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...