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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VI. The Prayers Go Up: CMC Ludhiana III

On Retreat

Not a day goes by that a student does not come to me and ask me to pray for them. They are just beginning a course of education here at the college hospital which will be their journey for life. Many have made a commitment to work in an outlying area for two years as soon as they graduate. Many will emigrate, especially to the United States and Canada. Rev Stanley says there is a great exodus of Indian physicians, that India is the single greatest provider of doctors in the world. Some will stay and serve their own people. All of them are on the cusp of something massive in their lives. What they ask me to pray about, however, is that God would direct them to greater faith and give them guidance in how to become better followers of Jesus. How humbling.

Is it a western thing or simply a universal plight to not notice that one has stopped being a youth? To try to cling to whatever chic, slim, radiant, muscular, sharp, fast, sexy that one can recall ever possessing? I am an elder here. I am twice everybody's age. I am "Mam", someone to respect and listen to, to ask to pray for you. At home, I feel the loss of the things of the past but I can't quite put my finger on the gain of these gifts of maturity that are a given here in India.

It is a cool day with the threat of rain when we and 80 students board the college bus, headed on a "retreat" to Chandigarh, a nearby city. It is a time for student recreation together and to get to know this state a bit better, as many come from far away. The singing begins as soon as the bus lumbers out of the driveway. It is the boys who begin, sitting together in a clump in a large front 'cabin' at the front with the driver. They are belting in Punjabi, with good humour and male energy. The young women, seated together and many 3 to a seat so all aisles are taken up with an extra set of legs, start up their own songs – in Hindi. The road is full of honking and passing vehicles, conversations bursting loudly all around me; the voices are multilingual stereo to my ears.

The BoysSing a Punjabi song – a short clip

In Chandigarh, our family leads a short time of singing with the group in the Jeevan Jyoti Church who are hosting us and feeding us lunch, and I take the time to describe Canada, taking steps across the floor, marking province to province, and saying one thing about each. We lead them in "My Paddle's Keen and Bright" - the most popular suggestion from Facebook friends when I asked for their votes on what Canadiana to bring on this trip. 

David plays the chairs, Nicole solid percussion, Pj chording expertly

In response, the group shares a Punjabi song and then a Hindi song with us. I ask Roomi and Shikha if they will sing it again for me when we are in a quieter place, so that we can really hear it. It is beautiful and simple enough that I believe we can learn it.

The Girls Sing a Hindi Song "Stuti Aradhna" 

- with words written somewhat phonetically. Hint: Let Roomi and Shikha be your song-leaders in worship this Sunday by playing this clip. Put your e-mail address in a note in the Comments below if you would like the LCD projection of the words, transliteration and translation.

Fuse insulators become art at Nek Chand's world famous Rock Garden in Chandigarh

As we begin a visit to the famous Chandigarh Rock Garden, the rain begins to fall. A chilly shower that soaks our various sweaters and camises and jeans (on days off, students dress western). 

Mosaic Path

Spot 3 Jonsson-Goods

It fills the ground along the labyrinth of art through which we walk. The Rock Garden is an ongoing creation of Nek Chand, who began secretly creating beauty out of broken and discarded items in the 50's in an old gorge (a recyclist's dream art exhibit!), and since he was discovered, has been recognised locally, nationally and internationally for his innovative artwork. 

We trace our way around puddles on stone mosaic ground, walk alongside walls of patterned rock or multiple porcelain fuse plates, into a courtyard with sculpted waterfall, past a sentry of tile. The rain falls on it all. Not one student has a raincoat on. "There is no custom of wearing them," says Rev Stanley; he gives umbrellas away.

The morning of our departure from Ludhiana CMC, I feel a strong mixture of gratitude for this extraordinary hospitality and regret: one week is clearly not enough. We have only just fallen into a kind of routine with the college, only just become confident in finding our way around, only just noticed that some staff and students have become special friends, only just begun to savour the similarities and differences in our liturgical cultures. I can only hope that the loss of that first week of Ludhiana time (with our visa delay) can have the effect of heightening the conviction, on both parts, that we must return. 

Mrs Renuka and Rev Stanley stand with us as our driver, Mr Singh, expertly ties our belongings to the roof rack of his cab, for the long drive to Dharmshala. We do not leave until he – a faithful Sikh - has had me pray for our journey.


Dear Friends,

We continue to inch nearer our goal of covering our flight costs To, From and Within India and ask you to consider donating to our efforts with any amount, small or large. If we can reach our goal of $15,000, we are keen to fundraise for some musical instruments to schools that we visit!

Donate to the Jonsson-Goods' Flights of Song