Disturbing Narcissism and India's Dark Side

There are a couple of things on my mind today, one disturbing, one narcissist. Narcissism first. Over the years I've interviewed more than my share of people and written up profiles and articles about dozens of folks. Yet, I have never been on the receiving end of microphone/keyboard. Well, as of Saturday that has changed. Tan Lee Kuen (a reporter I met while couchsurfing in Malaysia) wrote an article that mentioned me in one of the two big Malaysian papers. Sure it was in the back pages, but there was a pretty picture of me driving a rickshaw that should make up for it. It was about my bygone days as a guidebook writer for Fodors when I schlepped my way through Rajasthan in obscene heat for very little pay. Check out the link in The Star.

Now for the disturbing. Since I started blogging I've shown a rather morbid curiosity with physical deformities and criminal activity here in India. Whether it is a one-eyed baby born in a local hospital , a thumbless rickshaw driver , prostitution in Kollywood, or an emerging porn industry, I'm always writing about something that portrays a gritty underside to India. Not that anyone is complaining, but I wonder if perhaps I should spend more space talking about something more wholesome, like, say politics in Tamil Nadu, or the funny thing I saw on the street the other day.

Alas, I don't have anything like that for you today. Instead I've found this story in while cruising a blog called Bombay in LA about a man in Bombay who was born with his twin brother inside his own body. While he always had a bid of a gut, as he approached his mid-thirties the bulge in his stomach grew almost human in size and started to make it difficult for him to breathe. He went to a doctor who initial thought he had some sort of enormous tumor and proposed operating on him to remove it. What happened next is something straight out of a horror movie.

Removing the Mutated Body

One doctor recalled that day in the operating room.

"He just put his hand inside and he said there are a lot of bones inside," she said. "First, one limb came out, then another limb came out. Then some part of genitalia, then some part of hair, some limbs, jaws, limbs, hair."

Inside Bhagat's stomach was a strange, half-formed creature that had feet and hands that were very developed. Its fingernails were quite long.

"We were horrified. We were confused and amazed," Mehta said."

I still don't know what to think of it. But I have to say that my fascination with this side of India doesn't look like it is about to die down.