What gives

Trying hard to recollect a poem I read long ago -cannot recall the writer or the poem exactly.....hopefully my rusty brain will catch up sometime... I am no Mary to sit quietly at your feet and dream, I am she , who runs wild and fleet, I am the Magdalene How do I then love you lord? Supreme. To the extreme- like the Magdalene!

I t's Christ alone in majesty, It's Christ alone in purity, It's Christ alone in righteousness, In Christ alone ,I clearly see, It begins with Him to eternity... It flows from Him,the grace gently, It's Christ and Christ and Christ only, The measure,the scale- and the Christ in me!.

Travelled to Kalimpong for the week-end.I remember visiting the place when I was six.Had been there for an interview in SJC and to meet up with my sibling who was in the boarding school then.Allthough a stone's throw away from my state, never got around to climbing the hill to visit the place again. There was a surpressed air of anticipation and excitement as we climbed and did the rounds of the multiple hills-it almost felt like Mandrake's xanadu.The town on the hill-top seemed to be a meek town caught somewhere in a time warp.It had it's old world charm in parts-very much Kalimpongish!!-nothing new or shiny about the place-the baker's shop selling the gigantic buns,little wooden houses with tiny gardens,dirty-market place,the famous mela ground where the 15th august celebration is supposed to be second to none in India and ofcourse the very old Gompus and their momos.A typically company humour doing the rounds during the gorkhaland agitation went something like this-,...

I remember one of my friends commenting breezily-Sikkimese people are ritualistic .Born in a christian family and being brought up away from most of these rituals I wondered if he was right. Going through several works of research done by contemparary journalists on the origin and the rituals of Sikkim ,I realised he had got it right and yet there were several admirable things to be learnt from this land of rituals. 1) Budhism was brought to Sikkim by Guru Padhmasambhava(budhists believe him to be a reincarnation of Gautama Budha, born in a lotus ).He is said to have addressed Sikkim as 'Bayul Demazong'-'a hidden land of sacred treasures'.(a hidden life of sacred treasures!- blessing people and the land !-if internalised how powerfull!) 2)There is this common act of offering traditional scarves as a mark of respect on different occasions-this white scarf known as khada is supposed to be a mark of intent which says I honour you with the purity of flower and yet with the ...