What gives

It is little more than a fortnight since I have come home.I was actually to be home less than a fortnight but my IELTES result which is essential for my visa was postponed on two occassions so I am home longer than I anticipated.This time it has been postponed for a week more, so I get to meet my older sister who is here at the end of the month.I consider this the most precious days of my life. Farmlife is a different ballgame alltogether.There is always work to be done and fruitful work for that matter.I find the whole thing very restful. Yesterday I spent the early morning picking a huge bunch of mustard leaves ,the green fresh ones and sent half of it to the bible camp for the youth that is going on in the church and seperated the yellow ones to dry them .I am learning to make 'gundruk' a traditional nepali dried mustard leaf.My father gets mighty impressed to see me show interest in the farm work.I also picked up the first brocoli of the season to be sent to the church.L...

Yesterday the workers cleared one part of our kitchen garden to put in new seeds.They unearthed mamoth-sized raddishes ,like the types I had seen during the south american revival times.Each one weighing a couple of kilograms.My dad thought that it might be much too ripe and was asking the boys to use it as cattle fodder.I had other thoughts.I spent half a day cleaning and cutting them and making simple pickle in lemon water with green chilly,giant sized ginger ,salt and a herb I am not sure what they call.It is in the sun . I also made a lot of raddish chips some of which I packed for my cousin and a senior church friend.The dinner was raddish parathas made in pure home-made ghee.Even my diabetic uncle who is on insulin and very careful with his food ate five mini parathas.My cousin who had eight mini-parathas argued that it was like eating two,looking at the size of the fare. In our family reading we are looking through the upper room discourse and it's significance as being t...

The church today was a simple affair.A young preacher preached about choices and destiny.It was precise,simple and profound .The concluding verse was John 15,stressing the relationship between abiding and being fruitful. We sang some old hymns of the yore and we prayed...oh we prayed. The last few days have been spent with the family....amongst oranges,carpenters,family dinners,and decisions. My neice Rachel got married in faraway Sydney and is enroute to the US.My cousin and her kids are on their way back to Newzealand after some time at home.My sister is expected home next week from Australia....and I start making some noises for my UK stint from next week.I am treading prayerfully and carefully for the Lord's leading as I make feeble steps forward in faith.My simple prayer for my life is that I will be used of God ,for His glory.....Nothing more and nothing less.

I just said goodbye to a friend and I feel sad.Max is my junior doctor.A quiet kid who when he joined us looked like he would prefer to disappear from the usual welcome and farewells that go on.For the past two years he has been like a shadow supporting and helping me through the inconsistencies of my personality.I have raved and ranted,he has silently been there....a ready help...one with Divya ,supporting me when I have been at my weakest. I took my time getting to know Max.Anyone can tell you that he is an introvert.Divya and myself often take time to rag him ,he takes it sportingly.He is the junior who has patiently painted the dustbins in the campus,designed the annual report cover for two continuos years,counted the tiles in the acute care unit umpteen number of times,defibrillated patients,done amputations,studied basic medicine with us ,just filled in whenever we have felt out of our depth. I have never seen him loose it,,In the middle of getting picked out for some...

Made a quick trip to Lalitpur to see my friend Sheba and her family before I dash out of EHA ,'Kent'ward bound.Doing the MP highway at 100kms per hour,from a distance of about half a kilometre we saw a motorbike struggling to cross over.He seemed to be an amateur .Kamlesh tried his best to control his car while I prayed hard.At the last moment the man slid his bike right in front of us.Things could have turned tragic but for our Lord's mercy.We hit the pillion ,both the men were thrown out of the bike onto the road but the car made a smoothe stop so the men were safe ,just the light at the back was broken. Out of nowhere a policeman landed up and a crowd came in.Things can turn ugly on the road. Two gentlemen, both of whom looked dignified, just appeared in the crowd and took control of the situation ,kept reiterating that it had not been our fault ,made us pay for the backlight and made way for us to leave the spot.Talk of guardian angels! The morning when we started of...

I am slowly but surely winding up my stuff from Lakhnadon.As usual I take a rough survey of my belongings and decide what I really want to carry with me.I have managed to collect a fair share of kitchen items ,thanks to my sunday cooking to feed the twelve youngsters.I never realised I liked glass so much as when I started filtering through my stuff only to find my weakness for the cutleries made of glass.I have a terracotta black pot which I have managed to put into a cardboard box.Apart from that I have an oven ,a coffeemaker and a blender I would like to carry with me. I have two or three boxes of books some of which have lived through my various movements around the country,many added to the collection in Lakhnadon.. Strangely enough,I don't have much clothes and anyway none that I covet.Bulk of my beddings were bought when I had visitors in Herbertpur,most of which I am not planning to lug around and ofcourse I have two or three files full of papers which seems to be the...

The last week has been strange to say the least,I had to travel to Raipur for my IELTES.I had three days in hand in a strange town.Divya booked a place for me in the pastoral centre which fed me with the tastiest putta I have had in my life.The cost was unbelievable ,just two hundred rupees per day. The written and the spoken were in two different places which were a rickshaw ride away from the place where I was staying.The first day an old rickshawpuller seems to have fleeced me of fifty bucks extra.The next day I decided to partly walk and caught a rickshaw halfway.What amused me and touched me also the next day was the reaction of the rickshawpuller to my ten rupees coin.He blankly refused to take it from me. Just a day earlier I was catching up with my juniors on current affair.One of them commented that one rickshawpuller had committed suicide because he could not feed his family,but he further added that it was his own fault because he had an old one thousand rupees n...