a new symbol

Here comes the hot-stepper!

Into a not-so-crowded world of currency symbols - one dominated by behemoths with a face-recall that borders on the hard-wired comes a new kid on the block.

The Indian rupee has unveiled its official symbol.

The brotherhood (or is it a sisterhood?) of $ ₤ ¥ and of course € now has a new friend. The sleek rupee symbol seen on the left.

A good year or so ago a contest was announced.

A contest to design the new official international symbol of the Indian Rupee. A way of putting identifying the financial power that India is - and is becoming. A pictoral image that captures some of our culture and presents it in an enduring way.

Here are some of the suggestions given:

Pretty awful most of them. I particularly wonder about the second from the lower left. How in the world can that be seen as an international symbol?

I must admit that I spent more than a few minutes daydreaming about participating in the contest. Turns out that other things (rightly) crowded their way in and put my opportunity for glory on hold.

Today's announcement says that the symbol chosen to be the new Rupee sign was designed by a D. Udaya Kumar - a freshly minted PhD in industrial design from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai.

Dr. Kumar is set to join the faculty at the new IIT in Guwahati.

Looking at the elegance of his design - you just want to say - 'I could have done that!' fit together so perfectly. The double bars – a sign of stability – are not put down in the middle like the Yen and the Pound – but lifted up. Dr. Kumar says it is to remind of the Indian flag – but it also allows for the incorporation of the line that the Devanagri script uses on top.

Bravo! May this symbol last long. Hooray for good design!

Better

Thanks for the notes of concern about my health. I am very much on the road to recovery and was able to start work again yesterday after only a day away!

The highlight of my sick day was a visit to the Lok Hospital ENT doctor about my ear. She took a look into it and asked me whether I used cotton ear-buds to clean them. I sheepishly admitted that I did. The sheepishness was because I was talking to the same doctor who had just a month previously suctioned out a wad of wax from Enoch's ear. That wax had been compacted next to the ear drum due to my cleaning his ears with ear-buds.

The doctor then put her instrument in my ear and showed me on the monitor how I had a blockage too and that it had become infected. She suggested that she try and suction it out. I agreed. In went the small tube and then a few seconds later she had something rather large at the end - and I could hear *so* much better.

What she had was the end of a cotton ear-bud - that had made its home in my ear. How long ago? Who knows. A granuloma had developed and I am now on a 5 day antibiotic course to work through the infection.

Embarassed? Of course. But so very grateful for the opportunity to be free from the swelling and discomfort in my ear. And very glad for the short but vital procedure that Dr. Nandita did for me at Lok Hospital.

And so I am able to respond to people with the cheery: "Yes, I am very much better. Thank you!"

And thank God!

Monsoonal Diseases

With the monsoon come flies and mosquitoes. With flies and mosquitoes come gastro-enteritis and malaria - and nowadays dengue fever as well.

Though not insect-borne, we can add to the above diseases the H1N1 flu (Schwein flu mein Freund!) which is making a slow and steady come-back in Maharashtra. 81 cases were reported last week.

Our kids sleep each night under a mosquito net. During the day we go about with many a winged insect around.

The government public health department occassionally does 'defogging' using insecticides like in the pic above. That happens about once a year around here. Usually when there have been some deaths to dengue already.

We have a chap who comes at least once a week and squirts what must be a larvacide spray into standing water. Dressed in khaki, he wears a big cylinder of pesticide strapped to his back and carries a small nozzle by which he sprays the stuff. He came to the JSK office this morning while we were singing during our morning prayers. Since he knows what to do - he walked through the chorusing staff - and went into the JSK toilet - squirted a bit - and then came out - got a signature to show that he had done his stuff - and then headed back out to continue his work.

As a nation we may be hurtling into the wonders of the 21st century - but we certainly have not figured out how to protect ourselves from small insects that enjoy our blood - and our faeces.

Things are only worse in the hinterland.

I remember taking a session on malaria with some of the outreach workers and health volunteers of the Diocese of Palamu in Jharkhand. We were about 30 folks in a room, and I wanted to get people thinking about how unpleasant malaria is. I was sure that someone in the room would be able to tell us, so I asked: "please put up your hand if you have had malaria." A forest of hands shot up. I then asked the opposite question: "please put up your hand if you have never had malaria." My hand was the only one up. Every single person in that room had already had malaria - and survived. How many others were dead?

We haven't even started talking about diarrhoeas - something that our dear flies and dirty hands are oh so good and passing on. Having just come through a (mercifully short) episode of Bombay Belly - I can testify that it is no fun to have the runs.

As a team we are stressing "hand washing" this month as our main health educational message. For the sake of stopping the runs. For the sake of preventing long-term gut dwellers who eat the food our friends eat - but from the inside of their digestive tracts! And amazingly enough - handwashing also stops the spread of H1N1 (swine flu) for which our HIV positive friends are especially susceptible to. Good hand-washing takes six separate steps - and should be done long enough to sing 'Happy Birthday' twice. Its easy to tell others to do something. Its always quite another thing to live it out ourselves. But change we must - and so you see the Eichers urging each other to do the 6 steps when we wash our hands before food.

Sick

I woke up sick this morning.

Ye olde trusty alarme - Donau waltz being played on my mobile phone - found me at 5 AM in a less-than-pristine state.

Headache. Slight nausea. What we call 'loose motions' (very loose). My right ear some-how blocked on the inside. Unable to hear much on the right side. A look in the mirror revealed a very pasty-faced Andi. Back to bed. Some gentle groaning and my dear wife asked me the question I wanted to hear: 'Are you alright?'

A couple of paracetmol tablets and a fervent prayer later I was drifting back into dreamland. Another couple of hours and I resurface to the loving hugs and kisses of my two junior nurses.

The day is cool and rainy outside. We decide I will have a sick leave. I drift back into sleep.

As I write this, half the day is over. I was able to see Sheba off to the clinic at 11 AM and manage the kids till they got onto their school-bus at 12.30. A few dishes done. The house is clean. Some reading of Spanish football celebrations in the newspaper (and a few more gory stories), a spell on the computer, some Bible reading and here I am - remarkably better.

Now imagine if this was my daily lot: Wake up. Sick. Bed bound. Sky grey outside. Damp moisture seeping in through wet walls. Filthy bed. Have to defecate in the common toilet outside.

Instead of being married to a loving doctor - imagine if I had to pay a hefty sum for a 5 min consultation. And imagine knowing that I have HIV and bearing the crushing set of fears and anxieties that so many live through who have the virus inside them.

For so many of my dear friends this is no imagination - but the daily reality of their lives. Sickness for me is an aberration. An occasional discomfort - almost a holiday. I am surrounded by love and care.

For many it is not so.

However much we may 'progress' in terms of quick diagnoses and wonder drugs - the cruel burden of being sick continues to be borne by so many.

Though we work with people who live with HIV, though we meet our friends with AIDS every day, I find myself so easily slipping into a heard uncaring heart towards the challenges they face. Today's experience reminds me just a bit of how much more empathetic I need to be. A small bout of sickness for me may in fact be 'just what the doctor ordered!'

On Oracles... and Octupii

Here is one thing that no one could have predicted about the World Cup Football Championships in South Africa: the world wide fame of an English-born, Germany-dwelling cephalopod named Paul. A google search of 'octopus' and 'paul' done 35 seconds ago revealed 9,520,000 hits. That's a lot. Especially for a mollusc.

The final 'predictions' that Paul made were pure showbiz - covered breathlessly by more reporters than Wayne Rooney (who is he?) could have dreamed about. Paul the octopus 'predicts' the country that will win an upcoming football game, based on which flag-adorned-plastic-bin he first opens to eat a morsel of fellow mollusk. His run of choosing the 'right' flag has coincided with all the Germany-related games of this world cup - as well as the final match between Spain and Holland.

Before that match we also decided to choose who will win. The 10 humans in the room chose which country they thought would win and wrote down the scores (ranging from 0-0 in extra overtime to 3-2 during regulation time). We also gave a black dog who was in the room with us the choice of a yellow (Holland) or red (Spain) coloured doggie treat. The humans were split down the middle. 5 for Spain. 5 for Holland. This was based mainly on who we wanted to win. The dog ate both treats. But 'Pepper' (the hound's name) ate the red treat first. 50% accuracy for the humans. 100% accuracy for the dog. Except that the doggie sample had an n of 1. Had we had 10 doggies who all chose red before yellow I would be more convinced.

A certain parrot called Mani from Malaysia - who makes its living as an astrologer's assistant 'correctly chose' the quarter-finals and semi-finals outcomes. But in the final it chose Holland. Google count: 146,000. Nothing helps fame like success. Failures don't get much press.

What makes us so hungry to know the future? 'Tis nothing new. The term 'oracle' (derived from the Latin 'to speak') goes back at least to the Greeks where the consulting of seers to find out what will happen was common. Probably the most prominent of these were the oracles made by the pythia - a high-priestess in the city of Delphi. People came from far and near to inquire and were given answers. Almost every culture echoes this desire for knowledge about the future. Most have formal and informal means which people use to try and find out what will happen for them.

"Religion is the opiate of the masses" opined a certain London-dwelling German who went on to lend his name to a religious belief system called scientific-materialism (a.k.a. Marxism). Far from being a death sigh - spirituality - of which a desire to know the future and a belief that future events are knowable - is very much bound into the very fibre of what it means to be a human. That much of what is called spirituality is rank superstition and the crudest forms of occult is no surprise. That 'despite' high levels of technology and 'progress' people should desire deeper meaning in life than a bank account and a bungalow should surely not raise any eyebrows. Finally, that a country that like Germany which is so largely irreligious and post-Christendom, for such a country to be a hot-bed of all forms alternative spirituality and occult will surprise us only if we are closet materialists (which a lot of us seem to be).

The reality is that we are deeply and fundamentally hungry for worship. If our desire for worship is denied or belittled - such as it is seems to be many post-Christian western societies - then we will search it out in birth-stones and water-drawn-at-certain-phases-of-the-moon and other increasingly outlandish dabblings in occult realms. It is no surprise that the "Orakle Tintenfisch" is housed in Deutschland. Paul the Squid's popularity is only a small reflection of a spiritual hunger tied up in the heart of man.

Mannschaft

With more goals than any other team in the tournament (barring the heavens opening and the Dutch scoring 7 goals against Spain in the World Cup final tonight) the German team leaves South Africa with a bronze medal around their necks and bright future ahead.

The 18 goals scored by the Germans included 8 vs traditional football superpowers Argentina and England. In those games the Germans' 'shock and awe' of taking an early lead and then running away with the game was just too much.

Tonight they came from behind to see a 3 - 2 win over Uruguay which saw 20 year old Thomas Mueller take another goal early - only to have the gritty Uruguayans put 2 past the Germans before the Mannschaft restored order and did what the Germans are notorious for doing - win.

What makes a team click? How do a group of individuals gel together and move forward - in any arena? The genius of the beautiful game comes down to a certain basic simplicity - a round ball happily booted between players - seeking to bury it in the opposing goal. The odd crackpot aside - most of the world (judging by the TV figures of at least a couple kabillion people) love the game. So how do talented individuals click together to form a cohesive whole?

The German football team showed some of it. For most of the World Cup 2010 tournament, die Mannschaft had it going for them: fluid passes - excellent midfield skills - poaching forwards who got service from their hard-working midfielders. They had that elusive 'nous' until the semi-final that is. Then the Germans came up against the Spaniards (who beat them 2 years ago in the European finals). Suddenly it was a different game - the men in red were everywhere, dipping in and out, the ball flowing as if glued to their feet - until another swift pass got it glued to the next Spaniard. Germany's team seemed almost bewitched - moving in slow motion - unable to click. Spain ran rings round the lads with the black shorts. Painful for a supporter - but so beautifully done you had to wonder why they managed only a single goal to move them forward.

What fascinated me about watching these games is seeing team work made visible. In our day-to-day work we do cooperate with our colleagues - but so often it seems that we are all alone - pushing forward in whatever we do. But on the green grass of a football field - with 90 minutes to play and thousands of brightly painted fans cheering around them - the teams have no where to hide. Everything, every play is seen (by the fans at least - even if the referee may miss it) and what emerges is a sum of individual parts. The team that finally gets the ball past the other side the most goes home the winner. And the team that does this most consistently is the champion. Yes there is the occasional game where the result is totally against the flow of the game - but that doesn't last. The world cup is always won by a team of exceptional players - who play together against their opponents - and not each other.

The young German football team leave South Africa for Deutschland with more than a bronze medal around their necks . Much has been made of their youth and multi-ethnic make up (a big shift from the Teutonic sides of old). Die Mannschaft look ominous for the future goal posts of the 2012 European Championship and the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. I have followed Germany since reading the Times of India story of their loss to Italy in the 1982 finals (blame it on a mother born in Leipzig). My support for the men in white and black has, however, mostly been a cringing one as over the years the football team seemed more adept at booting other players than playing the beautiful game (the dreadful 1990 final match stands out to me). But this year something new has emerged. While Germany will never play like Brazil (in fact Brazil doesn't even play like Brazil) the matches of this year's world cup showed a new kind of fluency and spark that not only warmed this die-hard's heart - but won many new fans around the world. Its a new experience to hear people talk about Germany and hear more than grudging respect - some of the current assessments of die Mannschaft have bordered on the effusive!

What about our own teams? We have a small team of 2 in every marriage. We have slightly larger teams in our families. In our work and church and other expressions of community we see different levels of team-living. How often we implode because we just don't 'get along' with each other? How many times we could have seen so much more take place - but do not because we don't want to give up the space we occupy - the rights we so dearly cherish?

Since I am writing early on a Sunday morning it is not inappropriate to think of one of the greatest teams of all time - a rag-tag group of 12 who helped turn the world upside down (many would argue right-side up). On the last meal with their master and mentor - a silly (but familiar) argument cropped up amongst Jesus' disciples about who was going to be the greatest. If I were the Lord I would have booted out that lot at that point. Especially since the argument took place after Christ had stripped himself of his outer garments and dressed as a slave had washed each one of their feet. Our good Lord did not boot them - but chose to teach them instead - and prayed to Heavenly Father that 'they all would be one.' After Christ's resurrection and ascension this core group then multiplied rapidly, forming new groups in different places - all following the risen Lord. History shows that these followers of 'the Way' were often persecuted, but when chased from one area, they splintered into smaller groups and continued to tell others about Jesus, forming worshiping communities in whose long chain of replication we as a family live out our lives today. In a few hours from now we will meet in a home and sing, share and break bread together. In doing so we recreate and extend the original team that ate supper with Christ so many years ago.

Day of Service

As I write there are 23 young people (ranging from 13 years to lower 50s) who are out spending a day with families living with HIV.

Its the Youth Against AIDS Day of Service and it means that young (and a few young-at-heart) people from different churches are spending a day with families affected and at risk of HIV.

We met in the morning to get oriented - to pray and praise - and see what God tells us about loving our neighbours - especially those with AIDS! Then we broke up into 10 groups and moved out to meet people in their homes. Each team with 2-3 volunteers and a JSK staff member to facilitate the time. The youngsters are going to spend this day with people affected by HIV. These young people are going to listen. To learn. To share. To work. To cook. To eat. To pray. To be.

We don't expect that the sky will be another colour tomorrow as a result of this day's work. But we do know that everything done for God - no matter how small or insignificant it may seem - has a purpose - and brings joy to the heart of Jesus.

Tonight we will regather and share what happened during the day. Going by the past YAA day of services that we had in March this year and November last year - this time will be deeply moving - as people share their first experiences of blessing - and being blessed - by people living with HIV.


Would that we will not have to have a Youth Against AIDS day of service. That every person with HIV would already be lovingly cared for. Even better - that the disease would only find mention in historical textbooks.

But till that day comes - this is a small step in the right direction.