Monday 11 January 2016

Vasu: On reaching a big number


We met on a dark station platform
Our little family of three stumbling out
To the welcome party of you
The night split by your smile

You hoped we would make Igatpuri our home
Purnatha our lives
It didn’t quite work that way
Though our lives have twined
At various levels

And now you have reached
An amazing number of sun-spins
Since your Amma welcomed you
Into the Madras of 4th January
In the year of our Lord 1966

Can it be that you are fifty?
How does that number fit you
Dear friend?  Knowing you
There are new dreams brewing
More King-pleasing designs
Being drawn up, dizzying

The road is your home
Kabul boy, world-oyster locally-rooted
You ache for Heimat, for Gaon
Heart-panting for a coming abode
Garden city, King encircling, never ending
Far from Chicken street and yet so close

And now, just before we part
(For a moment, an era?)
We have the added sweet-pain of daughters
As peas, of families enmeshed
Dreams alive

Keep questing deeper, dear Friend
Keep hungering for that which will truly satisfy
Dig deeper into He who called you
By name, as stars and galaxies spun into place

Fifty years, a moment, a brief candle
A small trickle, a rivulet before the joyous roar of
Eternity, yet each sliver of a second, and the next
Priceless, and paid for in full.
 
 - With love from Andi, Sheba, Asha, Enoch & Yohan Eicher
-----------------------------

On Saturday evening we had a lovely 'surprise' party for Vasu to celebrate his half-century along with his wife Sheba and their daughters Joanna and Amy and sundry friends.   What a legacy of joy Vasu has.  It has been a privilege for us to know him since June 2001, and here is to many more years of sojourning together!

One of the more dramatic times was when he almost died with a brain seizure  three years ago.  And how grateful we all are to our loving Lord for keeping this remarkable man going.  We all agreed that he seems to have found the fountain of youth - a quick survey around the room found 3 baldies and 2 snow-heads... and Vasu looking like he has stepped out of the late 1980s...  We are very thankful to the Lord for this special man - and his amazing family!

As we sang on Saturday night (among other songs) for he's a jolly good fellow, for he's a jolly good fellow... and so say all of us!

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