Musical art

Stefan and a bunch of others who love to sing and write music have just put in 3 days of intense work in song-writing.

Read more about it here or at http://artnet.in/

There is a lot of good stuff out there. Lets see what we can do to listen in some more.

All I have is a red guitar, three chords, and the truth
All I have is a red guitar, the rest is up to you!
- All Along the Watchtower - by Bob Dylan (personally heard through the lens of U2 on the Rattle and Hum album)

Positive Friends Retreat

Life - lived in fast-forward - has reached August 14th.

We head over to the other side of town for a 3 day retreat with our Positive Friends who have faith in Jesus. John Forbes has just arrived from the US to help lead us through this special time. We expect a turnout of about 60 all told!

Our theme this time is: Blessed to be a Blessing - how despite all the setbacks each one has faced - we have and are being blessed - and how that is not just for ourselves - but also for each one of us to touch others through.

We are doing this over the long-weekend that kicks off with our nation's 61st Independence day (15th August - also my brother Stefan's birthday!). Instead of only getting pity (which even that is is short supply) we would like to see people with HIV/AIDS - who are living through the challenges each day - we would like to see them bless the nation.

Deep breath. Over and out. See you on the other side of this retreat!

Steel ward bed

Stay by my steel ward bed
And hold me where I lie
Love me when I am dead
And do not let me die.
- Vikram Seth

The last part of a poem Seth wrote for a newly released compilation of writing on the stories of people with HIV in India called: AIDS Sutra

The poem brings to mind the first pictures I saw of people in our country who had AIDS. A stark set of black and white photos published in the (now defunct) Illustrated Weekly of India showing two gaunt wide-eyed women in an empty ward of a government hospital in Bombay. The year was 1986. The fear was palpable.

There are so many more stories to be told... not only the poignant and tragic - but the comical and mundane as well. Who will tell them - and more importantly - who will listen?

Into the depths

Our humble mobile phone has been through much abuse. But this past week took the cake.

The toilet seat needed fixing and so I bent over to see what could be done.

In a flash our mobile had taken a dive deep into the bowl. A yelp from me and a quick grab brought up the errant little pup. I tried a quick dry but the damage had been done.

Over the next 3 days I felt very much an orphan - not having access to others over the mobile (and having the office phone on the blink as well).

I did what I had done previously with wet electronica - laid the mobile in a cardboard box with a low intensity bulb in it. And prayed. Gary Larson drew a cartoon about "Appliance Healers" - showing guys with bouffants laying their hands on non-functioning mixie-grinders and vacuum cleaners. It may sound strange, but I talked to God about the little wet mobile.

The first time I tried it did crazy things. A few hours more in the hot-box, again not so fine. After 2 cycles of this the mobile seems to be back to its previous capacity (which was not so great in the first place).

Moral of the story - be careful when you lean over. Moral No. 2 - don't borrow our mobile - you know where it has been...

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About 10 minutes after the dramatic dive of our mobile into the loo - Enoch called me and said "Daddy, Daddy, your plug is in the toilet!" I couldn't understand what he was saying and so took a look. Lo and behold, the pen drive had also followed the mobile in - and was lying submerged all this time.

Same treatment (along with the wet mobile). Same results - the pen drive seems none the worse from its submarine venture!

Milk

"Milkman - why is this milk so watery?"

"Ma'am, the buffaloes on hot days like to drink lots of water - which is why the milk is like that only."

Attending high-school in the foothills of the Himalayas, these old jokes did their rounds - especially when we would see the milk men bring their mules close to a certain spring on the way up to the Flag Hill gap.

Today we have a whole parallel industry in creating duplicates. The papers occassionally profile folks caught making 'synthetic milk' - white looking stuff which they seal in plastic bags and mix with real milk to more than double their profits.

With milk touching Rs. 22 per litre - there is a money to be... pardon the expression - milked.

How much of what we consume so freely is 'real' and how much duplicated? I am told that there is a factory in Bhandup that supplies the hotels in the Mulund area with whatever cold drink they want - Pepsi, Coke, Thums Up, Sprite - you name it - better than the real one - and a lot cheaper. The factory makes it to order. The boxes arrive and are consumed and no one - it seems - is the wiser.

On a very different - but perhaps linked note: we are being visited by Fred - a pastor from the US who is on a sabbatical and is touring the land to listen and learn. He said something fascinating - his take on Gen X (or Y or whatever) is that they abhor consumerism like anything - and cherish above all else authenticity and 'realness'. They want community and they want it now and it has to be uber cool and so real. But yet strangely enough the very concept of community is then turned into a commodity. And very few seem ready to put in the hard work it takes to make community.

I can't comment on the veracity of Fred's observation. It seems to have an intuitive goodness of fit to it, though. What I can say is that so often I want things to be real, perfect, excellent - but I want it to be so without my involvement - and for it to exist anytime I would like to access it. There are a suspicious number of "I"s present in all the above. Contrast that with John the Baptiser's statement: "I must decrease so that He may increase".

Love must be real.

I'll drink a cup of milk (real I hope) to that.

Safety

Sheba was on the phone - talking with one of the great heroes of our day - Dr. Chering Tenzing who is battling it out at Nav Jivan Hospital. This was the hospital where Sheba joined me after we got married (almost 9 years ago now!) and which has multiple challenges including being in the area largely controlled by Maoist insurgents.

As the conversation was developing - we suddenly heard a tremendous racket from next door. Loud swearing of the most vulgar kind, what sounded like slaps, more shouting and banging. It clearly was not a tiff between husband and wife, but something more. Soon two people had come out of the neighbours flat and were shouting outside.

Sheba gave a quick update to Dr. Cherring who made this classic statement: "Wow, I am glad I am not living where you are - it sounds really dangerous."

Coming across the phone-lines, spoken from a place that is so steeped in violence - where the pistol is king and where having gone to jail is spoken of with pride - Chering's gave us pause for thought.

Where is our security actually? In our Sunday fellowship this morning we examined Psalm 91. The writer says that: He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. He then goes on to list out the ways that God protects and keeps his children.

Here's the rub. We can take tremendous comfort in knowing that God looks after us when we dwell with Him. But that doesn't mean that our lives will be 'safe' in the sense of being free from danger and suffering. A quick look at the life of Jesus shows that clearly. We are, however, to be free from fear. Free to enjoy life to its fullest - and live each day with confidence in our loving Father.

Multi-drug resistant TB? Bombs? Water-borne disease? Flooding and high winds? Patients with criminal links? (all real issues for us in our work and where we live) - we pray, and move forward. Safety is in being close to our Lord. His hand will hold ours no matter what happens. Period.

Olympic daze

A geo-political shift is taking place before our eyes.

The Olympics are 2 days old and China is clearly showing that the years of preparation for the show, the amazing amount of energy directed towards winning, the obsessive focus on excellence by the Chinese state has paid dividends (in terms of gold medals at least).

After so many years of seeing the US on the top of the heap in every Olympics I can remember - to have China take that place is something totally novel (for me at least).

Our own national team that India sent looked shabby and comical as they walked in. The ladies wore three different kinds of dresses. Here they are representing a billion folks from Bharat and they can't even co-ordinate what they will all wear on the day... To my untrained eye, it looked like there were more officials than athletes (and why we have officials walking in the parade with the sportsfolk who have sweated so hard to make it to the big stage is another mystery).

Anyway, the point is that China has arrived. If nothing else, the billions of dollars that they spent on the big show seems to have given the bang for the buck. Shock and awe all around.

Our own standing in the world continues to reflect our lady athletes confused dress sense - India is seen as bumbling and irrelevant - a sleeping giant that has its own million Lilliputian issues to deal with. A look at the papers seems to bear this out - most of our political parties are hell-bent on showing their greatness by making sure all signs are painted in the state language. Our streets are festooned with posters wishing 'Happy Birthday' to various assorted local politicians (many looking more thuggish by the day). Our streets reek with garbage and we step over it and try to think of other things.

Recently when a local paper dared to write a small satirical piece about a plan to spend an obscene amount of money to make a statue off the coast of Mumbai, showing the great warrior Maharaja Shivaji (and making sure that it is taller than the Statue of Liberty), party members of a certain party broke in and vandalised the house of the editor of the op-ed piece.

Meanwhile, for better or for worse, we have the spectacle of a proud and cash rich China - who as a nation seems determined to carve out a place for itself in the world.

Is the American century over? Nations rise and empires fall. My reading these days is of the prophecies made at the height of the Babylonian empire. Where are they today - those great monarchs of the past? And yet in their day it was unthinkable to think of any other power structure.

We live in fascinating times. Hats off to all my friends who are living in and loving China!