Accomodation

There once was a cobbler named Raju. He occupied a small patch of sidewalk on the corner of an intersection close to our home at "Happy Valley." I got to know Raju from our occassional needs to have a shoe repaired or an umbrella fixed. One day he came to us for advice because his child was bitten by a stray dog. We chatted on and off over the months.

Then Raju fell ill. He came back to work after some time, but we started seeing less of him.

Today Raju is in the village. In his stead, his younger brother Suresh mans the stall. From 10 am to 8 pm, Suresh sits and repairs shoes, chappals, bags, umbrellas - anything that needs the skill and problem-solving of a cobbler. Raju was drinking too much - and got ill too often. According to Suresh, Raju is now plying his trade in the village.

The big shopping centre behind where Suresh sat went out of business but the humble cobbler survived. The whole place was empty for some months. Then the central portion was rented out to new tenants. Workers got busy, fixing it up - a big sweet and savory snack was opening. The new business paved the place in front of their establishment to be a food court. They certainly did not want a cobbler sitting there next to their patrons munching on gulab jamuns and pani-puris. So the new establishment made another spot for Suresh - in front of an unused part of the building. A small brick platform was built for him - and Suresh willingly moved to another part of the pavement.

Then in January, that part of the building was leased out to a bank. The bank too renovated, painted and spruced up their part of the building. But had a cobbler - our Suresh - sitting on the pavement in front of their branch.

So what did they do?

They could have turfed him out - using a bit of muscle power from a local goon or two.

Instead they gave him a sun-shield proudly sporting the colours of the bank. Instead of an eye-sore, Suresh the cobbler has become a mini-mascot for the bank.

The new branch manager is a friendly fellow from Kerala who got our name from a friend of his. He came over to the Jeevan Sahara Kendra and invited us for the grand opening of his branch. Late last week he also attended the weekly Bible study we hold in different people's homes.

I am pretty sure that Suresh was not turfed out because of this friendly Christ-follower who is managing the bank.

We met Suresh the day before yesterday. A small job - to get a zipper repaired on a small bag. He did it immediately. He repaired it with a smile. He performed the job before a fascinated audience of the younger Eichers.

Suresh the cobbler - with a potential apprentice

Dear Anjali,

Dear Anjali,

A year ago today you were born there in cold New Delhi. How many smiles and warm hearts have followed you as our world has danced around the sun and come back to where it was on this day, the 5th of February...

When we heard the news from your Daddy and Mummy - that you had arrived - all of us here in far-away Thane let out a loud cheer. Your cousins Asha and Enoch and your Uncle Andi and Auntie Sheba had been praying for you for many months, as God grew you inside your Mummy. And now you have completed a whole year of joy.

photo courtesy Christa Eicher

Sweet niece, your full name of Anjali Eden Rose Eicher is about as fragrant a name as possible. We know that you will fully live up to the beautiful promises that lie in the names your Mummy and Daddy gave you.

We know that you are surrounded with some of the most extraordinary people on the planet - since your Mummy and Daddy have chosen to live lives of deepest compassion and humble following of our Lord Jesus Christ. The uncles and aunties who you meet are people who are being blessed and shaped and changed by the love that your Mummy and Daddy are giving them.

We also know that you have a wonderful older brother in Ashish Christopher Ion Eicher. We have seen him love you so much over this year. Its a great sign for the years of love that you and he will enjoy in the years ahead!

photo courtesy Christa Eicher

Anjali, we really wish we were not so far away. By God's grace your Mummy and Daddy were able to be in Mumbai for a few months in 2007 and so we were able to spend time with your family (before you were there of course - you were only a twinkle in God's eye at that time). We even celebrated your brother's first birthday in our house here in Thane!

Your cousins Asha Esther Alice Eicher and Enoch Anand Graceson Eicher (how many names you all have!) think of you a lot. They tell us that they *want* to be with you. We hope that we will be able to meet up soon.

In the mean time, look at what you and your brother will be doing in a few years. If you become anything like Asha and Enoch, you too will some day be lost in books...



When Asha and Enoch wake up, or come home from school, or have a spare moment in the day - they just jump into the opportunity to read. Your uncle and auntie are both very happy about this - and also almost worried. Surely they should be doing something more active? Will we have enough books to feed such a fierce appetite for reading? I am sure your Oma and Opa felt the same way about your Daddy, Uncle Andi and Auntie Premi too about 30 years ago...

Anjali, we know that your life is going to be really great. Each day will bring new joys and challenges. Each day may have some tears - but we know that you will also have lots of laughter too.

One of the things that your uncle Andi and auntie Sheba are (slowly) learning is how to be thankful to God for the many, many joys we have. Take the miracle of the watermelon! We do not have it often, but when your Oma was here last month she bought us 2 - remembering how much your uncle Andi used to enjoy it (mothers do things like that). Look at how your cousins went at it:


Did you notice anything different in the way your cousins eat watermelon? They are very different from each other - but love each other so much - just like you and and Ashish-bhaiya.

So on this day, dear Anjali, our fragrant Rose, we want to say "thank you" to God for you - and let you know that your life ahead is secure in His hands.

We look forward to many times together in the days to come!

Lots of love and prayers,

Enoch, Asha, Sheba-auntie and Andi-uncle

Insurance

Balram was feeling sick. His fever had not subsided despite taking some medicines from the corner Medical Store. He was weak and unable to do anything.

Since his wife lived far away in the village - it was Balram himself who checked himself into one of the best local private hospitals. He was one of the privileged few - his employer had given him a mediclaim coverage so that any hospitalisations were covered.

Then the shock.

The hospital did an HIV test on Balram. Without permission. Routinely.

They told him that he had AIDS.

They also informed him, that since he was HIV positive, his medical insurance was invalid. He would have to pay everything in cash.

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I wish the above were a fictional story. Or a case study in what could possibly happen. Sadly its a true experience that a Positive Friend of ours had. This was the way he found out that he had HIV. And added to the terrible confusing news about HIV - he also had to have friends scurry about to pay off the hospital bills.

Many, many people with HIV are not covered with medical insurance - because for most insurers in India having HIV makes a person ineligible to get medical coverage.

How this injustice continues I just don't understand. Here we are in 2010 - a quarter century after HIV was discovered to have reached India too - and yet people with HIV are facing something out of the 1980s - a time of total fear about what HIV was ...

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Yesterday a man came to meet us. He represents a large NGO who has teamed up with an insurance provider. The idea is a group insurance policy for people who have HIV. I was sceptical - and still have lots of questions. But it looks almost too good to be true. The premium is Rs. 1500 per person per year - and the NGO is willing to subsidize that by Rs. 750.

The benefits are that a person with HIV can be hospitalised up to Rs. 15,000/- per year. And in addition to that, when a person's immunity goes down to where their CD4 level is below 100 - they get a Rs. 15,000/- cash payment.

The only catch? Well, participants need to have an immunity level of over 300 to begin with - and we need to have about 200 people who are willing to sign up.

Lets see how this pans out...

Guests

We love to train people in HIV Care.

The problem we have at Jeevan Sahara Kendra is accommodation. Hotel rates here in Thane are stratospheric. We do not have a Catholic Retreat Centre near-by (bless the dear Fathers and Sisters who run these amazing institutions across our land). We once even tried hiring the Forest bungalow in the National Park - but the short hike late at night proved too remote for our trainees.

So stop-gaps measures for housing our trainees are the name of the game, and we have occasionally put up training participants with our JSK staff.

One of the areas we at Jeevan Sahara are working towards is mainstreaming people with HIV into society. People with HIV can work - and should! It would be very odd if we who encourage our Friends living with HIV to actively work in their vocations - would then discourage them from joining JSK as staff.

We are proud to have people serving in JSK who are living with the HIV virus. Their presence in the team is an inspiration and challenge for us all.

At one of the trainings we held, some of the women were housed with our nurses. On the first night, as they got to know our staff they also found out that one of them is living with HIV.

The next morning we had two lady trainees on our hands who were not happy at all. "We need to be housed in a different place." they said. "The house is not clean, the toilets are not clean."

What they were saying was "we don't want to live with a person with HIV."

The irony is that they were sent by a group of churches that ministers to people with HIV. They were leaders in this church. They had 'ministered' to people with HIV before - but not lived with them.

Our response was short and sweet: Like it or lump it.

Over the course of the training, things changed. The ladies saw how the JSK staff treated each other. As the days went on, the trainees met person after person with HIV who shared their story openly. Lives which had been shattered, but which God in His mercy is in the process of fitting together. Some of the stories were told by JSK staff themselves.

At the end of the training, we had a reflection exercise. The ladies shared how they had been changed. "We used to work with people with HIV - but now we know how to live with them."

Our staff told us that when they left both the ladies hugged the lady staff member they were staying with. Both asked her forgiveness for the things that they had told her.

Oscar nomination!

I don't usually click onto the Entertainment Weekly website.

But I did tonight.

I clicked on it because it was the first available site on Google to tell me what the Oscar Nominations were.

As I skimmed down the page, I kept passing well and lesser well known names.

But I was looking for something else.

Down, down I scrolled, past the Best Original Screenplay, past the Supporting Actors, past the best Sound Mixing.

Finally I saw what I was looking for: nominations for best Live Action Short Film.

A short intake of breath - there was only one film there with a one-word name. And it was the one I was looking for - Kavi!

Our friend Gregg Helvey has done it - his short film - a gritty look at a boy in bonded labour making bricks in rural Maharashtra - has made it to the final round of this year's Oscars!

Amazing.

When I first heard that Gregg was coming out to Mumbai to shoot his thesis film for USC Film School in the countryside outside Mumbai - what could I say? I tried to be optimistic and encouraging, but the thought of an American shooting a film on his own - and that too on a challenging issue like bonded labour seemed to verge on the Quixotic.

But then I met Gregg in the flesh. Talked with him. Prayed with him. And followed the amazing progress of his making of Kavi, the movie - through hurdle after hurdle - writing, rewriting, and more rewriting, getting the site, casting, organising his crew, working with his local colleagues - then getting music composed, then mixing, and on and on.

Over time - it all seems a blur - the challenges began to fade into award after award as the film hit the film circuit - culminating with Gregg winning the Student Oscar for this year for Kavi.

Well, I thought it culminated there - but tonight has shown that Kavi has still more road to be travelled on. Gregg will be there in the Kodak Theatre when the Oscars are announced - and may even walk up and hold a golden statuette and give the customary acceptance speech...

In the mean time - if you have not seen the trailer to Kavi - please click onto the movie's website: www.kavithemovie.com

More than even the artistic achievement - which is phenomenal in itself - Gregg has managed to be a voice for the voiceless - to help a group of people whose cries are not heard - be heard - and that too all around the world!

Do spare a moment to remember the many children who are sold into slavery by their parents - or who run away from unhappy situations and are swallowed up by the evil city.

Our country has so many young boys and girls who are slaving away because they have no other option. And so many youths and adults who have grown up in this crippling life - and know no other. Many continue to enslave themselves through alcohol dependency and poor choices among the few choices they get.


We are so happy for the Kavi film. We need many, many more such stories for the truth to be told.

And we also want to see many homes opened to welcome these children - and lonely stunted adults - into our lives. If that isn't Quixotic, then I don't know what is - but that is what our Lord has commanded us to do. To love our neighbour as ourselves. To love in deed, not only in word.

To love beyond seeing a story and being moved - but actually moving out and letting the challenges of love move in with us.

Music to your ears

There is music.

And then...

there is MUSIC.

Ten years ago we were blessed with a very special wedding reception that our parents held for us in Mussoorie.

The venue was the dining hall of Woodstock School (in its humbler avatar), which was redone as a mini-shaminah. We were surprised with a colourfully decked up cycle rickshaw and had a drummer and a band of guests dancing ahead of us (quite something for Sheba who had been nurtured in a Bakht Singh fellowship)...

And then we had music. Amazing music performed with deep love by our friends Chris Hale and Peter Hicks.

Pete on guitar and Chris on Sitar - Photo shamelessly swiped from the Aradhna website

At that point in time Aradhna - of which Chris and Pete are the backbone - was just getting underway.

Today the twosome can look back on a decade-worth of melodies - mainly mining and extending the rich tradition of Hindusthani devotional music - but focussed on celebrating the humble King Yeshu Masih.

I hope that our gentle readers of this blog will have at least one Aradhna album on their comp or ipod or whatever music delivery device you use. You can always delve into their music by checking out their website - http://aradhnamusic.com

Up in Mussoorie - safely stored with our hoard that our parents are keeping for us - is a small treasure. An instrumental piece that Aradhna wrote for us and recorded on a small digital recorder which was a break-through novelty then. They then presented us the piece on a cassette tape which was what we used in those days. We hope Mum still has a working cassette player in Mussoorie to play this treasure on...

Music resonates with the very beauty of God.

Testing

The teen-aged girl was scared.

She had come for an HIV test.

Her uncle had been ill for some time, and she was looking after him.

He did not tell her what his disease was - but she had been repeatedly dressing his wounds and caring for him when he was bed-ridden.

Then at the end of last year she accompanied the rest of the family to a special meeting. It was organised by an group that works among people who have HIV.

During the meeting a presentation was made about what the organisation does - and it included the fact that the group monitors the medications of people who have HIV. On the slide being displayed was a picture of a bottle of medications that people with HIV use.

The girl recognised that this was the medication her uncle was using.

She was convinced that he had HIV.

She was scared, because she knew a little about HIV. She knew that it could spread through blood. She was scared, because she remembered the times she dressed her uncle's wounds without gloves.

Our counsellors talked to the girl. They helped her understand the extent of the risk she had exposed herself to (small, but still significant). They encouraged her to take a HIV antibody blood test. They listen to her fears, comforted her and prayed with her.

The next day she came for the test result. The counsellor was able to tell her that she was HIV negative. The girl was *so* happy. Her face just beamed.

Fear is real. Truth helps cut through the paralysis that fear brings.

Its a privilege to be part of the big picture of helping people confront the truth in their own lives.

HIV blood tests are one of the methods we use.