What gives

Christmas is come and gone-as days go by ,I remember the christmasses and the holidays spent at home .It all sounds so incredible........I remember chasing wild ponies in the haystack...me always trailing behind...playing bang-bang....hide and seek.......hanging the socks on christmas trees....waiting for the dawn to come....snuggling inside the quilt in the december cold with warm milk and christmas cake...opening our gifts with eager anticipation and innocent joy.....it has been five full years since I have been home for christmas. It looks like Omar Abdullah is going to become the CM of Jammu and Kashmir!Looking back to his impassioned speech in the parliament sometime back when he was in the news which sounded altruistic enough,it sure makes me want to believe that winds of change are blowing all over India . Just today one of my friends made a very strange observation.No offence intended to anyone, but she feels that tamilians sure like to be photographed.....be it their magazines...

What do you write about?Everybody in India atleast seems to be full of the Mumbai carnage 26/11 as they say it....I quietly watch it all apalled but no comments........Bush gets booted in Iraq..what did he expect....?My first reaction is oh no! my cousin's book will get out-dated if he does not publish it fast. I feel old, old as history itself-I want to go back to being the child I am ...is it too much to ask? The news channels quote Amir...says...,Amitabh .....says....their blog items are news........what does the common man say????-Is R.K.Laxman still around?

It is almost morning and I am at the library hitting away at the key-board .Just finished a caeserian section.I will be travelling in the next few days all the way to the chill of the mussoorie hills.Six days is a long time to hole myself in a retreat centre .Looking forward to visiting 'Kakeda' in CP with my sister and cousin on my way back.I doubt if I will be able to enjoy the heavy stuff they serve anymore.I have this special fascination for these desi hubs...Lord teach me to rest in you and to trust you to take care of my responsibilities.....teach me to experience the peace of just being etched in the palm of your hand....just being your child......teach me to be a good child,a good leader,follower,daughter,friend,colleague,aunt, a good human being .

What a strange way to celebrate my birthday.For the first time in my life I did not own it .It was like as though I was just a spectator standing some steps behind and watching it all from a distance.Almost everybody who mattered remembered my birthday-it seemed atlleast most of them did and the staffs were overwhelming in their generosity with blessings.I got flowers and more flowers-got me worried about the campus flowers and yet the excitement of the history which was made yesterday made it all so insignificant. The telephone lines were down and so in-coming was all that was possible-one by one one people remembered.....dad,mom,agya,aie mimi,amchung,sanu machi,agya PG,aie diki,Johnson,sheba who very sweetly prayed for me...the juniors and the mess guys...the staffs...the TB guys who did an inspirational prayer,CHDP guys,Pradhans,the OT people.........the office guys...... I still have not wished myself a happy birthday as yet!

Strange, the chord an election so far away can strike here in one distant corner of India.As a child, reading about the american civil right movement,Martin Luther King Jnr became my childhood hero.I remember carrying his autobiography close to my chest even as I devoured his eloquence,his passion ,his commitment to christ and therefore his commitment to the cause that ultimately cost him his life.I mugged up his 'I have a dream speech..'and like a lunatic used to rattle those speeches in front of the mirror. I am a sikkimese ,born and brought up in India,a women to boot and now a missionary of sort. Yet today when the much awaited american election news poured in there were tears in my eyes...why did I want Obama to win...america to win so badly??

Leaning across the table pastor sandy asks me what is your biggest challenge? Without hesistation I say ‘myself’. I have been working on myself eversince. Two more weeks and I become a year older. The last year has been a defining year full of hopes and joy,dissapointments and killing depression,a year when I have had to redefine the values and priorities in my life...a year when I have had to disown many baggages,a year when I have surprised myself beyond my own understanding and also a year when i have withnessed the Hand of the lord first hand...It has been a year when I have seen life at its cruellest best and yet I have survived.It has been the year I really grew up. Three cheers for the miraculous human spirit that God has created !!

After running around from Kolkotta to Delhi and back,reminiscing and going back to the college days,meeting up with friends one had left behind long back…walking into the German embasy to see gracious people who made the visa procedure simple...i fly to Berlin for the ERS. The congress is at Messe Damm.The church guest house where i am to stay is five stations away.Walking on the street from the station to the venue there are scores of people from just everywhere walking with me....i meet a professor from NewYork based in Puerto Rico who walks with me as all of us are searching for the venue...he says he has many indian friends and they are very loyal...a picture of a warm hearted sardar comes to my mind. I get myself registered and am walking back and who do i see?Dr.Peter Davies walking along...casually.We plan to meet the next day during the congress and I walk on back to my guest house. The guest house is a decent arrangement with a furnished bath and an attatched fully furnished k...

Things are happening around us every day.We hear about churches being burnt,christians being killed in Orissa,in Mangalore and God knows where.We have seen many a TV channels flashing the news gallore.Many gracious Indians speaking against the violence.. In all that is happening around us how do we as christians respond? In the mayhem and confusion where do we go to look for the grace that apparently alludes us.There will be baggages and more baggages....pray that the lor will help as many or all to overcome so that they may get the crown of life...Amen.

The work is killing .I hardly find time to myself.The little time I get I often find myself slumped in front of the telivision.Got a cable connection just a week back and I am already having doubts about it.I haven't been able to find one intelligent channel that keeps me interested or teaches me anything of value.My lap-top lies neglected in one corner of the room un-touched ,beckoning me to write something beyond my own personal pain and struggles.The adjacent states of Bihar and Orissa are drowning and burning literally.One by the element of man's interference on nature and the other on quirkiness of man's nature.Orissa is burning..burning...and burning,whereas Bihar is drowning...drowning ...and drowning.How will the balance be brought,wil Orissa drown again like it did the last time and will Bihar burn once the public get their breath back.

Did two sub-total hysterectomies-am desperately asking myself,what next?The work has become hectic with every department running at break-neck speed.Everyone seems motivated and working to the maximum.The wards have never been so full.We actually had to turn away people come for billing since the HMS started rejecting the charts reading 'the wards are full...

What do you do when your sense of referance and one of your centers get suddenly pulled away from your feet?You lose the anchor that keeps your feet on the ground....you start to float......the delimna is whether to entertain the fulcrum at a periphery or completely anhilate it . Ideally God is the center of a christian's being .Thank God for it.No matter how far the prodigal may have gone he has ways and means of putting us back in the fold. Man's struggle and God's workmanship-the secret is to 'Let go and let God'-what a relief!

Its 2am in the morning and I am stuck at the hospital waiting for a breech baby to be born.Opened up another badly mucked up surgery case.Wh o will think I am a physician with an inclination towards res piratory medicine? This is what working in a deprived area is all about. I got in touch with myself today .I stayed stunned the whole day and by night I was laughing all the way to the bed and hospital. I treated myself to a luxury of a real strong jamaican coffee-that is saying quits to the night of sleep. Caeserian section beckons me to the the operation theatre-I can hear the anaesthetist dragging her sleepy feet to the OT door. I wonder how long it will be till I get a good night's sleep.

I tell my friend I am in my own world,deliriously happy. The first thing he asks me is are you in love? Strange! I have been doing my own little things being sinfully selfish indulging myself in small things that give me immense happiness. I bought myself some lamp-shades,one in particular was after my own heart.I was all over Birganj,Ranchi and DTO on the lookout and as it always happens I come across this small shop in the by-lanes of Kolkotta that says 'Lamp-shades' and sells only lamp-shades.It was there in all hues, colours and materials.Paper,silk and satin. Amazing ,and I thought shops like that had stopped existing. The other thing that has happened is I have re-discovered my love for music and writing.My home theatre system which was a gift from my cousin is being used to the maximum and I discovered this collection of MP3 which took me back to my growing up years..some favourites from dire-straits,cat stevens,Eric clapton,Smokie....remembered my older siblings playing...

My Dad's cousin. My dad had cousins we met once in a while.They stayed in the capital and visited us occassionally.They were clannish,extremely sophisticated and respectful because my father was older than them.They had children who seldom registered and had to be introduced afresh everytime we met .In other words we never grew up together. In the early 2008,all of a sudden three men of their family passed away.Two were sudden and one was anticipated.As we watched the scenario from a distance one wondered who would console whom.Each family member left had lost someone from their immediate family who was a pillar for them.To make things worse the matriach of the family was still alive.