sparks an alarm that whirs ‘Danger, strange event! Get to the bottom of it, before they get you!’
Maybe history has something to do with it, too – our fascination with ancient Egypt, for example. Their lives and beliefs seem so otherworldly that we can’t help but be enthralled by their secrets. I recall watching a documentary about a recent discovery of a tomb, in which the experts translating the hieroglyphics could not fathom what was written on the walls. The writing had been changed to suggest that the priest to whom the temple belonged was in an incestuous relationship with his mother.
‘That’s impossible!’ was the experts’ view. But was it? I wanted to have their knowledge and use it to get to the truth of it all. Did this Egyptian priest father children from his mother? Was his scandalous family secret found out? Perhaps this is the reason conspiracy theories are born: we become unsatisfied with the information fed to us, and wish we had the tools to do a better job than the more qualified people who are unable to satiate our curiosity.
Chanife Moumin, Surrey
Too vast a problem
Kavita Puri, in the absorbing interview about her pioneering radio series on the Bengal famine of 1943 (March), discusses why the famine is not better known, particularly in Britain. As she notes, it has “no dedicated archive or memorial”– even in Bengal.
One thing the piece doesn’t mention is Ashani Sanket (‘Distant Thunder’), the moving 1973 drama about the famine directed by Bengal’s greatest film director, Satyajit Ray. This was awarded the top prize at that year’s Berlin Film Festival, and has been widely praised around the world since then. Yet even Ray could not bring himself to depict on screen the appalling suffering and death toll during the famine, which he witnessed daily on the streets of his home city, Calcutta. Instead, his film shows only the start of the famine in a Bengali village – the first death, so to speak.
As Ray
