As a man who has dedicated his life to animal activism and the belief that all existence is equal, he refuses to take medicine produced by pharmaceutical companies that torture animals.

However, the most intriguing of these three sections is the story of an ailing monk (Neeraj Kabi). Modernity has rendered morality obsolete. “This is as good as it gets,” he is reassured by his grandmother. Disillusioned with the decadence of justice and the exploitation of the poor, he embarks on a quest to find a stolen kidney which takes him to Sweden but it leaves him feeling empty. “Ship of Theseus” launches a powerful commentary on materialism and man's search for meaning through the account of a young stockbroker (Sohum Shah). Divided into three distinct fragments, “Ship of Theseus” almost feels like three different films with their own visual narratives and philosophical explorations. It opens with the curious case of a blind photographer (Aida El-Kashef) who struggles to adjust to the dizzying world after she receives eye transplants, choosing to return to the comfort of darkness by wearing a blindfold. Instead, it keeps bombarding us with more questions while telling the stories of three vastly different people and their personal conflicts. The film does not try to indulge in dogmatism by presenting a definite answer to this infinitely nuanced conundrum. The paradox famously asked whether a ship would remain the same if all its individual parts were replaced, begging the inevitable question: are we the sum of all our parts or is there something more to it? Gandhi takes the eponymous paradox from Ancient Greece and transforms it into an inquiry of personal identity and post-humanism. Although “Ship of Theseus” is a fascinating examination of contemporary Indian society, its grand vision is supported by a construct that is mythological in nature.

Ship of theseus novel