XI Vellore: To Minister

The hill overlooking Vellore

The story of how Ida Scudder started the Christian Medical College Hospital of Vellore has a distinctly biblical quality. The daughter of Christian medical missionaries serving in Tamil Nadu early in the last century, Ida grew up planning for a very different future than that of her parents. While studying in the US as a young woman, she was called back to India to care for her ailing mother, which she did on the understanding that as soon as her mother was well, she could return to her life on the other side.

One night at a late hour, there came a knock at the door. It was a Hindu Brahmin. "Please come to assist my wife. She is labouring and the baby will not come. There is nothing more the midwife can do." Young Ida said, "I'm not a doctor; let me ask my father to come to your home." The Brahmin was aghast. No man could see his wife; only a woman might be permitted. Ida was distraught and helpless. The man left.

Later that night, there came another knock at the door. Hoping it was the Brahmin changing his mind, she opened the door to find a Muslim man. "Please help," he implored her. "My wife is trying to deliver and something is wrong. There is nothing more the midwife can do." Distressed, Ida replied to him that her father was the house's only medical professional and asked him to allow her to call on him. The man would have none of it; no man had set eyes on his wife except he, and so it would be. He left.

When a knock came the third time, Ida did not wish to answer it. It was a third man – a high caste Hindu - begging her to come and attend his wife in labour. "Something is wrong with the delivery. There is nothing more the midwife can do." Nothing could persuade him to allow her to send for her father. Ida collapsed in bed that night deeply troubled in spirit. She awoke the next morning to the dull thudding of drums. When she descended to the village square, she heard the news that she had feared: All 3 women had died the night before in labour.

Ida Scudder's comfortable life was shattered; her previous plans seemed trivial. She returned to the States to attend medical school, vowing to return and set up a hospital to serve the women of India. She was true to her word. After her graduation in medical studies, she found sponsorship in the Dutch Reformed Church and a patron to begin the creation of the Mary Schell Hospital for Women and Children, and the building was begun in Vellore.

Aunty Ida is truly beloved at the Christian Medical College Hospital, where staff and students have a deeply lived sense of her motto: "Not to be ministered unto, but to minister". Her ministry moved out into the rural areas where she had a mobile clinic (horse and cart) that served in the shade of the village tree. 

Ida Scudder's Mobile Health Unit (before the motor car)

Yet she knew that, for every person helped in the village, there were a thousand other people not receiving care in other villages. So she applied to start a medical college for women, whose programme she would oversee. Though her proposal was met with a certain degree of cynicism by local authorities, women signed up in numbers and the college was launched.

Today the breadth of the ministry is incredible: a modern facility with a staff of 8500, 1500 students, with a daily caseload of 6000 outpatients, 2500 inpatients, 150 surgeries, 50 babies delivered – and a staff of 20 chaplains.

With this image of Ida Scudder and her travelling clinic in our minds, David and I have decided that we will go to the CMC Rural Health Unit for a day of visiting and experiencing this campus of the Vellore mission. 

"Pick up that mantle" - at RUHSA

It is an hour and a half drive outside the city, along narrow roads of palm trees, busy stalls and small industry, school children returning home in uniform, enormous brick kilns beside great stacks of newly made bricks with pieces artfully removed leaving the shape of a temple.

We join the RUHSA staff in their regular morning devotion. The keyboard is fourteen inches long, however one of the chaplains is playing the harmonium, squeezing air into the back of the organ with his left hand, playing melody with his right.  And still another is playing tabla, with its deep interrogative sound. To be accompanied in our choruses by harmonium and tabla - along with David on the percussion chair - is a first for me.

The group that follows is the local "Community College", whose composition I have misunderstood and for whom I have mis-planned. This group is a one-year residential programme for young men who have not been able, for various reasons, to complete their public school training. It offers them the skills of air conditioning repair and auto rickshaw maintenance. I reflect a little about how we come to know God's direction for us in life, but David is the hit telling the guys the story of how he had his plans all laid out for himself when he was their age (it seems the Tamil translation for "rock star" is "rock star"), and how God moved him in a surprisingly different direction. "Still, I realize that I got what I asked for – but by an entirely different route than I expected." I tell the story of Elijah passing on his mantle to the next generation. God steers us where we need to be – if we will stay tuned, and pick up the mantle that falls near us. "Pick it up," I say.

Community College - Cultural Afternoon

Later in the afternoon, we wander past the CC men sitting in a covered workplace, where normally they would learn the fine points of motor mechanics. One of their number is standing and singing a local song; it is weekly shared cultural afternoon. He is followed by another, pulling lanky hip-hop moves to Indian quarter-tones on the CD player. Never would we see this in a 2&4-stroke engine class in Canada.

So, RUHSA is based on the belief that overall health depends not only on freedom from illness, but a combination of education and access to services, opportunities and employment. We hear about this from Reta Isaac, the director of RUHSA, and we eat with our host chaplain, Mr Joseph, who thinks he just might take some of my rendition of the Elijah story to the student retreat up the mountain this weekend.

Waiting Room at RUHSA

Our days begin with a savoury breakfast, and a cup of chai mid-morning. Lunch is at 1pm, some snacks around 5 perhaps and a dinner at 7pm or later. We tend to sing in the mornings and with student groups in the evening – keeling over in our rooms in the afternoons, yielding to the heat. It takes me a while to realize that, if adventures are going to be had while we are here, we had better get planning. One night, I invite anyone who will listen to come wander around Vellore by night. David and I get on the first bus coming across the front gates of the campus.

The bus (which costs 4 rupees or 8 cents a ride) drops us at the chowk (market) closest to the hospital, whose intriguing shops I have seen as we passed by it every morning. Fabric and saris, shoes and sandals, cameras and electronics, a fruit stand where we sample jackfruit for the first time and buy goa (guava) for the kids – all are bustling in the evening hour.  In an open area on the other side of the wide street, an enormous stage and seating have been set up, with a huge light-bulb silhouette of 2 local politicians poised at the gate. A crowd has gathered for the rally, music and voices blare, fireworks explode in the distance.

We are looking for an odd thing: a large jute bag to cover a box for couriering. This takes us off the main drag and further into the market each time we ask for directions. As we make our way along lefts and rights, we begin to find ourselves in a kind of market inner sanctum, an almost Dickensian labyrinth, covered with thatch and tarpaulin, where bright lights cradle stalls of every kind: stainless steel pots and pans throw a wide silver aura

an emporium of plastic and packaged household items almost obscures the shopkeeper in its midst, an orderly pharmacy sells remedies, a vegetable seller sits cross-legged amidst his bananas, cauliflower, chilis and papaya 

while at another stall a man meticulously prepares waxy green leaves which he tells me are curry. 

The tailor is surrounded by fabric of every colour, his pedal sewing machine before him

and the Muslim brothers next door display fabric for the custom sewing of a "suit", its exquisite embroidery ready to become the neck edge of the camise, or overdress, for salwar pants.

A cow sits languidly in the middle of the walkpath.

It is sheer magic. I am caught up in the mystery of every turn, a laugh caught in my chest the more I ask shopkeepers questions or request a photo. 'Yes,' they say in whatever language we've got. 'And take my buddy's photo, too! Smile, would you?!' they jostle each other. There is an unguarded willingness to be seen and known in India, the impulse for privacy satisfied at other times and seemingly disjunct from these open moments.

It would take a Canadian a lifetime to understand the subtlety of this public-private distinction. My own need for privacy is found most obviously in my wish for "personal space" – an elbow in my back in a line-up sends me into a silent tantrum, dignified old women ramming past my shoulder on a train baffle me. The rampant public throat-clearing causes me to want to turn to my neighbour and warn them never to move to Canada.

Back on campus, the tamarind trees are dropping their brown pods on the pathway every morning. The security guard who stands resolutely at the front of Alumni House has taken one apart and is sucking the sticky coating off its seeds. To my question, he nods and smiles. Yes, they are the very ones tamarind sauce is made of – acerbic, biting.

Low Cost Effective Health Care Unit with Mr Raja

Mrs Jennie greets us at the Low Cost Effective Health Care Unit one bright morning, offering chai as soon as we arrive. The facility is small, but treats a large number of people for medical and dental issues, dispensing at the pharmacy or referring on to the CMC Hospital as necessary. In the open courtyard, David and Nicole and I sit down, this time with no keyboard, with guitar and a bucket. A group comes to sit on the stone before us, parents and family mostly of patients, largely Hindu, entirely non-English speaking. I am getting used to this. I tell a Jesus healing story and sing a well-known chorus that I know can be found in Tamil and Mr Raja interprets for me. There is one comic moment when I say a single short sentence in English which takes him 5 minutes to render in the other language – to which I respond that I should know better than to ask a pastor to be my translator. He laughs and refuses to translate this.

When I sing Patrick's song "I Hav Luv and my house does too", throwing in the Tamil word "Anbu" for love, I have won them over. It occurs to me that it doesn't really take much to make friends if you really want to. When our presentation is over, we make to leave, but there appears a small crowd in front of me and Mrs Jennie explains that these people are asking for my prayer. My prayer? For sick people? In a hospital? I am thrown off by this request – unprepared, unworthy. But how could you say no and why would you? What have I been doing all these weeks at the two CMC Hospitals but turbo praying, reflecting, bible studying, relying on the Spirit, re-receiving the faith by the act of sharing it? I reach out and touch each face, praying for God's healing mercy, extremely moved, changed, baptised by the trust God has shown in me.

A Blessing

Rev Giftus, the world's most gentle man, has taken us up on our offer to return to Vidialayam School on campus, to sing with the elementary children a second time. We are wishing for some re-connection with these children, especially since everything we do is with a new group each time. Giftus tells us that the teachers were reminded at our last visit of how they used to have visiting musicians and performances very regularly at the school, and how that practice had fallen off. "She brought the music back," they said, making plans to pick it up again. I do believe this might be some of what we have been feeling our way into: What is the mission of people coming from so far away, from a culture in many ways different, hoping to avoid past abuses of western arrogance but having a unique set of gifts to offer? Simply reminding people of what they care for and who they are? I spend time with the teachers, telling the story of Mary and Martha - two sisters who care about the same thing but approach it completely differently. In your heart of hearts, which of these women are you, I ask.

It is this story that I think of again, as we prepare to join all the chaplains for a farewell luncheon on Friday. My notes of reflections and recollections, encouragements and future directions get lost on the way over to the hospital and the only thing remaining is the image of the hospitality that we have received at the CMC. "As we arrived at the Low Cost Effective Health Care unit this week," I say,  "we were asked if we would like to sit down and have a cup of tea. My thought at the time was that we should perhaps do the work that we had come here to do and have tea later. However, my host was firm: 'The tea is hot now.'" It was then that it occurred to me that I come from perhaps a bit of a Martha culture – one in which work holds a high value and gifts of hospitality come as something earned. I have experienced India and the CMC to be a Mary culture - a place where hospitality is what comes first – regardless of who you are and what you have come for. The tea comes before you do anything at all."

Our many hosts thank us for our time at the CMC and – in that way that comes so naturally to Indians – each and every one of them stands and sums up some aspect of the work that we came to do and thanks us in detail. It blows me away. They remember things large and small that we did, comments that participants have made, music that we have brought from Canadian composers to be used freely. I particularly appreciate Rev Sarah's observation that, while this trip must be a pleasure for our whole family, it also must have involved sacrifice for each one of us to be here. This is certainly true for Patrick, Nicole and Isaac, to whom home beckons all the time. Rev Finney remarks aloud that one of the things they have experienced in us has been, for Indians, a non-traditional family with a woman at the front of the stage, supported by her husband. I appreciate this bold acknowledgment of some of the subtle complexity of the Jonsson-Good ministry.

And so we load up a taxi to leave the Christian Medical College of Vellore on Monday morning, with encouragements about the next portion of our family's journey – into the unknown of free travel for the next 3 ½ weeks. This CMC has been a place of hospitality, of challenge, of prayer and tending the fires of faith, of ministering to people in the setting of a hospital – so often a literal cross-road of life. Still, there is no question that despite the intensity of the work, the striving and flexing of cultural understanding, the constant preparations and then throwing out the preparations, and the hours of singing – still – we have been ministered unto in this place. 

I think perhaps Ida Scudder might not mind that at all.

Goodbye to the College Chapel

The story of Ida Scudder is taken from the booklet found at the CMC: "Doctor Ida of Vellore" by Sheila Smith, Eagle Books No. 63. © 1950 Edinburgh House Press, London.

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X Touching the Hem of Vellore - CMC

The electricity has dropped out again, the room swallowed into black. The electronic keyboard ends mid-note, the numerous fans scattered throughout the college chapel lose their motor thrum and slowly drift to silence, my voice becoming a solitary echo in the room. It is the kind of moment I have often feared: What to do if the power goes out and I lose all my electronic supports? However, these small outages happen about a half dozen times a day in the CMC complex, so I have become used to them. We have dropped into absolute darkness in the middle of a complex action song in the women's hostel, lost sound on stage in front of 400 children at school, gone silent in presentations to student groups. After a couple of weeks of this, I now step away from the keyboard and simply carry on the song without missing a beat, counting on David and Nicole to drum it along for me or the group to simply carry on. And sometimes I notice, to my surprise, that my own reaction to it all is one of relief: I don't have to do this the way I always do this. I am going to have to find another way to get to my destination with this song. And everybody understands.

2nd year Med Students

Heema walks me back from Fitch Hostel, where we have sung together (no men allowed) in the evening. She is a first year allied health sciences student and she is having a hard time adjusting to the difference in food here in the south; she's from Himachal Pradesh state up north - where they have snow in the winter and more chapathis, less rice. It cracks me up to hear an Indian speak of adjusting to the food when the curry and rice diet has appeared very similar to me all month. Obviously I haven't yet begun to learn the subtleties of this country.

But, there are immediate differences. Leaving the north, we felt a wave of it as we stepped off the plane: the air undulates at 30-plus degrees. Lush palm trees line the streets, saris prevail in brilliant vibrancy. Skin is deep dark, and the Tamil language rolls fast like a wooden cart on hard road. There are monkeys living in the trees around our home on the campus; one of our host chaplains, Rev Arul Dhas, advises us to avoid the area around a certain tree as we tour the campus one evening: a female has just given birth and is on the defensive. 


Flying fox bats hang in the tall green tree at the end of Mango Road, muttering and flapping their large wings as they hang upside-down in the daytime.

Jalakantesvara Temple (1566 AD) in the Fort

Banyan trees stand curving and strong, with their long tendrils hanging down to the ground. I make a mental note to ask someone why there are bags attached to the ends of many of these tendrils along the roads and streets, and learn that it is a practise of offering a newborn's umbilical cord, hanging it on the tendrils of the tree, connecting to the source of nature.

Bananas hang from trees nearby, coconuts are piled up on spread blankets, the vendor ready to cut the end off its husk and inner shell, great sprawling heaps of watermelons stand like fortresses along the road.

Indian seed pods making a good shaker

And all I know is that whatever I have planned will not be. If I think it will be a small, intimate group, 300 students show up with technology, chairs and snacks. If I prepare for a large workshop, 15 or 1 comes. There is a keyboard, there is none. There is no pedal, the power cord doesn't exactly fit in the electrical connection or the sun melts the tape that is holding it in. A bible study that, to me, is a group conversation expects that I come with a 60 minute presentation. An emergency students' meeting pre-empts our evening devotion with med students and so we stay late. 

Strangely, knowing this has lessened any anxiety I brought with me about planning and presenting. I make two columns of possibilities in my little notebook and trust that blankness in front of people is an opportunity to ask for help or sing off-piste.

Singing at Vidyalayam (see how "a" is made with a curl)

Still, I made three columns for the children's oncology ward. I was nervous. Possibilities: 1) mostly little children who might need finger play, sound games and hug songs, 2) mostly parents with a variety of religions and languages - and who could use a word of Christian comfort 3) mostly older children which would call for a mix of stories and songs. Turns out to be Anshu. With a surgical mask around her bright little face, she joins us as our family band takes up the bench along the window, bringing her puzzles to the table. The doctors are late making their rounds today and the children will come as they are able. And so I join Anshu and the nurse in putting together puzzles. Isaac sits in too, beating us at cards, unfazed by the medical atmosphere.

Solving puzzles with Anshu

Anshu's energy is bright; this is her last "check-up" visit in 3 years, confirming that she is clear of cancer. She and her dad will return to their home in the northern state of Assam, 3 days' journey. He thanks God for her health. Younger Nikita joins us, trailing an IV tower; all that can be seen of her face is weary but willing eyes. As I sit with Nikita, arranging tiny wooden furniture in the dollhouse, Anshu comes near and matter-of-factly pulls out of a stashed purse a container of tic-tacs, shakes one out and gives it to her younger friend. Later, Nikita will open her fingers to give it to me.  Her eyes, over her facemask, have an almost apologetic look. The head wiggle means this time, I think: You understand.

Dj's children's ward drum

After the music with Anshu and Nikita and Roshan and Naim, (in which I have to guess by their eyes only if they are really smiling and singing) (and yes, they are), I am left with these children very much on my heart and mind. David and I return a couple of days later to visit them again. All have been discharged but Naim. His father, in long white Muslim garb and kufi hat, is glad to see us. Naim had been declared free of cancer last December and by January it was all back. He is the only son, the youngest after 6 sisters. He and his dad have been at CMC for 2 months now, away from their home in Bengal – also 3 days' journey from here. We visit him in his room, give him a funny Canada pen we have brought, pray with them. 

Dad takes the elevator with us. He is on his way to noon prayers at the mosque down the street. 

Triage at CMC

I am blown away by the breadth of the ministry in this place: the variety of needs, languages, spiritualities that all must be respected, the medical concerns that must be dealt with quickly and for little cost, the need for an institutional organization that can make it all work efficiently. We eat with international visitors most every morning and evening, people who have come on an "observership" to learn how it is done at the Christian Medical College, people who are here to teach laboratory procedures or quality control, people who came and got "hooked" on the place and return 1-5 times a year to both teach and learn. 







Elwyn from Birmingham says that people travel great distances for attention here because they trust that they will get "honest" health care. There is no bakshish at any level. Rev Pearson says "People feel the presence of God here. They say it over and over to us."

Worship Languages

Back home at nightfall, David and I wander up to the college store, to explore and try to memorise what is packed into its tight lines of shelves. As I sit out on the front step of the store, a group of monkeys swings into the yard in front of me, circling the trash can, reaching in to bring out bags of rice leftovers, pop bottles, banana-halves where someone has left the protective rock off the top of the dust bin. A late monkey approaches, trying to near the group, the food. She is limping – no, not quite - she is favouring something, holding it like a soft thing, dragging it slightly along the ground as she crawls. The other monkeys do not allow her near, threaten her to a distance across the street. As she hobbles away to sit and watch the others eat their fill, I see it: her own newborn, not long dead.

Nicole on the mountaintop

"What story should I tell?" I ask Serene, who is 11 and the daughter of the pastor, as we make our way to the Rehabilitation Chapel on Sunday morning. "Maybe the one about the woman who touched just the hem of Jesus' cloak?" she offers. Such a story for India: Jesus in a crowd that is pressing in on all sides, a woman who is untouchable, but who dares to reach toward the healer. Jesus says 'Who touched me?' and you can almost hear the disciples laughing: 'What do you mean who touched you? We're in India, dude; there is a billion and a quarter people here.'

Go ahead and reach. Ask for what you need. Lay it out there. God is listening.

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IX Christian Medical College Hospital, Vellore

Click to hear the South India morning as you read on:

It is early morning in Vellore. The residence and campus of the Christian Medical College Hospital begins a steady modulation into day. Bulbuls, parakeets and hoopoes take up a morning cry from the overhanging tamarind trees, rising in argumentative pitch until the trucks and autos passing outside the campus walls take over.

The CMC in Vellore is a small town. Separated between hospital campus in the busier downtown and college campus in Bagayam a few kilometres away, it is a massive organization: a modern facility with a staff of 8500, 1500 students, with a daily caseload of 6000 outpatients, 2500 inpatients, 150 surgeries, 50 babies delivered – and a staff of 20 chaplains.

On our first 2 mornings on site, a nice air-conditioned car has been sent to bring us from campus to the hospital, with careful rendez-vous at the transportation department or main reception near the central chapel, lest the Canadians get lost in Vellore traffic or hospital corridors. But, we have told our host, Rev Finney Alexander, that we like the adventure of the autos (motor rickshaws) and can safely negotiate with the drivers about the "varying" prices of the drive. We are trying to break out of a certain "bubble" that we know we live in as westerners visiting this country in comfort. Paying for all things has turned out to be David Jonsson's job; negotiating with the drivers is Linnea's skill set. Having a sense of direction comes naturally to neither of us, however the family has developed a certain instinct for getting places that has worked reliably so far.

  

in the Christian Medical College Hospital, Vellore

We spend our time shadowing the chaplains, singing in their devotions and services, leading some choirs (adults and children), increasingly speaking with student groups about our musical life of faith, and sometimes teaching liturgical music leading or biblical storytelling. It is stretching us in every way. 

Ida Scudder Center for Women and Children

I sometimes have a keyboard, and other times do not, which has caused me to rely on Patrick and David for guitar playing, to sing unaccompanied sometimes, and to dig into the creative recesses of my brain for alternatives. This is very important when one has done a job for decades and has repeated herself too many times. David plays drum kit when there is one, often playing the chair with the sticks he brought from home; however he has played a child's toy drum once or twice and is good with a box. Nicole plays a tom and sits in with a shaker regularly. When Isaac is not playing the LCD projector, he takes up the shaker, too.

Christian Medical College Hospital

Indians are reputed to be spirited singers and that has been true for us. We sing with many student groups, and young adult and children's choirs. They bring to their singing a heartfelt gladness and youthful true sound, as well as the earnest desire to do it right. I suppose that, as this is a university campus whose members are some of the country's best students, it makes sense that they would be serious students of music, too. It is my job to honour the desire for excellence - and yet disperse it a bit with the challenge to be authentic and passionate - a risk for any choir.

This is my job in Canada as well. 

Children's Choir in the Chapel

I love the moment in music leading when a glimmer begins to appear in the group – a slight adjustment of posture, a widening of the eyes, an expansion in the air – an elation as singers begin to perceive the power of their own singing. Polite attention gives way to shared Voice and the group becomes one – more than the sum of its parts. 

The children in the 4 choirs we have sub-let for these 3 weeks have a big voice and are full of fun, though very respectful. They sit on the cool stone floor of the chapel in which we practice, the boys on one half-circle and the girls on the other. Our voices rebound throughout the circular room with its vaulted ceiling  – sometimes an aquarium-like confluence of sound, sometimes pure peals of choral bells. 

College Chapel

The difference in my western style of group leadership is apparent when we lead young adults or adult professionals. I am used to a certain amount of speaking to and directing of groups, balanced with a back-and-forth engagement with its members. In India, this is foreign, awkward. I will ask a group if they know a certain song, if they need more time working on a part, if they have ever had the experience described in a passage of bible, and it will be hard to get a sense of the response. This is partly because I am not sensible to the slight mannerisms and facial gestures that are totally clear to Indians: a wiggle of the head means yes, but I sense that it can also mean "I wish I could say yes".

I am glad to find that I know so much of the repertoire sung here at the CMC. I realize that my entire life of faith: my agnostic childhood, my Anglican youth, my teen evangelical background, the spectrum of United Church Canada belief, my travels in Canadian and American denominations and regions, our time in Australia/ANZ, and my experiences with a diversity of spirituality in the world, have led me to this moment.

I can draw on language that is an integration of all that I have experienced and still feel true to what I really believe.

However, the big hit of the tour is The Rap.

That's Matthew 25: "Jesus, when did I see you hungry? When did I see you scared?... You know that I care. But hey – when did I see you there?" The crowd – children or adults – begins to smile and even giggle. A bible passage as a rap; imagine that! They ask for it again and again. I tell them that we will repeat it only if they rap the refrain with us - which they do. And then they ask for it again.

We have spent time with the parents and very little ones in the children's ward of the subsidized hospital, preschoolers in mama's arms, grandmothers sitting on chairs with little ones clinging to their legs, a newborn lying on dad's lap with feeding tube hanging. One nurse translates everything I say into Tamil; the chaplain translates into Hindi. Everything takes 3 times as long in Tamil.  "God is so good..." Dad asks me not to sing the song with "boo" in it while new baby is sleeping. I tell the story of the Prodigal Son as an expression of comfort, mistakes, jealousy and a Parent's uncomplicated love; most of those sitting in the room are Hindu. I simply end: "That is what God's love is like" and some parents nod.

Autos (Our Favourite)

"If you sit down on the Jesus Bus, it is a bumpy ride..." Quick adjustments. My mind is racing overtime even as I try to tell the story of the man whose friends lowered him through the roof toward Jesus - to primary children at the school and then to health care professionals in a devotion. What are the children thinking about the many people they see with paralysed or amputated limbs around here? What are the doctors thinking about the balance of prayer and medicine? What can I say about "When you did this for the least of these..." when I have just nodded, but not given money, to the grandmother seeking a coin in the street market? "Get on the Jesus Bus", seen on an Indian road, with flashing coloured lights, brilliant side-lettering and painting, is a different ride. I know nothing! What am I doing here - telling you about faith?

at Vidyalayam Primary School on campus

Night has fallen, as it does at precisely 6pm here. We have sung after worship with nursing students late into the evening. Patrick, Nicole, Isaac, David and I make our way across the still boisterous street fronting the Christian Medical College of Vellore, negotiate an auto for all 5 of us at a night price and squeeze in together, looking forward to the dinner held late for us back at Alumni House. 

With Isaac in the rear well behind our seat and the 4 of us seated together in the back seat, our driver bids a teen to hop in with him and all 7 of us motor down the main drag, passing buses, swerving around scooters, narrowly missing men on bicycles. His seat-mate is clearly his younger brother, perched up front with his arm around his elder, maybe learning the hair-breadth skills of auto-driving as we roll. The two talk and laugh comfortably together, hardly aware of us as the lights of the street pass us noisily by. And strangely - in this one moment of finally being not really noticed here in the heart of India - I feel a bit of that bubble pop. And I settle a little more fully into this bumpy ride.


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VIII Amritsar (by Isaac JG)

 Isaac takes the lead on the storytelling this time. I want you to know that he told me how to direct the filming of his monologues and planned his presentations solo. 

 Our time in Amritsar began with our first bicycle rickshaw ride into the Old Town. In a loud, second-floor hotel room with 2 double-beds for 5, we attempted to sleep early so we could rise at 3:15 to make our way over to the Golden Temple. Prayers begin at 4:00am, when the Guru [Holy Book: literally Darkness-Light] is processed into the Temple.

Isaac will take you through town on our Amritsar Day. That night, he and David and I rose to meditate in the temple court surrounding the holy "lake", along with masses of people from all over the world. Our friend Ad Purkh Laura had told us that we could help serve the free meal that is offered every day of the year at the temple, so we walked up and were given the job of passing out metal plates to diners from out of a box large as a utility trailer. We joined in the breakfast welcoming until Isaac's working partner – a complete stranger - took him away for morning tea behind us. Together we ate our breakfast with a roomful of people sitting in lines on the dining room floor – almost the last to leave as the clean-up zamboni  swooped in to clear the floor. We left the marble halls of the Langar (dining hall) mid the metal cacophany of plates being flung into great steel washtubs, on their way to the volunteer washing team.

Join Isaac...(click on the video photo here):

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VII. Dharamshala: Our Heads in the Clouds

The clouds have slowly settled upon the mountainside of McLeod Ganj. A deep chill passes through our many layers of clothing – for me a ridiculous mix of Indian dress, sweatshirt, knitted sweater, dupatta scarf, Nepalese woolen socks and Birkenstocks. Our driver, Kewal (Kayval) Singh, has expertly manoeuvred our six-seater up the switchback road, bringing us at the end of the day into what is a little Tibet. A different world.

The town is perched on a steep slope of lush green, with terraced fields, cement-wall houses built in layers on the incline. The main chowk, or square, is a tight little circle of 3-storey, lighted restaurants and businesses, with narrow streets leading away, up or down hill. As the evening deepens, the shopkeepers whose businesses have been open along both sides of each street begin to bring in the wares that have been displayed on the steps out front, pulling down their great metal rolling doors with a roar.

There is a deep sadness that pervades the air here, an inexpressible grief. Yet the streets are busy. Maroon robed monks and nuns make their way through the town, greeting one another, sitting in the cafe, talking on cell phones. The colour is shared by other Tibetans and foreigners and pilgrims. Oriental art, blankets, Buddhist symbols, metal statuettes and jewelry, inspirational wall hangings, line the streets. This is the home of the Dalai Lama, leader of the Tibetan Buddhist faith community and the spiritual and political leader of Tibet in exile.

Large signs on every street show the names and the faces of Tibetans who have died for their country after it was overtaken by China. I am deeply affected by the pictures of those who have set themselves on fire in protest, explain it as best I can to Isaac who surely feels the change in atmosphere here in the highlands. "Why would anyone set themself on fire??" asks Patrick. It is the last resort of those whose anguish has not been heard.

We have asked Mr Singh to park and wait for us while we browse a few hotels, much to his chagrin; he calls Rev Stanley back at the CMC, wishing we had taken the nicer hotel he had been directed to. We wander the streets, evading hotel touts and decide on the modest Om Hotel, affiliated with the Namgyal Monastery. Down a set of stairs from an almost-alley along the mountain edge, the hotel is simple. We take the last double-room.

Near bedtime, as we all sit on our beds wrapped in blankets, visiting the internet in each our different ways, we begin to see our breath. Next morning, after a difficult sleep in our unheated rooms, we learn that the temperature has dipped to 2 degrees overnight.

Now with my Tibetan socks and multiple layers, I am prepared for a day of sidestepping the scooters along the descending streets of McLeod Ganj, and we make our way to the Tsuglagkhang Temple, monastery and museum. The complex is properly visited (circumambulated) in clockwise direction. As we do so, the monks arrive for their devotion. Their rich maroon robes exchanged for deep yellow, they sit cross-legged facing each other on 2 sides and begin to chant. It is a sound from the depth of the mountains, a primordial rumbling that seems to stop time. David and I are transfixed; Isaac kneels.

Mani Prayer Wheels filled with thousands of mantras

Turning all those mantras

with prayer flags

Inside the Temple

Back Om, we give the kids money to cover their lunch on their own at the cozy little restaurant attached to our guest house, and David and I go off in search of something Tibetan. In a small sun-warmed lunch room, as we attempt to understand the difference between momos (gyoza) and thenthuk (noodle soup), we are helped by a young PhD student from the US. Alex has been in the country many times and can interpret some of what has not been explained to us in this mountain refuge. He relates that, on his trip up the night previous, he got on one of two buses headed up our way and witnessed, as they neared Dharamshala, the bus in front of them slip sidewards off the road, rolling over and over with baggage spilling and passengers obviously tumbling inside. He said, "We stopped and I had to get out and walk and smoke a cigarette; I was shaking all over. Then we all got back in our bus and drove away. All the locals slept. I couldn't fall sleep all night."

Next day's detour around the fallen bus

We return to our little place to find the kids taking it easy online again, having chosen momos for lunch too. Isaac begins to fade and we suspect altitude sickness. He groggily asks what medicine is available for "the common barf". 

David and I are so aware of how safe we have been, how easily that is changed, and what a privilege it is to be here, ascending the mountain into others' lives for a short while. My partner turns on our rented heater. I re-braid Nicole's hair. Patrick sits at the window seat laughing at the thunderous noise as monkeys run racing and fighting on the metal roof above our heads.

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