Jayalalithaa as Napoleon

This painting was hanging in the background of the Stree Sharira conference last week and I have to say that I wish I commanded the sort of money it would take to buy it. The painting is of Jayalalithaa--the recurring chief minister of Tamil Nadu--dressed as Napoleon Bonaparte.

Stree Sharira

This week the Prakriti Foundation is holding a conference called "Stree Sharira" with speakers coming in from all over the world to talk about sexuality, reproductive health and pleasure. Yesterday the Tamil film actress Kushboo had an intimate conversation with audience about her experience with government censorship of her films and how some relatively innocuous statements she made a few years ago on premarital sex drew fire from the state's highest offices.

The conference continues today and tomorrow at Anokhi Cafe on Chaimiers Road if you find you have free time and want to attend. This afternoon Padma is going to speak on her impressions of the notorious lesbian flick "Girlfriend".

I took some photos yesterday and have posted a gallery of some of the dance performances and speakers.

Above: Kushboo talks with the audience before ducking out of the hall where a waiting mob of autograph seekers waved crumpled pieces of paper and pens in her direction.

Painting: This painting was hanging on the wall behind the speakers at the conference. I can't tell if she is holding a piece of string or a very long sperm. I think the artist left it ambiguous on purpose.

The Writing on my Arm

When I was younger tattoos scared me because they were permanent. Sure it may look good now, but when I'm sitting in my rocking chair in my dotage perhaps I will have second thoughts. I watched as friends of mine back in the United States couldn't stop at one tattoo and steadily started marking up their bodies like grade school kids fill up note pads. What is the fun in being a human doodle?

In the last couple months, however, I began to change my mind. What if a tattoo was more than just a drawing, but meant something special? Padma has long advocated me marking up bodies and has a large tattoo that snakes up her back. The main problem was that I couldn't think of anything right.

And then I began thinking about an incident that happened to me about a year ago when a student of mine I was taking through India on an abroad program died while we were in Bihar. I was charged with bringing her body back to Delhi so she could be shipped back to the United States for burial. As many of you already know the three days I was stuck in Gaya preserving her body against decomposition and negotiating with police and consular officials were quite difficult. The only respite came from some very good friends who arrived in my hour of need. One of whom, Joel Lee, pretty much showed up out of thin air and spent the entire time by my side. At one point while we were sitting beside the student's coffin we started talking about a sufi saint in Delhi named Nizamuddin.

In the 14th century Nizamuddin was building a mosque in Delhi at the same time that the sultan Tugaluk was constructing a fortress on the south side of the city and the two were in constant competition for workers. Tughaluk was often out of the city waging wars and expanding the empire while Nizamuddin was expanding his spiritual practice. On one of Tugaluk's military excursions Nizamuddin took away all of Tugaluk's workers and set them to building his mosque. Eventually word reached the sultan as he was finishing a campaign in Bihar and he sent a message back to Delhi that said that he would "deal with" Nizamuddin when he returned. This of course meant that Nizamuddin's days were numbered. But when Nizamuddin heard of Tugaluk's plan he was not concerned. Instead he sent Tugaluk a one line note in Urdu that read "Hanoz Dilli Dur Ast" or, "Delhi is still far."--meaning that Tugaluk had to be in Delhi to exercise his powers. Tughaluk headed back to Delhi while riding on a war elephant and had started to set plans in action to kill Nizamuddin. However, when he was only a day's ride outside the city his elephant was crossing over a bridge which gave way under the animal's weight. Both Tugaluk and the elephant perished and Nizamuddin was safe.

I have heard dozens of different versions of this story recited over the years but this one has always stuck with me. At the time we were in Bihar sorting out my student's remains the saying seemed to take on yet another meaning--we were headed to Delhi but had been unable to get there---Delhi was still far away. I am told that in Delhi the saying is often repeated as meaning "You don't know as much as you think you do."

I started dreaming about getting the line tattooed on my arm a few week ago. I knew that I had to get it done after I found myself wandering through the Muslim area of the city and came across one of the last communities of professional Urdu calligraphers who were running the only hand-written newspaper in the world. These were the people who would design it for me.

I asked them to write out several versions of the saying (and triple checking for spelling since I don't read Urdu) I went to a very posh tattoo parlor in Chennai called Irezumi. A woman in a salwar kamiz named Nisha tattooed it on my forearm. She had never gotten a tattoo of her own, but stencils on about 20 permanent markings onto people every week. She says she likes drawing. I think she did a pretty good job.

At first it was difficult for me to get used to the writing on my arm. The night after I had it done I woke my wife up at three in the morning and thought I had made a horrible mistake. It was my inner conservatism coming to the surface. I searched out different tattoo removal companies in India and discovered that it is pretty easy and cheap in Bangalore. Could I get it removed the next morning, I thought.

But since then I have grown into it a bit. It is healing well and I am really starting to enjoy it. I'm not so worried about being marked. The script and the story behind it means something to me. I might have to worry about airport security in the future, but I will always remember that Delhi is still far away.

Suspect Surgeons Advise Tamil Nadu Organ Transplant Future; Get Government Nod

Health Minister KKSSR Ramachandran

This afternoon I attended a meeting held by the government of Tamil Nadu that was meant to be the beginning of an official response to the kidney racket. In the last thirteen years thousands of kidney have been sold on the black market with the tacit approval of the ethics board that is charged with monitoring organ transplants. A month ago I wrote a story for Wired News where a member of the ethics committee admitted to knowingly authorizing illegal transplants through brokers.

The meeting today was meant to be a step forward out of a ethical murkiness of organ transplants and call together a wide array of doctors, NGO-wallas and ethical savants for their opinions on live-donor transplants and the solutions that might lie ahead. But intentions are not everything.

"The kidney rackets have been operating in this community for a long time. . .90% of the donors we know about come from below the poverty line, and 90% of those donate for money," said V.K. Subburaj Deputy Secretary of Health and Family Welfare during his inaugural address.

From a statement like that it would follow that the attendees charged with formulating Tamil Nadu's future policy would decide to get tough on organ donations and look for positive solutions through cadavers.

Yet when K.K.S.S.R. Ramachandran, the minister of health, asked for people to introduce themselves from the audience, it soon became apparent that the agenda for the meeting was actually being set by the kidney brokers. Just about all of the doctors who came are currently under investigation by the police for assisting in illegal kidney transplants. Representatives from hospitals in Madurai, Coiambatore, Chennai and Trichy that have all been outed in the media for working closely with brokers sat self-satisfied in their easy chairs waiting for their chance to influence policy.

The most obvious among them was Dr. K.C. Reddy of Devaki Hospital--who allowed a broker named Dhanalakshmi to operate for years outside his hospital and in the past has been a vocal proponent of live-donor donations. He was practically jovial. Though he wouldn't say a word to me.

When the opening remarks were over the press was kicked out and the doctors began to discuss their recommendations in private.

It was like putting the inmates in charge of the prison. The very people who were implicated in creating the organ racket in the first place were allowed to chart the course for the future. Allowed to set the clock backwards and make it seem like all their illegal actions over the last dozen years were actually for the best.

So it was no shock when the results came in and the doctors had reached a consensus that 1) Live unrelated donor transplants should be legal and that people should be allowed to buy and sell kidneys on the market. 2) Foreigners should be allowed to buy organs in India, but need to seek approval from the committee 3) All of the committee's authorization decisions should be final and not open to appeal 4) Members of the ethics board in charge of overseeing that the system is not abused cannot be held accountable for coercion between brokers over donors or forged documents. And, to put it in the speakers own words, "should not be harassed by the police or press".

So lets just throw transparency out the window and start an open-air-organ bazaar in Nungabakkam why don't we. If the committee's statements get taken up by the government (which is a real possibility) then we can look forward to thousands of completely above the board organ thefts. There were no stipulations to properly look after the rights of the people donating kidneys (except for one proposal for 5-10 years of free health insurance) and no mention of brokers at all.

But some people, thankfully, were not completely taken in by the committee's organ mafia. V.K. Subburaj said that there was still need for further debate, and that cadaver donations were still the only real option. The same went for members of the MOHAN Foundation, who have organized 200 cadaver donations in the last three years.

To top it off, no people from the press were permitted to ask questions or attend the closed door sessions with the gang of doctor-criminals discussing how to divide the spoils if the laws change.

At this point it is in the hands of K.K.S.S.R Ramachandran ,the health minister, a DMK appointee who's claim to the ministerhood seems to rely on his loyalty to the party and an incident in his past when he was burned by acid during a political rally. I don't know much about Ramachandran except that he has endorsed cadaver programs in the past and that he doesn't speak much English. Though one quote that he said during the meeting (which was translated for me) ran a chill though my veins:

"If there was a situation today where I needed a kidney I am sure that my son wouldn't offer up his own, instead he would say that he would pay any price for one."

And the price today is the blood of the poor.

Before he left a reporter from the Hindu asked if he would prosecute hospitals that had preformed illegal transplants. He said he would when the investigation turned up evidence. So far, it seems, he hasn't looked very hard.