What gives

I was well immersed in my outpatient work multi-tasking as usual, seeing patients, advising my juniors, watching the patient’s get impatient when I noticed that a lady with a small child was just standing in one corner of the room.I don’t like other patients hanging around when I am in consultation with a patient so I looked questioningly at Radha who immediately pounced on the  duo.She was very careful because they looked like tribals and very poor.The lady kept pointing at me and seemed to not have registered as is the procedure . That was when I realised that we had struck gold. They were actually from the community we had been reaching out to with clinics every week and in various other ways.This was a small step towards victory and I am very grateful to God for it. It is a community of ‘musahirs’ originally so called because they were rat eaters. They live in their so-called village /slum ,work as daily labourers ,eat when they work and form the part of Ind...

Kamla is a dwarf with two wiry legs ,deformed but she stands on it.Her husband has a leg deformity because of which he crawls.on his knees.What struck me about the couple whenever I saw them coming to the antenatal clinic was the joy in their faces and the dignity.As impoverished as they looked they never seem to ask for charity or show a dull face.Kamala’s haemoglobin would not budge above it’s 6.5 value.When the times comes we would have to take her for caesarian section because she had CPD and there was no way the baby was going to come out PV.I asked my colleague to put her on iron injections if blood transfusion seemed impossible and  we had barely managed to give her a dose ,a few days later she came back to us. On my day off she came to the hospital in labour so we had to intervene. She and her husband make their living by selling roasted corn for ten rupees each. We made that difficult decision of posting her for Caesarian section wit...

I was almost in time for the church .After having finished a contentious rounds I headed home for a quick bath and rushed towards the chapel which must be around fifteen paces away when a brightly smiling face greeted me.As always it takes sometime for me to put a character and name to faces I have not seen for a while. I sat in the church trying to dig my memory and suddenly it dawned on me that he was Rakesh’ (name changed) father. Rakesh was a super intelligent twelve year old who was brought to us with a terminal pleural effusion secondary to relapse of osteosarcoma in the leg.He had had an amputation but the sarcoma had relapsed.by the time he came to us he was very sick. The oncologist had given him a week to live but he lived three months longer, a time when he became sicker,got to know our campus kids who would run up to him to read him stories and play board games with him while he came in and out of oxygen ,got to know the Word of the Lord better and professed fai...

The samaritan woman was going about her livelihood as she would daily ,drawing water from the well she had pride in.She calls it ‘Jacob’s well ‘and it was .She does not see anything beyond, although there is much more to life as it is and then she chances upon Jesus who offers her ‘a stream of living water’.She is convinced even as she listens to Jesus and goes back to the village to spread the news of the messiah.,ASTONISHED. The woman caught in sin ,condemned to be stoned to death.Would you and I stand up to an angry ,self-righteous crowd like that against injustice?Jesus stands up for her,rescues her and she stands before Jesus ,RELIEVED. The sick women ,bleeding for twelve years,convinced that Jesus has the anointing but touches his cloak and she is HEALED. The synagogue leader’s daughter’s funeral ceremony was going on but because of her father’s faith in Jesus,Jesus goes over to the synagogue and picks her up by her hand and she is ALIVE. The Canaanite woman whose dau...

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I have had special visitors this last one week. Dr Manoj and Manju were here all the way from Cochin.I was introduced to them long ago when I was in the second  year of my medical school.I had attended a conference in Gopal-pur-on-sea .They stood out as a young couple just married ,comitted to serving in Lamtaput as pioneering medical missionaries.Lamtaput then was a difficult place which ,as one of our managers put it ,even the Oriya people were afraid of venturing to, because of the fierce tribals there.Now a flourishing community serves there with a hospital as its focal point. I was impressed by the quality of resource in the retreat and the testimonies and remember praying that I wanted to be among them because there seems to be so much one could learn from them. God's meandering hands took me to Oddanchattram straight after my internship and I had the privellage to work and learn with these giants of faith . The other couple was Andi and Bethsheba Eicher,my fellow sojo...

I am trying to beat the Benaras heat with crayons,colour,psalms,gospels,song of Solomon,and Audrey Assad. Song of Solomon 2:15 says,'Catch for us the foxes ,the little foxes that ruin the vineyards,our vineyards that are in bloom..'How often I have to go beyond the movenment of everyday living to commune with my King before I can detect the little foxes.How he yearns for us to come to him broken ,blind and bleeding to be shown these little foxes we would willingly give up for our Master. Audrey Assad was introduced to me in a baptist church during my years's furlough.I remember one of the pastors sharing how she while walking alone up the Mount Everest base camp was helped by listening to this song even while she plodded up the hill which was cold,tough ,tiring and which at that time seemed scary and endless.A beautifully meditative track ,I say. In my personal reading I have been struck by a phrase from the book of Romans which says '...We do not support the root ...