Rachel's cry

The day I sit down to write this column is the jubilee of a movement of sorts. It was exactly 50 years ago, on September 27, 1962, that Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published. The book became an instant hit for its deft handling of a subject hitherto dealt with only in science journals. It struck a chord with ordinary people, made powers that be to sit up and take notice, and rubbed the industry the wrong way. Many people credit it for having heralded the beginning of the environmental movement. Others say it is too much to attribute to a book, but no one would deny that, as the biologist Roland Clement said, it “stirred the pot”.

Silent Spring begins with “A Fable for Tomorrow”, in which Carson speaks about a strange blight creeping over a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. “Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death. The farmers spoke of much illness among their families. In the town the doctors had become more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients. There had been several sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among adults but even among children, who would be stricken suddenly while at play and die within a few hours.

"It stirred the pot."

“There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example where had they gone? Many people spoke of them, puzzled and disturbed. The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices.”

The book was about the ill-effects of pesticides on the environment. Carson argued that the chemicals created to kill insects, weeds, rodents and other organisms made their way up the food chain and threatened animal and bird species and eventually humans. They should not be called ‘insecticides’, but ‘biocides’, she said.

Carson was no novice who stumbled into an emotional campaign for the environment. A writer by vocation, Carson was a scientist by profession and was well aware of the concerns wildlife biologists at the Patuxent Research Refuge in Laurel, Maryland, had about the deadly chemical DDT, which was administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, where she worked. But what caught her immediate attention was a 1957 lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture regarding aerial spraying over Long Island. She now began collecting material on pesticide effects, and four years of research eventually became Silent Spring. It was initially serialised in The New Yorker.

Its publication caused ripples in political and industry circles, and President John F. Kennedy directed his Science Advisory Committee to investigate Carson’s claims. The ultimate result was environmental legislation to regulate the use of chemicals and pesticides.

But criticism against Carson was vicious. She was threatened with lawsuits, and personal attacks included charges against her of being a communist sympathiser wanting to reduce Western countries’ ability to produce food, to achieve “east-curtain parity”. Even today, critics accuse her of “cherry-picking studies to suit her ideology” or of sounding a false alarm, causing millions of people around the world to suffer the painful and often deadly effects of malaria.

But Silent Spring’s legacy is that Carson posed the moral question. The idea that nature existed to serve man never appealed to her. Says her biographer Linda Lear in the aptly titled book Witness to Nature, “She wanted us to understand that we were just a blip. The control of nature was an arrogant idea, and Carson was against human arrogance.”

Over the years, many chemicals that Carson had proved were highly dangerous are still being used in many parts of the world. A recent report, Global Chemicals Outlook, compiled by UNEP working with international experts, says though the exact number of chemicals in the global market is not known, 143,835 chemical substances have been pre-registered under the requirement of the European Union’s chemicals regulation, REACH.

The global chemical output (produced and shipped) was valued at $171 billion in 1970. By 2010, it had grown to $4.12 trillion.

The report further says: Chemical manufacturing and processing activities, once largely located in the highly industrialised countries, are now steadily expanding into developing countries and countries with economies in transition. For example, from 2000 to 2010, chemical production in China and India grew at an average annual rate of 24 per cent and 14 per cent, respectively, whereas the growth rate in the United States, Japan and Germany was between 5 per cent and 8 per cent. In 2001, the OECD issued projections that by 2020, developing countries would be home to 31 per cent of global chemical production, and 33 per cent of global chemical consumption.

DDT was banned in the U.S. in 1972, eight years after Carson’s death. The Stockholm Convention, which took effect in 2004, outlawed several persistent organic pollutants, and restricted DDT use to vector control. The Convention has been ratified by more than 170 countries and is endorsed by most environmental groups. According to some reports, India is the only country still manufacturing DDT.

“Individuals living in poverty are particularly vulnerable, both because their exposures may be particularly high, and because poor nutrition and other risk factors can increase susceptibility to the effects of toxic exposures,” says the UNEP report. Examples are not far to seek; the deadly effect of endosulfan in our own backyard is too well known and documented.

That is where Silent Spring becomes chillingly contemporary.

‘Have you not read...?’

No Christian parent who wants to raise ‘God-fearing children’ will frown at what my daughter asked me recently: a Bible. To be precise, she wanted a teen Bible. (The promotional phrase for one of them in Amazon says, ‘a Bible that speaks to their world’.) But we have at least half a dozen Bibles at home, different versions of it and in two languages, some of them taken out only on occasions.

Bibles now come in different versions, and mediums. There are the print, audio, braille, online and various electronic formats of them. Bible Apps for phone, computer and laptop offer different versions of the Word. The Bible Society of India website says it provides the Word of God in audio and video forms, catering to the need of non-readers and neo-literates. It says it has pioneered the development of a wide range of new Scriptures for special audiences and groups: the visually challenged, the hearing impaired, terminally ill, victims of HIV, semi-literate and rural audience, and so on.

The Bible is also a consumer product regularly repackaged and customised to suit the taste of a particular audience, making it the best-seller year after year. In 2007, some 25 million Bibles were sold in the United States — “twice as many as the most recent Harry Potter book”.

A Bible for everyone

An article, ‘The Good Book Business’ in The New Yorker, says: “There are devotional Bibles for new believers, couples, brides, and cowboys... such innovations as ‘The Outdoor Bible’, printed on indestructible plastic sheets that fold up like maps, and ‘The Story’, which features selections from the Bible arranged in chronological order, like a novel. There is a ‘Men of Integrity’ Bible and a ‘Woman, Thou Art Loosed!’ Bible. For kids, there’s ‘The Super Heroes Bible: The Quest for Good Over Evil’.... In the ‘Rainbow Study Bible’, each verse is colour-coded by theme. ‘The Promise Bible’ prints every one of God’s promises in boldface. And ‘The Personal Promise Bible’ is custom-printed with the owner’s name ([For instance,] The LORD is Daniel’s shepherd’).”
The Bible is many things to many people. Many Christians read it ceremoniously at the break of dawn and as darkness encircles the earth, the Word engraved on the tablets of their hearts or leaving an imprint as temporary as desert tracks the wind erases. Some pore over it to find solutions to all their individual problems. Others try to find new meaning in the Scripture in the contemporary political, social and economic context. Some die for it; some live by it. Some invoke the promises in it to bring wealth and health to themselves; to some it is chicken soup for the soul.
People from as diverse backgrounds as ever, prince and pauper, capitalist and communist, slave and master, techie and casual labourer, Syrian Christian and Dalit Christian, all have used it to their purpose. It has been a tool of exclusion and dispossession; it has been a device for inclusion and liberation. Uninformed readings of it has led to an environmental ethic that is destructive even as it has been an inspiration for taking stewardship of the earth seriously.
From Genesis to Revelation, it is an entire series of classic literature in different genres: Poetry, historical narrative/epic, prophecy, epistles, and more. Approaching the Bible as history, it provides an insight into Jewish culture and traditions, and as a book of law and ethical guideline.
Why is it that the Bible looks radically different to different people? Is it worth seeking moral answers in the Bible to apply them in our context, when the moral issues of today are very different from those in biblical times? Does the Bible lend itself to an alternative interpretation?
‘Have you not read [in the Scriptures] …’ is an oft-repeated question Jesus asked the Pharisees. They were known for their strict observance of rites and ceremonies of the written law and their traditions concerning the law. Yet Jesus’ poser meant that he did not subscribe to their views or recognise their interpretation of the Scriptures. He obviously wanted them to follow it in spirit rather than in letter.
So, how do we read the Bible? Maybe you know this oft-repeated quote by our Valia Metropolita Philipose Mar Chrysostom: Don’t read the Bible, but study it.
Kristin Swenson, a professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University's School of World Studies, in an essay ‘What You Should Know Before Reading The Bible’, says “knowing something about the Bible —  its historical backgrounds and development, its languages of origin and the process of translation, and its use within religious communities as well as secular contexts — enables readers to make sense of biblical texts and references for themselves. For religious people, such knowledge can enrich their faith; and non-religious people may appreciate better why the Bible has endured with such power and influence.” Kristin is also the author of Bible Babel: Making Sense of the Most Talked About Book of All Time.
“The Bible is not an answer book to our questions, rather it helps us to ask the right questions,” says a theologian friend of mine. “It tells us how our ancestors experienced God in their life stories and lived a life worthy of their calling. Our engagement with the Bible helps us to discern God in our times and to engage in ethical praxis. When we read the Bible our attempt should not be to find out the original meaning of the original author in the original context. Rather, we, as readers, should bring our story into the Biblical story and construct new meanings to make the Bible a living story in our times.”
One of the things Kristin says she loves about the Bible is its resistance to reduction. “By way of a few examples, there are several stories of creation and four different narratives of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Consider the coexistence of explanations of suffering as punishment and the book of Job. Yet declarative and absolutist statements beginning, ‘the Bible says’, and bumper stickers such as ‘God said it. I believe it. That settles it’ are commonplace,” she says.
And if you maintain that the Holy Spirit will make the meaning of biblical texts clear to believers, here is what she says: “Knowing some background information (the more, the better) about the Bible is bound to lead … to fruitful discussion. Maybe it's there, in the spaces of informed conversation about a multi-faceted Word of God, in the dynamism of humble learning and listening, that the Holy Spirit pulls up a chair and the Bible reveals its richest meanings.”

Living the Good News

When it comes to the business of education, everyone loves a good deal. So I was intrigued when I read of Super 30. It was very different from the stories that I had read about ‘serving the community’ or ‘giving back to society’. A lot of philanthropy these days, especially of the corporate kind, is motivated by a desire to make a name for oneself. In the case of individuals it could be just an ego trip. For social service organisations the reward often is a column-inch space in newspapers or 30 seconds on television.
Super 30 is an innovative educational programme run by the Ramanujan School of Mathematics in Patna with an aim to create technocrats out of 30 meritorious students from among the economically backward sections of society. The school helps these children get into the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), the dream destination for many students even from the cream of society. It provides free tuition, board and lodging to these students who are handpicked on the basis of their talent, family background and education. This year, 27 of the 30 cleared the exam. That is a giant leap from 18 in 2003, when it all began.
Ramanujan School, named after the great mathematician, is the brainchild of Anand Kumar, who, despite his academic excellence, could not pursue a higher education in Cambridge just because he did not have the means to do so. Knowing what it is to be left out in the race, he now decided to train a group of students for various competitive examinations.
Anand’s funds for Super 30 come from the nominal fee (compared with that in other coaching centres) he charges other students who join his academy. His institution now figures in the list of innovative schools in the world. What strikes you as you browse through his website is the notification in bold, NO DONATION PLEASE.
In this, I can’t but help wonder if Anand Kumar is not living the Good News. Had he not welcomed the Super 30, a good many of them would have had wasted lives like flowers that expend their sweetness in the desert air.
Commoditisation of education in India in recent years has increasingly left many bright young students in the lurch. There have been reports about a few students taking the extreme step apparently depressed over their inability to continue their education. Recently, there were news reports in Kerala about a boy who dropped out of medical school as he could not afford to pay his fees. That timely intervention by a few kindly souls helped save the day for him is encouraging, but the larger question is why should the poor be always grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table rather than be seated at the board?
It is that time of the year again when parents are willing to invest for their children’s education -- ‘buy’ admissions to various professional colleges in the country. It is also that time of the year when we open our wallets for what we consider a worthy cause -- spend a few rupees on the not-so-privileged for their books, uniforms and umbrellas. “Diaspora philanthropy” too works best now; every year there are a number of notifications in church publications inviting ‘deserving candidates’ for help from our Churches abroad.
Religion plays a big part in making us set apart a portion of our incomes for charity (tithing in Christian parlance). It is hard to tell whether it is out of guilt or out of a feeling that it will serve as a protective shield against hard times that we secretly fear. Or as an investment to reap rich dividends later (as Malachi 3: 10 says, “Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it”). Maybe it is a combination of all these.
Marthomites are never known to be tight-fisted, but what do charities mean to us and why? What are the values that we associate with philanthropy?
“We have the mindset of the benevolent master. Our missions and ministries are always mission ‘for’ and mission ‘to’. We are yet to understand mission as mission ‘of’ or mission ‘with’. Mission and charity always construct the other as our other. It will never help them [the needy] to get out of their wounded psyche and to design their own identity and selfhood,” says my theologian friend.
What can be good news from our Yuvajana Sakhyams for the poor and marginalised students who find themselves in circumstances they have not chosen and are helpless to change? There are no quick-fix solutions when the problem of education is of insufficient funds and inefficient schools and when privatisation of education is as much of a problem as it is a solution.
Years ago, when emotions were stirred more quickly than reason, I was guided into a slum by my seniors in the Yuvajana Sakhyam. It was called beggars’ colony. They gave them free tuition and conducted medical camps and catered to their ‘real’ needs than the needs we ‘felt’ they had. I reckon it was worth much more than the ‘educational kits’ we provided in our later years and filled the annual reports with those figures.

P.S.:
Anand Kumar’s mission is worth disseminating in a world where education is just another commodity. GoodNewsIndia (www.goodnewsindia.com) by D.V. Sridharan offers many such inspiring stories “of positive action, steely endeavour and quiet triumphs -- news that is little known”. He stopped updating GoodNewsIndia in 2006, which he had been doing for six years, when he had doubts whether publishing feel-good stories about India by itself was good enough as a service. Then he turned to restoring a piece of land in Chennai. “I no longer retain my early confidence that a sustained economic boom will be like the tide that raises all the boats. ...I further believe that a ‘modern’ economy cannot create true wealth, ... it can be destructive of what wealth we inherited and still possess. The true wealth of any nation is in fertile soil, abundant water, clean air, safe food and its people educated for independent action and free to practice it. I shall go searching for people who are trying to make India wealthy in this manner,” he writes on his website.
I have been told by at least a couple of friends that there are ‘good news’ initiatives by our own churches that are worth spreading. Please watch this space for them. And send me your stories (with photographs) or ideas worth disseminating at burningbushsam@gmail.com.

The Jesus story, in black and white

The only film perhaps my grandmother saw in a cinema house was Jesus, in Malayalam. The scene in which Roman soldiers drove nails into the hands of Jesus so disturbed her that she let out an anguished cry, much to the embarrassment of those who accompanied her. I wonder what Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, depicting the final hours of Jesus in all its gory details for a full two hours, would have done to a gentle heart like hers. The movie devotes 10 minutes alone for the flogging of Jesus.

Most of us, like my grandmother, are eager to take the vicarious trip 2,000 years ago to a world that spoke Aramaic (as Jesus spoke), to follow the blue-eyed, long-haired blonde miracle-worker along the shores of Galilee and Nazareth and Jerusalem and Judea as the multitudes did, and to ‘share’ in the passion of the ‘son of man’ on Calvary’s cross. But what does the life and message of the poor carpenter’s son, whose hands were callused with work and whose soul yearned for liberation, mean for us, modern-day believers?

The greatest story ever told

The other day, I chanced upon a DVD titled Son of Man, a South African movie in Xhosa (one of the official languages of South Africa and spoken by approximately 18 per cent of its population) and English, which re-imagines the life of Jesus today and now. It bagged the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in the United States. The 2005 movie brings alive ‘the greatest story ever told’ by making us become a character in it.
The story is set in the fictitious kingdom of Judea in an African country. Dictatorship, coups, ethnic strife, hunger, poverty and child soldiers are part of everyday life here. The country is ravaged by a civil war. A young woman trying to escape armed militants by pretending to be dead amid the corpses of children in a classroom gets the vision of an angel, who tells her that she will bear the son of God. In a striking parallel to the Gospel, the woman gives birth to a child in a cattle-shed when she accompanies her husband for a census.
By the time the Magi come, Jesus is old enough to walk. Now Herod decrees that all male infants in the minority population be killed. They flee the country but some of them are waylaid by soldiers at the border. A disturbing sight in the movie is the massacre of children; hiding in the bushes, the mother turns child Jesus’ eyes towards the scene. As they are about to cross the border the angel appears to Jesus and invites him to heaven. But Jesus chooses to stay back saying, “This is my world.”

Upon reaching adulthood, Jesus leaves home and gathers disciples from among the warring factions. There are women too among his chosen twelve. His religion is non-violence: he convinces all of them to turn in their weapons.

An “interim government” propped up by the occupier force is in power in the country; the local people who form the majority are for a power-sharing agreement with the rulers rather than side with radical groups like that of Jesus who want the occupiers out. Jesus is on the watch-list; his miracles, including that of raising Lazarus to life, is viewed with suspicion but not taken seriously. But Judas, who records all of Jesus’ activities on his movie camera, gives the high priests of war and politics, aptly named Annas and Caiaphas, enough evidence about Jesus’ political ambitions.
The political and social situation of Palestine and its environs during the lifetime of Jesus, which was under Roman occupation, is set in contemporary idiom in the movie. For instance, a ‘sermon’ by Jesus goes like this: “When those with imperial histories pretend to forget them and blame Africa’s problems on tribalism and corruption while building themselves new economic empires, I say we have been lied to. …When I hear someone was beaten and tortured in the Middle East, I say we have been lied to. When I hear that in Asia child labour has been legislated for, I say we have been lied to. When politicians in Europe and USA defend trade subsidies and help to restrict the use of medicine through commercial patents, I say we have been lied to. Evil did not fall.”

Jesus is captured, and Annas and Caiaphas offer him a chance to share power. But they can’t make him submit to their plans.

His torture reminds one of the killing of South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko in police custody. Jesus is buried in a secret grave, but a young man in the burial squad lets Mary know of it. She is among a group of people protesting against the occupiers when she hears the news.

She and a few other women dig the body out of the grave. She brings it (in Pieta fashion) sitting on the back of a truck. Mary ties the arms of Jesus to a cross with scarves, and the cross is lifted up for all to see. Death by crucifixion being alien to the African culture, the film is careful to contextualise it in this manner.

A crowd slowly gathers at the foot of the cross, and Mary sings, “The land is covered in darkness.” Chants of unity, freedom and strength rent the air till they reach a crescendo. The movie ends with Jesus walking up a hill followed by a multitude of angels (young children) and pumping his fist hopefully in the air.

“The secret of the movie is that it doesn’t strain to draw parallels with current world events - because it doesn’t have to,” says film critic Roger Ebert.

By portraying Jesus as a black man clad in jeans and shirt, director Mark Dornford-May challenges the general perceptions about Christ. “We wanted to look at the Gospels as if they were written by spin doctors and to strip that away and look at the truth,” he said in an interview. “The truth is that Christ was born in an occupied state and preached equality at a time when that wasn’t very acceptable.”

The 86-minute movie is a refreshing departure from conventional movies about Jesus. Son of Man essentially takes the time machine to show us what the Incarnation could be like if it happened now. It is about the inner struggles and triumphs of a social movement as much as it is of an individual. This is the Jesus story of our time – warts and all.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Every time I enter our church, a small signboard by the side of the door catches my eye: “Remove the shoes from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” As one who believes in essential etiquette on all occasions, I have always removed my shoes before entering any place of worship, but I wonder about the connection between any ‘burning bush’ experience I might have and footwear. I am also stumped when my daughter asks me why Achen insists that women cover their head in church (once he even admonished them). Or why the Sunday school teacher wants children to wear white on certain occasions. What is our idea of holiness, piety and purity?
The metaphors we use unconsciously in the language to depict ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are either “up” and “down” or “white” and “black”. For instance, happy is denoted with an ‘up’ (lifting spirits up) and sad with ‘down’ (down in the dumps). In Christian parlance, being pure is to be “washed as white as snow”. If so, can sin and evil but be black (Yuvajana Sakhyam skits have Satan wearing black)? Hence the preference for white garments for worship and the symbolism of the “long white robes over yonder”. Remember the Sunday school song, “I wish I had a little white box/To put my Jesus in..../I wish I had a little black box/To put the devil in....?
By substituting black with white and vice-versa in his poem ‘White comedy’, Benjamin Zephaniah, who has Caribbean roots, amply illustrates how the colour ‘white’ has been associated with goodness and cleanliness and ‘black’ with evil and dirt. 
“I waz whitemailed
By a white witch,
Wid white magic/
An white lies,
Branded by a white sheep
I slaved as a whitesmith
Near a white spot...
I waz in de white book
As a master of white art,
It waz like white death....”
In the social world, these good-bad and white-black metaphors get translated into saints and sinners, the righteous and the guilty (and even the upper caste and the lower caste). Aren’t we familiar with such talk in everyday Christian life? 
Dr. Richard Beck, professor and experimental psychologist at Abilene Christian University in the United States, describes this theme of socio-moral disgust in his book, Unclean. A popular blogger (www.experimentaltheology.blogspot.in), he describes the psychology of disgust in the personal and social domains using simple imagery and demonstrates how disgust erects boundaries around people. These boundaries are in a sense good to keep away from so-called ‘evil’ influences, but they “shut down mission and dialogue in the church”.
Beck bases his book on the text in Matthew 9 and Matthew 12 where Jesus tells the Pharisees, “I require mercy, not sacrifice.” The Pharisees were visibly upset at Jesus dining with “tax collectors and sinners”. In another instance, Paul says to people in the Corinthian church, “I hear when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you….” The divisions here, scholars say, are about how a certain group of people were treated and how there were different meals set for them.
Beck builds on the work of theologian-scholars Walter Brueggemann and Fernando Belo that within Israel there were two competing visions of uprightness before God—the Levitical or priestly vision and the prophetic or justice vision. One focused on cultic purity (ritual purity) while the other focused on “rehabilitative activity to care for the poor and marginalised”. “The Pharisees attain their purity by excluding ‘tax collectors and sinners’ from their company. Jesus rejects this form of ‘holiness’,” says Beck. Jesus asks the Pharisees to go and learn what it means by the expression in Hosea 6:6 that God desires “mercy, not sacrifice”.
Does the church foster an attitude of ‘sniggering superiority’ over people? I believe to an extent it does. For instance, as Beck says in an interview, “the logic of disgust manifests itself in the feelings of disgust toward people whose perceived sins violate the rules of purity”. This explains, in part, why there is a perceived hierarchy of sin. Our response to some sins like sexual immorality or drunkenness is more rigid than the response to sins like idolatry or greed or theft (even earning money by unfair means). Is not corruption a moral failure? 
So, who is clean, who is unclean? Jesus touched a leprosy patient and healed him (Mark 1: 40-42), healed the woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years (Matthew 9:20), and took a dead damsel by the hand and raised her to life (Mark 5: 41), all of which were said to cause defilement in the Old Testament. He touched the untouchable! This when he called teachers of the law and Pharisees ‘whitewashed tombs’.
“Psychologically speaking, mercy and purity pull us in opposite directions. And behaviorally, as we see in Matthew 9, we have to make a choice: follow Jesus as he crosses the purity boundary or stand with the Pharisees who have opted for quarantine,” says Beck.
He speaks about how the Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper can be an enactment of Jesus’ practice of welcoming and eating with tax collectors and sinners. “Well, that idea works for faith traditions that practice open communion,” he says. “For communities practising closed communion the exact opposite is going on—the Eucharist is a location of exclusion, a place where a boundary is drawn between insiders and outsiders.” 
All of this, I agree, is easier said than done. But we need to begin somewhere. “The will to give ourselves to others and ‘welcome’ them, to readjust our identities to make space for them, is prior to any judgment about others, except that of identifying them in their humanity. This will … transcends the moral mapping of the social world into ‘good’ and ‘evil’” (Miroslav Volf). 
The book  Unclean, as a reviewer writes, is bound to startle and dismay many church folk, especially those who like their religion "nice". 

What have you given up for Lent?

In my growing up years, Lent was all about giving up meat, fish, eggs or dairy products. In other words, I had to forgo some proteins that formed part of my regular diet, some carbohydrates and fats. But it was more like being on a ‘Daniel fast’. I got all the vitamins and minerals that are essential for the functioning of the body from my vegetarian diet.
These days many people decide to give up a favourite food item like chocolate or keep time away from television or movies. Obviously, fasting is more than disciplining your taste buds or taking a break from that ‘chewing gum of the eye’, television.
Ina speech he made on his visit to India in October 2010, Archbishop Rowan Williams said: “Real fasting, says God to the prophet [Isaiah 58:6-7], is breaking the bonds of injustice and sharing your resources. And it is fasting because it means denying yourself something – not denying yourself material things alone, as in the usual sort of religious fasting, but denying yourself the pleasures of thinking of yourself as an isolated being with no real relations with those around; denying yourself the fantasy that you can organise the world to suit yourself; denying yourself the luxury of not noticing the suffering of your neighbour.”
When it comes to caring for the environment do we act as isolated beings? Is not Lent about redefining our consumption patterns too? Here is a list of five things that we can learn to live without, beginning this Lent.

1. Plastic bags
According to the Worldwatch Institute, in 2002, factories around the world churned out roughly 4-5 trillion plastic bags - from large trash bags to thick shopping bags to thin grocery bags. You can imagine what it must be a decade later.
It is said plastic bags can take up to 1,000 years to break down. But as we see around us, some plastic don’t even reach the landfill. They clog the drains, get into waterways, damage the environment and pose a great threat to a large species of animals.
Of late, there have been initiatives to use biodegradable plastic. Some supermarkets voluntarily encourage shoppers to forgo plastic bags.
Why not carry a canvas or cloth bag to the grocery next time? I know of one instance where a Marthoma church gave jute shopping bags to all its members free.

2. Bottled water

Did you know that much more water is consumed in making PET water bottles than will ever go into them? A study says that producing 1 kilogram of PET plastic(polyethylene terephthalate) requires 17.5 kg of water and results in air emissions of 40 gm of hydrocarbons, 25 gm of sulphur oxides, 18 gm of carbon monoxide, 20 gm of nitrogen oxides, and 2.3 kg of carbon dioxide.
In India, the demand for bottled water is increasing by 50 per cent every year. Besides the environmental cost of producing bottles, this can put a strain on existing water resources.
So, starting this Lent, ditch the plastic bottle.
Running water, too, is a luxury where at least 11 percent of the world's population - roughly around 783 million people - are still without access to safe drinking water, and billions without sanitation facilities. There is no need to let the tap running while brushing your teeth or shaving. Also, try a bucket bath rather than using the shower.

3. Disposable cups and plates
The environmental impact of the ubiquitous paper plates and cups are more than we can ever imagine. Paper plates and cups begin as wood pulp, which are then bleached using chlorine compounds. Chlorine compounds are among the most hazardous industrial chemicals in use.
Besides, paper plates and cups that we use are not recyclable. Most manufacturers coat paper plates with materials that make them less biodegradable. That means all of them will go to landfills.
Sometimes Styrofoam disposables are referred to as paper plates, but they are made from non-renewable petrochemical products.
Try palm leaf plates for a change.
Add to this list of avoidables things like disposable pens, razors and nappies.

4. Air-conditioners
What price are we paying for cooled air? “In the past half-century, a number of big, energy-guzzling technologies have really changed our lives: automobiles,computers, television, jet aircraft. All that time, air-conditioning has been humming away in the background, like a character actor you see in a whole bunch of movies. It's never the star, but it always seems to be there moving the plot along. When I looked at the doubling in the amount of electricity used for air-conditioning homes in this country [U.S.] just since the mid-90s, I thought, we really need to address this, because it is a big contributor to greenhouse-gas release and it's going to increase the likelihood that we're going to have longer, more intense heat waves and hotter summers in the future, and we're going to have to be running the air-conditioning even more,” says Stan Cox, the author of Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer).
Air conditioning is a huge reason why power consumption is breaking records. In other words, we use a large part of our electricity to cool ourselves. And, “tofuel our own air conditioning, we're destroying nature's,” says Cox.
Why not try the humble fan?

5. Private transport
Here are other chilling facts. For every kilometre driven by private vehicle, people consume two to three times as much fuel as they would by public transit. And, it takes 18 litres of water to produce just one litre of petrol or diesel.
A2002 study by the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute noted that "private vehicles emit about 95 per cent more carbon monoxide, 92 per cent more volatile organic compounds and about twice as much carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide than public vehicles for every passenger mile travelled".
Annual vehicle sales in India are projected to increase to 5 million by 2015 and more than 9 million by 2020. By 2050, the country is expected to top the world in car volumes with approximately 611 million vehicles on the nation's roads. The environmental impact of this is too large to be ignored.
Walk, ride a cycle or take public transportation whenever possible. If you have a car, give a ride to your neighbours too.

The mark of Cain

On a December afternoon in Delhi, with the sky a sullen grey and the cold gnawing at your bones, there is nothing better than a warm place indoors. The Sunday morning worship doing no wonders to lift my spirits up, I rushed home from church, grabbed a quick bite of lunch and hit the bed. But my siesta was interrupted by a commotion outside. Groggy-eyed, I turned to the balcony to watch. Many others too were craning their necks to watch the spectacle in the common space between two rows of apartments in our LIG colony. (Low-income-group flats, each of which has one bedroom, a living space and kitchen.)
There was a motley crowd below, some of them beating a boy, others whispering his ‘crime’ to late-comers, and some others watching the scene, perhaps like Saul who watched Stephen being stoned to death but did not want blood on his hands. The sole voice of reason from a scrawny lad to call the police and not to take the law into one’s own hands was outshouted with a “Chup raho...”.
I could not see the boy’s eyes (I would not have dared to look into those), but I gathered that he must have been nine or 10. He was clothed in no more than a shirt and a sweater that was barely enough to keep the cold away, and I don’t remember if he had a pair of shoes on. His hair was dishevelled and his hands and feet bore telltale signs of winter, his dry skin looking like cracked porcelain. The boy could hardly take the blows anymore, and once he turned like a top before falling to the ground.
His crime? The little boy had wandered into the corridors of the flats, and seeing a neatly made bed in the front room of my neighbour’s flat, slipped between the warm ‘rajai’ (blanket).
Perhaps all he wanted to do was to sleep in a warm bed, which he otherwise never did.  But the little girls of the house who came in after playing outside saw a stranger sleeping in their bed and started screaming (only fairy tales have friendly dwarfs who let a Snow White stay). The ‘thief’ was immediately captured, a few questions asked and then blows rained on him.
Winter is the cruellest time for the homeless poor in north India (monsoon in other places). Media reports say more than 350 people died of the cold in the region this winter. Thousands of people in India have only the sky as their roof. 
Homelessness not just robs people of an address, but it robs them of their dignity too. Here are some chilling statistics. Action Aid in 2003 found out that there were 78 million homeless people in India. CRY (Child Relief and You) in 2006 estimated that 11 million homeless children live on the street.
What the streets can do to children is anyone’s guess. I dread to think of what happened to the child I saw years ago in Delhi. The gates of prisons are forever open to children like him.
Jacob Riis, a photojournalist, documented the squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s in his book, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York. The book portrayed the Dickensian setting in which children lived or worked for a living. He blamed the apathy of the middle class and the rich for turning their tenement into dens of vices and crime. Public reaction soon followed, which led to improvements in their living conditions.
“The first tenement New York knew bore the mark of Cain from its birth, though a generation passed before the waiting was deciphered,” is the first line of Riis’ book. The ‘mark’ that God set upon Cain has come to be referred to as a person's sinful nature. But this article is not about the sinful nature of people who are pushed into a world of crime and violence by circumstances beyond them, like the ones whom Riis speaks of or whose lives he documents, but about people like us who do not know how the other half lives.
“Long ago it was said that ‘one half of the world does not know how the other half lives.’ That was true then. It did not know because it did not care. The half that was on top cared little for the struggles, and less for the fate of those who were underneath, so long as it was able to hold them there and keep its own seat,” Riis wrote in the Introduction to his book.
Metropolitan Geevarghese Mar Osthathios, in his Theology of a Classless Society, says “hardly anybody is non-violent in our exploiting structure of injustice in which we are all voluntarily or involuntarily involved. The alternative is not between violence and non-violence but between greater and lesser violence, between structural and special violence and between hidden and manifest violence. If we are silent about the endemic violence of the unjust economic, cultural and social structure of our society and raise a hue and cry about the bloody revolution which is a result of the former, we are justifying the evil tree and condemning only the evil fruit.”
That means we are as guilty as anyone else in perpetuating structures that kill and maim. How will we escape having blood on our hands? Like Cain, who has killed his own brother, are we seeking a mark on our head lest others might harm us when we ourselves are guilty?
The question still burns, "Where is your brother?”

Journey to self

Years ago, long before Gandhi-giri became a fad, I went on a whirlwind tour of Delhi. The architectural splendours of Lutyens’ Delhi and the sandstone marvels of the Mughal era had always beckoned me. Any sightseeing trip of Delhi, as you know, is incomplete with a pilgrimage to the Rajghat and the Gandhi Museum. 

The Rajghat, Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial, has an aura of holiness surrounding it. An eternal flame burns here as if to remind the world of the relevance of Gandhism for time to come.  The black-marble-slab memorial on the banks of the Yamuna invites as many as 10,000 visitors every year, apart from heads of state and visiting dignitaries. It has the epitaph ‘He Ram’ (O God), which he uttered with his last breath.
Rajghat and the Gandhi Museum were on the last leg of our trip. Visitors were few and scattered on that wintry afternoon in January – most people on our bus had walked away after making a ritualistic tour of the place – and I saw a feeble, old man making his way to the memorial.  He wore a crumpled Gandhi cap and leaned on for support to a young man who looked like his grandson.
Even as I watched, the man stumbled his way to the black stone, touched it in reverence, and, in what would remain in my memory for a long time to come, buried his face in his hands and wept uncontrollably. Tears streamed down his weather-beaten face. I felt a lump in my throat.
There was no doubt that he was witness to the “lovely dawn of freedom”, as the poet Sarojini Naidu remarked. But what did that mean to this poor man from some remote corner of India? What spell had the old man with a spinning wheel cast on him? Or a million others like him? My journey in search of Gandhi had just begun.
Significantly, we saw a revival of the Gandhi cap in the anti-corruption crusade led by Anna Hazare. Thousands of people, young and old, sported them as they held candle-light rallies and meetings in support of him. But do symbolic gestures such as this or wearing khadi or using handmade paper mean anything?
Beyond idolising Gandhi, a theologian friend told me, it becomes imperative to reinterpret Gandhian principles. For instance, writing in Young India, Gandhi said: “The extension of the law of non-violence in the domain of economics means nothing less than the introduction of moral values as a factor to be considered in regulating international commerce.”
How would we engage with Gandhi’s positions on caste, patriarchy and trusteeship?  How would we reconcile with the vision of a poverty-free India, as expounded by a minister, that 85 per cent of the Indian population should live in cities and to the idea that all urbanisation processes should be halted. How would we be led forward into action to build an India where “women will enjoy the same rights as men”?


Mannequins wearing Gandhi caps.

Those laying claim to the legacy of Gandhi will have to do more than wear his cap or ‘like’ it on Facebook. That would be to resist all forms of structural violence as well. Structural violence is the result of policy and social structures, and change needs to come from altering the processes that encourage these. Thus young professionals in the forefront of anti-corruption also have to make active interventions in preventing the commoditisation of health care, education, and other essential needs of citizens.
It is also very Christian to have this sort of generalised dissatisfaction, “a maladjustment to the world”. As theologian Richard Beck says, “More, these feelings help with resisting idolatry, letting us know that the status quo isn’t the Kingdom.”
In one of his speeches, ‘Proud to be maladjusted’, Martin Luther King, one of Gandhi’s greatest admirers, said: “…[T]here are certain things in our nation and in the world which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of goodwill will be maladjusted until the good societies realise. … I never intend to become adjusted to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few….”
Gandhi himself said Jesus was the most active resister known perhaps to history. “This was nonviolence par excellence.”
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams says Jesus would have joined the Occupy movement to protest against social and economic inequality. “Jesus would be there, sharing the risks, not just taking sides,” he said. Jesus, who “constantly asked awkward questions” would be “steadily changing the entire atmosphere by the questions that he asked of everybody involved — rich and poor, capitalist and protester and cleric.”
Another Christmas. Another spiritual journey to know the mystery of the Incarnation.
“…were we led all that way for Birth or Death?
There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death.
--- ‘Journey of the Magi’, T.S. Eliot.