Limits of the Body

I began to feel uncertain about my body over breakfast.

On the table in front of me I had a freshly prepared bowl of oatmeal and I was contemplating what would happen if I ate it. The rolled oats, sugar and fruits in the bowl would enter my mouth, cruise down my esophagus and eventually be absorbed into my blood stream as nutrients. The waste eventually would inevitably find a way out. But at what point does that bowl of oatmeal become part of my body?

For the most part we are content to accept that the limits of our body end at our skin. We are convinced that there are finite limits to who we are. But we over look all of the things that get past that skin barrier. Even the things that change it. How do we define the bacteria and viruses enter our body and make us sick, or the medicines come and cure the sickness? How about the million of bacteria that live symbiotically in our intestines and help us digest food? Or the DNA, our own genetic blueprints, that we let fall out with our hair in the shower?

If we break a leg and a doctor uses bolts or a cast to fix it, are those parts of our body? How about a man in a wheelchair or a ventelator, for whom the external device is essential for life itself? Or someone who has donated a kidney to a friend or relative? Is it possible that one organ could belong to two different bodies at the same time? What about a person who lost a leg in a car accident, and yet feels phantom pain in the missing limb? And for that matter, when I dream, I am almost always wearing clothes. In waking life if someone tried to rip them off of me, I would feel violated. Might my body also extend to the barrier of my clothes?

For the most part we don't really need to care about the final limits of our bodies. We can go through our lives without a precise definition. However the question gains salience in today's world where our bodies are commodities that are bought and sold on world markets. Over the last several years I have reported on kidney brokers who steal organs from poor people and sell them to richer ones, and bone thieves who rob graves and sell skeletons to medical schools. This year in Uttar Pradesh blood pirates locked patients in a room and siphoned off their blood to provide a stable supply for local hospitals. But not all buying and selling body parts is illegal. Bio-prospecting companies collect genetic material from indigenous people in order to develop the next generation of wonder-drugs. Multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical companies run clinical trials that test experimental drugs on humans.

In all of these cases, outside forces defined what was valuable about a body and placed it on the market. Often times without the consent of the people whose bodies were used. If we think that our bodies are special in some way, and that outside interests should not be able to violate them, then we need to start by having a better conception of what our bodies actually are.

This means starting with breakfast. What exactly is the relationship between that bowl of oatmeal and the limit of your body?

photo: LoreleiRanveig at flickr

Ant Goddess and the Sponge of Doom

There have always been ants in our apartment. When we first moved in, near-microscopic red ants scurried across the kitchen counter looking for dropped morsels of food. Winter came and they slightly larger black ants took over until they were eventually replaced by an even larger variety. Now, in the heat of the summer the small red ants are back and they have managed to find their way into every Tupperware barrier we set up against them. They've crawled into the refrigerator, into the rice, and invaded our stash of walnuts. If we don't scrub down the counters after making tea a hundred ants will suck on the residue where sugary water dripped over the side of the cup.

Over the last three years my wife has sealed the cracks in the walls with duct tape and poured eucalyptus oil into their hideouts. She has sprayed their dens with insecticide and sponged away countless ant carcasses from our counter tops. But the ants keep coming back. There are more now in our apartment than ever before. But something that happened over the weekend has made me question her fundamental relationship with this apartment's most numerous inhabitants.

After years of countless ant murders and countermeasures my wife went into the kitchen to find a herd gathered around a dollop of honey. She says that there were at least 50 of them in a circle "lapping up the nectar like antelopes at a waterhole". There is nothing in the world more pleasing to an ant than honey. Rather than her normal reaction of immediately scrubbing the honey and ants into the sink, she bent down over them for a better look. Sensing her gaze--and impending doom--the ants scattered in every direction. They abandoned their sugary stash and ran for the cracks where they came from.

This is unusual behavior. I have to emphasize that that ants didn't run after she had begun to squish their bodies into the counter top with her finger one at a time, or even after preparing a sponge in the sink. They ran after they saw her looking at them. This leads me to believe that after years of wiping out this same colony of ants, they are beginning to respect and fear my wife (as she is their appointed exterminator). She is their fickle and unruly goddess.

We see them as pests that pollute our food and occasionally bite us with their envenomed pincers. But from an ant's perspective we are giving them mixed signals. One day we fill the counters with tasty food droppings, glittering in honey and flower particles that feed and grow their colony. The next day she removes the offering and eliminates the workers that they send out to collect the food. She poisons their colony and wipes them from the face of the earth. She is both the source of their sustenance and the agent of their demise.

Back in the safety of their colony, the ants must gather around their queen and ask for her to interpret the various moods of my fickle wife. Is she an agent of good, or one of evil? Is there a way to appease her, or are they doomed to her random acts of kindness and murder? Right now, the counters are clean, and the ants are likely preforming elaborate rituals to honor my wife and forestall her wrath.

My wife is the ants' goddess. Right now she could be preparing the sponge of doom, or a cup of tea with honey.

photo by Binux on Flickr

Chennai Runs out of Gas

Today the Chennai ran out of gas. By noon the few remaining pumps that were open had lines that wrapped around the block. A few, like the Indian Oil pump across from my house went for more than a mile. In the center of the city I passed a stalled Hyundai Santro with a woman in tears behind the wheel. She had run out of gas while going from station to station looking for a place to fill up. By ten at night, the few remaining pumps had police posted outside of them ready just in case a riot broke out. I saw people filling jugs for drinking water, apparently hoarding the fuel just in case the gas supply doesn't get turned back on.


I stopped at several different pumps and asked attendants why there was no gas and got conflicting answers. A police officer with several stars on his eppillete outside one bunk told me that there was a strike. Fed up by paying $5.30 a gallon, truck drivers refused to supply gas to stations across Tamil Nadu in a bid to the government to lower petrol prices. In a country where the median income still overs around $300 a year, the current price of petrol is far higher than just prohibitive, it's downright obscene. However another source at a local newspaper told me that gas supplies were slow to come in from abroad and that this could be a sign of things to come.

There is still no clear consensus about whether this is merely a blip, or the beginning of a trend in Tamil Nadu. I expect that the issue won't be resolved tomorrow. There will probably be a lot of stalled cars on the roads in a few days.

Could a Nano-Size Pricetag Mean Chaos?

The Tata Nano isn't just one more small car ready to enter the world's stream of endless transportation options; it's a revolution. Costing just a little over $2,500, it's half the price of the next cheapest car on the road today which means just about anyone with a mid-sized call center paycheck can pick one up. For this month's issue, WIRED sent me out to explore how the Nano will change the Indian economy. I tracked down powerful city planners and iconic environmentalists in Bangalore and sat inside a Nano prototype in the Tata factory in Pune. After criss crossing the country on the Nano-trail I think I have a good idea about what to expect when the car finally hits the roads. It's not a pretty picture.

On its own, the Nano is a great automobile. The engine is small and fuel efficient, it meets most environmental standards, and it is a whole lot safer than a motorcycle or scooter. But with 350,000 set to be produced in the first year, and untold millions in the years after that, the Nano portends a massive strain on India's already stressed infrastructure. The crux of the problem is that developing world governments aren't able to keep pace with private industry. There are already too many cars on the road and there don't seem to be plans to adapt to the coming influx.

We can't blame the Nano for being a cool car that a lot of people will want to buy--it is much nicer than the Maruti 800 which sells for $5000, and I'm beginning to think that it even puts my own Hyundai Santro to the test--but at the state level, there don't seem to be solutions in the works. At one level it is just a problem of geometry, as more people drift from two-wheelers to four wheelers, there will be less overall space for vehicles to navigate. At the same time, a lot fewer people are taking buses (who would want to when they are so cramped?). As citizens depend increasingly on private transportation the whole system tends towards gridlock.

And now that automakers know that it is possible to produce cars in the nano price range engineers from Germany to Japan are making plans to mass-assemble their own versions.

At $2,500 people who were never able to afford cars before suddenly can. According to figures I culled from World Bank data, the global pool of potential car owners could increase by as much as 800 million once ultra-compact cars are available world-wide.

This means big problems for administrators who are trying to keep developing world cities moving. Streets that are already clogged will get worse. Fuel prices that are already high will go higher.

Check out the story in this month's issue of WIRED. Or just click this link.

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In other news, I wasn't able to go to this year's SAJA awards in New York. That's a real shame because I was the finalist for the Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding Story about South Asia: the conference's top award.

Two Years in One Space

For the last two years we have lived in our apartment in Kilpauk enjoying the near-constant sweet sounds of a busy intersection and occasional power cuts. When we first moved in we recorded a video of the place while my mother in law was visiting from the United States. Uploaded to YouTube, that video has been inexplicably popular fetching more than 20,000 views. By contrast, this entire website just passed 200,000 visitors this week. So, as a special treat, Padma and I thought we would update the video and show what two years has done to the place. We've weathered a small fire, a rent increase, and some modest redecorating in the time.

First up: What it looked like in 2006:



Today's Apartment:

Finalist for the Livingston Award in International Reporting

A couple days ago learned that I have been selected as a finalist for the Livingston Award in International Reporting for my piece in WIRED titled "The Bone Factory: India's Underground Trade in Human Remains."[link] Every year 50 young journalists are selected as finalists by a star committee of veteran media players. The wikipedia entry on the competition says that "the Livingston Awards are among the most competitive and prestigious reporting prizes in American journalism."

My name on the list of finalists is wedged between two reporters for the New York Times and shares space with some of the best up and coming journalists in America. So, I know it's cliché, but it's an honor just to be nominated. The winner gets a $10,000 cash award, and a trip to New York to mingle with the panel of judges. The awards will be announced on June 6th.

___

Also, just in case you missed it. I had another story on NPR a few weeks ago, but didn't end up posting about it on this blog. It is about a new transgender talk show host here in Chennai who is stirring up the community with provocative questions about sex and marriage. Check it out here: "Transgender Talk Show Host Tackles Taboos in India."

Scarlett Keeling: Goa's Lost Innocence

About a month ago the half-naked body of a 15-year old British girl was found on a Goa beach. Initially police said that Scarlett Keeling was only the most recent casualty of Goa's live fast and die partying lifestyle. Their initial crime report siad that she had dies of a drug overdose and drowning.. It took two weeks of agitating by her mother to get the police to preform a second autopsy. Their findings were that Scarlett had been drugged, raped and left to die. The mother has accused the police of taking part in a massive cover-up of her daughter's murder.

Nerlon Albuquerque, the sub-inspector who initially led the investigation has been suspended from duty, while the BBC reports that a senior police official hints and a broad internal conspiracy.

"It is a very complicated story. It has wider ramifications," a senior police official, who prefers anonymity, said.

He hints at influential local politicians being involved in the flourishing drug trade on the beach. - [via BBC]

Yesterday the police announced that they had solved the Keeling case and arrested two men who were said to have been in compromising positions with Keeling before her death. Placido Carvalho and Samson D'Souza have both been arrested. MSNBC reports

"The first arrested accused D'Souza has confessed to his role and has also named four others involved in the murder," Kumar said. The others named by D'Souza would be arrested after evidence against them was established, Kumar said.

But despite the confession, several questions remain--not the least of which were if the interrogations were fair, or if D'Souza confessed only under duress. Sources on the ground in Anjuna tell me that local people believe that D'Souza is only a scapegoat being used to pacify the media interest.

In a few hours I am catching a plane to Panji to report on the Keeling case and dig up whatever I can. For now, at least, the Goan Paradise seems to be lost.

Chennai's Great Newspaper Throw-Down

Chennai is gearing up for a newspaper slog fest that promises to leave journalism by the wayside and more billboards on the roadside. In the next month or so, the Times of India is coming to town with a major advertising campaign and super-low introductory rates. Its move into an already crowded media market is forcing the current players to reevaluate their positions.

Part of the reason, of course, is that the Times of India arrives full coffers and is already poaching the best reporters from the established Chennai papers. Indian Express's Jaya Menon--an extraordinary journalist in her own right--will be heading up the office as bureau chief and star reporters from the New Indian Express, the Hindu and Deccan Chronicle have been lured to the new offices by higher salaries and promises of plush assignments.

But no matter how talented the Times of India's editorial team might be, the future of the paper won't hinge on the stories that they break. Chennai is India's last great media market before the big newspapers start duking it out in second tier cities. For the next couple years, papers will be competing for readers as fiercely as possible before the losers are forced to close up shop.

And what sells newspapers better than sex?

When the Deccan Chronicle entered Chennai in 2005 it learned that the quickest way to turn a buck wasn't to fund an outstanding reporting team, rather all it had to do was paper the city with pictures cute Indian babes cavorting on the beach. Under the tag line "News Made Exciting" the paper ran high on celebrity news and sex scandals (and some occasional good reporting from senior staff) and its circulation in Chennai alone rose to more than 300,000 in just three years.

Former Rediff and Tehelka reporter and current assistant editor at the Council on Foreign Relations Basharat Peer laments that Indian editors consistantly bury hard hitting stories in favor of tabloid fluff in order to move newspapers

Privately, editors in India will say that cover stories about how Indian men and women behave in bed after age thirty sell more copies than cover stories about torture. [link], via sajaforum.org

It is unlikely that Chennai will be able to support four major English language papers over the long haul, and editors that I've spoken with are nervous about what happens next. As talent migrates towards the Times of India, papers like The New Indian Express are trying to differentiate themselves before the shakeup. For the last couple months the paper has included a sexed up 40-page Friday supplement called Indulge and has lately been winning the design wars for best above the fold layouts.

Even with some positive signs, the paper has the most to lose when the Times of India enters the market. With its drab offices far outside the city in Ambattur it has to work hard to keep talented people from fleeing to greener pastures--among them Sushila Ravindranath, Sunday Express editor has shifted to the Deccan Chronicle.

All that aside, for readers, this is a great time to be in Madras. For the next couple years the industry is going to be full of energy as the papers try to out-compete themselves for your attention. Lets just hope they run some actual news stories next to the full-page babe inserts.

The New York Times Effect

It's the gold standard for newspapers. It has a daily circulation of more than 1.1 million and its staff columnists collect Pulitzer prizes like carnival trophies. The stories that it runs on its front page set the agenda for every other news organization. The New York Times is a news behemoth. And this is something of a problem.

We've all heard about the New York Times Effect on restaurants and movies. Journalist Seth Godin writes that when the Times wrote a positive review of his neighborhood cafe business spiked and the line of customers pushed past forty. The spike in business lasted more than a week. A good review can make a business soar, a bad one can push it into the gutters. But the Times has a different effect on journalism. The newspaper has something of a monopoly on stories and it sets the rules about what stories can and cannot be told.

In order to convince a magazine or newspaper to devote precious page space to a story, the idea first needs to jump through several difficult hurdles. First the piece needs to be relevant to the readership and to be genuinely interesting. Second the story has to feel fresh--this means that other major news outlets shouldn't have covered the subject recently.

The first barriers is hard enough to get across. Editors have very definite ideas about what sorts of topics are relevant to their readers. Many stories get killed in their infancy before they even start. But the second barrier can be even more troublesome. Since many news stories are interrelated, how does an editor decide the bar for what counts as fresh?

Last week I pitched a story that aimed at exploring kidney scandal in Delhi where a notorious organ broker kidnapped unsuspecting workers and stole their kidneys. Other publications had already covered the scandal, but I had new information from the WHO that two American insurance companies were paying for organ transplant surgeries abroad—an issue that raises important ethical questions about the future of transplant surgery.

I got two responses from editors. An editor at a major business publication said:

“And I could swear I read a story like this recently in the NYTimes, although I could be hallucinating. It’s a great idea for someone, though, and a very well-considered pitch.”

And another from a top technology magazine said that the editors loved the idea, but the story seemed too familiar:

"BTW this is becoming a common problem. People in this office are
longstanding voracious readers. Everything is too familiar."

I had seen Amelia Gentleman's coverage in the New York Times of the kidney trade, but so many publications had been writing about the subject that I had to double check to see if indeed, she had covered the width and breadth of the issue in the article's 1000 or so words. The article is quite good, but is little more than day one coverage. There is no investigation into the very sinister international side of the crime. Certainly there was no reference to insurance companies that might have footed the bill for the expenses.

The problem isn't actually the fault of the Time's reporting staff, rather it's the weight that people put on Times articles. In my years as a reporter I have had more stories rejected because of previous NY Times coverage than because of prior coverage in any other publication. It doesn't seem to matter as much if TIME magazine or or Newsweek run cover stories on a subject, just so long as the NYT hasn't sent reporters to the field.

For reporters on the Times staff, the situation is precisely the reverse. They can cover any story they want, not matter how tired the subject is. Right now the Times is running a series of stories on sports scholarships which is basically the same exact article written over and over again by different reporters. Last week, Amelia Gentleman covered the sharp increase in Indian surrogate mothers selling pregnancy. The issue had already been a cover of TIME magazine in Asia, Marie Claire, The Christian Science Monitor, the BBC, a major special on the Oprah Winfrey show and dozens of other publications. I'd known about this story for more than two years before the NYtimes reported on it. It is such a familiar story that it should have never gotten past an editor's scrutiny.

The heart of the problem is that every editor I know reads the NYtimes religiously. No matter what their beat is, they see the paper as a direct competitor of their own publication. The times, on the other hand, thinks that it is peerless and can run any story it wants to. In the end, all this does is reinforce the NYT's position as a canonical newspaper. It gets to recycle the best original content from other publications, and then, once it has done so, stops the news coverage of that particular subject.

As an independent journalist, it is hard to always be in the shadow of the New York Times Effect.

My Shower: Where Electricity and Water Really Shouldn't Mix

There is a glaring contradiction between the skyrocketing price of real estate in Chennai and abysmal quality of construction and infrastructure. We've had out share of problems with the state supplied electricity to our apartment--ranging from city-wide brown outs to meter men from the Electricity Board and telephone pole explosions right outside my window. But once you take a look at the wiring inside the apartment you finally get a real picture of how on the verge everything is to collapse.

Take a look at the construction of my shower. You can see in the picture above that the pipe that leads to the spout connects to a small hole in the concrete where there are three different circuit breakers. Inside the wall, the pipe splits into at least two different pipes, and I believe that the stains around the windows show that there is at least some leakage inside.

The circuit breakers were installed to power the electric water heater and also shunt power into my bedroom to power an air conditioner and my computer setup. The water heater isn't particularly energy efficient, I've noticed that when I keep it on, the electricity meter downstairs starts moving at three or four times its normal rate.

So now I have to wonder if the shower that I've been using for the last two years, is actually some sort of crude execution device simply biding its time until the inevitable. Lettering imprinted on one of the breakers says "15 AMPs 256 VOLTS". I wonder if that is enough to give me a gentle stimulating shock, or enough to fry me instantly into a tandoori kebab.

The thing is, I've seen setups like this in apartments across the country. A photographer friend of mine in Delhi had a small house fire when his water heater exploded during one of the humid months. Even brand new places keep electric circuits perilously close to the water supply. We've got roughly a year and a half to go living here in Chennai. Any bets on whether we make it out?

Back to India for the Children of Immigrants

Preetha Narayanan moved back to India for a year and a half on a scholarship.

Thousands of Indians born in America have found a new home in the land that their parents abandoned. This week for NPR I reported on a new trend among second generation Indians to return to India in search of opportunity. Part of the draw is that Indians born and raised in the states often feel conflicted over their identities--on one hand they feel like they feel set apart from the American mainstream, while on the other they aren't sure how well they they fit into India, either. Inevitably, when they move to India, many in the second generation find that they have more in common with other Americans than they do with local people. And some people, find that disheartening.

But there are some clear advantages to moving. In addition to new visa schemes like the PIO and OCI cards that allow people to cross borders and work without too much government hassle, returning Indians also find that they can seriously advance their career. S. Mitra Kalita, a newspaper editor at Mint in Delhi, says that simply moving to India threw her into the ranks of senior management almost immediately. It would have taken her years to get to the same position working at newspapers back home.

And it's not just the second generation moving back. I'm increasingly meeting people here in Chennai and Bangalore who have been educated in the United States and even worked there for a few years who have decided that moving back makes a lot of sense. In the 1970s and 1980s most people assumed that moving to America would lock them into the west--returning wasn't even on the table. Now, it seems, many people are able to bridge both worlds.

Here's the story on NPR:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87884391

The Hindu's Front Page "Real Estate"

This is the front page of The Hindu today, February 29, 2008. It's a full page ad hocking a new real-estate scheme. For more than a century The Hindu has been considered one of India's best newspapers, but selling its front page to an advertiser is nothing less than editorial treason.

And it's just the most recent offender in a long line of terrible advertising ploys that undercut the credibility of journalism in India. Earlier this year the Decccan Chronicle pull a similar shenanigan when they thought no one would notice.

It's true, newspapers do need to support themselves on advertising dollars, but in order to retain credibility there is usually a wall between editorial and advertising. Reporters need to have free reign to write the stories they want, and the paper sells on the basis of those stories. By putting a full page advertisement on the front page the newspaper ceases to be a news source. It makes it the trash that delivery men leave on my doorstep.

I don't think I am going to read The Hindu anymore.

Back to India on Sub-Prime Wings

In the wake of the sub-prime mortgage crisis and fall of the US greenback against the rupee, it makes me wonder how many Indians in America have decided to pull up stakes and return to home. In November, NPR ran a story about a new movement of India doctors to come back to elite-multispeciality hospitals in Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi and Mumbai where they don't earn as much money, but can have a higher standard of living. I've heard similar stories about Indian filmmakers who were trying to make it in the Hollywood have retreated to Mumbai where they have more opportunities. It's probably happening in the IT sector, as well.

Earlier this week a publication contacted me to write a story about Indians who have spent time in the United States, only to realize that they can live better back at home. I have a few people in mind to feature, but there are probably hundreds of stories out there of returnees and I would love your help to find them. Maybe it'd be a good time to vent about the failure of one particular American dream.

Send tips to sgcarney@gmail.com

Traffic, Congestion, City Planning and...the Nano

What do you think about traffic in India? I want to know.

As far as infrastructure is concerned, the next decade is going to determine the long term future of India. The number of vehicles on the roads is growing by orders of magnitude. According to statistics on the Bangalore Traffic Police website, in 1987 the IT capital of Bangalore had only 400,000 cars on the road. By 2005 there were more than 2 million. As India metropolises continue to grow the mileage of roadways doesn't even come close to keeping pace leading to traffic jams, and worse, gridlock.

Next year automakers are going to release 14 new car designs onto Indian roads. New players Volkswagen and Nissan are preparing for major releases while TATA motors has announced an ultra-cheap "people's car" that cost barely more than a motorcycle. I'm working on a story about the future of Indian cities--the plans to make things better, and the downfalls of quick development and I'd like to get people's opinion of what they think the future holds.

Also, does anyone know of any cutting edge initiatives in city planning, or civic management that are prepared to deal with the traffic influx? In your opinion, who are the biggest and brightest minds in the field?

The Shakti Center talks about Sex

Sex is taboo in Chennai. Like any place in the world everyone here is having sex (well most people, anyway) but to admit it out loud makes people angry. A couple years ago the actress Kushboo said that unmarried women should have access to birth control and get occasional AIDS tests and was attacked by local politicos for "dishonoring tamil women". And let's not even get started about homosexuality. When sun goes down Marina and Elliots beaches turn into brothels and married men cruise for sex in just about every public park. But the next day no one says a word. But that could change.

The Shakti Center is addressing rift between what people talk about, and what goes on behind doors. The group's philosophy is simple: provide a space for people to talk about sex in the city and things will start to get better. To do that Shakti has a lot of projects in the works. There are host free weekly films--ranging from Tamil flicks to the latest Quentin Tarrantino release--followed by discussion groups. They also run sex-ed curriculums in local schools, have a blog, a zine, and resources for people to use to develop other dialog fostering projects. They're open to anything that will get people talking. Eventually the blog will become a repository for stories from local people to voice their own experiences negotiating the rough cultural waters around sexuality and gender.

Padma Govindan, my wife, is a founding member of the group and is eagerly looking for other people to come in and help out. Just about everyone in Chennai has a story about coming to terms with their own sexuality. There are strong opinions about who should and should not be having sex and what it means to be gay (or transgender) in a city that won't think out of a straight box.

If enough people get talking, maybe the next time someone like Kushboo suggests people should use condoms people will listen rather than threaten to throw her in jail.

For more information about the Shakti Center, or to get involved, go to the website http://www.shakticenter.org