A little girl

She's a little girl. Maybe 11 but we don't know. She has not done more than 3 grades of school. She is a double orphan - twice.

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Leela's auntie died last Wednesday. A week ago. Her auntie had AIDS. Leela, all of 11, was her primary care giver. Her older cousin Tappan was out most of the day. Working. Drinking.

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Leela looked after her auntie. Cleaned her. Gave her the medications. Cooked. Cleaned.

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She ran away a few times. No wonder.

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Leela's own parents are dead. Her auntie - who was a widow - was the only one who took her in. Now her auntie is dead too. Tappan wants nothing to do with her.

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Leela is pale. We have not been able to find other relatives to look after her. Tappan is clearly not helping. The miserable shack of their home is no place for a little girl.

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A very trusted organisation which runs a home for women and children affected by AIDS has said they have no room. We are looking further afield.

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Its horrible to think of her there tonight, lying in the shack. Lying in the rain as it drips through the miserable excuse of a roof. She needs to come home to a new home.

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Please pray for Leela. That her little boat would come into anchor, and safety.

A Voice

Hats off to Malti Joshi!

For those of you who have not had the privilege of meeting this fine educational consultant of Gujarati ancestry but impeccably British pronunciation - here is a small sample of what she shared at our the youth meeting last Saturday.

Malti was at CST Station (which used to be called Victoria Terminus - the largest railway station in Bombay) when she saw a sudden commotion. A crowd was running after a man who had a purse in his hand. They caught him. And started beating him. The woman who had her purse stolen from her came to him and started kicking him. Repeatedly. While his captors held him.

Malti couldn't stand still. A prayer to God and she waded in. Another man had tried to stop the aggrieved woman from kicking - and she started slapping him too. Malti did not know whether she was next - but she went forward. YOU CANNOT DO THIS! She shouted at the woman. YOU ARE BRUTALISING HIM. WHAT HE DID WAS WRONG, BUT YOU CANNOT DO THIS!

Silence.

The woman glared at Malti. Malti was ready for the beating herself. It never came. Somehow they listened.

A voice. With help from God.

In praise of the dosa

As a family we just got back from a bracing talk about how we as followers of Christ are to be good stewards of God's wonderful creation.

By the time we were home it was 9.30 PM. What to eat at this time of the night?

What better than a dosa! Out of the fridge comes the batter ('Maow') and a short time later a peanut-coconut chutney is made. The morning's alu-bhajji is added and we have a meal fit for a king. Fit for a royal family!

Hooray for the dosa - that crispy yet soft treat! Hooray for the goodness of coconut chutney! Hooray for the love we receive well mixed into our food!

Stanley Nelson reminded us earlier this evening: food is a gracious gift from God.

We couldn't agree more (esp. after 4 dosas are comfortably resting in my stomach)!

Hidden epidemic

130 friends in 6 years.

That's how many people with HIV have died. And that is only counting those whom we have gotten to know through JSK - and about who we know their outcomes. We are not counting the many with HIV who moved away from here - or those who told us that they did not want any further contact with us.

All around us, life goes on as usual. The traffic snarls. The pigeons are fed by the Jains. The monsoon plays hide and seek.

But interspersed in the fabric of our city - is a hidden net of holes. Lives that should be still lived out. Gone.

HIV continues to be the disease that dare not speak its name. The sheer terror of acknowledging one's status is enough to keep people who know they have the infection silent.

Sadly, we keep seeing people who actually die, because they have postponed their revealing of their status till its too late to get help. They are so sick that they do not recover. A heavy price to pay for the apparent peace of today. Fact is that we all seem to believe that 'everything will turn out ok.' If I can only swing it a bit longer - then things will be alright.... Not always. Not often.

Lets not keep quiet about this epidemic any more. Lets speak up. Lets calmly but clearly let light into what are often dark places.

Discovery

Table conversation this evening: Asha asks at one point. "Who discovered poison? And how did they find out?"

Short exploration of the basics of science: cause and effect. Doing and observing. Seeing the relationships between things.

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We had earlier prayed for Japan, N. Korea, Sri Lanka and Mongolia. Had talked about Columbus trying to find India and bumping into the 'New World' instead. Remembered the image that Keats has of the Spanish explorer (or conqueror) who looked out on the Pacific for the first time:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific – and all his men

Looked at each other with a wild surmise–

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
- Keats on reading Chapman's Homer

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That amazing vehicle of wonder - when we first see something that we have never seen before. I remember the first time a person with HIV who loved Jesus stood up in public and spoke. I was stunned and still have the scene frozen in my memory. Likewise, the first time I saw the internet - a crude programme called 'PINE' that was up and running at Yale in late 1992. I can still taste the awesome swoop of joy that came when I had my thesis together for Public Health - and knew that I had been blessed to see something new.

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Our late S. Chandrasekhar - in his book Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and Motivations in Science (which Stefan let me read eons ago) explores a fundamental fact: the simpler a theorem is - the more compact and parsinimous it fits - the 'truer' it is. Looking for beauty brings you to truth. Chandrasekhar was a nobel laureate (physics 1983) and went on to say that when he had the experience of coming up with a new mathematical theorem or proof - that it was like discovering a new country, like seeing a landscape that no one had ever seen before.

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Once again we see finger-prints of the Divine. Would that we would open our eyes a bit more.

You are my god!

We met them through the phone.

He had called up an HIV helpline. They found out where he lived and realised that the Jeevan Sahara Kendra was close by. The helpline called us twice to find out if he had come for help. He finally did.

A young family broken by HIV. Lets call him Sailesh. Lets call her Vinita. Lets call their little daughter Arpita.

Sailesh works but has HIV. He has been on treatment. He has had diarrhoea constantly for months. His life is in deep depression. Vinita - his wife - has HIV too. She is devastated - and not just because she has the virus in her.

Sailesh's childless brother took Arpita away from them. "I don't want to touch you" he told them. Arpita is negative. "You will make her sick too. So we will look after her." The pain was terrible. The couple considered suicide. "They looked after her like a fairy" said Vinita, but what point in living?

Today Sailesh and Vinita met Sheba.

A different story. "You are my god" Sailesh told Sheba. His diarrhoea has stopped. A miracle - nothing less. They plucked up courage and went to his brother and got Arpita back home. A miracle. They have life in their eyes. And gratitude.

Sheba was quick to point out that she was in fact not his god. But that she had prayed to Jesus with them when they last met. A situation which seemed so hopeless - has now changed. All glory to the true and living God - who cares so much for each of His children.

We do not always have 'happy' stories like these to tell - but what a great privilege it is to serve our dear friends and be entrusted with the intimacies of their lives. And what a wonder when change is seen!

Baloon lumpfish

This off the BBC website. We are given the helpful caption: "Balloon lumpfish attach themselves to a balloon at an aquarium in Tokyo, Japan."

What is it which is so bizarre about this shot? The primary colours that make up balloon and fish? The alien-like blue eyes of the lumpfish? The sheer slightly disorienting weirdness of seeing things we do not normally see?

One of the funny things about science fiction is how little imagination many of the 'worlds' end up being. They are all just versions of our own (I think Lewis pointed out this in one of his essays). At the end, we cannot really imagine something totally different from us. Come to think of it, even if we did - the strain of understanding would sink most stories - so we are pretty much stuck with this good old world and a few odds and ends tacked on.

Which is as it should be. Though we are loath to think of it - given the sheer number of stars and their associated planetary systems spinning round the cosmos - our world is actually a pretty neat place. It actually has been made pretty close to perfect to keep not only humans, but an eye-poppingly wide spectrum of life afloat. Take a look at those balloon lumpfish again. Then go look in your bathroom mirror. Which one is wierder? Which one has more to marvel at?

The wisdom of the old book tells us that we are 'fearfully and wonderfully made'. We saw that today all too clearly.

We saw fearfullness and wonderfullness in the beauty of meeting old friends of ours for supper - people we had prayed with for years and now are married and doing an amazing work for God. Marriage is itself such a miracle - how two lives can be twined together...

We saw fearfullness and wonderfullness in the woman who was carried into the JSK clinic - slumped over in a chair - her husband also sick and already admitted at one of the government hospitals - and with four children at home. The desperation of this dear woman - with all her brokeness - pointed again to the deep purposes that each life has...

We saw fearfullness and wonderfullness in our children. Who are these two beings who are developing and sprouting in so many ways? What depth do we start to detect in the actions and thoughts of Asha and Enoch? Listening to them pray - are they still repeating what we say or do we see new experiences of God in the next gen?

The list goes on... Thank God for baloon lumpfish. Its good to see something weird every now and then - if nothing else to reawaken wonder at God's grandeur.