Contemplations and Ruminations

The title is a line from The Chosen , a TV series about Jesus and his disciples, that has taken me by surprise. Many portrayals of Jesus depict him as a solemn man who walked around preaching and talking to his nondescript bunch of disciples. You couldn't tell one from the other, only Jesus stood out from the rest of the characters and everything else was pretty standard story telling from the bible. But The Chosen is a world far away from the one we've usually seen or heard about Christ. For starters the disciples are wonderfully fleshed out; the impulsive and brash Simon, his dashing brother Andrew, the delightfully odd Mathew who has Asperger's Syndrome, the open minded Nicodemus who really wants to know more about what cannot be explained or understood. And Jesus, just one look at him and you can feel the warmth in his gentle eyes touching you. There's so much depth to the characters that now when anyone talks about Simon or Mathew, the actors who play them pop into

     So the virus is in town, the corona virus which gives rise to the symptoms termed COVID_19 and we're in lock down mode. The whole world is more or less in the same situation, everybody cooped up at home. I don't know how long it will last... it's not bad, I do my yoga, play shuttlecock in the evenings followed by zumba, cook/ bake something in between, watch documentaries about our universe and black holes and all the massive energy and explosions happening out there where everything is in constant motion; a cauldron of intense activity as compared to the eerily deserted streets on earth today.      I wonder about the people who have no homes or enough food, migrant people caught up in the lock-down, unable to go home or rest anywhere. What about the daily wage earners... I do hope they are getting their due share from the government which has rolled out many PDS (public distribution system, commonly known as ration shops) relief schemes. I don't know what to ma

         The dawn of another year and there's so much happening in the world, what with the bush fires in Australia, the CAA/NRC protests in India, the Trump and Iran situation; it is good that we stay updated and take an interest in world affairs, that's probably all we can do. We cannot influence such events that take place on a global scale, but we sure can work on the smaller issues that relate directly to us. The other day, I was taking a walk in my locality during the first week of January and I came across a rather sorry sight. My locality is usually clean and people do not throw rubbish everywhere, so I was taken back when I saw a pile of discarded sticks and wild grass (used to construct a Christmas crib) along with a few plastic Christmas stars lying on the road. What a harsh sight it was, a reminder that Christmas was over, and thus all the things that made it a beautiful season have to be dumped right on the road.      How can we celebrate a festival one week

Another year, 2020, how fast the years roll by... the transition from 2019 to 2020 was fun enough, surrounded by family, friends and  an influx of angels. I saw a paper doily angel online and since then this is what I have been making in December, an army of paper doily angels... To be placed in the crib, a t last count there were about 23 angels in the crib in my hometown... Ah, Christmas is fun even though I couldn't get into the whole giddy Christmas mood this year. I don't know why, I kept listening to Winter Song by Fernando Ortega and My Favourite Time of the Year by The Florin Street Band , to get into the high spirited mood of Christmas... and though that helped a bit, everything was kinda subdued and serene. I guess Christmas as a festival just isn't appealing anymore, but Christmas as a time where love comes to stay in the form of family and friends who travel home for the holidays is more meaningful. Christmas is more than the lights on the tree,

There’s a beautiful song called Christmas in Heaven , where Scotty McCreery, the singer, wonders how a loved one who has passed away is celebrating Christmas. Scotty sings: Are you kneeling with shepherds before Him now?  Can you reach out and touch His face? Are you part of that glorious Holy Night? I wonder what Christmas in Heaven is like. We’ve all lost loved ones, and the memories will always remain, but how are we going to remember the ones who died (and those who remain traumatised) due to the deep malaise that infects society. Rape is the sort of horror that cannot be put into words because words do not exist to describe what Aruna Shanbaug, Jyoti Singh, Asifa, Priyanka Reddy, the Unnao case survivor and countless others went through. As we prepare to welcome the new born Christ into our homes, let us first examine our hearts and find out where the sickness lies. We live in a society, and the family is the basic building block of any society. The first seven years

Do not, do not, do not! The father in church intoned What, she thought warily Gratify the needs of the flesh, he preached. Why not, she mused, smiling at the one Sitting beside her, oblivious to the sermon It is beautiful to love and be loved. What's there to be scared When love exists deep in your soul No amount of denying can bring peace. So the other day the father in church was talking about how it is a sin to gratify the needs of the flesh. And all I could think about was why, why is he so scared, why does the church seem scared of sexual union. Isn't that how the priest exists, because his parents decided to have sex (unless he was conceived clinically in a petri dish). Why does our society fear sex, why does it have such a bad connotation? Why couldn't the father bring in love, why couldn't he say that if you feel a connection or if you really love the person then it is beautiful, otherwise, it might end in heartache. It's not only the father...

This picture was taken circa 1990 when the mountain gods (the western ghats) with their gentle song were all we could see everywhere we looked. Check out the mud bound road and the half-saree clad higher secondary students (akkas then)... life was amazing here, it took me years to realise that. Here I am at one of the mountains thirty years later, just soaking in nature and contemplating how far I've come from that little girl who hated this village and couldn't wait to leave. Life always surprises you in the most beautiful of ways when you learn to go with the flow. You may not get the view you were hoping for, but you will be rendered speechless by the view that awaits you, it will be something you never thought could exist and yet here you are... reveling at how the universe has always got your back.   This is one of the pristine beaches back home... the sun on one side, moon on the other.  I sit here typing all this as the rains fall outside while I sip on warm

An article I wrote for the church magazine... In Genesis, when God created everything from nothingness, s/he knew it was all good, “God saw all s/he had made, and indeed it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Everything that existed from the beginning of creation was perfect like the Creator. That’s how wo/man was formed too, in the image and likeness of God, in all perfection and goodness. This is the state of grace or the Garden of Eden, where humankind lived in harmony with creation. Since humans have a dual nature, that of being one with the creator yet at the same time being temporal in flesh and blood, this equation of grace was bound to change, when the temporal takes precedence over the eternal nature of being (our spiritual nature). That’s when evil/bad was conceived in the image and likeness of wo/man. That’s where humankind stands now, at a crossroad, forever wavering between the spiritual and the temporal, not realising that our true nature is spiritual and that existence