Starting a day

How do we start a day?

It stretches before us. Empty. Uninhabited. Waiting for our footsteps to explore it as our gentle (or harried) friend Time takes us through it.

Do we remember our Maker as we wend our way through this 24 hour slot?

At Jeevan Sahara we try. Each morning we take some time to sing praises and encourage each other from what God has been telling us in our own reading of the Bible. Turn by turn. We hear different voices - and are so often provided with key thoughts which accompany us as we tunnel through the experiences that this day has to offer us.

A short prayer for some of our Positive Friends and for a local church (again on rotation - there are far more than the 30 days in a month allow of course) and then we disperse to the tasks at hand.

Trumpet pictures

Just look at the little fellow. Who says this world has lost hope when babies as beautiful as this are still arriving!

Welcome, little Shofar Evangel Ramesh!

You have just emerged into the bright lights of this wonderful world. We will be celebrating the 16th of June from now on - and each year you will understand more of what we are celebrating about.

In the mean-time - enjoy! Your Mummy and Daddy are looking after your every needs. Every little cry and wimper from you is so precious to them - they are at your beck and call. Feeding you. Cleaning you. Carrying you. Putting you to sleep. Talking to you. Singing to you. Staying up late. Getting up early. Swerving everything else around a little pretty maelstorm called Shofar!

And then you have your wonderful sister Frankie! She is so delighted to have a brother - and what a beautiful brother at that too! Here you are - all 3.5 kgs of you being held in the arms of your sister. How strange and wonderful for her to be holding you - a life - a boy with purpose. Yesterday she used to play with dolls. But you are so different. It might take a little while for Frankie to get used to you Shofar - but you are going to have a lot of fun with such a great older sister!

Shofar, your Thatha and Ammamma are trying to come to see you as soon as possible. For some reason - the people at your consulate in Hyderabad are taking their sweet time to give your grand-parents an interview. Maybe if you cry loud enough the consulate uncles will give the visas sooner? Should we make a youtube video and send the US consulate a link?

In the mean time all your cousins on the other side of the world (that's the junior Eichers and Joanna and Anmol!) have been ooohing and aaaahing at your photos. We have prayed for months and months - and now you are hear. How lovely to see our prayers answered in who you are!

Your Mummy and Daddy have chosen a very unique set of names for you. You can be sure of this. There is no one else in the whole world. In the 6.5 billion people who live on this beautiful blue ball - with a name like Shofar Evangel Ramesh. Your uncle Andreas Daud Eicher (whose name is pretty unique too) will guarantee that. Just like there is no one called Frankincense Graceola Ramesh! Hooray our little trumpet for having such creative parents - who have marked you apart from birth with your unique moniker!

Monsoon

Today is summer solstice. The longest day of the year. The day when us Northern-Hemisphere-wallas get the maximum amount of sunlight.

It should be the hottest day of the year - but it isn't. At least for us in the Indian Sub-continent. We have the monsoon to thank for that! Without the monsoon we would be like the Sahara desert. Literally. India lies at the same latitude as much of North Africa. Without the great seasonal wet - we would be so very hot and arid - that nothing would grow.

A colossal amount of rain is dumped over India thanks to steady winds that bring moisture off the Indian Ocean. These winds also distributes the huge masses of moisture as steady rains all over the subcontinent. Being on the west coast - Mumbai (and Thane of course) get huge precipitation as the clouds hit the shore. Since Mumbai is a long peninsula - basically reclaimed from 7 original islands - and since most of the city is virtually at sea level - each year the place floods - often at what seems to be the slightest down-pour. The reason is simple - when the sea is in high tide - whatever storm water is getting flushed down the sewers (even when they work) - meets the sea - and comes up on the streets!

Nothing new. Growing up in Mumbai we used pray for rain - so that we would get a school holiday declared. I remember waking up on some mornings hopeful that my prayers were answered - seeing a pool of water forming outside our house in Nana Chowk - only to be told by my parents that we were going to school anyway. Raincoats came on and out we went into the wet.

To my parents horror - we used to actually love 'swimming' in the floods when they really covered the compound with knee deep water. Looking back now I see my exuberance with horribly adult eyes.

But the constant streams of water did actually change the compound to a small wonder world. A few areas had tiny pools of water where we could see tadpoles grow. We explored small rivulets and made dams.

Coming to Thane just under a decade ago we met a dear old man in our house church - Uncle Dhanawade - always prayed for rains. Each year I remember him praying for rains. Uncle has been promoted to glory - so these days as the monsoonal rains start falling (and especially when they stop for a few days in between) - I remember Uncle Dhanawade's prayers.

Last year was almost a major drought year. The signs were ominous - especially early in the monsoon as most of north India was not getting enough. We prayed. Things changed.

I am praying again this year. For all the flooding misery that Mumbaikers will have to go through in a normal monsoon - our dear country does need rain. And more, not less.

The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. Deut. 28.12

Budding cooks

A sample of tasty treats made by Asha and Enoch with help from aunty Ethel who had come over for lunch after church today.

While they look delicious - these ones are not yet edible - being made of modelling clay. Asha is starting to learn the amazing arts of cooking (she has an excellent teacher in Sheba) and we were treated to Asha making and serving dosas for us yesterday. The dough ('mau') and coconut chutney was made by Sheba beforehand. Asha then spread the dough thinly on the pan and flipped the dosas (under the supervision of Sheba) and served them hot to us at the table.

We live and learn! Hooray for the budding cooks!

We look foward to many tasty treats in the years ahead.

The tale of bodies

This is not for the faint of heart.

Yesterday's papers had front page photos of security forces emerging from the jungle. They were carrying wooden poles between them - and on the poles were trussed the dead bodies of the Maoists that they had killed in the gun battle.

Among the bodies recovered were 3 women. Two of them appeared to be in their late teens.

The inference in clear. These be beasts. Government officials are on damage control - stating that after a person has been killed - that they should be honoured - with the minimum that they be brought out on a stretcher.

The operation took place in Lalgarh a part of West Midnapore district in West Bengal - and is part of an on-going struggle between various factions of Left-wing Extremists on one hand, and local political forces and state security agencies on the other. No one is given any quarter. The fighting is sporadic and brutal. This particular episode is being called a major victory against the Maoists as an entire squad of 15 armed members were killed in the Ranja forest.

Over the last few months various factions of the Maoists have shown spectacular and horrifying efficiency through multiple strikes which have left scores of dead security forces. The most prominent ones were the massacre of 76 paramilitary troops in the state of Chhattisgarh in April, and the horrifying deaths of over 140 civilians in West Bengal when a passenger train was derailed by sabotage only to be hit by an oncoming goods train in May.

We seem to be in a new phase of the decades old struggle across the dry forested areas of Central India.

On one hand, the Maoist forces have become entrenched across fairly large swathes of the vast hinterland. Given poor policing (hardly better than in colonial times - some would say worse) and a local political class that is riddled with corruption at every level - the Maoists have managed to carve a niche for themselves. Many of the local villages end up 'sheltering' the Maoists. But do they have much of an alternative. Much of the current struggle draws on guerrilla techniques of recruiting children, imposing their own taxes, developing rough justice courts where the 'guilty' are tortured and executed. In addition, the Maoists can only look north to the recent history of Nepal to realise that it is possible to control large portions of the countryside for years - and force the politicians to jump to their tune.

Make no mistake. These Maoists are not folks in college coffee houses - discussing the finer shades of Fabian socialism as opposed to Trotskism. These are men (and some women) who are willing to kill - and who do.

On the other hand, we are seeing an increased determination by different levels of security forces to move in and eliminate the Maoists. In Chattisgarh the Salwa Judum movement has armed local groups to directly fight with the Maoists - along with various levels of paramilitaries. In West Bengal the Marxist (!) but elected state goverment has armed its local cadres and to go in and finish off the Maoists together with the various police forces. Nationally the Centre takes LWE (Left Wing Extremism) very seriously - and is linking together various state forces through Operation Green Hunt - a coordinated offensive against the Maoists.

Throw in a constant string of insurgencies in Kashmir and in the North-East - and a set of bombings from various outfits (most often jihadist or so it seems) - and we have a situation where ever higher levels of violence are reported - and ever higher levels of counter-violence are being sanctioned.

All of this plays itself out rather faintly on the windscreen of metro India. The economy is booming - despite a global cooling of sorts - and a generation of aspiration means that all things success is the mantra of the day. When a spectacular Maoist strike takes place - it appears on the front pages and the TV channels sputter to life about how bad everything is and what should be done. Within 48 hours of the event things go 'back to normal'. Cricket, film star gossip, endless speculation about various political pairings, the weather, exam results - these are the things that colour the daily lives of aspirational India.

The Maoist violence actually questions the very fabric of our state. Despite our regular 5 yearly election cycles at almost all levels of government - we are dealing with a fundamental failure of civil society. The growing use of the gun (or sickle) points not only to an escalation of violence since the state has started moving in through Operation Green Hunt etc. - it speaks to the very core of who we are as a country. There is such a huge disconnect between the basic set of justice deliverers (our local police constable for example) and what every citizen of our country should be receiving - the right to life and safety and security.

The bodies that we see - being carried like some kind of jungle game that has been successfully hunted - or lying on the ground with a crumpled pamphlet accusing them of some 'crime against the people' - these are unacceptable in any sense of a civilisation. These dead bodies speak of the war within that rumbles on.

When will the killing stop? When will justice flow like a river and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5.24)?

Young

Tarun has finished his class 10. He passed and is currently working to earn a bit of money by delivering milk early in the morning before he goes to school. He is small for his age. Both his parents died by the time he was 8 years old.

He is also HIV positive.

Anjali has not finished class 10. She dropped out of school 4 years ago. After her parent's death she has been living in limbo - hiding inside her room. Her brother - who is negative - is working at odd jobs. Her uncle does not know what to do with her. She has repeated eye problems.

Anjali is 16 and has HIV.

Martin is 14. His father died of HIV. His mother has HIV too - as does he. He has been taking HIV medicines now for a few years. His sisters (both HIV negative) have both eloped. One came back and then lived through the tragedy of her husband committing suicide.

Tarun. Anjali. Martin.

The new face of HIV. A generation of children who are growing into adolescence and living with the disease thanks to the dramatic improvements in life-expectancies that anti-retroviral medications have brought.

The meds are great at keeping the virus down - and letting battered immune systems rebuild - and function as they should - even for young people.

But the meds are not fairy-tale pills which you can pop and suddenly your whole life is changed.

Our young friends are growing up with a landscape of loss around them. Most have lost a parent - if not both. Many are in family situations that are broken at best. Some have taken on the roles of parents for younger siblings.

The poverty that most of our young friends are living through is not incidental either.

And then there is the universal challenge of growing through adolescence itself - with all its joys and pangs.

We are dealing with a landscape of change which is quite different from what things were like when we first started working with HIV/AIDS. In those days we were mainly doing palliative care for dying adults - with the occasional child who was dying.

Now we have a slowly growing generation of HIV survivors - but ones that are not done with HIV. Rather, these young people are growing up with the complexity of HIV in their lives - and the damage that is has wreaked in their families.

Hari - an adolescent friend of ours who is living with HIV recently had an argument with some of his friends. He then came home and tried to hang himself. The neighbours somehow realised what was going on and broke in - and saved him.

His landlord threw this boy and his bother out of the tiny room that they were renting. But after much pleading allowed them back in.

No easy solutions. What do can we even say to a young boy who has deemed life too harsh to continue living?

What can we say other than try and listen. Try and remind each one of our young friends just how precious they are. Just how valuable each day is. Just how much God cares for them.

No magic buttons to press. No magic pills to pop.

But what we do have is hands that can touch. Ears that can hear. Legs that can walk alongside.

We have homes that can be opened, hearts that can be broken, lips that can speak words of life.

Something to bite into

Everyone loves cakes.

One could argue this - but one of the greatest contributions to world cuisine for which we have to thank the Americans for is the cupcake.

Small. Moist. Sugary sweet. Tart. Decked up in powder blue with sprinkles on top. Always room for at least one more.

American cup-cakes are in Mumbai. Thanks to the good folks at TH Bakes. For those of us living in Mumbai-land cupcakes and other lip-smacking fare is just a phone call away.

And it is all for a cause. More than that. It is for real changes in real people.

Our good friends Bennett and Bernie David are changing lives in Navi Mumbai through an amazing work called Tender Hands. Tender Hands works with children in distress and provides a residential home for them to make a change in their lives. Among the precious children that Bennett and Bernie and the team are pouring themselves into are kids from families that we have ministered to throgh Jeevan Sahara.

There is just so much that can be done.

Kudos to the team at TH Bakes for developing high-quality products. Their bakes are tasty treats - and are also good for the heart - the 'real' heart of course.

How about you - do you have an idea that can make a change? Are you still sitting on it and not moving forward? Now is the time.

Lets get off our seats and get moving!