On nights when sleep eludes me, memories of India
unlock my guarded heart and I am abed on the Bulandshahr mission
Bungalow roof, counting stars while breathing the nighttime
fragrance of jasmine. Drums throb in the distance, occasionally
being eclipsed by shouts in the mango grove where night birds
threaten the harvest. In the morning, the joyous spring festival
will begin when everyone will be free to throw colored water on
one another and, for once, wives may beat their husbands.
Tomorrow night the Holi drums will boom by bonfires as men dance
on them under the full moon.On Easter morning at 4:30 a.m. I join the Bride School students in a candle lit procession on the front lawn. The next year in Ghaziabad I am alone in the peaceful grapefruit garden until Grand Trunk Road fills with tongas and bicycles, buses and rickshas, and many pedestrians. Church service will not be until afternoon. Boarding an eastbound bus, I watch for Bishvasi’s village and dismount to scuff through soil, weeds, and grass clumps to the house/school where she sits with several of her school children, cooking sweets to celebrate our Holy Day. One of the boys asks Jesus to bless the food before we eat. He is not yet Christian.
On Christmas afternoon in Bulandshahr, under a brilliant blue sky, everyone on the small compound (Christian, Muslim, Hindu), men, women and children, finds a place to sit on the rug spread over the grass by the well. Fragrant rose bushes enclose us on three sides, tall poinsettias on the fourth. We sing and pray before Father Christmas arrives with some little thing for everyone. Then Khalil brings buckets of hot tea and trays of warm pakoras and syrupy jalebis from the kitchen. We eat and celebrate together.
In Delhi I stroll beneath Royal Palms in the green oasis beyond Kashmiri Gate. In 1948 refugees camped here. Now, even the clamor and confusion of the nearby bazaar are muted. Later I wend my way through crowded Chandni Chauk, marveling at displays of silks and handicrafts in the shops.
In Hyderabad I sit in the garden beside the lotus pool and then wander along the lake where a soft fragrant breeze dispels the disquiet of mind and soul following conference meetings.
Near Ghaziabad I ride my bicycle westward from a village on Hapur Road as a reddish, purplish haze obscures the horizon and silhouetted bare Neem trees testify to survivability. Tomorrow, groups of Christian village school children will gather here for a Music Festival. Their laughter and joyous singing will testify to the survivability of a Faith.
In the mountains I trudge fourteen miles (three miles of which are like stairs cut into the stone), up and up to Rohtung Pass. The wind bites. There are patches of snow to avoid as we pass lone shepherds in short woolen coats, smoking their bubbling pipes and smiling at us.
On Christmas Eve I join a village pastor and his congregational leaders sitting around a charcoal heater in a mud brick room. A bucket of hot Indian tea soothes our vocal cords as we sing songs welcoming our Lord. My ailing throat gives out and I retire to the parsonage where the pastor’s wife massages me with garlic, mustard and other oils until I sleep. In the following June her little David dies of typhoid fever and we weep together.
There is no end to the memories and they do not bring sleep as one lives again more deeply and intensely than ever before or since, bombarded with color as well as squalor, riches and poverty, entrancing tunes as well as clamor, irresistible delicacies and repulsive concoctions, genuine sacrificial Christianity along with an immeasurable need for the gospel.
Memories of India do not bring sleep–only yearning.