Precious stone

Shanti Kunj - the home of my parents in Mussoorie is a treasure trove. Besides the stunning scenery outside as it perches on the cliffside at an altitude of 2000 meters, it is a living museum inside. Mum loves anything old - and if it is wooden and varnished - then even better. The dining room table is surrounded by benches made from pews from a British era church. The upstairs terrace has Mum's flower garden where old toilet bowls are now sprouting glorious sprigs of flowers.

In a glass-lined cupboard - filled with beautiful crockery - is a grey rock. Well, not quite a rock - it is a grey shard of concrete. Ugly from the outside, this stone may mean more to Mum than most of the treasures in Shanti Kunj.

The shard is a piece of the notorious Berlin wall. My bro Stefan and I enthusiastically hacked it off using a hammer and chisel in the summer of 1990 (my last visit to my mother's land).

Mum was born in Leipzig - and after the Germans surrendered to the victorious allies - her part of Germany was taken over by the Soviets. The puppet state that emerged was perhaps not as brutal as some of the other Iron Curtain countries - but the years of lies took their toll. Though not much of a Christian believer at that time, Mum could tell that the Marxist party line was tripe - and refused to join the FDJ ("Free German Youth" - the youth wing of the German Marxists). Not joining the party had consequences. Though her marks were good - Mum was not allowed to study past 8th standard. She was assigned work in one of the 'people's own' factories.

My grandfather had had his small coal business in Leipzig taken away from him - and then had been assigned to work as an ordinary comrade in his erstwhile business (something he did with deep humility and a true Christian spirit - bless his soul).

Mum did not share her father's humility. She wanted out. And at that point it was just possible. Having relatives in the western sectors, she requested and was granted permission to visit them. She left and claimed asylum status in the west. Her parents knew about this before she left and sent her with fervent prayers.

When Mum left the glorious 'German Democratic Republic' as an 18-year-old only-German-speaking girl, her generation left with her. For all the glories of scientific Marxism - those who could were voting with their feet - and finding any excuse to leave the GDR. The only solution left was to plug the border. The first place it was done was the infamous concrete wall, cordoning off the 3 allied occupied areas of Berlin from the other part of Berlin - and the surrounding GDR countryside.

Simultaneously, the boundary between the GDR and what became the Federal Republic of Germany was barbed wired, mined and patrolled by gun-wielding guards. The shock was felt around the world. An iron curtain had descended - one which ran along the frontline Soviet puppet states of the GDR, Czechoslovakia and Hungary - and which ran between the Soviet block and the Western powers all around the world.

It was shattering for those left in East Germany. And for those outside - like Mum - who were now even more cut off from her parents left behind it was a dull ache over all the years. Communism seemed so dominant, so totally present that few ever believed we would be living in a post-Communist world.

20 years ago the world cracked - with the first people walking through the previously unthinkable distance that separated the western part of Berlin from the East. The wall, which had previously caused the death of so many who tried to escape over (or under) it, was no more a barrier. Within minutes someone climbed up to the top. Then more and more. Then people started chipping bits away. Unbelievable scenes.

And so we have a shard of concrete in our home in Mussoorie. It is a precious proof that change is possible. That even when lies are so dominant - and every one follows them - that truth and courage and sacrifice will come up trumps. Yes we had distant relatives who gave into the system. And who were hollowed out when the GDR collapsed. And we had other distant relatives who did not compromise. They did not get cushy jobs. Some of them ended up as bricklayers and roof-repairers. But at the end of the day, their integrity remained intact. I look forward to meeting them in the new Kingdom.

(un)Disclosure

Thane update:

Given the vicious stigma surrounding HIV - and the fear and confusion most people have when they find out - it is not surprising that we continue to meet people with HIV who have not told their families that they have it. Last Friday we reviewed some of these - In the last 2 weeks we met a number of new contacts affected by HIV. Each one is different. Here is one story in progress:

Mr. Tarun (name changed as usual) has come to Mumbai for better prospects. He works at a dairy - looking after water buffaloes (prized for their creamy milk). His 5 children are with him - as is his wife. He has HIV and has known about this for 3 years. He still has not told his wife.

We have just made contact with Mr. Tarun. Our staff will now try to meet him regularly and build his confidence. He promised to bring his wife to the JSK centre - in order to disclose his HIV status to her and have pre-test counselling for her. They were to come this week - but did not show up.

Our staff will be visiting Mr. Tarun... (to be continued - we hope)

Nav Jivan CHDP

When you've gotta go - you've gotta go!

Sheba and I were a year into our marriage. We were both totally sure that God had brought us together - for each other and to serve Him in North India in a rural setup. We had been working at the Nav Jivan Hospital, running the Community Health and Development Project (then called "DISHA") and had just started up a tuberculosis control work which we had christened "DOST" (to point out that it was not yet at the level of the Govt. sponsored DOTS programme).

We were just about to launch into a project to build a community health training centre and TB control place. A young architect had come and designed a Laurie-Baker-inspired plan. The cost was going to be something like Rs. 40 lakh. This brought pause for reflection. Not only was this a lot of money - but it also meant that if we were jumping into it, we would need to be sure we would be around for the next 5-7 years at least.

Surprisingly for us, as we prayed about this step together - neither of us had peace to move forward. Puzzled we decided to carry on in what we were doing (there was plenty to do - as there still is today) while being open to God leading us to wherever He wanted. We decided that we would not actively look, but if someone called us, we would take it seriously and go and pray on that site.

When the requests came they came as a threesome. We first got a call by our dear friends Drs. Isaac and Vijila David to join them at the Prem Jyothi programme in Sahibganj Dist of Jharkhand. Then Rev. Viju Abraham asked us to join the ACT HIV/AIDS programme in Mumbai. Finally our supervisors suggested we also look at the Purnatha Bhavan in Igatpuri. To cut a long story short - after visiting all three places and coming back to Nav Jivan Hospital to consider and pray we found ourselves shocked to be suddenly telling our colleagues that God had clearly said to shift to Mumbai and work among people with HIV/AIDS through local churches.

If we were shocked at this sudden turn of events - our colleagues were more so. What would happen to the community work that we started? There were no successors in sight. Who would take up the TB work? None of the senior hospital officers showed much interest in taking things forward.

One thing we knew - that if God was in this - He would take undertake. We came across a book at that time by Oswald Chambers where he talked about how Abram had to leave in obedience to the call - and leave God to sort out the rough edges of his departure.

Last week we were in Jharkhand - 8 years after we left Nav Jivan Hospital. We are humbled by what has gone on in the time of our absence. In many ways both the community and TB programmes have gone well beyond what we could have thought for them.

Meeting with the current Community Health and Development Programme team we found out that they are now doing reproductive and child health work in 30 villages! 20 of these villages are directly being served by the CHDP team, with another 10 being looked after by partner NGOs. These are some of the most challenging parts of Jharkhand - places where the Maoist insurgency has dug deep roots - and where our staff have over the years met up with armed groups on multiple occasions. We salute our colleagues - a few still there from our time - and a whole cohort of new members - for their love of the people and willingness to serve in what is basically a thankless job. The community team is often misunderstood by the rest of the hospital community, and by the village communities that they serve as well.

The challenges of seeing true health change take place continue. During this visit to Nav Jivan the CHDP had their monthly meeting with the "ASHAs" from their project villages. The term Asha (Accredited Social Health Activist) is the new term for Community Health Workers as part of the Government's National Rural Health Mission.

Seeing these ladies took us down memory lane. The training of women to help their communities through practical and life-saving steps continues. While we were at the hospital a child was brought in a critically late stage to the hospital. Pneumonia. The child died during admission. Another life that could have been spared if the parents had started treatment in time. If the child had come from a village in which the CHDP was working, it would have hopefully been detected by the local 'Asha' and then taken for early (and cheap) treatment.

Probably the main difference between our time and the CHDP of today is the degree with which the CHDP is able to work with the government. In our day the government was indifferent to what we did. It still is largely - with so many of the functionaries and employees milking their position for the lucrative salaries and doing minimal work. The presence of the Maoist forces are used by many govt. officials as an excuse to shirk their duties at remote postings. But the difference now is that in the villages where the CHDP is working, the government posted ANMs (nurses) are very open to working with the CHDP since the team is now an accredited part of the government rural health mission.
The challenges that our colleagues in the CHDP face continue. This year was a drought year so many homes in the village are shut as people have migrated in search of livelihood-work. The rigours of daily visits to distant villages. The dangers from the low-intensity conflict that is being played out between the Maoists and the Paramilitary forces.

We are humbled by the on-going service that the team of the Nav Jivan CHDP, lead ably by Prabodh and Julieta Kumar, are rendering to the villages they touch. The challenges continue - and the need for them to be involved in the community-changing work they are doing has not lessened, with so many villages still unreached. Hats off to these unsung heroes!

We are proud of each one of the team - and humbled to see how much things have developed since we left in late 2001.

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P.S. The tuberculosis control programme has also developed in leaps and bounds - and now covers the whole district under the amazing guidance of a string of remarkable doctors and field workers - but that is a whole different story...

View at the Bihari Dhaba

Two ladies. Two worlds. One land.

The shot above is the first of a number that are going to crop up from our recently completed trip to Jharkhand where we lived at the turn of the millenium.

In the pic above a billboard image of a Bollywood starlet reaches out to a drop-beaded bottle of fizzy sweet black water that one of our friendly multinationals is flogging in our country. The expression on her face is puzzling. Is is joy? It looks more like a kind of awe. Perhaps the bottle looks messianic to her. Anyway, it is presented as the object of her desire - and hence the worthy object of our desires (and the lightener of our pockets).

Below and behind this image sits a tribal woman beside the road. An old bed is being used to dry something and she is at work - seemingly in a world of her own. How much does she look at the images our ad boys (and girls) are trying to feed her. Does she have the Rs. 13 in cash that a bottle of black fizzy joy will put her back (Rs. 15-20 if consumed in a 'restaurant')?

Some of the constant contrasts we are presented with in our poverty-shot land of plenty.

We saw the scene above when we stopped for lunch at the famous 'Bihari Dhaba' on the road between Ranchi and Chandwa - just outside the slightly morbidly named place of Kuru.

The great thing about BD is that it is still there - doling out piping hot rotis to go with various vegetable subjis. I had often stopped in while on the 3.5 hour motor-cycle ride between the Nav Jivan Hospital and Ranchi. As with any dhaba worth their salt, you can relax on the row of charpais that are laid out for passing truckers and other travellers who prefer to eat their food biblically (Jesus 'reclined for diner' as was the Greek-influenced culture of the day - e.g. Luke 22.14).

Our intrepid crew used the charpais to sit on rather than taking advantage of the opportunity to eat in bed!


P.S. Though the state of Jharkhand was split off from Bihar in 1999 - some places are still called by their old names. A lesson for some of our friends in Bombay-land (oops make that Mumbai-matra-bhoomi)?

Fear at an alma mater

Its not everyday that you read the morning papers and hear that your alma mater (at least one of maters) has been selected as a target for a jihadist terror plot. But there on the front page of this morning's Indian Express was a short article saying that the recent FBI arrest of two men in the US seemed to indicate that Woodstock School was one of their targets.

Nestled in the foothills of the Himalaya, Woodstock continues to exude an allure that make the 20+ years since I was part of the 'wailing wall' (a long teary line of fresh graduates saying farewell to near and dear) on my sunny graduation day of 25th of June 1987. An august place, the school estate now covers most of the sunny side of Landour. From my parents home at Shanti Kunj, perched up on the hillside overlooking much of the oak forest, we can just make out some of the many school and dormitory buildings that have come up over the 150+ years that Woodstock has been around.

Our alumni are scattered citizens of the world. Often misfits. Often at home in varied places - both extremely odd and extremely common. The school recently feted Chris Anderson as this year's distinguished alumni. Of the class of 74 vintage, Chris is known in some circles for the work he has done with TED.com in getting amazing ideas out across the world. His take on his time at Woodstock is here.

Sadly, this is not the first time that Woodstock has been the potential target of a terror attack. The hand-written prison diary of Ahmad Omar Sayed Sheikh, who was arrested by our police in 1994 and then swapped for the hostages on IC-184 in Kabul in 1999, talks about him trying to get a job at Woodstock as a teacher:

On July 26, 1994, I arrived at Indira Gandhi International Airport. My instructions were to spend the first night in some good hotel and then the next day call the two phone numbers I had been given. I was to ask for a "Farooq." .... It was about the third week of September when Shah-Saab told me that he had finally managed to arrange a house in a remote area in Saharanpur where the neighbourhood was Muslim and undeveloped to the extent that it was unlikely to have an effective system of informers. When I saw the house, my heart sank. How the hell was I supposed to bring a foreigner all the way here? And unnoticed by the local people? Siddique was jumping up and down in joy and making little gestures with the pistols. Sultan beamed at me and said, "Like it?"

"No," I said sharply. He was surprised. I didn't bother to explain. I told Sultan I wouldn't go back with him to Delhi and would go out "on the hunt" straightaway.

Next morning, I went to Woodstock School—an American school—and applied for a job as a teacher. I did this partly because if I got it I could easily bring one of my co-teachers down to visit my "relatives" and partly because I wanted to see whether cutting short my academic career had greatly affected my competitiveness on the job market. I had an interview with the vice principal, and I didn't get offered the job!

What follows then is an almost comic description of how he tries to kidnap various Americans. Tragically, after he was swapped to Pakistan in the infamous hostage crisis that the BJP government presided over, he seems to have finally got into the big league. It seems that "Sheikh Omar" (as he is also called) was the main force behind the terrible kidnap and murder of the American reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.

And so we return to the tranquility of the hillside, high up in the Himalayas. Watching the sun set the oaks ablaze in gold as it sets in the west, one would never imagine that anything evil could lurk about. And yet that is the central paradox of human history. Looking down from Woodstock school, one sees an old burnt out house. The residence of a prominent Muslim who fled at Partition, and whose house was ransacked by hundreds of local villagers from far back in the hills. They apparently swarmed in, carting off everything that they could lay their hands on. Leaving behind a burnt-out shell. Even today, a good 60+ years later, the mute roofless walls bear witness to the savagery that lurks beneath the skin of man.

We are in an age of terror. An age not too different from ages past, when people did not always assume that we will live to 80 and retire in comfort. But at the same time, we have never seen a time when people welcomed and enjoyed terror. The very nature of the beast points to something deeper and more permanent - namely a yearning for a world free of fear.

The good book captures this vision - one which does away with the external niceties of religiosity - and hearkens to the roar of the divine order: Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream! (Amos 5.24).

3 books

Good books move you. Shake you. Linger.

This month - after a very long time - I have been able to read 3.

Each one of them valuable in their own way.

To start with one that we have been reading together as a couple for some time now - This Momentary Marriage by John Piper. Meaty. Grace-filled. I have come back to it again and again. The exerpts from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's letters from Prison itself is worth the price of the book - and to think that Piper is letting us have it as a free download! This month saw me dig deep into this book while teaching on marriage for couples and mature singles at the JSK Family Bible Camp, as well as holding a special session for marrieds at the Nav Jivan Hospital where we used to serve in Jharkhand. This one is a keeper - a paradigm shifter.

Andi with HIV positive couples at the JSK Family Bible camp - Sheba was taking a concurrent session for widows.

Next up is Don't Ask Any Old Bloke for Directions by P.G. Tenzing. A Sikkimese gent, PG was part of the brightest and the best who make up our premier civil service - the IAS. After serving in Kerala for 20 years he handed in his papers at the ripe young age of 43, bought an Enfield Motorcycle (made by Eicher motors no less) and zoomed across India for a year. The book is his diary. Pithy. Hedonistic. Boozy. Sardonic. Hilarious at times. Tenzing has a wicked wit - and skewers friends and foes alike. Curiously, the portion about us (he dropped by Thane 2 years ago - see here) and his visit to his cousin Dr. Chering at the venerable Nav Jivan Hospital are among the kindest and tamest parts of the book. At the end of the book, however, I felt bit hollow. Tenzing's desire to break free somehow doesn't take him farther than the ubiquitous IAS pals who lurk around every corner. Having just been for a week as a family with his hilarious and totally driven cousin Chering, I felt that the whimsy could have been replaced with meat. Tenzing talks about twice cheating death in his book. His journey is clearly not over.

Finally A Leg to Stand On, by Oliver Sacks. I had to smile when I noticed that the Picador paperback edition had misspelled the author as 'Olivers Sacks' on the spine. The book was gripping. Magical. Sacks recounts how he had survived a terrible knee injury in Norway - and was then medivacked to London for surgery - only to find that his leg has 'dissappeared' - that while he saw some obscene object grafted onto him - that his real leg was gone. As a neurologist, to be a patient - and then to experience the shock of losing the body image of his leg - and then amazingly regain it fully - was a humbling and ennobling experience. Reading about what it feels like for a doctor to be a patient - and the road to recovery was delicious. Sacks writes with empathy and a beauty that verges on the ethereal - all reasons for me devouring this book. Here we were in Jharkhand - but through the pages I was able to explore multiple worlds - something that every great book allows.

What books drive you? I always find that finding out what a person is reading now - and their reactions to the books - gives a pretty good picture of where they are growing.

Deep breath!

Its been an intense 3 weeks. As the Thane Eichers, we have experienced so much that October seems like a totally different country, a different era to us. I will try to unpack some of our experiences on this adventure called life over the next few days - but I already feel that the rush of time is hurtling us forward...

But lets make a start.

The vortex really got underway with our dear friend Jaya being admitted with terrible pain - which turned out to be from gall stones and a stone lodged in the duodenum. The process of providing care for her and the children (along with our other church members) was a cathartic one. Jaya had surgery where the other stone was discovered unexpectedly (a very rare occurrence) and so was sown up again for further tests. She has had the pain settle and has been advised further surgery in 2 weeks - but has opted to wait longer till the Christmas holidays - to see what may happen till then. We know that God heals in varied ways - and that the surgeon's knife is one of them.

Hot on the heels of all of this was the annual family-oriented camp that our group of house-fellowships organise at Khandala. This year was the first where I plunged into helping organise it - and it was a wonderful blessing.
As city-folks - when do we get to get a view like this? (pic courtesy Dr. SP Matthew).

Or when do we as a family get to sit outside on the lip of one of the amazing table tops and look out as the sun rises?

We took our sleepy kits, our Bibles and bedsheets - and happy hearts to sing and praise God on the beginning of a new day. Morning has broken indeed!

(further pics courtesy of Rajesh Yesudasan).

Besides the stunning natural beauty of creation - there was also the moving beauty of wonderful lives - broken people being mended - the power of God's word being explored and shared together - fellowship over meals - kids running around - the odd visit by troops of fearless monkeys - superb worship times - discussion groups to lead - personal prayer times - and the general good-natured chaos of a 3 day camp with 200 plus folks together.

And all of this now seems ancient history since we are talking about events 2 weeks in the distant past.

Stay tuned for an mini-avalanche of musings and experiences as we traverse the country - back to Lonavala for the JSK Positive Friends Family Bible Camp - then off to Jharkhand - then back via Rourkela (Orissa) and finally home sweet home to Thane.