proof

if you didn't believe me before, here is undeniable, un-photo-shopped evidence of the uniquely colored raspberries found in my mountains:

i picked them myself while on a walk-about at Poondi, the remote village and surrounding hillsides where my family went to camp for a weekend. behind me are a tangle of bluegum eucalyptus plus the raspberry brambles:

so very raspberry, i had to stop to pick the seeds out of my teeth, and my mother just had to capture it on camera:

transformative words on the way

yes, as you may know, i have arrived in the states, been here a little over a week now.

la Biblia es la primera cosa. been reading a lot of Psalms 89-91, Psalms 121 and onwards (the psalms of ascent o los canticos de los peregrinos), Isaiah 43, Ruth, Ezekiel 37, and just now i read Galatians 5:1, 13-15. freedom. love. fruits of the Spirit.

at the moment i have just finished The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. it's not finished with me yet, though. it is the growing-up story of an Afghani boy and his complicated family secrets, as well as a chronicle of the growing pains of his country and his people as immigrants to the U.S. and refugees in their own homeland.

others that have gripped me lately:

The God Between by Lyn Brakeman. it is a collection of stories written in Jewish midrash storytelling style, which means taking a story from scripture and meditating into it, holding it up to the light of the message God is speaking into your life from it, and creating a narrative that goes beyond the actual words and events and character sketches of the Biblical account but remains true to the spirit and personalities conveyed by the Biblical writers. her stories are all on the topic of different kinds of relationships: mother/son, mother/daughter, husband/wife, group of women, two men, woman/eunuch. i read this on the way to India from the U.S.

Up the Ghat by Zai Whitaker. it is a thin little novellette i have been yearning to read for years because, first of all, it is written by an ESL teacher at my school in Kodai, whose ex-husband has been on National Geographic specials for his work with snakes in the Palani Hills. second of all, it is a narrative based very closely on my hometown, the hill station of Kodaikanal. a number of years ago, probably right around the time i was born, there were some bonded laborers from Sri Lanka being held by a landowner out in the hills, having to live in horrific inhumane conditions, and this book details the struggle of one honest regional official to obtain freedom and justice for them, through the eyes of his wife, who is an almost-adulterous struggling writer.

Good News About Injustice by Gary Haugen. may we all have the courage to be part of God's work of bringing about justice in the world.

Water by Bapsi Siddhwa. it is the English novel version of a Hindi movie inspired by the practice of child marriage which is too often followed by child widowhood. widows are traditionally thought of as unclean and unworthy, so often they are cast out of their husband's home with cruel ceremony, not allowed back to their own home, and are forced either to wander streets bald and begging, or to find a widow's home where they scrape out a living one way or another. sometimes the older widows make a business out of prostituting the young, pretty widows. this is tragic but true.

The Message of Mahatma Gandhi in his own words edited by U.S. Mohan Rao. too much to say about this one. he truly deserves the title 'great one'; i closely identify with many of his transformative spiritual experiences; i wish fervently to put into practice the principles of ahimsa, nonviolence and truth. his ideas about that reminded me of a sermon i heard last summer preached by Bishop Malkhaz from the Republic of Georgia, where he introduced to us the word "truthing", truth as a verb, not just 'speaking the truth in love' but doing it, thinking it, being the truth acted upon in love. i hope that someday i may have the courage to use the soul-force of satyagraha to make peace happen where it is needed.

Come Thirsty by Max Lucado. very convicting and refreshing devotional.

Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas. it is a collection of hilarious and insightful stories of an Iranian girl's family and French husband, of her memories from childhood, adolescence, and emerging adulthood.

Dr. Ida: Passing on the Torch of Life by Dorothy Clarke Wilson. it is the biography of Dr. Ida Scudder, a third-generation medical missionary to India, who almost singlehandedly, calling on the power of God and the resources of family and friends and strangers, revolutionized the system, the availability, and the quality of health care in India. she is one of those 'never say never' stories, who fought God for a long time before surrendering to his will for her to become a doctor and return to her childhood home. once trained and there, she started out with free clinics in her house, which turned into a medical center, and then built a hospital, trained many Indian women in nursing and medicine, and eventually established a medical college where my great-grandfather was the third principal. today, that hospital is one of the top hospitals in South Asia, serving over 1000 inpatients and 3000 outpatients each day, many of them for little or no fee. i cried my way through this book because even though i never knew this woman, she has influenced the course of my life deeply.

Mayada: Daughter of Iraq by Jean Sasson. it is a brutally shocking biography of a woman who was once a member of one of the most revered families in Iraq, a gifted journalist in her own right, and even met Saddam Hussein on a number of occasions, but was eventually thrown into one of his prisons by the secret police and tortured on a false charge, crammed with 21 other women in one cell who were also sent there on completely false charges of conspiracy against Saddam. all were horrifically tortured, barely fed, and kept in extremely dirty conditions. i read this on the way to the U.S. from India.

ahora, de nuevo en la Biblia: 2 Kings 5:1-14, where Naaman is healed of leprosy after washing seven times in the Jordan river. at first he questions the prophet Elisha's command, but then complies. oh how we resist God's simple whispers of advice...oh how often God heals us anyway. here's the prayer from Alive Now magazine for this week:

God of healing and creativity, lead me to the waters of your grace so that I can reach out in love to others. Amen

images of india [3= moonu]

dolphin's nose at dawn (an official picture)

my friend Peter and i on our little hike to Dolphin's Nose
from Dolphin's Nose there is a clear view to Perumal (if it is not obscured by clouds/mist). Perumal is the funny-shaped peak with the eucalyptus-tree-buzz-cut on top. there is a local saying that "he is a fool who has not ascended Perumal. he is equally a fool who has ascended it more than once." peter and i happen to be...the second kind of fool.
view from Dolphin's Nose
view down to the plains from Dolphin's Nose

he caught me.

parting shot.

on another hike, to Cloudlands Peak, we took along our friend Joel, who is sitting at one of our rest spots, the bell tower of an abandoned church

and we dragged along my sister Kara, too [gasp]

KISAQUA the most refreshing kind ^_^ [specially labelled for the Kodaikanal International School class of 2007]

walking the days away

well, last wednesday i just watched as Dr. Rebecca Paul, older sister of one of my best friends Peter Paul, walked down the aisle with sparkling smile leaving her father's arm to be united for a lifelong journey with Dr. Benjamin Ross, now her husband by way of the ceremony in the school's packed chapel, the presentation of the thirumangalyam (a gold neclace worn constantly by married women), and the reception where the couple sat festooned with colorful flowers on a stage while all the guests consumed biriyani, tandoori chicken, raitha, and a runny reddish sweet sauce with cashews called halwa, while the groom serenaded his bride with a self-written song on guitar

and on saturday and sunday i took a few walks with my family down the beach at Kovalam, a coastal tourist town in the state of Kerala, on the southwestern edge of India, looking out over the stormy monsoon-season Arabian Sea with a vicious riptide running under the powerful breakers, imposing rock promontories between separate stretches of beach, and black sand draping the shore

my mom and i took our own little walk to do a little shopping for postcards, wade in the unpredictable water, and taste the fresh coconut water we were craving in our sweaty dehydrated bodies until the coconut-walla cracked his curved knife across the top of one, stuck in a straw, and walked around while we sucked down the wonderful warmish but refreshing rehydrating liquid

and yesterday i walked up to school to meet a friend for the afternoon, ended up meeting four of my classmates to go out for dinner to a new restaurant in Kodai called Cloud Street, where they advertise as serving Israeli, Mexican, Thai, Indian, and Western food; we talked, listened to the interesting background music they were playing, ate, and laughed, before walking Pavi home, playing with her puppy named Toshi, and the guys walking me home

and this morning i woke up at 6:30 to meet Peter for a walk around the lake and a cup of coffee at Amsa's, that popular little steaming hole-in-the-wall 'hotel' that serves up the sweet milk-made stuff in a small glass cup for four rupees (=10 cents), ladled hot out of a tin vat for its local customers to sip, either standing on the crumbling cement sidewalk or sitting on one of the rickety stools with peeling blue paint in the tiny cubicle out of which the restaurant operates

we pass a lame beggar on the side of the road
mi amigo gently jingles a bit of change into the rag in his lap
with that genuine gesture i almost believe the offering could help
my pockets are empty, but i bow a little in respect to say 'good morning, sir'

Pushpa and i were sent around 10 a.m. to shop for some necessities in the bazaar, walking the cobbled potholed cow-and-motorbike-dominated streets up and down the slopes of our mountain-town to get to the vegetable market, the egg stall, opposite the meat shop with the chickens in cages or hanging stripped from strings tied to the tin roof overhead, and then over to the coop for sugar/flour/butter, to the bakery for some muruku and mixi, and finally on our way back up the budge hill, stopping to buy a bunch of bananas from a makeshift roadside hovel, 'sorry, not today' to the mango sellers hawking their mounded baskets of ripe fruit, and then home

she wrapped artfully in her silky blue sari

me squeezed self-consciously in my fraying blue jeans

she's in her everyday element
i'm thrilled when i hear and understand the word for 'eggs' in Tamil (=muttai)

my dad and i set out about 11 a.m. in search of 30-liter water cans (more like gasoline tank-shape) to take to camp with us tomorrow, asked in a few shops before finding the last 3 of these cans in Kodai, at the M.M Stores, which insists on selling everything "from A to Z and Pin to Plane", and my dad got excited at seeing a big green bin like the ones used for collecting rainwater or recycling plastic, and he bought it, so we tossed the water cans inside, each grabbed a rim-side of the bin, and walked back through the budge and home

my mom and Kara and i then walked to Tava's for lunch later, to eat our delightful pav baji and aloo paratha, then up to Meenakshi store for some mango juice...then home

need a walk
need to work out in my head and heart what i
need to do to love this world,
to love the widow-beggars and weak child-laborers of this country,
to love my weary family,
to love my wonderful friends,
to love the wisdom and works of God more than ever, more than everything

kodaikanal international school

KIS CAMPUS MAP

KodaikanalInternational SchoolChurch

images of india [2 = rendu]

entrance to KIS (back view of chapel bell tower)

KIS chapel (front view)

inside the chapel

the flag green = that elevated, oval-shaped patch of grass on which these girls danced around the flag pole for republic day in january

the fiery-headed kid on the left is the one we said goodbye to the other night...the other two trumpets are my dad and my youngest sister, kara

day's work and night games

Psalm 90:1 "LORD, in all generations, you have been our HOME"

it really is such a rush to see a whole hall full
of massive linen bags and trunks and boxes and piles
of clothes, shoes, clocks, lamps, pillows, sports accessories,
whatever the dorm students leave behind at the end of the year

and start to sort it out,
pick out the pairs of shoes and line them up,
stack clothes on different tables according to some system
of types and genders and sizes
so that in a few days all of the school workers
(the ones who sweep the grounds, who dust the desks, who mop the floors, who fix the generators and pumps and wires and roofs, who cook and serve the food, who drive the buses, who clean the toilets and sinks and showers, who set up the sports equipment, who collect the garbage, who really make the school run smoothly)
will be able to come in and pick up their five free items
before we send the rest to Goodwill and Corsock and other local charities

so. much. stuff.

and then to come back to campus in the evening,
hang around flag green while the group gathers for the night games
ready? set, run around in the dark
trying to make it back to the flag pole before getting caught
strange to be the oldest, but the one least familiar with the game...
means i've been gone too long, but easy enough to settle right in,
especially when we sing in church:

"it only takes a spark to get a fire going,
and soon all those around can warm up in its glowing
that's how it is with God's love, once you've experienced it
you spread his love to everyone, you want to pass it on

what a wondrous time is spring, when all the trees are budding
the birds begin to sing, the flowers start their blooming
that's how it is with God's love, once you experience it
you want to sing, it's fresh like spring, you want to pass it on

i wish for you, my friend, this happiness that i've found
you can depend on him, it matters not where you're bound
i'll shout it from the mountaintop (hey world!) i want my world to know
the Lord of love has come to me, i want to pass it on"

(otherwise known as the Arson Song)

ending the evening with a silly-dance in the middle of Seven Roads,
standing on top of the little dinky traffic island
with whitewashed rocks sticking out of the round cement structure,
illegal water trucks rumbling through the intersection,
a few drunken tourists stumbling to their hotels
and a group of kodai staff kids reluctant to go home at midnight
coz we have to say goodbye to one who is leaving the next morning

just a normal day and night
here
in my temporary home
just another reason to store
treasure in heaven, instead