A testing time in a village

Most of our work at Jeevan Sahara is urban.  But every now and then (make it more like every 'then') we do reach out to the countryside.

Thane is a big district.  A very big one.  In the 2011 census it had over 11 million inhabitants. That is just less than the population of Cuba today - and just more than Tunisia.  If Thane were a country, it would be the 79th largest in the world by population.

Just over a year ago Thane was split into two with a new district called Palghar being formed out of the northern portions - and thus we have lost 3 million or so folks.  Our remaining 8 million odd souls live largely in urban areas (77% of the population were in urban areas of undivided Thane) which include the largely railway-station-clustered sprawls of Thane city, Kalyan-Dombivili, Mira-Bhayender, Ulhasnagar and others including the 1.2 million folks in Bhiwandi.

Any way there are lots of small villages around - and even though the bulk of folks live in the big and getting-big urban areas - Thane still has a population that lives on the land and is linked in with the cities.

Last week Jeevan Sahara Kendra was invited to do a one day Family Life Seminar and HIV Testing Camp at a church in a village well beyond Kalyan.   We jumped at the opportunity.  It was going to be a testing time in the village - and in more ways than one!

We got to the village after a delightful early morning drive down a wonderfully smooth highway - and met our host outside the nearest railway station. Our trusty Papaya was carrying the equipment and the Eichers - Sheba, Enoch, Yohan and myself that is (Asha had a day off on her own).  We had a cup of tea in the local tea shop.  When they said 'full cup' I thought it would be a tiny serving as usual - and so was surprised when the brought out two huge glasses with enough tea for 4 people each.

The rest of the team arrived by train shortly afterward, but our host had already put a local gent into our car and off we went off the main road and onto a tiny - but well paved - single track off into the bush.

The sheer delight of seeing forests and fields and small villages after so much noise and glitz and concrete (even the decked up kind) was just tonic.

As we came close to our destination village, our guide pointed out ladies that we passed:  'they are believers who are coming to the meeting he said.'   And then we finally came to the church a simple building, on the outskirts of the village, with a beautiful ridge of hills behind.  

Our team arrived in a jeep shortly afterwards and we had already started to set up.   Sheba was sitting with village women - talking with them using another lady who translated into Marathi. 

Folks were trickling in when we got the first inklings of trouble.  Everyone went to one door of the hall and I could see a man carrying a child in his arms and people around him.

An accident.  In the first confusion we didn't know what happened.  I thought one of the jeeps that was hired had hit a local child.  It was actually the opposite.  A local man, drunk and riding his bike, had hit one of the children who were coming to the meeting.  The child was bleeding profusely from his nose, and he and his grandfather were whisked off to the nearest town.

But the problem did not settle down.  The biker got a group of local folks together.  And they were angry.  Before we knew it a group of men and women had entered the area.  I saw a man with a big log of wood, trying to swing it.  Folks were asking him to stop.  Many prayers were said.  People were talking loudly in Marathi.  Stochastic actions here and there.  Folks coming into the hall.  Dust and movement outside.  Then a settling down.

Who was who was not clear to me as other than our JSK team I was seeing almost all for the first time.  But things settled down and the folks in the hall - mainly women - settled down and the singing began.   The young leaders sang out in Marathi and the assembled village women, with a sprinkling of men and children sang along too.  A harmonium and drum added melody to the earnest joyful singing.  We were taken into glory land.  Outside things were still unclear.  But in the hall the beautiful village faces were singing.

And then we had our first possession of the day.  One of the ladies fell on the floor and writhed around.  The young man leading the singing came close to her and prayed.  Other ladies were praying too and singing.  After a few minutes the lady settled down, a little while later she sat up.  And soon she was singing again.  All in a days work it seems.  The songs continued.  The morning light poured in.

It was then time for me to speak. We were here for a special Family Day.  I had the privilege of sharing the first message about God's plan for our families.   What to share in such a short time.  How to relate to folks with such different experiences to me.  How good, though, to know that God cares so much for our families - and that the Bible is all about relationships and the transforming love of Jesus.  As I looked out at these dear ladies - dressed in bright clean sarees, many of them with weather-beaten faces - and the men who were on the right hand side - I saw my sisters and brothers in the faith.



What a privilege to share about how God desires all our marriages - and families to be united.  The reason a man leaves his parents and cleaves to his wife is for union.   How much everything around us seeks to split us up - especially our own selfish natures.    The second huge desire of God for us is to be holy.  Our Lord says 'be holy, for I am holy' - and purity seems the last thing possible in a world that celebrates sensuality.  But how gracious and helpful God is to keep us growing and being cleansed.  Finally, we talked about God wanting every marriage and every family to be one of service.  We are not here for ourselves, but to seek the good of others.  Our Lord Jesus laid aside His heavenly majesty, stripped Himself down to the clothing of the slaves of the day, and washed His followers feet.  How much each of our families should be serving in various ways of grateful obedience to God.

It was the first time I had talked in Hindi and been translated into Marathi - and soon after this my translator - our own Daniel Kautikkar - had the floor to himself.   Daniel took a session on HIV prevention.  We had our LCD projector - and the hall had electricity.  Thankfully for the entire period of the presentation!   Using simple Marathi, Daniel walked the 70 or so adults and 20 odd kids through the basics of HIV.  At the end of his talk, Daniel shared that we had come to do HIV testing on whoever wanted it.  He explained that we would counsel them before hand and then take a small blood test and give the results 2 days later.



It was now time for lunch.  Our JSK team of Peter, Nissi and Kamal had already eaten and were ready to start the HIV counselling and testing camp.   Amazingly, the folks started lining up.  Daniel ate a quick lunch while Kamal started counselling after the candidates had been registered by Peter.   Enoch helped out by taking folks to Daniel's counselling room and then bringing people to Nissi who took the blood samples.  As the numbers started to take off, Sheba also was pressed into service as a pre-test counsellor.


Then it was time to start again.  The threat from outside also started up.  We heard that a group of folks with sticks were assembling.  The coordinator of the programme went out.  Most of us stayed and prayed.  Later he said that one of the participants was a lady village pradhan (chief).  She had come with him and gave him a running set of instructions on what to do.  When to engage the others, when to pull back.  God had sent and angel, a calm young woman who brought dignity and savy to a tense situation.  And the prayers of those within continued to keep the peace.

After another session of lively singing - and another set of dealing with women affected by spirits - done with grace and confidence - it was time for another blessing. We had a very special person with us.  Shobha.  Shobha has HIV and shared her story.  Openly speaking in Marathi.  Giving her new friends a picture of her life.  Shobha also has only one arm.  She lost one of her arms as a child.  Her husband had died.  She raised up her 3 children by making papad with her one arm.  And then she started falling sick and came in touch with us at Jeevan Sahara.  In between, Shobha had also met the Lord Jesus.  As she stood in front of her brothers and sisters from the village, her face was lit up with joy.  What a privilege to see this amazing lady tell her story.

The counselling and testing continued and it was now time for our final session of the day.  The counsellors had their steady stream of folks and all roads led to Nissi who took the blood samples.  In one end of the hall Sheba and Shobha met with the women and discussed the challenges they faced.  I had the men with me, talking about how we should behave as men.   We looked at what roles we play normally, and asked ourselves how Jesus wants us to be.  Good stuff.  Time ran by too quickly.

And then the day was over.  There were still folks being counselled and tested.  We ended up doing a whopping 53 blood tests among the 70 odd adults!  Thankfully not a single one came back HIV positive!

It was still not clear whether all was clear in the village, but the first jeeps started back.  We got the phone call that there had been no trouble.  The sun was setting behind the forested hills.  Sheba, Shobha and the boys went for a walk down to the village hand pump. 


Then the final packing up and thanks giving all around.  A special prayer for having taken us through a testing time.


What a privilege to be with such dear people.  The genuine smiles of our new friends will linger on in our minds.

As will the scenery.


As I type these words a week later, its 9 PM.  We are back in our urban home with 24 hour water, linked up with the wide world through our internet connection, with Sheba working with Asha and Enoch on their homework and Yohan taking his bath.  Mum and Dad have gone for a 2 day outing.  So many blessings we have - and yet the greatest joy is that we were able to worship along with our new sisters and brothers, and we know a time will come when people from every tribe and tongue will be around the throne of glory.  We have had a small taste of glory under the woody slopes an hour and half, and a world away from us.  But a world that we are linked with through the love of He who loved us first.

A day to celebrate!

 Today was a red-letter day for us.

Dad and Mum went over to Bethany Hospital to meet his oncologist Dr. Ashish Bakshi and show him the blood tests and the CT scan he had requested over the weekend.  

The plan was for them to call Sheba and myself when their 'number' got close.  We would then drive over from Jeevan Sahara to have a conference with the oncologist and see what the next steps should be.  Usually Dad spends about an hour before he gets to see his doctor.  

This time was different.  When they arrived, they were whisked right in to see Dr. Bakshi.  No waiting this time.  So when we finally got the call, Dad had already been seen by his doc.

And the news is good news.

Nothing at all on the tests to suggest any need for further treatment.   Hooray!

Dad's cancer treatment is over for now - and by everything that we can see it has been a success!

And what a journey it has been.  Our initial concern when we got a copy of the ultrasound from Mussoorie showing a mass blocking the common bile duct.  Dr. Stephen Alfred insisting that Dad come down to Bethany immediately.   Mum and Dad being woken up by Stefan and Neeru and told they have to be out of the house in 3 hours to get the flight to Mumbai. Dad's ridiculously high bilirubin levels. The initial stabilising procedures.  Stefan and Neeru's coming down to help.  Then huge step of the major surgery - a Whipples procedure - to remove the large cancerous tumour and a goodly portion of Dad's digestive plumbing.   The post-op care - at the hospital and then at home.  Then news of one of the nodes being positive for cancer post-op and finally the 6 months of chemotherapy...

Well, the journey reached a milestone today.  A happy milestone that says all is clear... for now!

No mo chemo.  No more diet restrictions.  Dad and Mum are free to go back to Mussoorie.  Amazing stuff.  And all the fruit of so much love and so many prayers.

Dr. Ashish Bakshi would like to meet Dad again in 4 months.    The shift to surveillance has begun.  Pancreatic cancers are aggressive and could very well show up again, having micro-seeded in the initial outbreak.   But we will take one day at a time.  And we will celebrate this amazing recovery and the good news that nothing was detected in the blood tests and CT scan.  

We are so proud of how Mum has soldiered through all of this - especially being with us in the heat of Thane (and October being very much a second summer - we had 5 over 37 degree days so far this month).   Her dogged love.  Her on-going care and willingness to adapt and be a blessing to us all and a support and help for Dad is such an example to us.

We never imagined we would be living 9 months this year with Mum and Dad - what an amazing blessing it has been to us all!   We would of course never want them to be here because of cancer... but this has been one of the many silver linings of this extra-ordinary experience for all of us. 

We had a small celebration at supper this evening. 

Out came some cards and a bunch of flowers.   And a big thank-you to God for bringing Dad to this amazing place.

And a big THANK YOU to so many of you who have been reading along and praying - both near and far.  We have had folks 3 floors below us tell us that they are reading about Dad on the blog - and folks in remote parts of the world send emails (and prayers) our way.   Each prayer has been such a treasure - we will never be able to thank all of you in our extended family enough.

But suffice it to say - today is a day of celebration.   And so after supper we broke out the coffee and caramel icecream.  Speaking of which, I am off to get another bowl from the freezer...

The day to celebrate is not yet over!

Results day

We have an appointment with Dr. Ashish Bakshi - Dad's oncologist - at 11.30 this morning.

Dad has finished his 6 months of chemotherapy and has been asked to do some blood tests and have a CT scan done.   He will be showing the results to Dr. Bakshi and talking about the next steps.

This will be a mini conference for us with Mum, Sheba and myself planning to sit in on the conversation.

We are so grateful for all the prayers and support of various kinds by so many which has allowed us to see this day.

Stay posted!

Conscience Keepers - part 2

So what about our conscience?

Is it old hat?  An anachronism of a by-gone age? A feeble gasp of an old man looking blankly out of a window at snow falling in quiet whiteness?

Well, there never was a nice old time.

Human history is red with blood.  The miracle is how any shred of goodness has survived.

The fact of the matter is that we do know when something is wrong.  We have a gut feeling, a gnawing back in our heads that this is not kosher, that this is not done.

And that very fact points to something well beyond us.

Consider this - no one teaches a small kid to lie.  But we take to it like ducks to water.  And to some lying is even considered cute:  most children in India are 'taught' and execrable 'nursery rhyme' that goes:  Johnny Johnny, yes Papa? eating sugar? no Papa, telling lies? no Papa, open your mouth! Ha, ha, ha!

But somewhere we know that there is something called the truth - and if we bend it, twist it, refashion it, replace it with something else, that this is a lie.   And though we may use this reinvention and pass it off as 'truth' for our convenience, there is that little twinge there.

Why should we have something like that if all we are is protoplasm that seeks to move our genetic material forward into the future?

That twinge is one of the soft voices that points us, if we choose to listen to it, towards God Himself.

What is also beyond doubt is the way that our consciences can be dulled - and ultimately shut off or put in such deep-freeze that we end up doing the unthinkable, the repulsive, the bestial... and then wonder how we could have ended up there.

Consider the case of Hansie Cronje.  You may not know the name, but to me he was a far-off hero.  A decent bloke who loved his cricket and his country and captained an attractive South African team that was reintroduced to the world after the miracle of Mandela.

Cronje was also the first big cricket star to admit to match-fixing... it was dragged out of him, but he did testify that he had participated with a betting syndicate or two (though he claimed he never swung a match).

Hansie Cronje was finally banned from cricket for life.  Here is a take on his fall from grace that a local newspaper had when he finally admitted to being involved. Tragically, Cronje died in a plane crash about 2 years later.

Enoch and I watched a biopic on Cronje's life a year or so ago - a film called Hansie.  It's frankly not the best movie in the world, and I found the depiction of Cronje to be mealy-mouthed and too much of a goodie-two-shoes innocent - you kept feeling that 'everyone else was bad' but not dear Hansie.  But then when it comes time to fess-up, he doesn't.  And then when he finally gets around to it, he (in the movie at least) just seems too trite...

What did hit home, and powerfully too, was the gradual slide into a trap.  We may disagree whether it actually happened to Cronje or not, but the way the film shows him 'groomed' towards match-fixing is dead-on.   The bookies are nice friendly Indian guys who are crazy about cricket.  They love to hang out with the best of the world - and have cash on them in generous amounts.

And so it goes.  A nice-guy just 'gives' a few thousand dollars to Cronje.  Hey.  No strings attached.  I know you can use the extra little bit of cash.  Cronje accepts it.  A little extra to buy something for his wife with.  A mobile phone is given too.  Wow!  Remember this is the early 1990s when mobiles were from outer space.

And then after a few gifts and nice dinners in good hotels, a simple question.  What is the pitch like.  Hey, nothing serious.  Just a little information.  And some cash as a small thank you.

And gradually the stakes rise.  More information.  How about 'fixing' a dead game.  Just for the heck of it.  Why not just tell it to your team-mates as a joke.  See what they say eh?

The genius of the film is the slow and slippery way that Cronje's conscience is put to sleep.  A little bit here, a little bit there and then he is trapped.    The film alleges that it was the bookies who turned Cronje in when after a certain point he decided not to play along with them.  This sounds a bit contrived - but what we did see was that oh-so-subtle way of self-deception which lands us in the place where we know is wrong, but where we are.

I was reminded to this in the latest set of sorry skeletons tumbling out of the box - testimony which is being given about a fearless New Zealand cricketer Chris Cairns who seems now to have been the centre of a match-fixing gang.  A fellow player testifies about having used women and money to try enlist his help to swing games.

The Bible says at one point that 'the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure, who can understand it?" (Jer. 17.9).

So lets look closer to home.  It's one thing to shake our fingers at bad boys who make lots of bucks and then make some pretty immoral choices.

What about myself?

I remember an earlier version of me, when I was in 9th grade, handing in a music notebook as a student at the Deutsche Schule Bombay (the German School in Mumbai).  We were a 'big' class of 7 students (the whole school had 75 pupils and most were in kindergarten).  My best friend at that time was a super studious chap who had re-written his whole music notebook so that it would look neater.  I had not kept my note-book upto date and asked him for his 'rough' version so that I could copy and update my notebook before the end of semester grading.

So far so good.  Conscience asking a small question about whether I should copy his book, but quickly quietened down with the idea that it would anyway take lots of work for me to do so.

Well, I took his notebook, but kept procrastinating without actually updating my own exercise book. And so finally, when D-day came for grading, I actually took his rough book, put a new cover on it, and gave it to our teacher as 'my book.'

Remember we had only 7 people in our class.  And my handwriting was (and sadly still is) a barely legible scrawl, while my friend's writing - even in his 'rough' book was highly structured.

How could I ever even think I could get away with this?  My conscience had been silenced long before, and the blindness of evil had clouded whatever was left of my understanding.

On the day she returned the notebooks, I got 'my book' back from the music teacher.  I don't remember any more whether I got the 'F' I deserved or not.  But I do remember this.  She did not shame me in front of the class.  But she just looked me in the eyes and said "Andi."

30 plus years later, I still hear her voice.  And the voice I hear behind her words is that of Him who pricked the consciences of a mob of men intent on stoning a woman caught in adultery.  This was 2 millenia ago, but the question about why they were not dragging the man who was party to the affair sadly not too surprising given the violence towards women across the centuries.   Jesus started writing something on the ground, and the men began leaving, starting from the eldest.  Finally, Jesus asks the woman where her accusers are, asking her whether any one was there to condemn her.  She replies that there is no-one and Jesus replies: "Neither then do I condemn you, go now and leave your life of sin." (John 8.11b NIV).

How much our nation needs conscience keepers at this time.

Yeats said it well in his poem The Second Coming
 Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

We have people lynched for the 'crime' of allegedly storing cow-meat in their fridge - and 'investigative agencies' that actually 'test' the meat to see if it was beef after all (it was mutton - but the man is dead anyway).

We have children who are sexually assaulted - and Dalit kids being burned.  The list of horrors that our dear morning papers serves us up is stomache-churning.

We have wave after wave of folks who will throw ink on people ('non-violently mind you), while others will block roads, beat people up, burn cars and busses in order to be heard and seen and get their sound-bites on the evening TV news.

So are these our 'conscience keepers'?  They may use some of the words of morality, but their deeds show how hollow they are.  Bitterly sad to say, however, their raw power looks to be gaining the day.

2K years ago, a crowd of people thronged the streets of the 'City of Peace' and bayed for the blood of an innocent man.  How many of these would have been healed earlier by him, or had eaten some of the bread and fish he multiplied?  We really don't know, but we do know that many a conscience was beaten down in the murderous mob that cried out for the slow, painful, shameful and accursed death of being nailed naked to a stake.

Thank God.  Literally, that death was not the end of Jesus.  A third day resurrection set the world in a spin and gives hope for people with seared consciences like me.  My wickedness, my beating down of that which tells me what is right, my easy slip into things-that-are-wrong-but-feel-oh-so-good, is healable, restorable, because of the living Jesus.

Here's the catch - He knows how hard it is to stay true, to stay pure.  He has suffered under temptation - but did not slip like I do.  And instead of being proud of His achievement and scornful of my falls - He is the opposite: compassionate to me because He knows how much it hurts - and because He is the embodiment and source of love itself.

I pin my hopes on Jesus as the conscience-keeper, conscience-restorer and life-changer No. 1.

I still have a long road to travel in some areas, but I am so grateful for real victories in other parts of my life - thanks to my loving Lord.   And I don't only want my conscience clear and tender.  I want to keep seeing real

Feeling remorse is not enough (though most males think that if you feel sad about it that you are genuinely repentant).  I need to see genuine repentance.  And restitution and reconciliation.  And real change.  I can't do this on my own - even with the clearest and cleanest conscience in the world.  I need my Lord shape me on this journey.

And what I want for myself, Sheba and I want for our family and our country... and our world of course.   It seems absurd to think about a place and time where everything is right - but that's what the Bible talks about taking place sometime in the (near?) future.

Our consciences are antennas for a coming age of righteousness.  Which is why so many have over the eons tried to tune them out - and today's crop of assorted nuts seems oh-so-close to succeeding.

But they too will pass.  A new day is dawning.  And our pricked consciences are signs of the coming storm.  We need our consciences as much as ever - and real conscience keepers as opposed to ink-throwing (and worse) lumpen senas.

Lord have mercy.

Conscience Keepers - part 1

“When I was at Yale in the mid-1980s, studying at the School of Managment” the man said “Yale University was the conscience keeper of the nation.  Why has this changed today?”

The questioner was a well-dressed middle-aged man, and he was addressing Peter Salovey, the current president of Yale University at a high-tea reception in Mumbai last week.

Salovey’s response was telling.  He made a comment to the effect that “that is not language we would use today” before going on to make a fairly tame (lame?) statement that the university still grappled with hard issues and that students and faculty are dealing are in a dialogue about the challenging topics of the day.

“Conscience keepers” in deed. When I was at Yale in the mid 1990s I actually attended a class where a position was put forward that paediastry was not so bad after all – and who are we to judge adults who are attracted to children.

Conscience only makes sense when we hold to clear values of right and wrong.

Salovey is right to the extent that the language of even talking about conscience-keeping seems quaint and out-dated in a relativistic, make-your-own-values-as-you-go-along world that the university champions today.

But surely today is when we need consciences the most?

Consider the fall of the mighty Volkswagen car company.

Over my lifetime, VW has grown from strength to strength from being the ‘cute’ German car company to a global monster of a firm.  Last year it was ranked as the largest automobile company in the world by revenues (US$ 220 billion – 5 billion US$ more than Toyota). 

A dear friend of mine is a manager for exports of a needle roller bearing company in India which supplies many of the large auto-makers in the world.  He has told me about the stringent standards that the big car companies demand of them as suppliers – and how quality control does not only end up with the final product meeting a raft of different specifications, but how the car-companies actually have their staff come and inspect the supplier’s factories and do quality audits in the actual manufacturing plants that his company runs.  For a big company, if there is a recall of cars for any reason, it means huge losses.  And so they want to make sure that sub-contractors and suppliers will give them fool-proof products.

My friend’s company has been supplying Diamler Benz for a number of years with needle roller bearings – and experienced the Diamler engineers going over his company with a fine-toothed comb well before any contract was signed.

So a year or two ago, my friend approached Volkswagen to see if they would be willing to get needle roller bearings from his company.   After an initial inquiry, my friend was refused.  The good folks at VW who were dealing with my friend said that the quality control that the Indian company was offering did not meet up to their standards.  “But we supply Daimler” said my friend “and they are happy with our process.”

“Ah” said his counterpart “But we are Volkswagen.  We are not Daimler.”   End of story.

Well, not quite.

Last month the revelations of all sorts of skeletons in Volkswagen’s closets have started tumbling out.

This company, which has built its reputation on touting Teutonic engineering, has been systematically cheating the US environmental agencies for at least the past 7 years.  How?  They have installed a ‘defeat device’ into the diesel cars they made.  This software programme was able to ‘detect’ whenever their nitrogen oxide emissions were being tested.  While the emissions tests were being conducted, the car engine would adjust itself to give less harmful emissions and so meet the emissions norms set by the agency.   Once the test is over, the car would go back to its normal state, which emitted between 10 to 40 times the amount of nitrous oxides permitted in the US.  

How much extra nitrous oxide have the VW cars been emitting?  Estimates are hard to make but reports suggest between 14,000 to 59,000 tonnes of NO2 into the air.

Someone needs a conscience badly.   And this has been going on for years and years.  Each quarter profit margin boosted by illegality.  As time went on, the cover-up of this programme would have become wider and wider until it blew up and now the world knows the truth.

The VW deception has led to a loss of 1/4 of its market value.

We are living in an era where utilitarian values rule.  If you can do something and get away with it, what is to keep you from doing it?

Germans have often placed themselves as the good guys - the folks who play by the rules (as opposed to, say, a stereotype of the Greeks being lazy and corrupt),  The difference in cultural understandings of what 'debt' means can be revealing.  But these days the myth of the 'upright German' is taking a bit of a beating.  

With the big bad world of FIFA unravelling before us - with all the sleaze and bribery that the quadrillions of dollars minted from our global fetish with the beautiful game - is it any surprise that we should have new revelations tumbling from the closets?  Revelations that include the Germans?

This week Der Spiegel (the Mirror) a prominent German magazine has published its investigation that suggests that the German Football authorities (DFB) bribed their way into getting the 2006 Football World Cup awarded to them.

How do we judge right from wrong?

As much as we don't want to bring this up, there was a prominent German (or Austrian who came to Germany and then annexed his own homeland) who wrote the following:

"In this world success is the only rule of judgment whereby we can decide whether such an undertaking was right or wrong." My Struggle (Volume One, Chapter XII), 1925-26. 

Put simply - the man says that 'success is the only earthly judge of right and wrong.'

This man is the chap modern Germans hate most to be reminded of: Herr A. Hitler himself.

But the utilitarian attitude that grounds so much of our world today is quite happy to take this philosphy and run with it.

Cheating is not a matter of right and wrong - it is a matter of getting ahead.

We are currently reading through a whole sordid set of revelations about how top class cricketers have swayed games in return for money (and in some cases women) from betting syndicates.  More on this in another post.  

For me the most clear statement of this comes from a man who many lifted up as a hero.  Cancer survivor.   Tour de France winner.  Never took drugs - only worked hard" world champion cyclist Lance Armstrong.

Over his amazingly successful career Armstrong repeatedly said that he had never taken performance enhancing drugs.  His Nike ads boasted that others thought he was on drugs, but he said that he 'was on his bike, Busting my ass 6 hours a day.' Armstrong was lying.  The whole time.

And when he was finally cornered, he grudgingly admitted it.  But said that he would probably do it again if he faced the same situation:

One thing is clear.  Success reigns in most people's hearts.  As long as someone is getting things done - almost everything is forgiven.

But is that all there is?

History shows us where moral utilitarianism leads us to.  The 6 million deaths in Nazi camps continue to haunt us.

Who will stand up for the truth?  Is truth even relevant?   Is there a role for conscience keepers?  Or is that just a quaint hold-out from 'simpler days' in the past?

It is more than ever.   One man said something totally different to the world of success-driven ethics. He said that He was the way, the truth and the life.

More on this in the next post.

Stay tuned.

Ways of Seeing

Stefan and family are far away in the US of A.  And we have hardly heard from them over the past few months as they shifted over to Indianapolis as a fivesome and found new schools for the kids and set up home and hearth in a very different place than their previous New Delhi home.

But one thing seems to have continued - Stefan's sleep deprivation as he juggles various worlds and whirls around touching many different people.  He has begun his Masters of Fine Arts in painting at the Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI).  And has been busy with his church too - which runs the superb Harrison Centre for the Arts.

In fact, Stefan has already curated his first exhibition there: Ways of Seeing which collects some of the work which the Art for Change foundation has done in New Delhi - and for which Stefan constructed a special monster-size set of spectacles.

Take a look at the video below and see if you can spot Stefan in animated conversation - and see how some of the younger art-appreciators have taken to the 'big specs.'

Ways of Seeing, First Friday October 2015 from Harrison Center for the Arts on Vimeo.

No mo chemo ? ! ?

Dad was admitted to the casualty department at Bethany Hospital this morning.

It was not an emergency.  In fact, it was the last dose of a very wonderfully mundane set of chemotherapy doses that have stretched back the last 6 months.

Why at the casualty department?

Because Bethany Hospital’s 125 beds are completely full.  Yesterday there was not a bed free for Dad to get his chemo, so they postponed his final treatment dose till today.  This morning the hospital called up again to say that Dad would be admitted for his chemo in casualty because once again the beds were full and they did not want to delay the treatment further.

So we come to the end of another phase in Mum and Dad’s life.

What a year it has been!

We started out in January with the joyous surprise celebration (for Mum and Dad at least) of 100 years of their combined service to our Lord in India since 1964.

Then at the beginning of March we had a sudden overnight shifting of Dad and Mum to Thane from Mussoorie after we found out that Dad had what turned out to be a cancerous tumour blocking his common biliary duct.  This lead to the miraculous surgery at Bethany Hospital at the end of March – and a wonderful post-op recovery with us here.

But the biopsy showed that there was at least one lymph node was positive for cancer – it had spread at least some beyond the tumor which had been removed.  And so Dad started a 6 month chemo therapy using Gemcitabine as the molecule to knock out as many of the roving cancer cells as possible, while not knocking out too many of Dad’s healthy cells.

Those 6 months are now over.  Today was Dad’s last dose of the 6^th cycle.  Eighteen doses done.  Many prayers said and received from all over.  Much care by the Bethany Hospital staff.  Much love by the Thane Eichers young and old.  And much blessing to us as a family to have Mum and Dad with us for these past 8 months!

We will have a final CT scan next week to see if there is anything that has ‘cropped up’ in the mean time, but by all indications we are now ready to send Mum and Dad home.

So ready to go, that they are planning a quick trip down to Bangalore to meet up with some of their dear ones for a day or two.

No more chemotherapy?  No mo chemo?   That’s what we hope.

We are putting Dad back into the Lord’s hands.  We are very grateful for every day God has given us together.

I told Dad I would take one more picture of him as the last bottle was draining the meds into his chemoport – and then into the aortic vein and then through the heart to the rest of the body.   Here he is at the Bethany Hospital casualty ward getting the last bit of this chemo.

Lets see what the future holds.  Thanks for being along with us on this journey!