That thing called b e a u t y ....

a flower vase at Shanti Kunj - arrangement and photo courtesy Christa Eicher

A thing of beauty (Endymion) by John Keats

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its lovliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkn'd ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.


Hear, hear!

We are reading a George MacDonald novel ("The Shepherd's Castle") as a family, and the book opens with a shepherd / scholar boy reading Shelley while resting his bare feet. He is accosted by a clergyman who considers him a heretic for reading such dangerous poetry.

Would that we had more poems about beauty. Our world is rather sparse with words that sing of that which pleases the eye and the heart - that which we yearn for deep within us - that which every small table setting made with love and every large breath-taking panoramic vista of the Himalaya in the twilight spurs us to.

So we will leave with three images of beauty - each operating at different scales.

A leaf shot from here in Thane:



Our happy twosome and who make a joyous threesome with their cousin Joanna (shot in Vishakapatnam):


And of course another image of Mussoorie (shot my Mum from the terrace of Shanti Kunj) - which for us as a family serves as one of our havens of beauty:

Little girl

Our paths crossed for the briefest sliver of time.

We as a family were coming home after an enjoyable outing. Stomaches full after a lovely lunch, we were ambling home and almost reached the gate of our appartment block. A few meters before the gate is an alley which houses our nearest shanty-town. At the mouth of this alley a 'tempo' - our local word for a cargo carrying three-wheeler - was parked.

She - a child of no more than three - was holding another child - barely a year old in her arms.


She held him in a motherly way - the noon-day sun was upon them and she was shielding his eyes by allowing the shadow of one of the tempo's bars to stripe across his face.

Why were they sitting there alone? The contents of the vehicle gave a clue. Plastic jerry cans - which the poor use for water collecting and storage. A grimy kerosene stove. Various cloths. A plastic straw mat. Broom. More plastic vessels. Shapeless lumps of things. This is the inventory of her family's home. This is a family moving from one 8 x 10 foot 'room' to somewhere else. To nowhere else.


Our paths crossed for the briefest sliver of time.

Having been on a family outing. I had a camera in my hand. Three quick clicks.

Three images remain on our computer. Nestled in the midst of a sea of images - chronicling smiles and laughter of happy Eichers. Three images of a little girl and her brother. Alone and waiting... for whom? A Dad who keeps losing his job - but not the regular visits to the bar? A mother and other siblings? An uncle who is packing them off back to a village?

Its easy to get drowned in despair at the grinding horribleness of life all around us. It is just as easy to shut down our heart and ignore - hoping things will go away.

A few thousand years ago a widow returned to an uncertain future. How many things did she pack for her journey towards her village? The village whose name 'house of bread' had seemed a bitter mockery when she and her husband and sons left during the famine. Now she was returning - with not much more than sorrow at the deaths of her men-folk - and a foreign daughter-in-law who clung to her.

The story of how this destitute woman became the great-grandmother of Kind David is told to us with heart-breaking hope in the book of Ruth.

Would that the little girl holding her brother with a gravity beyond her years, would that she experience a similar destiny, a similar experience of the divine.

Talk talk

The office phone rang - I picked it up and said: "Jeevan Sahara Kendra, how can I help you?"

The voice said: "Hi son, this is Dad"

I was surprised to hear his voice. "Guess where we are?"

Where would they be? They had been down to Kerala, for a large convention that their old friend and mentor George Verwer was addressing.

"We are in Mumbai" Dad said "Waiting for the Kochi-Mumbai passengers to get off and the Delhi-bound passengers to get on our plane."

I could hear Mum talking in the background.

"Who is Mum talking to?" I asked.

"She is talking to Sheba" Dad laughed. Sheba was at the JSK clinic - a 10 min walk from my office. It was a busy day and she had patients in her examination room - but a call from Mum trumped that - for some time at least.

Here were Mum and Dad - sitting next to each other in an airplane parked at Mumbai airport - talking simultaneously to Sheba and myself - seated in different offices. The miracle of technology that helps us talk like that!

I am still enthralled by the miracle of having a phone in my hand. To be able to call up across town - or across the country while I am walking to my office. To track down a loved one when they are far from any phone booth or office.

And of course I have to think back.

To 1977 when we were wide-eyed in the U.S. of A. Dad had gone to the Mall to register for a phone. The locals were complaining, because they had to wait for 1/2 an hour.

Dad turned to them and told them that in Bombay we had waited for 7 years to get a phone. No bribes for the Eichers of course - and those were the days of our pseudo-socialist republic. It seemed impossible to us that the very next day folks from Bell Telephone showed up and promptly installed a working phone for us. Talk about the land of plenty...

And then there was the experience - many years later - of making a 'trunk call' to an international number from Mussoorie. In the 2.5 years I was away from home in my first stint of college I never talked to my parents in India. In 1989, when I was back in Mussoorie for a year of 'independent study', we had to call the US for some reason. We tramped over to Telephone Exchange - deep in the heart of the bazaar - next to the Cambridge bookstore. It was night - since we wanted to talk to someone (was it our grandparents?) during their day-time. We had 'booked' the time with the clerk in the Exchange well in advance.

And then we had the great moment of talking to the other side of the world. Well, talking would not be the word. We literally had to shout... "H O W .. A R E . Y O U ?"... Y E S, W E ... A R E .. A L L .... F I N E ! .... WHAAAAT??" and so it went. Precious money flushed down the tubes - the rupees disappearing at a dizzying rate as the seconds slipped by - and most of what we heard was a harsh buzz of static with the occasional word slipping through edgewise. And that which actually was said was pretty much tripe.

So a silent prayer of thanks for the miracles of fibre optics and satellites. For the massive minatureisation of communications. For the rabid competition here in India between mobile providers and betwixt the burgeoning group of broad-band-wallahs. May your tribe increase dear friends...

But thanks most of all to the Giver of the words themselves. Precious packets of meaning - sped between us through mouth and air and ear.

What does it profit a man if the sound quality is pin-fall clear - but the words themselves are devoid of love?

We have been so blessed to have so much of the later. In spades.

Mrs. Sagar

The mind is such a mysterious thing.

How we sift through the myriad sets of sensory inputs that swarm into us like so many buzzing flies... How we are able to go back in the past through the layers of memory - or move forward into a possible future through the thoughts and plans we sketch out... How our feelings and emotions are mingled with the flux of experiences that we live out...

...and in the end - it works! We sail through our days with myriad thoughts mingled together - choices made - experiences sifted and stored - with literally barely a 'second thought' about it all.

Perhaps this is why mental illness takes on such an ominous note. How to help a person when the shadows of the mind draw their shades? What is the lived experience of a person who is not able to share clearly what is going on in them? Where along the path of healing can we join our friends?

We admitted one of our old HIV positive friends yesterday. Mrs. Sagar's husband died two years ago. They had a small room here in Thane. After his death she sold the place and went back to her ancestral village in Uttar Pradesh. We thought we had seen the last of her. We did not think there was much chance that an HIV positive widow would come back to Thane.

Last week our staff unexpectedly met Mrs. Sagar again. She was lying on the sidewalk near her old room. She was sick. Her two children were on the street with her. Her 2 year old daughter couldn't walk because of a broken bone. It was a pathetic sight.

Mrs. Sagar had come back - hoping that she would get her house back. She said that she would buy it back from those who she sold to. She said that she would get the local political leaders / goons to intervene. She said that her brother would come and visit her. She said many things.

Mrs. Sagar is clearly not in her right mind. How much of this is organic? How much the result of a head-strong desire to follow her own path? How much the product of her own fantasies she is chasing is not clear.

What is clear is that Mrs. Sagar is destitute - and delusional. We are looking after her and her children. The kids are so bright. The little girl is now in a cast - scooting around the floor. The boy is lapping up love. But Mrs. Sagar continues to live in a world of her own. She clearly has TB, but has no place to stay. She needs to be started on ART for her HIV medicines but how can we do that when we are not sure whether she will even stay in one place?

Mrs. Sagar keeps telling us that her brother will come from the village to meet her. How can he do so, when she has no fixed address? What is going on in this dear woman's mind - only her loving Maker knows.

In the meantime, our JSK centre nurses are looking after her with love - while other staff are trying to find out some relative or else to link up with. Would that a church would take this confused widow into their fold. We are left with prayers - both spoken to our Father - and lived out in our actions.

Swimming pool

While most of N. America and Europe are deeply snow bound - while swathes of North India is still shrouded with fog - we in Thane sleep under the fans at night.

What better than to have a swimming pool. We constructed one last week. Maybe we should more accurately report: Enoch constructed it.

Its a pretty small one - though 2 can swim in it - provided you are the scale of a lego mini-figure.

The first protype was built while Asha and I were lying in bed - reading our respective books.

We suddenly saw Enoch run by the door. Then a few seconds later he ran back in the other direction.

Asha went to investigate and found that Enoch had build his mini-pool and poured water in it, only to see it seep out between the bricks. The running was to get a mop-cloth from the balcony.

We suggested a modification in the form of a plastic bag and cello tape. It did the trick. The mini-figures are now able to swim in it. If you look carefully at the picture above, you will note that the little man is clearly doing the crawl stroke.

Enoch informs us that most of the lego men generally do the back stroke. The figure on the left demonstrates this - though the fellow with the white pants may either be drowning, or looking up in wonder at something in the air...

The countless possibilities that these humble bricks embody...

As Enoch moves towards his 7th birthday on the 19th of this month - one of the possible designs for his cake is a big red lego brick. Lets see what takes shape!

Meanwhile, Enoch's lego creations are coming under unexpected attack. Not from school books and practicing the key board (they have their regular place of course) but from the excitement of reading.

Both Asha and Enoch have their noses buried in books at almost every waking moment it seems - with Enid Blyton ruling the roost at present. With 753 titles credited to this remarkable lady, there will be plenty left to read even at the short work our two are making of the books available in the home!

-------------------------

Meanwhile - while on the water and ice theme - we have another creation by our intrepid explorer. In early December, inspired partly by stories of polar exploration, Enoch set out to recreate an ice-bound ship.

The means used was the trusty lego set (using a few of the newer pieces that Zeph Phillips had given Enoch) and a plastic tub which was then dutifully placed into our freezer.

The result was a very pleasing block of ice with a ship nicely encrusted in it - and plenty of opportunity for the mini-men to walk around on top of the ice.

I am told that one of the pipes protruding from the boat was a thermometer which can measure the temperature.

The mind is a fertile place.

In limbo

Another sad story.

On Sunday one of our church members talked about her company sports day. It was a picnic for all the management and workers and was organised in a gala fashion.

In the middle of the time, however, a pall descended on the day. Word came that the 13 year old daughter of one of the workers had committed suicide. She seemed to have failed in 2 subjects in school and had hanged herself.

A call came that a local news channel had already found out about it and was broadcasting the tragedy on constant churn. This took place even before the father was informed about his daughter dying.

Our church member then shared something that for me made the tragedy all the worse. The company HR head swung into action. Not to comfort the family, but to call up the TV station to stop mentioning that the father was working for their company.

Suicide is one of those tragedies that are real, but just take your breath away in their hopelessness and despair. The scars for the survivors are so deep and intimate. The lies that perpetuate these actions: "no one wants you" "everything will be better if you are not there" etc. etc. are so devilish...

We shared the grief that our church member was going through on behalf of her colleague. We prayed. We spoke out our grief to the Father heart of God.

Gone

Mr. Janak died yesterday morning.

He had been in palliative care for the past few weeks. We had admitted him for some time at the centre in order to give his family some breathing space.

The last days were miserable. When he was lucid he was cursing. His children had long since learned to avoid him and were hardly to be seen in the tiny shack of a room he lived in. Mr. Janak had terrible bed-sores - and his wife was lying on a cot next to him - since she too has HIV and has suffered a stroke from a brain infection.

Our JSK nurses went every morning for the past 3 weeks to Mr. Janak's house. They nursed him and cleaned him as he was incontinent. They dressed his wounds. They prayed with him and his wife. They touched and shared God's comfort with this man.

Mr. Janak's earthly life is over. His wife and children are still alive and need much help and comfort.

There is not much of a happy story in all of this. Other than real love and devotion by our JSK staff who have once again gone way beyond the call of duty to care for this dear man.