Bye bye Black Beauty

Later today Asha, Enoch and I will pile onto an old friend for a final whiz.

The dear 'Black Beauty' our 2004 Honda Activa scooter has been an old friend.  It got swirled under the flood during the 2005 deluge.  It had one or two bumps - including a memorable one where my angel(s) worked overtime it seems.  It had all 4 of us Eichers on it many a time - but now even 3 of us is hard going - esp. if two of us are the Eicher parents.

Sadly, it was showing signs of entropy.  Rust - our ancient foe - was sprouting.  The rear bar - which had a stepney on it - fell off one fine day - and there was so much juddering and clanging at the time - that I did not even notice its loss for a day!

Sheba has for some time felt strongly that we need to move on - and that the dear scooter should be sold.  But who would buy it? 

Repairs have been taking place with alarming frequency - and the local mechanics are not sitting idle - the Eicher 'Black Beauty' has put more than one chicken into someone's dinner curry!

And so we come to the end of 8 years with an old friend.

Last week we talked to an eager dealer - who offered a certain sum for it as a trade-in.  Today we are driving the Black Beauty to that dealer - and will be handing over her keys to the man.

Within the next fortnight we are expecting a new member of the Eicher family.  One that will look pretty much like this:

Welcome Nano!

Justice

Our newspapers are hardly bringers of joy.  The last few weeks have seen a steady drip of political scandals, abductions by Maoist groups, the odd disaster (natural and human-induced), bombings in sundry places and so on.

We have such a daily diet of rape and mayhem that it takes some doing to really chill you.

I got the chills yesterday.

It was when reading the newspaper reports about the trial of the Norwegian man Anders Breivik.  AB carefully planned and carried out a spree of killings that left 69 people dead.  The authorities have ruled that he is not insane.

This man certainly seems to be relishing the limelight as he explained to the court in horrible detail about how he had even taken water with him since he knew that his throat would get dry from the stress of killing people.

So how do you judge a man who has clearly planned such an attack and takes great pride in telling people how he did it and why he did it?

We have our own version of AB - a young Pakistani man called Ajmal Kasab who joined the jihad and landed from the sea with with 9 other similarly armed men on November 26th 2008.  At the end of their killing spree at least 166 people were dead.

Like AB - our AK was captured alive and has been holed up in solitary confinement in a high-security prison since then.

How do you judge and execute justice in these cases.  Norway does not have a death sentence - something that AB mocks and claims that he should either be pardonned or executed.  AB's counterpart here is far less vocal.  AK seems barely more than a young boy.  From media reports of his trial, AK can hardly converse - and yet AK was honed into a killing machine.  It is now clear that AK and his fellow killers were meticulously guided by a well-planned and ruthless group who wanted to make maximum murder - and especially kill foreigners and Jews. Hearing about how their handlers told AK's other counterparts to shoot the wife of a rabbi through the head - and to do it so that the handler could hear it over the phone is just horrible.

So now that these two have been captured - and their cases are being heard - will justice actually be served?

For one, even if both perpetrators are executed, the sheer scale of the killings remains.

The trials themselves have become dangerous spectacles.  The Norway one provides a terrible opportunity for AB to speak out his hatred - almost seeming a reward for the enormity of his actions. . The Mumbai one grinds on almost as a mockery to the ability for the state to dispense justice.

Where is the healing taking place?  It certainly does not seem to be there in either of the court-rooms.

But when we step out of the present and look into the future a different picture emerges.

Both men in their own ways seem to be cocking a snook at society's ability to administer justice.  And perhaps at least in the present set up both the so-called sophisticated Nordic courts and our own sweat-and-grime creakiness of the Indian counterparts seem to fall well short of being able to handle these killers.

But there is another court which will take place in the future.  The Bible tells us that at the end of days a great white throne will be set up and the dead - great and small will stand before this throne - and the books will be opened.  Books that list what all of humanity has done.

AB and AK and a host of others will have to give an answer for what they have done with their lives.  Not only the grisly actions that the press has almost gleefully shared around the world - but the many decisions that AB and AK have taken to rebel against their loving Creator.

Each one of us faces a similar date in court.  Its not popular to say this - but justice will be done.

And at the same time - a great and terrible mercy will also take place.

For those whose names are found in the Lamb's book of life - all their terrible acts - every single one of them - will be pardoned.

Why?  Because the Lover of our Souls took the punishment on Himself and bore it as an innocent, naked man, tortured and nailed to a twisted instrument of torture for six hours outside Jerusalem in about AD 29.

The scary thing about AB and AK is how much they resemble us.  We don't want to admit it, but the horror of their actions strikes a deep unsettling chord in us because there is no 'logical' reason for them to do such terrible acts.  Just like there are no 'logical' reasons for our many acts of commission and omission.

One of the reasons we are so angry with the courts is their seeming inability to appropriately punish the perpetrator - and give relief to the victims (in these cases the families of the victims - and those who survived the shootings).  As I think about it, this sense of justice not being served points to something deeper in us - an innate sense that justice will indeed be lived out.

And it will.  Though many many of us have tried to live our lives blocking the thought out.

Eternity is a long, long time.  Stretching into infinity.

The infinite grasp of justice is just around the corner.

AB and AK beware.  And you and me too.

Child labour in our family

Samuel Austin Cravath - my great great grand-uncle on my father's mother's side was born on Sept. 27 1836.  When he was less than a year old, his father, grand-father and uncle all died within days of each other, having all moved together to Crawford county in Pennsylvania a few years prior from their previous residence in New York state.

This is what SA Cravath says in his memoirs:

A large area of timber land had been flooded to make a reservoir for the Pittsburg & Erie canal, and it was supposed that this flooding was the cause of a Malignant Malarial fever which prevailed extensively at the time and of which grandfather, father and Potter died.


About four years later, mother, having married Galcott Kinney meanwhile, the family moved to a farm which was about one and a half miles northeast of Oberlin, O[hio].  Here mother died May 30, 1848 - thirty nine years of age.  The children after mother's second marriage were, Mary, Joel, Chester and Julius.   The last died in infancy.  After mother's death the family was broken up and scattered among relatives.  George [my great great grandfather] found a home with his Grandfather Davis and his Aunt Amanda who kept house for grandfather Giles with his Uncle Augustus Cravath, and I with Uncle Giles A. Davis for a year or two and then with Aunt Amanda.  The family was never reunited and no two of them lived for any considerable time in the same family.  I was over ten years old at this time.

Samuel remembers coming as a family (with his step-father Galcott Kinney) to then newly established college town of Oberlin, Ohio:

The country was nearly level, sometimes swampy, and the great primeval forests had been pushed back but a little distance from the roadside.  Winding worm fences inclosed the small cleared patches of land which were thickly dotted with stumps. Oberlin was located in the forest and the first houses were constructed from timber cut upon the townsite.  The town and college had been founded but seven years at that time.  The stumps had been quite thoroughly cleared out of the town site, but they with the forests stood thick all around the rising college.


Father Kinney secured thirty acres of land a mile and a half northeast of Oberlin.  I think it was all dense forest.  While a house was being built we lived with a near neighbor, a Mr. Josiah B. Hall, who occupied a place that had been under cultivation long enough to grow an orchard and his apples were a temptation to the boys in the neighborhood for many years, for they were the only fruit, except wild fruit which grew in the settlement.


These early years must have been years of privation and some hardship to my mother for she had been reared amid more comfortable surroundings, but I was not aware of the privations.  During the six or seven years of residence near Oberlin, the forests were generally pushed back from the immediate vicinity of the house, but hardly more than ten acres were brought under cultivation so as to contribute food for the family. The cattle had free range of the woods and got their living there wholly in the summer and partly in the winter.  When feed was scarce in early spring, the forest trees were felled so that they could browse upon the buds and small branches.


It was no small part of the chores of my brother Giles and myself to find the cows in the unfenced miles of forest and drive them home for milking.  Did we ever get lost?  Yes, sometimes, but never so badly but that we found ourselves again by some land mark we knew, for we soon became familiar with the forests as well as the fields.


I remember one occasion, when after a long search alone, I had found the herd and tried to drive them home, but the old bell-cow broke away and passed me, taking the whole herd with her.  I could only follow, for I could not "lead" them.  She soon lead out into a place where a road had been surveyed through the forest and the trees filled, preparatory to making the highway.  I then found that the bell cow was right and I was wrong as to the direction of home.  (pp. 15-16)

Talking about his work at the time, Samuel Cravath writes a few pages later:

These were years of work, hard work for children of our years. Father Kinney was absent from home so much attending meetings and in colporteur labors, that a large part of the raising of crops on the home place and on rented land fell to my brothers and myself.  Day after day we were sent to the forest to fell trees and work them up into wood, with no older person to direct us.  We tracked down the smaller trees and generally managed to get them down without lodging them in some of their larger neighbours.


As I said previously, brother George [my great, great grandfather who was 4 years older than Samuel] never had a faculty to manage animals and was rather weak physically. This threw the team work on Giles [Samuel's middle brother - 2 years older to him] and me. One of us would drive or ride and the other hold the plow - generally taking turns.  Both driving and holding the plow was pretty lively work amid the stumps and roots of a pioneer farm.


The care of the team [of horses] gradually fell to me; perhaps from choice.  From the time I was eight years old to eleven, I generally went with the team whenever there was work for the team to do. I hauled four feet wood to the village and had to do the unloading myself.  I was sent not infrequently to Turkey Rock, a stone quarry fifteen miles from Oberlin, for large, square building stones, or half a dozen of which would make a load.  I enjoyed such trips, for tho' it made a long hard day for the horses, there was enough variety along the road to keep me entertained.  The loading and unloading of the big square rocks was always a matter of some anxiety for me.  As the quarry I generally got the assistance fo the quarry men, tho' with some grumbling.  At Oberlin, I generally got the load off alone with the aid of a handspike, which I learned to handle with some skill.  (pp. 19-20)

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

Reading these words that Samuel Austin Cravath wrote 111 years ago has been a challenging experience for me.  SA Cravath typed out his memoir when he was 65 years old.  As a man SA Cravath's careers saw him experience being a farm hand, college graduate (he returned  back to Oberlin to study), a teacher, a principal, a district school superintendent, a surgeon, a doctor, and finally a newspaper editor and owner.  The internet article I read on him also talks about him being a banker and prominent citizen of Grinnel Iowa which is where he lived the last years of his life.

For one thing I have always considered myself a son-of-the-soil Indian.  Well, this document shows otherwise.  At least one strand of my family was busy cutting the forests and steadily moving west-wards, colonizing the vastness of the United States.  

As a person trained in forestry I have always had a beef against people who allow their cattle to graze in the forests.  Even more so against people who do slash and burn agriculture.  Well, as a young boy at least, Samuel Cravath clearly was doing both. Its strange to find myself on the other side - considering the actions of my ancestor understandable as he helped his family eke out a living, pushing back 'the primeval forest.'

But the thing that really gets me is how hard Samuel Cravath had to work.  And at such a young age.  

I look back at the luxury of my life.  What did I have to do when I was 8 years old?  Read books.  Play downstairs.  Climb trees.  My father made us a tree house.  Samuel's step-dad was so involved with preaching and taking books to others - that much of the business of keeping the family afloat fell an Samuel and his brothers.  My father also did do some travelling when I was a stripling lad - but it never lead to any privation on our part, it never forced any extra labor for my sister, brother and myself!

Its a long way to 1844 and there abouts.  But its not so long - or so far.  Just a casual glance on the street, a quick look into the local eateries - or into the automobile workshops - will show that there are plenty of young children working in our city.  How many of them will be able to step outside this cycle of child labour? And how many will remain confined into the same general (and often alcohol-soaked) poverty of their parents and grandparents?

Reading Samuel Austin Cravath's life-sketch is such a tremendous gift of grace to me.  He writes in the forward that these notes (a 69 paged typewritten manuscript) were written at the request of his beloved daughter Myra... and that "this sketch is not intended for publication or public perusal, but strictly for the family which it concerns."

Well, as a descendant I am interpreting that particular injunction in the broadest possible sense.  Hearing what SA Cravath has to say about the incidents which 'have gone into the making up of a life' has brought many thoughts about my own life, and the function of memory which allows us to go back in time and listen to voices that are all but forgotten in the thick wall of 'information' that we now have to swim our way through.  

MDRTB again

Multidrug resistant TB is an unwelcome friend in our lives.

No, I will rephrase that.  It is not a friend.  It is a scourge.  And it is our friends who have deal with this terrible disease.

Take Balu for example.  We looked after him here at the JSK Centre.  He seemed to improve.  We were able to discharge him for care at home.  But he just didn't regain his weight.  We did a sputum culture.  The dreaded report came. 

He is multi-drug resistant.  Balu is so upset.  He has lost hope.  He refuses to cooperate with any further treatment.  He refuses to wear a mask.  He is angry and at home, a thin dying man being looked after by his wife and mother. 

How do we minister to him?  What precautions should our staff take?  What do we tell his wife?  She is very worried about herself. 

The tragedy is that we have an NGO partner who are willing to give medication for the multi-drug resistant TB. Free.  For the full 2 years of the treatment. 

But Balu is too fed up with treatments.  We are trying to convince him, but he is unwilling to receive help.

Its hard.

Across town a young woman has MDRTB.  Our partners have asked us whether we can admit her.  She is 6 months into her treatment for MDRTB and still sputum positive.

Hard.  What do we do?  Say yes?  Refuse?  Where else does she have to go.

No answers come easy these days (as if they ever did).

We will pray and move forward.  Would that MDRTB be just a memory - instead of a daily reality for us.

Faith

Nalini is a woman dying at the JSK Community Care Centre.  She has been dying for some time now.  But yet she clings on to the slender thread of life.

Nalini was admitted 2.5 weeks ago.  She was found to have severe neurological involvement.  An infection of the brain has led to lesions which are basically incurable.  The medical literature talks about a 8% recovery rate.  The rest die within weeks ... or months.

When she was admitted, Nalini could not sit up.  Her control over basic functions was loosening.

At one point she lost control over her swallowing muscles.  We had to intubate her and have been feeding her through a nasal tube.

Last week we thought her end had come.  Sheba had gone over to see Nalini on a Saturday morning.  She came back saying that Nalini was gasping.  The low laboured breathing many people have just before they die.  She was incontinent.  Her arms were splayed out in an involuntary way - signs of the end.

Nalini's condition is heart-breaking.

All the more so when we see the love that her family is pouring on her.  Nalini was born in Assam.  Her family speaks Bhojpuri and has links to Bihar and eastern UP.  Her sister and her sister's husband have come from their village to help look after her.  At any time our centre has 3-5 people from the family - talking to Nalini, massaging her legs, helping her out. In the morning prayers we are joined by Nalini's sister Laxmi and her husband.  He wears a dhoti and looks like he has just stepped out of his farm.  Which he has.

Laxmi is a person who I have long heard about but have met for the first time now.

She is an unchurched follower of Jesus.

Laxmi has been to the Yeshu Mahasabha that takes place near Allahabad.  She has believed Jesus.  She knows very little about him, but has put her full trust in him.  She says confidently that he answers all her prayers - and that her sister will walk again.

Laxmi's faith humbles me.  It makes me wonder how much I believe.  How much I relegate the Jesus who brought back people from the dead - to the past.

What does it mean to believe?  How should we pray?

When Sheba told me that Nalini was fading my heart sank.  For Nalini - and her precious life - and also from Laxmi and all the family who are so happy that Nalini is being cared for here.  For the love and prayers that we are all able to give Nalini.

When Sheba came back from her afternoon rounds she had a queer look on her face.

I thought it was the end.

It wasn't.

Nalini lives.  She had improved a bit.  Her breathing was no longer the laboured breaths - her hands were back to how they were before.

The next day and the day after - marginal improvements.

On Monday afternoon Laxmi told Sheba that Nalini wanted to eat.  Sheba said that Nalini had lost her power to chew - but was willing to have her eat orally if she would do so in Sheba's presence.  Nalini tried to eat a bit of banana that Sheba put in her mouth - but did not seem to be able to.

Later in the afternoon Nalini pulled out the NG tube herself.  Her family members fed her some biscuits under the supervision of a nurse.  She ate them. Some time afterwards Nalini drank a mango milkshake.

'We have put her fully in Jesus' hands' say Laxmi and the other family members.  Nalini's husband - who recently found out that he too - as a 50 year old man - has HIV - show a faith that humbles.

How do we trust?  As little children.

What a great honour for us to serve saints like these.

Nalini is dying.  And yet she lives.

Grab

The indignities of being poor.

An HIV positive lady was talking to Sheba and Marise on Tuesday.

Her life is a royal mess.  And one of the strands concerns money.

This lady - who we will call Sheetal - had rented a room from another woman. 

As with many places in Mumbai she gave a deposit of Rs. 25,000/- to the land-lady.   After some time the land-lady gave Sheetal a necklace to wear.  Sheetal claims that it looked like it was gold - but what it really is she does not know.

One night, as Sheetal was sleeping with her children, she sensed someone in the room.  She felt a hand grab the chain around her neck, breaking it off, and saw a young man bolt for the door.

Sheetal recognised the man - it was the son of her land-lady.  She ran after him into the street, shouting for help.   He ran faster and escaped.

Sheetal went to the police and lodged a police complaint.

She told her land-lady about the theft.  Sheetal said she thought that the Land-lady's son was the culprit.  The Land-lady brushed off the accusation.  But she was surprisingly philosophical about the loss of the necklace.  'It was stolen from your neck... it could have been from mine.'  This surprised Sheetal alot.

Then the hammer fell.

Sheetal's Land-lady informed her a few weeks later, that she wanted Sheetal to leave the room, since someone else was coming.

Sheetal agreed - and asked for the deposit back.

The Land-lady refused - saying that the value of the necklace was 25,000/-.

Sheetal was devastated.   Her elder son even more so.  He seems to have lost his mind.  The boy mainly sits at the railway platform gazing into space.

Sheetal is trying to rebuild her life.  She has moved to a far off place where she only pays a deposit of Rs. 5000/-.

The life of the poor is rotten.  The widows and the orphans are preyed upon. 

What do you say to a story like this?

Passing the cup

Pastor Stanley Mehta spoke to a group of Christian leaders last week about dealing with rejection.  He talked about the bitterness that we have in our hearts when others disappoint us, when we feel slighted and ignored, when hurtful words worm their way deep into our hearts.

And Stanley talked about how Christ experienced all of this - and more.  None of us have had God turn His back on us - but Jesus experienced that during the darkness at noon when the sins of all of history were placed on Him - and Father God turned away prompting the anguished cry "my God, my God - why have you forsaken me?"

The good news is that Jesus took the bitter cup of rejection and drank it for me.

I don't need to drink it any more.  Jesus is willing even now to sip the bitterness and give me the release of forgiveness.

That's a great comfort - but first I still have to give Him my cup.

Here is an opportunity to put it into action:

In early January we got an application from a young nurse who wanted to join us.  We met her and she joined Jeevan Sahara on Feb 1st.  Over these two months we were pretty happy with her work and thought that she was adapting well to being with us at JSK.

On April 2nd her sister called up and said that her father was critically ill and in the ICU with a heart failure.  We immediately sent our nurse home to a small town in Maharashtra.  The mission hospital in that town is the one in which my brother Stefan was born.

On the next morning - and through the day - we tried calling our nurse.  She did not pick up the calls.  Our other staff members called.  Same.  One person got through and was told that she arrived safely and that her father was still sick.

Then silence.

More attempts to call.  No picking up.  Once or twice we got through but could not hear what she said.  Strange noises.  Silence.

Near the end of the week one of our nurses who has just left us after working for 5 years at JSK told us something.  She said that this nurse had told her she was leaving as soon as she got this month's salary.

We were devastated - but hoped for the best.  I sent an email to the director of the hospital - who is an acquaintance of mine - and asked whether a certain so-and-so was admitted at the hospital.   The director called me a day later and said that they had no record of the name - neither in the ICU, the wards, the OPD, the pharmacy...

It was true.  Our nurse and her sister had deceived us.  After agreeing to serve here for 2 years - she had left after 2 months - and without the courtesy of saying goodbye.  We sent her off with fervent prayers for her father's recovery.  She knew that there was no father in the ICU.

How not to be bitter?  How not to be angry at deception, at feeling foolish and betrayed?  How to share this with our staff team... another disappointing set of decisions made by a person we trusted and loved?

King Jesus tells us... give me that cup.  The one of bitterness and seeking revenge.

I am doing this.  As the thoughts come to mind ... I give them back to Jesus.  I pray for the nurse regularly.  As a team we have put her into God's hands.

At the end of the day we know that we can move on - but she is carrying the burden of her deception with her - and that the head of the mission hospital in her small town knows about her.  How she is going to get out of what she did is a puzzle - and makes it all the more painful for us since we really saw some excellent steps for her while she was with us.

Its a constant struggle not to allow the bitterness to seep in though.  But what blessed liberation to know that we do not have to hold anything against her.  And whenever the bitter thoughts come we can give them in prayer over to our Lord.

We are still keeping the door open for reconciliation...