Skip to main content

The India where we live.



Early morning round of Sirmangni and Lakhnadon,visiting the palliative care patients open our eyes to various things that go on around us.We were met with the sight of village people standing in a que to collect water from the tanks in the lorry.Further we went into the village we saw bullock carts carting water in drums from hand pumps.Our boys tell us that the water is shared in the villages according to how many containers one can produce.
We reached Sirmangni and ask a gentleman standing by the roadside about the whereabouts of our patient.The first question he asked us was  ‘what is his cast? .’When we told him his second name he directed to us to a cluster ,a distance away ,from where he stood.A cemented road took us to a cluster of houses and we traced our patient who was away in the field already and so I guess was doing fine.Apparently he had this habit of walking to the field every morning.
Two hard truths hit me.
1)There is gross water scarcity in the area and for the villagers it is a way of life ,they have learnt to live with.
2)The second reality is that caste system in India is not going anywhere very soon in the future..
Just the other day we were reading about how India has surged ahead of China in the rate of economic
growth but for the rural poor the same vicious cycle of drought,debt,migration,subsistence,sickness and hard life is the reality.Will we ever see a dawn somewhere?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Feet in the water.

  Fifteen days of earned leave after working for two years,I was praying in a house group prayer and worship and pleading with the Lord to show me something ,when it was not forthcoming I surrendered to the Lord and prayed let your will be done and then I saw the Lord walking up a winding road and deep in my spirit I knew He was calling me to follow Him .I did not know where to but I thanked the Lord and said yes. I have been living more in the unseen world than the seen world. Suddenly out of the blue I received a message from Dr Arpit asking me to replace them in Madhipura  for a  fortnight. I needed to go because things were getting a little intense and I needed sometime to step back and mull some things over. I had no idea why the Lord was taking me back to the old world of EHA , mission hospitals and friends from the yore. Travelling to Madhipura , I  continnued to ask the Lord, 'Why this road? I had no idea why I was going  where I was going.I am glad I came because I could r

night-hunting.

 Monda suggested  we go  hunting. Dressed up to beat the rains and the unpredictable weather we ventured out at night with the two Dawas. Annie had baked a cake for Rumpanol.It started  pouring in spurts but nothing could beat the enthusiasm.The junior Dawa was to drive us to a place around fifteen kilometres up the north Sikkim highway.We would come across three rivulets of sort where we could possibly find the edible frog.The senior Dawa was already at the spot making a pathway in the jungle for us to proceed. We reached the spot at around eight at night.in the pitch dark one could hear the sound of frogs of all variety and we started seeing quite a few but none of edible variety.We shuffled around in the rain with an umbrella,raincoat and torches like Nancy drew exploring the grasses and having eye contacts with stunned frogs which seemed to have lost the ability to run .The two boys did a Tarzen and was lost in the jungle with a sling bag ,a torch sans any cover from the rain.While

Thank you.

 After almost five months of struggling with the nitty gritties the dialysis unit opened last week. We were able to dialyse our set of first three patients over the last few days. So much of effort,dissapointments ,struggles,joys and most importantly prayers have gone into the venture.Many who will never see the fruit of their prayers have invested their prayers into it. The day it started with many apprehension I was praying at the early morning hour and put my head on the pillow to rest and then just as I was about to sleep I saw a vision of Jesus on His knees interceding.That is how much my Lord cares for us and this morning while listening to Alistair I realised that He deals with us like a father does a five year old .That is how He sees us. Lord Jesus ,you are the crown on my head and the only thing I can take pride in.