Movie Review: The Informant!

Note: This post contains spoilers.

If you are contemplating going in to see The Informant!, it is more than likely you already know that the movie is based on true events that transpired at ADM (Archer Daniels Midland Company), an agribusiness conglomerate, early in the previous decade. At the end of years of investigations, principals at the company were convicted and they spent time in jail for price-fixing. The man that made the FBI's case for them, a Vice-President at the company named Mark Whitacre, is the subject of this film.

Now, if visions of movies dealing with corporate espionage or corporate wrong-doing (such as The Insider or Michael Clayton) are swimming in your head, you would do well to banish those thoughts. That The Informant! deals with similar topics is all there is in common. While the seriousness of the subject matter and the thrill of watching a good guy taking down the big, bad companies came through brilliantly in those other movies, you get no such sense with The Informant!. Right from the get-go, in fact right from the first frame in which the disclaimer flashes across the screen (to paraphrase: "The movie is based on true events, but some of the characters are composites. So there."), it occurs to you that what you are in for is, rather, a tongue-in-cheek handling of the issue.

Mark Whitacre's personality and his antics - perhaps - lend themselves to such treatment. We are privy to his thoughts as he goes about his daily life - funny thoughts, profound thoughts, thought-provoking thoughts. We feel like we know the guy. We peg him as sincere and hard-working, as wanting to do the right thing, and as the movie progresses, as somewhat of a bumbling idiot.

Little do we know.

Turns out the man whose voice we hear, whose eyes through which we view the world, whose family we get to know, whose success - in exposing the illegal goings-on at one of the largest companies in the world - we are rooting for, is not who we think he is at all. We find out, some time into the movie, that he has bi-polar disorder - a disease that compels him to lie compulsively and allows him to entertain visions of a grand ending to his exposing the unlawful activities at ADM. He actually believes that the company will reward him by coronating him as head of ADM when all the wrong-doers end up in jail.

This is where the movie stumbles. We feel gypped. He now has our pity, our sympathy, for sure, but he no longer has our trust. Our loyalties are transferred to the FBI agents who have the monumental task of not only building a case, but also making sure their star witness does not end up jeopardizing it. It comes close more than once. By the time the FBI's focus shifts from the bad guys at ADM to Whitacre's own wrong-doings (embezzlement of the company's funds), the enormity of Whitacre's greed is mind-bogglingly obvious. His disease, the judge decrees, has no bearing on his greed.

Matt Damon, the actor with the star power in the movie, is brilliant as the slightly paunchy work horse with secret ambitions. With 30 pounds of extra weight on his usually athletic frame, large framed glasses and droopy moustache, his transformation from the international spy of the Bourne series to a 'bio-technician' in a farm products company is complete. Scott Bakula's turn as the slightly nervous FBI agent, Shepard, deserves recognition as well.

That this story is true at all is the most eye-popping aspect of the film. The conspiracy at ADM starts unraveling and the FBI becomes aware of it because the executives at ADM brought it upon themselves through a series of what can only be viewed as missteps (knowing full well that they are violating the law by price-fixing, they bring in the FBI to investigate the far lesser matter and things start going downhill from then on). These were the people that were running such a large company?

If there is one heartwarming angle in the story, it's the FBI agents' devotion and loyalty to Whitacre and his vital role in framing the case against ADM. They try to protect him not only from ADM, but from the FBI and from himself. One of them, agent Herndon, appears to stick with him through his years in prison, the final scene leading us to assume that he was even assisting Whitacre in putting together his plea for a Presidential pardon.

Sure some of the scenes in the movie are hilarious, but in the face of all the bits of information we are fed as the events transpire, you're left laughing less and shaking your head more. Discomfort replaces mirth; pity for Whitacre's condition replaces disbelief. You're not at the edge of your seat, you're cringing.

There are countless stories that lend themselves to hilarity and light treatment. I'm not sure this story was one of those.

~~~
Links: The movie's homepage. IMDb link to the movie page.

The movie is rated 'R' in the US for language.

Some lovely childrens' books recommendations...

... at Punarjanman. Do take a look. If you have suggestions of your own, please add them.

Related Post:

Books to Die For: A Nine Year Old's List

The manifold advantages of a big brother

Last weekend both the kids had appointments for flu shots.

I was not worried about C (my nine-year-old son) at all. From the time he was three years old, I have been very upfront with him about the need for shots and how making a fuss would only make it more uncomfortable for him. I really had not expected the message to go over so well so quickly, and was heart broken that this little three year-old had let go of my hand, had walked up to the chair, lifted his sleeve and presented his arm to a skeptical nurse. The only one that cried that day was me.

With D, my daughter, who's now three herself, it's a completely different story. When we returned to the US from India two years ago she went through a spate of tests that involved drawing blood. The repeated visits at that age (she was barely one) and having needles stuck in her arm each time cemented a dreadful connection in her mind - a visit to the doctor meant injections. That association is starting to fray a bit, but we're nowhere close to me talking to her about not fussing for shots.

When our turn came at the doctor's office, C raised his hand when the nurse asked who was going first. He went through the drill with minimal talking. Then it was D's turn. Fully expecting her to bawl, C stood at the door and covered his ears. I scooped D in my arms and sat down on the chair with her on my lap. D, who had been watching C get his shot eyed the syringe warily. As the nurse lifted D's sleeve, inspiration struck C. He called D, told her to look at him and proceeded to dance a crazy little jig. She turned to me and giggled with an expression that said, "Look mom, C is being silly again." By the time she felt the sharp prick of the needle, she was too engrossed in her brother's antics to spare more than a glance at her arm. The colorful kiddie band-aid had already made an appearance.

As far as D is concerned, C is a major source of fun - he's great for horse rides, to watch movies with, to make puzzles with, to bounce on the bed with, to play tag with, to raid the freezer for ice cream with, to read books with, to tussle with. I hope it's not long before she wraps her mind around all the tiny ways in which he makes her life a little less hurtful.

Tennis: Del Potro's 2009 US Open Victory Speech

Woo hoo for Del Potro. That was an amazing victory over Federer. A victory he had every right to savor. Which he did - in spite of a miserly Dick Enberg, the CBS Sports commentator and host of the prize ceremony.

For those who weren't able to watch the match's concluding moments, Del Potro dutifully answered Enberg's questions. Half-way into the rather embarrassing recitation (by Enberg) of the dollar amounts Del Potro had won and the names of the sponsors who had funded the prizes, the 20-year-old asked to say something in Spanish. Enberg brushed him off saying that there was no time left and promptly continued his way down the list. I'm not really sure how there could have been no time. What if the match had gone on a few games longer?

A few seconds later Del Potro repeated his request. Enberg then launched into an explanation of what Del Potro would do (really, who needed the explanation?) and reluctantly tipped the microphone toward Del Potro, who proceeded to, as far as I could make out, thank his vociferous Argentinian fan-contingent in the stands and tip his hat to Guillermo Vilas.

It was short, very sweet and so heartfelt. Those few moments rounded out a great run at the US Open for an up-and-coming tennis star. I wish Enberg - who has been around the block few times in these situations - had been a bit more magnanimous. Yes, we, the TV audience, get to watch the match courtesy the sponsors, but really the sponsors and the audience are there because of the players. May they please have their moment?

Update: Fixed the spelling of Vilas' name and added a Wikipedia link to Vilas, South America's only other US Open champ.

Update 2 (09/15/09): Link to CBS video of Enberg-Del Potro exchange. Note that they don't have the portion where Del Potro makes his request to address the audience in Spanish. Also note there are ads in the video with (briefly) language that is not office or kid-friendly.

Update 3 (09/16/09): Thanks to BPSK for this video of the relevant portion of the Del Potro-Enberg exchange:

CBS defends Enberg's performance:

“Dick had a number of elements that he had to get through on a very tight schedule,” said LeslieAnne Wade, the senior vice president for communications for CBS. “It was Dick’s job to get through those as quick as he could. And in the end, he did give him the opportunity to make his comments.”

Memories of 9/11

We have two pictures* of the Twin Towers around the house. One was taken from a boat as it sped away from the city toward the Statue of Liberty. The other from the ground as I lay on my back at the foot of the towers and snapped a photograph from a quirky angle. In that shot the towers seem to be leaning toward each other.

I don't go to New York that often, but when I do these days, my eyes scan the fast-approaching skyline. The Twin Towers were hard to miss when they were there. Their absence is hard not to miss now that they no longer straddle the horizon.

In Washington, D.C., I have driven by the Pentagon countless times since 9/11. Every single time, I turn and look over to where the third plane ploughed into what I thought was a fortress. New concrete, new glass, new paint and a brand new memorial have more than managed to smooth over the terrible scars inflicted on the building that day. Whether the scars inflicted in the human beings have smoothed over is quite another matter.

The minutes may have merged into one another, no longer distinct, clear; the day itself making its presence felt, and not just on anniversaries, as a vague, anxious feeling, amorphous, floating in the air. It makes its presence felt every time a loved one gets on a plane and I refresh news pages on my computer until I know the plane has landed; when I get into a large building in a large city and look around trying to ... I don't know what; when tunnels and bridges don't seem as enjoyable anymore.

This year, particularly, I've noticed that small flags are lining lawn edges and plant borders in the homes around me. The memorial tree in my neighborhood in remembrance of my neighbors who died in the Pentagon on 9/11 is lined with flags.

Every year there is a new way of remembering. But there is remembering. It is difficult not to remember.

Some of you may have noticed a link to a post in the side bar to the right - 9/11 Remembered. What appears below is that essay I wrote four years ago.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A generation ago, the question was, "Where were you when President Kennedy was shot?"

For my generation, there are too many questions. Tragedies and calamities abound in our collective memories, but one question that will be asked again and again is, "Where were you on 9/11?"

At this time of year, that question doesn't even have to be asked.

I was at home in northern Virginia with a cup of tea and a newspaper in my hand, standing in the breakfast room and looking out into the backyard through the bay windows. N** was already at the baby sitter's and V was on his way to work.

Three days ago, N and I had returned home from a six-week trip to India.

I savored all the little things I had taken for granted, but had missed sorely when I was away from home.

Outside, the sky was blue, cloudless, bright with that early fall sunshine that was not too hot on the skin. A slight breeze ruffled only the tops of the tall trees in the backyard. Everything looked fresh, clean.

Inside, Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gibson's easy, morning talk show banter filled the silence in an otherwise quiet house.

Then, confusion.

In Diane Sawyer's voice. In Charlie Gibson's voice. The banter was gone. Replaced by broken sentences, words that were coming out staccato. Too many pauses in between. They were searching for words, for understanding, for any information that would explain what has just happened. I turned to look at the TV screen.

There were no video shots yet. Just two lines repeated over and over - the Vice-President of CNN had seen a plane crashing into the Twin Towers. His office had a direct view of the World Trade Center.

I flipped furiously to the other channels - NBC, CBS, CNN.

The first images that replaced the Good Morning America studio scene were shots of the Twin Towers, smoke billowing out of a gaping hole near the top of one of them.

None of the TV channels had any confirmation of the news that a plane had crashed into one of the towers, yet. The discussion focused on whether there was an explosion in the building. Or speculation that may be it was a helicopter or one of those chartered planes. They are known to fly low, staying just above the Manhattan skyline, sometimes even seeming to dip in between the buildings. At this point, there was no thought (at least none that was voiced) that it was anything but an accident.

I called V, who was still on the road, on his way to his office about eight miles away.

I watched the TV screen, describing the scene to him. Then I saw a plane entering the screen from the center-right side. My first reaction was, "God, how stupid is he? He's too close to the buildings!"

Within a few seconds the plane rammed into the other tower. A ball of fire followed by an inferno, black smoke.

The TV anchors were just repeating what I had said to V when describing the second plane. The theory of the pilot's stupidity now duelling with the theory that may be, it was not an accident. Compounded by the shock that this was happening twice within the space of a few minutes.

There was no other way of reporting it. They had no more information than I did. The pictures were there for all to see.

There were no background file photos. No fillers. There was no script.

This was not pre-meditated war. This was not a natural disaster. This was not a multi-car pile-up on some icy interstate.

This was the story of two planes that came out of the clear blue skies that sunny September morning and crashed into the Twin Towers, those pillars of American achievement.

This was as real as TV could get.

I wanted all three of us to be home. Right away.

There was a deep sense of foreboding. Something was not right. I could not explain what I was seeing on TV. The people that were supposed to be able to explain could not, did not, explain what I was seeing on TV.

I wanted V to turn around wherever he was and come right back. I wanted to get N back from the baby sitter.

I could not. I was stuck at home. One of the cars was in the garage for maintenance. V had taken the other. He told me not to worry, that he would be back home as soon as he could and pick up N on the way back.

I'd been standing all this time. As I sat down on the sofa, remote in hand, I heard a loud thud. The windows rattled, the house trembled. Blasting at a construction site, I thought.

Without warning, the the television screens switched to Washington, DC. Claire Shipman was on TV, mike in hand, her back to the Vice-President's office, plumes of smoke rising from a building behind her.

From one angle, the building behind the Vice-President's office is the White House. No one was certain what this meant. May be a fire in one of the buildings? At this point, no one, least of all me, was connecting the loud thud with the smoke.

A few minutes later, the connection was clear. A plane's tail was sticking out of the side of the Pentagon that faces Arlington.

I called V. The cell phone circuits were jammed. I called all of my family that's in the US, made sure everyone was fine. I called India, told my parents and in-laws we were all fine. Everyone was trying to call everyone else. It took us all a few minutes to reach each other.

I still could not reach V. He managed to call me.

Washington, D.C. was being evacuated. He was turning back. But there was no place to turn. By this time, the morning rush hour had mushroomed into a monster. Two-way roads were switched to one ways, vehicles were going around in circles. Rush hour that was usually uni-directional was becoming bi-directional. All the bridges coming out of Washington, DC into Virginia were choking with the overload.

As V would say later, the evacuees were sitting ducks for anyone wanting to target huge numbers of people with nowhere to go. That evacuation was anything but orderly. It was an unmitigated disaster. It took V three hours to cover the distance that would normally take 30 minutes, to get home.

Still no information on what was happening. I don't know, may be because of the movies, or may be it is what I was getting used to, may be getting spoiled even - what with all the news channels, all that information, the idea that the nation should know what is going on, the images of Presidents addressing the nation - but I kept thinking, ok, the President will be on any minute. There will be something someone at the White House will say that I want to listen to.

Everyone had their two cents in. Everyone except the people I wanted to hear from. I was waiting for an answer to a simple question, "What is going on?"

The thing is these thoughts rolled through my mind right then. They were not the result of some post-mortem of the events that transpired that day. That day, I realized for the first time that I was looking for something from the government, something other than services or social security programs or budgets, or low interest rates.

The image of David Bloom - with ash, debris on his hair, his voice hoarse, his face gaunt, his eyes red from the dust, from hours of standing on his feet, his back to the falling towers - is the strongest in my mind from all the hours of TV coverage we watched, compulsively.

Then news of Flight 93 crashing in Pennsylvania. By this time, the shock was gone. There was the dull realization that whatever this thing was, it was relentless.

Hours, days, later, the stories.

Of bodies flying out of the windows of the towers, a desperate attempt to escape the fire and heat inside. Of policemen and firemen and dogs risking their lives to save others'. Of Todd Beamer and Lisa, the telephone operator who connected him to his pregnant wife, also Lisa, for a final few words before going to meet his death.

Of people trudging home on foot for hours. Of firms losing all their employees in a span of minutes. Of a six-month old baby waiting for her mother to come home and wailing every time the door opened but the mother did not come. Of rows and rows of cars waiting in vain at metro stations in New Jersey for their owners to come drive them home. Of my own neighbors who work at the Pentagon (two of whom died in that attack), coming home shaken, unable to eat for days.

Of depression among the people living around the World Trade Center because they are no longer in the shadow of the Twin Towers.

Their view outside their windows and our view of the world inexorably altered.

~~~~~~
* I will try to scan the pictures and put them up.
** C was known as N then on my blog. D wasn't born yet.

Maine-ly Delights!

If there is one thing that is all uniquely Maine that I adore, it's got to be lush lawns edged with natural stone containers brimming with colorful flowers.

The fact that I am besotted with this particular Maine feature must be all too obvious to you by now. So rather than go on and on about stone-walled flower containers, I will tell you about this tiny, heavenly patch on the east coast of Maine called Bar Harbor.

Rosalie's, a popular Pizza joint

About two and a half hours north of Portland, Bar Harbor is a long drive from Washington, D.C. - about 16 hours. But split over two days - with a layover in Boston on the way up and in New York on the way back - it's not too bad at all, even with and for the two kids in the back seat.

'2 Cats,' a restaurant and coffee house. Scrumptious doesn't begin to describe their breakfast spread.

Although the week we were there was sandwiched between two hurricanes, the weather was perfect. In the low 80s and high 70s during the day and in the 40s at night. The sun was bright but mild. Great weather to go biking, whale watching, driving around or just loitering the streets of Bar Harbor, all of which we did.

Bar Harbor is on Mt. Desert Island, the major portion of which is preserved as Acadia National Park, home to numerous lakes and the 1,500 ft. tall Cadillac Mountain. Thoughtfully laid out paths (thoughtful from the perspective of allowing visitors to extract maximum enjoyment out of their visits) for hiking and biking meander around crystal-clear lakes and through thick woods.

We rented three bikes for four hours. The lady at the counter looked us up and down and recommended that we bike the path of "intermediate" difficulty. I was skeptical. The next step was to choose the right bikes. Hope replaced the skepticism. Hope that had been springing eternal ever since I got to this country and faced my first non-Indian bike back in 1995.

I asked the man that was helping us for a bike with no gears. He looked at me like I was from another planet. Which I might as well have been given that what was driving my request was fond memories of riding bikes as a fifth-grader in Bangalore. Not-too-fond memories have managed to sneak in in the interim. Bikes with gears and I don't mix very well, you see. I just want to get on it and keep pedaling. I don't want to be bothered with figuring out what gear works on slopes or on hills. (But with cars I'm completely the opposite - I loved driving cars with gears.) Almost always, I find myself in the wrong gear.

My hopes dashed yet again, I resigned myself to a tussle with the bike for the next couple of hours and we started off. My husband and D on one bike, C on his own and me on mine. The very first hill almost had me turning back. The legs burned. The bike moved in spurts. It was incredibly hard to pedal in patches but I made good progress, and ridiculously easy in others but I had hardly moved. Argh! In the meantime the husband and C had shot off and were waiting for me atop the slope.

Thus the story went - I straggled, they waited, I walked alongside my bike, they waited, I flipped gears furiously, gently, cajolingly, they waited. Once in a while C would bike back looking for me and be my personal cheerleader, "You're doing great, mom! The last time you biked was five years ago. See, you're a natural!" Maternal pride and burning embarrassment jockeyed for real estate on my grimacing face.

The ride was well worth it, though. Not least because the path was punctuated with slopes going downhill as well. One spectacular slope lasted a good three or four minutes. The sweat we had worked up only amplified the coolness of the breeze floating in from the lakes. Plus it let us get closer to some beautiful parts of Acadia National Park than we would have been had we just stuck to the car.

But I must confess that driving around Mt. Desert Island was an infinitely more pleasurable activity. Drives on coastal roads are our favorite anyway, and Maine's rugged, scraggly coast was the perfect setting.

It took us to the top of Cadillac Mountain and gave us expansive, 360 degree views of the surrounding beauty.

It took us to the Somesville Footbridge. Somesville is the oldest village on the island and this footbridge is apparently very popular among photographers. I can just imagine the gently curve of the sparkling white bridge forming a delectable contrast to fall foliage.

It took us to the Bass Harbor lighthouse. It's not a great shot, and we apparently missed a better angle because we did not know there was another approach to the lighthouse. Oh well!

It took us to Thunder Hole. See how the rocks are angular and not rounded? They entice you to walk further and further out because they don't look slippery, because you feel like they are solid and they give you a good foothold.

But this is exactly what brought us to Maine. So I swallowed my trepidation and we walked out as far as we could and we just sat for a while, taking in the wilderness and the sounds and smells of the ocean.

The drive took us to Sand Beach, the one semi-proper beach on Mt. Desert Island.

As night fell, we took a long walk along the pier in Bar Harbor, the ocean on one side with the boats coming ashore for the night and beautiful, beautiful homes on the other side.

The highlight of the trip though, hands down, was the whale watching boat trip. A good one hour into the ocean and we came across a large pod of pilot head whales.

Pilot whales going about their business while we gawked
They were not shy at all and seemed content to swim circles around our boat. Nothing came close to delighting the children as much as happening on those whales did.

The Power of Education

I know it's not as simple. Education does not necessarily bring empowerment. But when you read Tererai's story, it's difficult not to think otherwise:

After much argument, the father allowed Tererai to attend school for a couple of terms, but then married her off at about age 11.

Tererai’s husband barred her from attending school, resented her literacy and beat her whenever she tried to practice her reading by looking at a scrap of old newspaper. Indeed, he beat her for plenty more as well. She hated her marriage but had no way out. “If you’re a woman and you are not educated, what else?” she asks.

Yet when Jo Luck came and talked to Tererai and other young women in her village, Luck kept insisting that things did not have to be this way. She kept saying that they could achieve their goals, repeatedly using the word “achievable.” The women caught the repetition and asked the interpreter to explain in detail what “achievable” meant.

[...]

After Luck and her entourage disappeared, Tererai began to study on her own, in hiding from her husband, while raising her five children. Painstakingly, with the help of friends, she wrote down her goals on a piece of paper: “One day I will go to the United States of America,” she began, for Goal 1. She added that she would earn a college degree, a master’s degree and a Ph.D. — all exquisitely absurd dreams for a married cattle herder in Zimbabwe who had less than one year’s formal education. But Tererai took the piece of paper and folded it inside three layers of plastic to protect it, and then placed it in an old can. She buried the can under a rock where she herded cattle.

Read the rest of Tererai's story in this New York Times Magazine essay titled The Women's Crusade (excerpted from a forthcoming book titled "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide" by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wu Dunn). Her story and the stories of some of the other women profiled in the essay are exhilarating.

Michael Jackson and The Yearning for Normal

When I was in middle school and high school back in India, Sundays were welcomed with great anticipation for a couple of different reasons. It was the one day of the week there was no school (Saturdays were half-days); Sundays meant family get-togethers; Sundays meant free-wheeling, no-destination-in-mind trips with my dad; Sundays also meant half an hour of 'Western Music' programs on TV. Other than the annual Grammy telecasts - days late and always in the dead of the night on a Saturday - Sunday mornings were our only window into what was happening in the music world in the US and the UK.

And so we saw and heard ABBA, BoneyM, Michael Jackson, the Bee Gees, the Beatles. We had cassette tapes of these artists that we listened to on a single-speaker 'Two-in-One,' but being able to watch them on our small television screen was quite something else. When the Grammys rolled around, we were familiar with a mere one or two of the nominated artists, but who cared?

Of all the Michael Jackson songs, I only knew three of them back then - Billie Jean, Beat It!, and Thriller. I could not for the life of me figure out Thriller. I did not know why they were in a graveyard, I did not know why the man laughed that maniacal laugh in the end. I did not know all of the words to Beat It! or Billie Jean. I don't think I know them even now. But I loved the beat, the energy, the confidence, and the absolute certainty of Jackson's dance steps and actions. He knew what he was doing and it was thrilling to watch him do it so well. When I finished listening to the songs, I felt pumped up, inspired, I was amazed that someone not too much older than me was so successful.

Little did I know that the success came at a price so huge as to be incalculable. I had no clue about the backstory.

It was only when I moved to the US that I realized he had siblings, that there was something called the Jackson 5. I pieced together the story from TV specials and magazine articles. Over and over, one concept popped up repeatedly in the media coverage of Neverland, the child molestation charges, the dangling of the child through the window - his yearning for a normal childhood. Although I noticed it at the time, it did not resonate with me at all. Why would anyone want a normal childhood if he was so obviously talented and could be so successful? A normal childhood was boring. It was infinitely more exciting to be able to travel the world, to have millions of fans hanging on to your every step, to be so rich.

That was many years ago. Now, with children of my own, I have an understanding of normal and not-normal childhoods. Being a wife and mother, having lived away from my parents for a number of years and having had the opportunity to see a lot of lives up close has put my own childhood in perspective.

And yesterday, when my husband first told me that Michael Jackson was in a coma and moments later I saw on the news that he was dead, and this morning as I've been reading website after website covering his life and death and music, my mind raced back - longingly - to those days so far away in my past when my brother and I danced our crazy steps to his music, when we wondered who Billie Jean was, when we would race to lower the volume on the TV or on the music player when we heard our dad clearing his throat disapprovingly and tried to explain but failed hopelessly when our parents asked what this kind of music was all about.

As one of the commenters to this Coates essay put it, I, and a lot of others, are homesick.

Do you see the irony in this? On hearing of the death of a music icon who did not have the sort of upbringing that would have inspired feelings of homesickness in him - whose lack of a normal childhood gave millions of us the music that colored our growing years - my first thoughts were of my own childhood homes, of the various living rooms and bedrooms in which we played his music, of my parents and of my brother, of my cousins and uncles who indulged us by buying us music.

Thank you for the music and the memories, Michael. R.I.P.

Complications during VBAC and a terrible tragedy

The Mad Momma has posted Rashmi and Vivek's horrifying story of the birth and death of their second child. Attempting a vaginal birth after caeserean (VBAC), the delivery ran into complications resulting in the baby's death. It is an excruciatingly painful story, their grief amplified by what they say was the hospital's negligence and uncaring attitude.

I felt no urge whatsoever to push, yet was asked to do so. The stirrup on the delivery table kept breaking off – I was told that this is a recurring problem that “needed attention”. At 1.50 pm, the fetal heart rate dropped to 80 beats per minute. Dr. Prabha was called again. She checked the fetal heart rate on the CTG, explained that this was normal when the baby was passing through the birth canal, and asked me to hold my breath and push hard. I felt no sensation in my cervical area, but felt intense pain tearing my stomach apart. I felt like my baby had rolled into my stomach and could see its body pushing up against my ribcage. I was screaming, pointing at my stomach, and telling them that my stomach was hurting, and there was no urge to push. But she told me to “push, push harder”. I then heard Dr. Prabha saying “Get the OT ready”. She told my husband that she was going to attempt to deliver by forceps – if that was unsuccessful, she’d have to do a Caesarian.

The OT wasn’t on standby, wasn’t ready. I was numb with pain. They wanted me to get up and move to the operation table. I couldn’t move. They eventually slid something under my back and I pushed myself on to the OT table, as there was no transfer stretcher available. I complained of severe shoulder and chest pain. No one paid me any attention; everyone was busy preparing the OT, and the anesthetist was attempting to top up my epidural. The fetal heart rate was never monitored in the OT. Dr. Prabha unsuccessfully attempted a forceps delivery at 2.20 p.m., and then cut me open. I heard a deafening sucking sound, after which I must have passed out.

Later, I learnt that my uterus had ruptured along the scar of my previous Caeserian section. My baby was found floating in my abdomen. He had no heartbeat and he wasn’t breathing. He had been deprived of oxygen for a long time – 43 minutes. They “resuscitated” my son and put him on a ventilator.

When I opened my eyes I saw Dr. Latha leave, followed by Dr. Prabha. Dr. Shirley was suturing me while laughing and talking with another nurse. I felt reassured that my baby was okay, even though I had neither seen nor heard him.

After months of working with the hospital to find out exactly what when wrong, Rashmi and Vivek were met with stonewalling and assertions by the attending doctor that she would do the same thing over again in a similar case in the future. And that is exactly what Rashmi says she is looking to prevent.

Please do click the link above and read the entire post.

Wockhardt Bangalore, the hospital where Rashmi attempted to have her baby, is responding in the comments section to The Mad Momma's post. Girl on the Bridge linked to the post on her blog:

As someone who will be (hopefully) a mother soon, this story is my worst nightmare. Of course, my situation is not the same. This is my first child. What annoys me most is the hospital’s claim (Wockhardt has a long rebuttal in MM’s comments) that Rashmi chose Dr. Latha because she wanted a VBAC. This is conjecture and probably not useful to any lawyer fighting on facts but I know, I just KNOW that no matter how certain a woman is about how she wants her birth to be, no matter how much she is set on a certain type of experience she would not, would not put her child at risk.

I have said many times before on this blog that we need to be involved in the medical procedures that we go through, we need to ask questions, read on our own about the conditions and the procedures. Rashmi's story does not take away from any of that. If anything, it emphasizes the need to not only be aware of what's being done to us but also the need to be careful in choosing medical institutions and doctors.

Many times, in emergencies especially, we don't have a choice regarding what hospital we end up in or which doctor attends to us, but for the times we do, I wish there were some service that would rate the doctors on their competency and bedside manner and success in their field. I'm not saying that the tragedy that befell Rashmi and her family will never ever happen again, but it will arm people with the kind of information that I didn't have when I was getting ready to have my baby in Bangalore, the kind of information that parents-to-be come searching for to my blog (and I'm sure many others) on the backs of a google search.

I deeply admire Rashmi for what she is doing. She has lived through an experience so devastating that we would not wish it on our worst enemies and she is using her story to educate mothers-to-be. A story that, I'm sure, calls up her pain every time she recounts it, that reopens wounds that would heal faster if only they were allowed to stay closed. I do hope that her efforts result in a better experience with hospitals for anyone considering having a baby.

P.S. Thanks, Aaman, for alerting me to this story.

In the Wake of the Iranian Elections

From .faramarz's Flikr photostream

Amazing coverage at the Daily Dish. More at Global Voices. Gripping photos on Flikr. History is happening.

Footloose Friday - VIII

When I dabbled as a disc jockey for a radio station in India, the quest to make the shows interesting was never-ending. For two hours each week I anchored shows that played an hour of English songs and an hour of Hindi songs. The third hour was devoted to listener requests, so the radio jockeys had no control over what songs would be played. I would try to mold the English and Hindi play lists around a theme - Rafi songs, or songs of the 60s, Oscar-nominated songs; or compile trivia about the songs that went on air; or make up quizzes about the songs that the audience would call in or message the answers to.

One evening as I was trying to arrive at a play list for the next day, I came across a CD in the radio station's library. Almost lost in the tightly-packed rows on the shelves was a compilation of the title songs from the James Bond movies. I had played some of those songs from the CDs of the artists that had sung them (Golden Eye from a Tina Turner CD, for example) and I had wondered why no one had ever thought of collecting all the James Bond movie songs in one place. Phew! That one CD made my prep work easy that day.

Golden Eye is hands down my favorite Bond song, followed closely by McCartney's Live and Let Die.






And then there is Carly Simon's Nobody Does It Better from The Spy Who Loved Me.



I've always enjoyed this song whenever I've listened to it and the other Carly Simon song I am familiar with, You're So Vain.

These days I just listen to her with a new ear, a new understanding and a new respect for her art.

In this heartbreaking but beautifully written personal essay in The Daily Beast titled How I Found My Voice, Simon traces the history of her struggle with stuttering. Who knew!

Here Simon describes the frist time the words got stuck in her throat:

As I tried to speak this line, a snake that had been hibernating near my oesophagus, grabbed at and strangled the beginning of each word. As the word “fair” struggled to live, the serpent constricted its passage and as if deprived of air, I balked two or three times at the ‘F’ before the word emerged ravaged and in need of oxygen.

This was the unhappy and astonishing birth of my stammer or at least my first gripping self-conscious awareness of it. My sisters and cousins, if they noticed this—and I can’t imagine they didn’t—must have been puzzled by the strange new guttural utterances. They likely imagined they were temporary and didn’t even consider to do or say anything about it. This would fade and disappear—like scratches, bruises, and babysitters.

[...]

For at least the grammar school and high-school years, there was merciless teasing, graduating by about eighth grade to a less beastly imitation and “behind the back of me” fun. In the early years, I was beaten into states of self-hatred and begging to go “home.” Home plate. Please let me go home. To my mother. I was assaulted, bruised, battered, and broken. I knew the answers in class and couldn’t raise my hand. I had to learn that the first devastating lesson was to learn to have the courage to face life.

My mother and I had the closest of times a child and mother can have. I would sit on her lap and we would practise the words. Any word. She would rock me and relax me. Sometimes a word would roll off my tongue, perfectly, passing the throat guards undetected and my mother would say: “See darling, you can do it!”

It's an amazing and humbling story of how she still struggles with speaking, but found along the way that she could sing. And so beautifully at that!

If you'd like to read the article, please do (click on the 'How I Found My Voice' link above), but come back and tell me which of the Bond songs you like best.

Related Post: My Day as a Radio Jockey.

This is the eighth post in the Footloose Friday series. The rest are here.

One Family, Three (or Four) Languages, One Fine Legacy

Summer holidays back when we were growing up meant family get-togethers. The four of us - my parents, my brother and I - would drive down to Tamil Nadu from wherever we happened to be living to visit my father's side of the family or we would drive to Mysore where my mother's parents lived. Alternatively, family came to visit us. We moved every two years to a new town or city and visiting us was, therefore, always an adventure. And then there were the weddings and upanayanams* that had seasons of their own. Auspicious days occurring during a few months of the year meant wedding dates and dates for other rituals were crammed into those few months.

While the summer holidays, weddings and other occasions had a charm all their own and were eagerly anticipated, they were by no means the only times the families converged. Whenever we lived in the same town as my mother's or father's siblings, Sunday afternoons meant everyone would gather in one house for a massive lunch. I could never figure out how it happened, who planned it or who called everyone else, but there we were in the midst of a gaggle of aunts, uncles and cousins, chowing down food until we could eat no more, my father's deep laughter resonating around the house, my uncles backing him up with cackles of their own, my aunts picking an argument with my father just because, and whoever the host was packing dinner for the guests in steel tiffin boxes to be hauled away at the end of the visit in buttis (plastic baskets with handles).

Amidst the laughter and fake arguments and the heady aromas and family rituals and gossip that enveloped us children like a warm blanket, one curious fact at these gatherings was (and is) a great source of delight to me. At any point in time we were liable to hear any one of four languages** - English, Kannada, Telugu or Tamil - floating in the air. It was, as far as I knew, unique to our family.

Since the pieces of this puzzle were in place way before I was born, I have never known anything other than my parents speaking to each other and with us children in one language (Telugu) and with their siblings and in-laws in two separate languages (Kannada and Tamil), all generously interspersed with English. It was only when I got older and visited my friends' homes that I realized that it was not normal at all.

The explanation for how this came about is innocuous enough - my father grew up in Tamil Nadu, my mother in Karnataka. One day my mother's aunt came with a marriage proposal for my mother. That aunt and one of my father's sisters were somehow related through an earlier marriage. It has been explained to me a hundred times, but I still don't get it (the next time around, I'm sitting down with a pencil and paper when I talk to my parents about this). But because they grew up in different states speaking different languages - Kannada in my mother's case and Tamil in my father's - how would my parents speak to each other? The elders talked about it a little and came up with a solution, a lingua franca - a third different language, Telugu - one that my maternal grandmother and mother knew how to speak and one that my dad spoke with his sisters-in-law and his sisters. Although each of their versions of the language was corrupted from being secondary to their main tongues, they could manage. And so they got married.

In time, my father became fluent in Kannada and my mother learned to speak and read Tamil, but they stuck to the original plan of speaking in Telugu to each other. So family events in which both sides of the family were present looked somewhat like this:

My parents spoke to each other and to us in Telugu; my father spoke to his brothers and brothers-in-law in Tamil, to his sisters-in-law and sisters in Telugu, to my mother's siblings in Kannada, to my maternal grandmother in Telugu and to my maternal grandfather in Kannada; my mother spoke to her parents, brothers and sisters and associated in-laws in Kannada, to all of my father's family in Telugu; my maternal grandmother spoke to my mother in Telugu (but my mother unfailingly responded in Kannada), and she spoke in Kannada to the rest of her children; my maternal uncles and aunts spoke to each other in Kannada; my paternal uncles and aunts spoke to each other in Tamil, but they spoke to the sisters-in-law in Telugu; my mother's nieces and nephews spoke to her in Kannada and the ones on my father's side spoke to her in Telugu; my brother and I spoke to cousins from my father's side in Telugu and to the ones from my mother's side in Kannada.

Depending on the participants, the same conversation would be had in all three languages, with everyone following and not missing a beat, and any exclamatory statements and pronouncements would be made in English. As in, "But that is preposterous!" to sum up someone's less than desirable stance on an issue. And sermons about bad behavior or life lessons were almost always in English.

As I tried to lay out and trace this bowl-of-spaghetti lingual connections to someone I worked for years ago when I moved to the US, he wondered if all this meant my brain was wired differently from his. It is quite possible that it is, but the one abiding lesson my parents tried to drill into us was respect for languages, and by extension, cultures. My father does not hesitate to express immediate and visceral disgust for anyone who puts down a language or culture. He maintains a small pocket dairy in which he notes down unfamiliar turns of phrases or new words he comes across in magazines or newspapers (he finds a boatload of them in The Atlantic Monthly magazine every time he comes here) and takes great pleasure in using them.

And if you thought I'd had my fill of languages to last me a lifetime, my husband speaks an entirely different dialect of Kannada than I do - the North Karnataka dialect. So when I first got to know his family, I, who had grown up speaking the language and studying it in school, stared at them a few times with a blank face trying to piece together what they said and trying to make sense of it in the context.

Over the years, our different languages and dialects have been a source of fun, too. My mother-in-law or my husband try to say something in Telugu with rather hilarious results, and they look at my face in anticipation when they use a particularly obscure word in the North Karnataka dialect.

Now all I need to figure out is how we're going to pass on this treasure to our children. My son picked up Kannada during our three-year stay in Bangalore and my daughter, who thought anything that did not sound like English was, by default, Spanish (courtesy Dora), now can identify Kannada words when she hears them. I have a strong feeling that the iron is hot and this summer is the time to strike it. The kids and I have planned to set aside an hour a day to speak exclusively in Kannada during the summer. I want them to be able to converse in the languages of our families without inhibitions, and am not really particular about them being able to write or read in those languages. Although if that does happen, no one will be more delighted than me.


Notes:
* I wrote about my son's Upanayanam, a thread ceremony marking the passage from boyhood to the life of a student, here.

** The Government of India recognizes 22 official Indian languages. There are hundreds of dialects of each of these languages.

Pico Iyer's Journey to Happiness

Pico Iyer, a travel writer (among other things) is someone whose writings I make it a point to read whenever I come across them. The topics he writes about are not raging controversies nor the latest hot-button issues of the day, but they do offer a unique view of the world and offer food for thought. In yesterday's New York Times, he wrote about living with less and getting wants to match with needs.

I’m not sure I knew the details of all these lives [Etty Hillesum, a Dutchwoman on the way to a Nazi death camp, Ralph Waldo Emerson and a Japanese poet Issa] when I was 29, but I did begin to guess that happiness lies less in our circumstances than in what we make of them, in every sense. “There is nothing either good or bad,” I had heard in high school, from Hamlet, “but thinking makes it so.”

Towards the end of the essay he says,

The constitution of Japan, refreshingly, says nothing about the pursuit of happiness, as if to suggest that happiness, like peace or passion, comes most when it isn’t pursued.

There is something vaguely discordant about that idea, am not sure what it is. His giving up his life in New York and seeking a life in Japan seems like the pursuit of something. And anyone giving a thought to whether they are happy or not (which is the only way you'll know you're happy) must be seeking it. And if they don't give a thought to whether they are happy or not, then more power to them and their detachment, but it is not the same as being happy. I guess what I'm trying to ask is, Can you be happy without seeking happiness?

I know this must seem like a nit picky point, but it was, perhaps, unnecessary on the author's part to ding all things American, including the Constitution, in order to make his point. I'm sure there are a lot of genuinely happy people in the Western World working and living within its value system.

Related post: What Makes You Happy?

[Update June 9, 2009: The New York Times carries reader reactions to the original Pico Iyer article, some in agreement and some in disagreement (such as, It takes a boat load of money to go off and live a simple life). Worth reading. Thanks, BPSK, for pointing me to the revision of the original article.]

[Update #2, June 9, 2009: The revision to the original article was to remove the reference to the Japanese Constitution. Thought I'd put it here in case you don't make it back to the original article or to BPSK's comment to this post. At some point during the day yesterday I got to wondering whether Japan even had a constitution given that they had emperors 'n all. NYT's note just says that the reference to the Japanese Constitution was 'incorrect' without elaborating.]

Obama's Cairo University Speech

Andrew Sullivan carries the entire text of Obama's speech at Cairo University. Many goose-bump inducing parts, including this one:

So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, and who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. This cycle of suspicion and discord must end.

I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

I do so recognizing that change cannot happen overnight. No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust, nor can I answer in the time that I have all the complex questions that brought us to this point. But I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly the things we hold in our hearts, and that too often are said only behind closed doors. There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground.

The speech is most definitely worth a read and worth sharing with our children.

Video below from YouTube:

The Newsweek Oprah Story: What Do Celebrities Owe Us?

Newsweek carries a scathing article in its latest edition, about Oprah and the 'bad', 'wrong', 'risky' health advice she dishes on her daily TV show:

Her viewers follow her guidance because they like and admire her, sure. But also because they believe that Oprah, with her billions and her Rolodex of experts, doesn't have to settle for second best. If she says something is good, it must be.

This is where things get tricky. Because the truth is, some of what Oprah promotes isn't good, and a lot of the advice her guests dispense on the show is just bad. The Suzanne Somers episode wasn't an oddball occurrence. This kind of thing happens again and again on Oprah. Some of the many experts who cross her stage offer interesting and useful information (props to you, Dr. Oz). Others gush nonsense. Oprah, who holds up her guests as prophets, can't seem to tell the difference. She has the power to summon the most learned authorities on any subject; who would refuse her? Instead, all too often Oprah winds up putting herself and her trusting audience in the hands of celebrity authors and pop-science artists pitching wonder cures and miracle treatments that are questionable or flat-out wrong, and sometimes dangerous.

Yes, Oprah is popular. Wildly so. Yes, she has a broad-based, ardent following for her TV show. Yes, the things she recommends on her show have the habit of flying off the shelves (or whatever the equivalent is on Amazon). But does any of this mean that she owes anything to her audience other than being honest when she says she tried such and such product or when she says she loved the book she picked for her book club?

I am not an expert on Oprah. I watch clips from her shows off and on and read her and about her in magazines and on websites. From what I've seen and read, she comes across as the person who is enthusiastic about certain things (some ideas, some products, some services) and uses her show - a vehicle and brand she created from scratch and built to dish on her view of life and its struggles - to talk about them. That a million people rush off buy the thing she mentions on the show - what exactly does it require her to do? Worry that her audience might use the information blindly without investigating it further for themselves? Should she be responsible for the actions of her audience?

This is a question I've asked before in relation to the Phelps marijuana fiasco. Just because a celebrity is good at something and they make money off of it or are popular because of it, does it mean that they should be on their best behaviour, do the right things and say the right things?

The Newsweek article places a litany of demands on Oprah's show. A sampling:

""Because of the power and influence that Oprah's show has, she should make an extra effort to be clear."" (Comment on a show about the HPV vaccine.)

"Oprah said almost nothing about possible risks." (Comment on a show about 'thread-lifting'.)

"Fanning believes Oprah should have made it clear that Thermage isn't for everyone."

Which leads me to believe that the audience has no responsibility for its own actions, that her viewers are gullible and unquestioning, that they will swallow every piece of advice that tumbles out of her mouth without assessing the pros and cons for their specific circumstances and health conditions. Is this really so? If that is the case, then Oprah and other celebrities like her are standing at the top of a very long, slippery slope. Which one of her audience members should she worry about? The ones that do not understand that medical or cosmetic procedures involve risks? The ones that do not get that medicines may have side effects? The ones that do not know enough to ask if such and such procedure is right for them? The ones that will refuse vaccinations for their children because Jenny McCarthy said so and she was on Oprah's show? Where do you start and where do you stop?

The article gives off a whiff of wanting to take the contrarian view just because. The complaints against the show appear lame and the authors and the experts they consult indulge in some heavy patronizing. The recommendations for alterations to Oprah's show (listing a procedure's side effects, introducing experts who take the opposite view on the medication being discussed, among other things) are great - if you are a C-SPAN show or a medicine ad that must follow the Federal Trade Commission rules or one of those public TV channels that no one watches. Not if you are Oprah and all you are selling is escapism in doses of an hour a day and the idea that we are all in the same boat (so what if she is super rich and super connected and super famous while most of her audience is thoroughly entrenched in the middle class?), and believe strongly in stories about wanting to be the best you can be.

So let's hang back and take Oprah's health advice with a pinch of salt. As we should. And as I'm sure she would want her audience to.

Updated June 2: Changed 'author' to 'authors' in the penultimate paragraph. The Newsweek article is credited to two writers.