An Indian Journey through Lent, Day 35 Markers on a Spiralling Way Like many couples Lena and I have developed our own rituals, special days and mutual understandings. These things that we hold in common function as “binding agents” (Sorry for the term borrowed from chemistry!) and markers along the way of our journey through life together. They help make our relationship special to us. One of the days is April 8th. It was on this day in 1982 that we first met, at Visakhapatnam Airport in the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. We’ve told the story of how we met and what we did many times; I won’t repeat it here. What interests me is the way in which over the past 32 years our journey has not so much completed a full circle as traced a spiral. Lena went to Bhutan as a nurse-midwife; she returned to India as a doctor. I was a scientific officer; now I’m an ecotheologian. She worked in the Himalayas, but in another country - Bhutan. I lived on the coastal plain of the same country I’m now in, though in terms of language and culture south India could easily be another country. We both lived in hospital compounds then, and we live in a different hospital compound now. I don’t know what has happened to the Bhutanese hospitals Lena lived in, but the south Indian one has been thoroughly modernised and, with the decline of leprosy as a threat to public health, has been converted into a community hospital. Though Lady Willingdon Hospital was inaugurated as a clinic in 1935 it is the years since 1982 that have seen tremendous growth on the compound. In particular, the 500 student DayStar School was built in the 1980s in the hospital grounds. Visakhapatnam Airport symbolises the great technological strides India has made over these years. When I met Lena there she walked across the tarmac to a tiny terminal; today “Vizag” has a huge, new terminal, one of many such being built at the airports of India’s major centres, replete with mobile enclosed walkways that stretch out to parked aircraft. Even religiously things are changing, but remain as they were. India remains pre-eminently a religious country. These two days in Manali feature a festival to the goddess Durga/Kali in which vast amounts of food are cooked for her then, because for obvious reasons she doesn’t eat it, is handed out freely to anyone humans who wants it. In some ways India is thoroughly modern, and in others it reminds me of the situation that the first Christians met, as described in the Book of Acts.
Posted on: Wed, 09 Apr 2014 11:03:12 +0000
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