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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