A Hijra named Kokila age 32 was suffering from abdominal pain and was admitted to Female surgical emergency ward at G.H Pondicherry. She was advised to have an operation. She was also found that she was HIV positive. The nurses attending on Kokila asked her to lift her saree show her “sex organ” – if male or female. Then she was made to sleep on the floor. She asked a blanket for her use and was scolded as “Transgender like you, can do without any comfort. And the doctor threw the case sheet in her face and she threw her out of the room cursing her and warning her never to step again into G.H.



Being a Transgender [hijra], Kokila is a human like any of us; presumably she has all the rights in the society guaranteed by the Constitution, therefore to have proper treatment when ill. The doctors who have to save lives behaved in this manner. Then how can one expect the general people to be kind to Aravanis.



“Sahodaran”, a CBO working in the field of prevention for STD\HIV\AIDS in Pondicherry conducted a massive rally on this issue to show the opposition to such insult and violation of rights and to show the unity of non-heterosexual people and T.G of all over Tamil Nadu and Pondy.



“FMSASHP” Federation for Male Social And Sexual Health Programme is formed at Trichy by the CBO`s in Tamil Nadu. It has nearly 21CBO`s as the members. Out of it 15 were registered and the remaining was in process. All over Tamil Nadu, the CBO opposed this Kokila matter. They formed under FMSASHP and arranged a bus and took part in the rally on 18th Oct 2006, at Pondy. Nearly 13 CBO`s from FMSASHP participated.


The rally started from in front of Forest Department on and passes thru Subbiah square – Anna Square – Anna Salai – Nehru Street – Mission Street – General Hospital and closing stage at Gandhi Thidal on 18th October 2006, between 11.30 am to 1.00 pm. About 350 non-heterosexual People, Aravanis, CBOs, and NGOs participated from all over Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry.



They shouted slogans against Pondicherry Government and Hospital Officials to take immediate action. They also demanded their basic rights. The Inspector of Police Mr. Saravanan negotiated. Mr. Ganesh, Project Manager, Sahodaran Pondy, explained the issue and their demands to the officials.

At the end of the rally Mr. Ganesh, Project Manager, Sahodaran Pondy, Mr. Jaya Kumar, Secretary, FMSASHP Trichy, Mr. Killivalavan Human Rights Activist, Pondy, Ms. Aasha Bharathi, Director, THAA Chennai, Ms. Priya Babu, Director, Sudar Foundation Kanchepuram, met the Chief Minister and handed over a memorandum. The Chief Minister Mr. Rengasamy took immediate action at the spot for immediate enquiry.



Organizations attended:


• THAA [CBO] , Chennai
• Sudar Foundation [CBO] Kancheepuram
• Sahodaran [CBO] Chennai
• Sahodaran [CBO] Pondicherry
• Sahodaran [CBO] Karaikal
• Lotus [CBO] Kumbakonam
• MCDS [CBO] ICWO Chennai
• PNP+ [CBO] Pondicherry
• READ [NGO] Cuddalore
• Villupuram Aravanigal Association [CBO] Villupuram



"FMSASHP"



• SWAM [CBO] Chennai
• Snegyitham [CBO] Tiruchirapalli
• Naam [CBO] Dindigul
• Friends [CBO] Tanjore
• Nesam [CBO] Coimbatore
• Udayam [CBO] Pudukkotai
• MSMS [CBO] Erode
• Wheel [CBO] Karur
• Gokulam [CBO] Madurai
• Bright [CBO] Ramanadhapuram
• CARE [CBO] Theni
• ADAMS [CBO] Salem
• Pasam [CBO] Cuddalore

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS....

what is my life all about?
why is there always grief and doubt?

why do people just turn their back?
is it coz of something i lack?
how come i cry for someone else?
why do i always hurt myself?
is love, life in a better term?
or just something i got to stay away from?
how am i supposed to keep a smile on my face?
why is life a competative race?
what do they get by hurting others?
does my existance even bother?

why do i pray and make a wish?
how come life's not a bliss?
is the almighty one looking down on me?
what does he do? what does he see?
how come happiness is beyond my grip?
why is life such a long trip?

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

where does all this lead me to?
is it worthwhile living through?
when did i lose my way?
why do i do whatever they say?

who will come to help me again?
isn't my life like a burning train?
will i be able to move on alone?
or shall i be stuck in this lonely zone?
how come for me things happen in a line?
is it just coincedance or some sign?

why can't i just leave my past?
why does it always haunt me so fast?
why is everyday a bad day?
when will i be able to do things my way?

what is there in this life to achieve?
who all am i supposed to believe?
when will all these lies end?
have i done anything else than pretend?
will my life get even a bit better?
from my heart, will i ever be able to utter?

why do i shiver although its not cold? why do i hear things even when nothing is told?
how will i trust anyone along my life's pains? why does the blood boil up inside my veins?
till when can i supress all this hate? is it worth trusting luck and fate?

is smoking up the only way out? or sould i just sit and shout?
does getting high help at all?
does it save me from that final fall?

where am i leading myself to?
are my actions reflecting what i really should do?

why do i still feel numb inside?
do i wanna be the guy who had nothing and died?
is everything slowly coming to an end?
will i always have someone as a friend?

is asking for a moment of joy too much?
who will ever give me that gentle touch?

why? what? when? where? who and how? i just need answers now...

another slideshow

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

Teacher's Day Joke

On a special Teacher's Day, a kindergarten teacher was receiving Teacher Day gifts.
The Florist's son handed her a gift.
She shook it and held it over her head, and said, "I bet I know what it is....some flowers."
"That's right!" said the boy.
"But how did you know?"
"Just a wild guess," she said.

The next pupil was the candy storeowner's daughter.
The teacher held her gift overhead, shook it, and said, "I bet I can guess what it is...a box of candy."
"That's right! But how did you know?" asked the girl.
"Just a lucky guess," said the teacher.

The next gift was from the liquor storeowner's son.
The teacher held it over her head but it was leaking.
She touched a drop of the leakage with her finger and tasted it.
"Is it wine?" she asked.
"No," the boy replied.

The teacher repeated the process, touching another drop of the leakage to her tongue.
"Is it champagne?" she asked.

"No," the boy replied.

The teacher then said, "I give up, what is it?"

The boy replied, "A puppy!"

Teachers’ Day is celebrated in India on the birthday of one of India's greatest teachers, Bharat Ratna Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan.

The great orator, thinker, writer, and philosopher started his career as a teacher of philosophy in Madras Presidency College, and then taught in Mysore University. He taught the `dull subject' with a passion that inspired his students. In Calcutta University, he was Professor of Mental and Moral Sciences.
He went on to become Vice-Chancellor of Andhra University and rose to become the President of India. The Government of India, on the request of the National Teachers Federation, declared his birthday as Teachers’ Day on 5 September 1962.

Respect for one’s teachers and recognition of the role that they play is not unique to India, we know of the great teachers of Ancient Greece, Rome and China. Several countries around the world celebrate Teachers’ Day. In countries such as China, South Korea, Taiwan and the US, the day is a ‘non-official’ holiday.

The UN observes the World Teachers’ day on October 5, to ‘provide an opportunity for the international public to examine the critically important contributions that teachers make, both inside and outside the classroom.’ On this day, thousands of education professionals around the world unite to ensure that the educational needs of future generations of schoolchildren are taken into account.

World Teachers’ Day focuses on the need for bringing qualified teachers into classrooms, and for offering teachers the necessary support – financial, intellectual and social – to attain the objective of Education for All by 2015. In order to reach the goal, millions of new teachers will need to be recruited and trained all over the world.

World Teachers’ Day invites everyone to recognize the indispensable and often difficult role that teachers play – whether working in an industrialized city or in a temporary classroom in a refugee camp.

Other countries also celebrate Teachers’ day in September.

In Taiwan it is celebrated as a national holiday on September 28. The day honours teachers' virtues, pains, and also their contribution not only to their own students but also to the whole society. This date was chosen to commemorate the birth of Confucius, believed to be the model master educator in ancient China. In 1939, the Ministry of Education set the date at August 27, the attributed birthday of Confucius. In 1952, it was changed to 38 September, calculated to be the precise date in the Gregorian calendar.

In China, Teachers’ Day was first observed on August 27 at the National Central University in 1931. It was adopted by the central government of the Republic of China in 1932. In 1951, the People’s Republic of China cancelled this observance. It was re-established more than thirty years later, in 1985, and the day was changed to September 10.


The Latin American International Teachers' Day is on September 11, commemorating the death of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, an Argentinean politician and respected educator. The Latin American countries decided on this in the 1943 Inter-American Conference on Education, held in Panama.

Many Latin American countries, however, have a separate national Teachers' Day. In Brazil, Teachers' Day is October 15. . In Peru, Teachers’ Day is celebrated on July 6.

In Mexico, in September of 1917, the Federal Congress decreed May 15 as Día del Maestro. Teachers’ day was first celebrated in Mexico on May 15, 1918.

Something different -- bits of my life

God and Country?

Song and dance over 'national' anthem....

A few days ago, the chief Muslim Mullah who presides over the historical mosque named Jama Masjid in Delhi, proclaimed that 'true' Islamists should not sing a song in praise of the motherland called 'Vande Mataram', because it says that the motherland is to be worshipped, and according to him, Islam says that only Allah has to be worshipped....

This caused an uproar, especially as the Hindu right and their cohorts the RSS, the Bajrang Dal, and the vishwa Hindu Parishad immediately went on the offensive, lambasting Bukhari as well as the Indian muslims...

Interestingly, the Muslim composer AR Rehman who reworked this great national song written during the Indian national struggle against the British by Bankim Chandra chatterjee and made it an instant hit among the hip generation throughout India...

Most Indian Muslims will not care a fig about what Bukhari says ... but once again, this controversial Mohammedan leader has served to push the Muslim community into a ghetto... there is , even at this moment, an upheaval within the Muslim community within india, with a lot of money from saudi Arabia coming in to fund hardline and fundamentalist preachers who run 'madrasas' or islamic schools in many impoverished muslim settlements....

The Taj Mahal built by a Muslim king is the abiding symbol of love and of India ... one can only hope that the fundamentalist Hindu, Muslim, and Christians won't tear apart the fabric of this polycultural , polylingual and polytheistic country that is unique in the world... a country called Hundustan by the Mughals, Bharat by the Aryans, India by the Europeans .....

The mere singing of a song that equates the land of one's birth with God does not give one the stamp of a patriot ...nor does the refusal to sing it necessarily make one an enemy ...

Vande Mataram!

"After a While"

After a while you learn the subtle difference
between holding a hand and chaining a soul.
And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning and company isn't security.
Kisses aren't contracts and presents aren't promises.

After awhile you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and your eyes open,
with the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child.

And you learn to build your roads on today,
because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain
and the inevitable has a way of crumbling in mid-flight.

After a while you learn that even sunshine burns,
if you stand too long in one place.
So, you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone else to bring you flowers.

And you learn you really can endure,
that you really do have worth.
You learn that with every good-bye comes the dawn.

Congrats ... Shilpi

A 17-year old girl from Bihar has won the British Open Deaf Tennis Championship - a first by an Indian.
Patna's Shilpi Jaiswal won the under-18 championship title Saturday at Nottingham, Britain. She defeated Sweden's Fatima Tebibel in straight sets 6-2, 6-1 in the final.
Shilpi, who is deaf by birth, is the first Indian girl not only to win the title but also to participate in this championship.

I AM .....

I am the boy who never finished high school, because Igot called a fag everyday

I am the girl kicked out of her home because Iconfided in my mother that I am a lesbian.

I am the prostitute working the streets because nobodywill hire a transsexual woman.

I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled nights.

We are the parents who buried our daughter long beforeher time.

I am the man who died alone in the hospital becausethey would not let my partner of twenty-seven yearsinto the room.

I am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away from the two fathers who are the onlyloving family I have ever had. I wish they could adopt me.

I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself justweeks before graduating high school. It was simply toomuch to bear.

We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she found out we wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men.

I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid getting the managementcalled on me.

I am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore, nursed, and raised. The court says Iam an unfit mother because I now live with another woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who found thesupport system grow suddenly cold and distant whenthey found out my abusive partner is also a woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I am male.

I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show affection to other men.

I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted toteach gym until someone told me that only lesbians do that.

I am the woman who died when the EMTs stopped treatingme as soon as they realized I was transsexual.

I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better person if I didnt have toalways deal with society hating me.

I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I don't believe, but because they closed their doors to my kind.

I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most, love.

I am the person ashamed to tell my own friends i'm a lesbian, because they constantly make fun of them.

I am the boy tied to a fence, beaten to a bloody pulp and left to die because two straight men wanted to"teach me a lesson"

~Author Unknown

"Pagett, M.P."

The toad beneath the harrow knows
Exactly where each tooth-point goes.
The butterfly upon the road
Preaches contentment to that toad.

Pagett, M.P., was a liar, and a fluent liar therewith --
He spoke of the heat of India as the "Asian Solar Myth";
Came on a four months' visit, to "study the East," in November,
And I got him to sign an agreement vowing to stay till September.

March came in with the koil. Pagett was cool and gay,
Called me a "bloated Brahmin," talked of my "princely pay."
March went out with the roses. "Where is your heat?" said he.
"Coming," said I to Pagett, "Skittles!" said Pagett, M.P.

April began with the punkah, coolies, and prickly-heat,
--Pagett was dear to mosquitoes, sandflies found him a treat.
He grew speckled and mumpy -- hammered, I grieve to say,
Aryan brothers who fanned him, in an illiberal way.

May set in with a dust-storm, -- Pagett went down with the sun.
All the delights of the season tickled him one by one.
Imprimis -- ten day's "liver" -- due to his drinking beer;
Later, a dose of fever -- slight, but he called it severe.

Dysent'ry touched him in June, after the Chota Bursat
--Lowered his portly person -- made him yearn to depart.
He didn't call me a "Brahmin," or "bloated," or "overpaid,"
But seemed to think it a wonder that any one stayed.

July was a trifle unhealthy, -- Pagett was ill with fear.'
Called it the "Cholera Morbus," hinted that life was dear.
He babbled of "Eastern Exile," and mentioned his home with tears;
But I haven't seen my children for close upon seven years.

We reached a hundred and twenty once in the Court at noon,
(I've mentioned Pagett was portly) Pagett, went off in a swoon.
That was an end to the business; Pagett, the perjured, fled
With a practical, working knowledge of "Solar Myths" in his head.

And I laughed as I drove from the station, but the mirth died out on my lips
As I thought of the fools like Pagett who write of their "Eastern trips,"
And the sneers of the traveled idiots who duly misgovern the land,
And I prayed to the Lord to deliver another one into my hand.

-- Rudyard Kipling

Notes:koil (usu. koel): Indian songbird
punkah: fan
Chota Bursat: the early rains

Kipling was never one to suffer fools lightly, and his intolerance has takenthe form of numerous highly satisfying poems and caricatures. Today's poem,the predictable-as-a-train-wreck account of a pompous politician's visit toa land notably lacking in the comforts of home, is typical - Kipling had adeep and informed love for India, and was often openly contemptuous of thosewho did not measure up to its rigours. (The theme is not uncommon - RobertService was later to write even more extreme poems along the same lines,about the men who did not measure up to his beloved Yukon.)This is Frontier poetry in the grand tradition, the division lines drawnclearly between the Men of the Frontier and the effete pen-pushers back homewho would presume to govern them. And what shines through every line of thepoem is an unimstakable ring of authenticity, the pervasive feeling thatKipling knows what he is talking about, and perhaps even that he has earnedthe right to his mockery.

Homecoming

Here I come again
With arms of lead
And lacerated feet.
Too many treadmills trod,
Too many burdens borne.
Too many mutilated milestones
Strewn across the bridle path.

Here I come again
With a limp in my stride
From chasing neon rainbows,
Seeking salvation in sandstorms,
Stretching out for tinsel stars
Pained on a plastic skyline.

Here I come again
Like salmon to the source –
To the circle of your arms
To the warmth of your smile
To the haven of your embrace.

Until a new moon rises
And waiting windmills call …


Frank Krishner 12 January 1994, Ranipul, Sikkim.


Note: Waiting windmills: reference to ‘tilting at windmills a la the Man of la Mancha , Don Quixote. Salmon to the source: salmon swim upstream, hundreds of miles to ‘home’ spawning season.

That's what friends are for

A picture says it all ... dedicated to my friends
throughout the years
every one of you
are special

what can one say

What can I say to you

when the world blows up in your face
explodes into a million brillinatly biting bits
of chaos

I feel nothing
absolutely nothing at all
zombie like in front of the television screen
a thousand miles away
as the cub reporter chatters excitedly into the camera
with a carriage lying there
bowels ripped open in the background

what can I say to you
when my blood has frozen like nitrogen in my veins
sick with fear for those i know who take the daily suburban train
terrified of recognising a familiar form
a cuff, a ring, a kerchief
as the camera pans briefly and impassionately
over the casualties

causalties of hate
casualties of unreason
such senselessness,
such stupidity

what can i say
as you scavenge among the twisted mnetal
the blood drenched shards
in the hope
that who you're searching for, may not be found
just yet
not here

Bombay ....
what can i say to you
words are not enough
sorry ... so sorry.... so sorry....

so sorry

The Fever, the North east, and I

Just a few lines as the World Cup Football fever subsides tonite

The fever of the Governor's Gold Cup in Sikkim has always been infectious
and I immensely enjoyed covering one of the most happening tournaments in the country for The Sikkim Express and the Telegraph between the years 1986 and 2002.

In Shillong, where i studied a bit, joined a seminary for a while, and returned to
work as assistant editor for The shillong times, and as a correspondent for The Times of India
I could witness the wild excitement right from the under seventeen matches, to the village tournaments, and of course the fierce loyalties between football fans of various clubs.

One of the most significant was the way the shopkeepers around the stadium closed their shutters a few minutes befdore the end of the inter-state tournaments ... especially the finals, one was never sure when the fans of the losingt side ... or the winning side, would go oin a rampage!!!

The North East is beautiful ... I have been blessed to have travelled through many towns and cities, covered may political and social processes, and have been one with the rhythm of the hills.

Memories... perhaps trapped in time ...The food, the bands like King Apple, Rusty Nails, and many others Rudy wahlang and the gang, Bob Dylan's Birthday,... Christmas, parties, treks and hikes, .... where else can you get the eclectic mix of the Mizo choir, the pungent thrumbai, well roasted dog meat on spits, and pork jaddoh, and also momos, tsang [chhang], and tsampa... ... ...

I hope that answers the query of the beautiful lady from the land of the seven sisters...

Gole

And now the final moment's come

the ball is in play
the stands are chock-full
the crowds at simmering point
the heat, the sweat, the tension
the Goal
the Cup

and then suddenly

its over

jubilation
tears

and a promise to meet again
when the earth has revolved
around the sun
four times

viva la foota

Rainy season road-hogs and other PIGS

Living from day to day in Patna,
the celebrated 'city' of Patliputra
has its hassles
and nothing excaberates them more
than the advent of the rains.

a non-existent drainage system
coupled with rampant and unplanned construction
turns the streets of this town into a reservoir for dirty drain water

add to this the utter lack of concern for pedestrians
and other people
and the near absence of civic sense
and getting from one place to another ... just a walk
down to the nearest grocery becomes nightmarish
because of the odd PIG who will drive through the street
at a fast clip spraying everyone with the filthy water.

while it's admirable that there are so many
'bihar lovers' desperately trying to turn the tide of negative publicity
it would need a greater effort than just inventing
'I love Bihar' blogs
what's need is an all out effort to teach people to obey traffic signals
to clean the fronts of their own houses of the grabage they throw on the streets
to respect others' property
and to act like civilised humans
unfortunately, there is a significant number of Bihari Youth
who take pride in being 'rustic' 'ribald' 'rude' and 'anti- modern'
because that they believe is the trait of the true Bihari!

Judas

Then
There was the time
I gave my friend a crystal ball
Of trust

And returned
To find
Its fragments
Shattered
On the kitchen floor.


Frank Krishner 1984, Published in Friends Magazine.

Bihar's football crazy girls

From the BBC:

Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Zidane, Kaka and David Beckham are unlikely icons among girls in a remote village in the dirt-poor Indian state of Bihar.

The girls of Barauni village in Begusarai district eat, drink and sleep football and stay up all night to catch their favourite teams at the World Cup on television.

"How can we miss it? We get a chance only once in four years," says Mausam Kumari, who is rooting for Germany.

The girls of Barauni are not only mad about football, they also play the game with a lot of passion - three girls from the village have played in the national women's team, and seven others have been in the state team.

In a near-lawless district - over 100 people have died in political killings in one village alone - the achievements of Barauni's football girls have gone largely unnoticed.

The girls here are so mad about the game that they have a village football club, which even became the women's club champions in India four years ago.

Bihar's state girls' football team is ranked fourth in India.

Rainy Day musings

Raindrops keep falling on my head,
Just like the guy whose feet are too big for his bed,
Nothing seems to fit…

It’s one thing to be in the midst of sweltering Delhi or parched Gaya
Where the heat is intolerant, smashing down from a hot tin sky
And the first few splatters of heavenly H-two-O cause the earth
To burst forth with that heady perfume of pure, distilled, water-vapour

It’s quite another thing to be in cool Lachung or draughty Darjeeling
And feel the cruel, icy fingers of steel run down your neck
While the one chilling icy blasts from the Himalayas pierce your eardrums
Through and through and you can hardly stand up from the pain.

So the rain is a time for jubilation in the heat-filled plains
But it’s a different story in the Alpine climes all over the world…

Have you ever seen the rain? Coming down …

In the Plains, love songs and mating songs are woven around the venal monsoons.

Elsewhere, the grey, soggy, wet weather that rots umbrellas and creates a dank smell that doesn’t seem to go away for months at a time is not a symbol of such joy.

For the people of Punjab, Delhi, the plains of India, rain is such a joyous, life-affirming event

And yet
The rainy day is somehow a time of sadness, as in this evergreen song:

Don’t look so sad, I know it’s over
But life goes on, and this old world, will keep on turning
Just let’s be glad, we have some time to spend together…
There’s no need to watch the bridges, that we’re burning
So lay your head upon my shoulder
Hold your warm and tender body, close to mine
Hear the whisper of the raindrops, falling soft across the window
And make believe you love me, one more time…..

Fire and Ice

There's absolutely nothing that can compare to a rough and tumble game of football in the rain.

Cricket is a decidedly namby-pamby cissy game, which has the mamma's boys running for cover at the first hint of moisture in the air.

You don't see either the players or the spectators running for cover when the skies open during a football match. No sir. The players just muck in and the referee as well.

Of course the real reason that the girls and I loved watching football was that one got to see the most fabulous bods around -- sweaty, sinewy, and many of them finger-lickin' scrumptious. The other reason that I really loved reporting on football was the additional extra: I got to walk into the guy's locker rooms.

Cricket can't come a distant second. Soccer is the one game that really socks it to Ya

All that body contact. The moves that are as graceful as a russian ballet and as supercharged as a ten foot cannon. The sweat and the heat and the excitement.
Football! Nuthin' compares to you.

foota

And what an entertaining opening match it was, with Costa Rica and Germany battling it out and Germany winning 4-2.

A couple of years ago, I toured the interiors of Jharkhand, looking at community run schools which were run by the Santhals, one of the main tribes of Chhotanagpur.

I saw a passion for football that surprised me.

This young man not only works in the family fields and goes to a community run school. His passion is football. He hasn’t access to television, but he knows the names of the football clubs: Mohun Bagan, East Bengal, Dempo.

He reminds me of when I first spotted Baichung Bhutia, a sixteen year old schoolboy from Tashi Namgyal Academy, Gangtok. This young boy was so good, that he was fielded in the Sikkim B team during the prestigious Governor’s Gold Cup. I remember sitting next to Jerri Bassey, one of Sikkim’s International footballers, and we were watching this young lad work magic with his feet. Later on, I wrote in my column in Sikkim Express that this lad would be courted by one of the major clubs and would blaze his way to fame.

True enough, he was snapped up by a top Bengal Football Club a couple of years later. The rest, as we know, is history.

The Golden Game

Oh. He’s football crazy, he’s football mad
And the football it has robbed him o” the wee bit sense he had
And it would take a dozen skivvies, his clothes to wash and scrub
Since our jock became a member of that terrible football club …

Jimmie McGregor [‘Football Crazy’ 1960 song.]

In Sikkim, the spiritual land of my soul, football and moonshine are the two most important subjects.

Some people think football is a matter of life and death .. I can assure them that it is much more than that . To the true son of the hills Goli is religion, church, sacrament and penance rolled into one. In Sikkim, there are three seasons: summer, winter, and football!

I remember in the bad old days of Boredarshan, how some of us drove cars over the mountains to the top of a particular ridge in 1986, so we could aim makeshift antennae and catch weak signals from across the border to catch the opening of the World Cup live… what we saw mostly was a lot of grains… but we drove back triumphant and bleary eyed, secure that the ritual had been satisfactorily performed and we had participated in the quintessential pontifical observance that separated the true worshippers of the leathern sphere from the neophytes.

World Cup Fever is in the air and I’m a believer.

To my friends in Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland, North Bengal and Sikkim… To all football fanatics the world over: Viva la compagnie!

Moody Blues

The whole trouble with a folk song is that once you’ve played it through there is nothing much you can do except play it over again and play it rather louder. [Constant Lambert 1905-51]

I’ve been putting aside some time each day to catalogue my current music collection. ‘Current’ because my peripatetic lifestyle has resulted in my entrusting dozens of albums to friends’ safekeeping in various towns over the decades. Disturbances in the north-east in the mid-eighties meant that I left a collection of some 50 albums with a good friend in Shillong – quite a few are tucked away in a corner of a little house in Sikkim -- music that may be difficult to lay hands on easily: The Who, Conway Twitty, Jim Croce, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Alabama, Gentleman Jim Reeves, The incomparable Dusty Springfield, The scorpions, AC/DC, several Joan Baez and Bob Dylan albums, The wonderful Ray Charles and the elusive Cat Stevens, among others.

My decade in Patna – certainly not the place to find intelligent music in the dark decades of Lalooism – was made bearable by recourse to the music I carried along with me … and the music I picked up whenever I visited Calcutta, Bombay or Delhi.

Last year, I picked up Harry Belafonte’s Carnegie hall concert for the THIRD time: my first set was purloined in 1986, the second was borrowed by the librarian of the erstwhile British library in Patna in 1994, which he forgot to return when he left Patna some years ago.

Just listening to Harry Belafonte belting out ‘Man Smart, woman smarter’, Mama , look a Booboo, and Ma-til-da is more than enough to drive the monsoon blues away…..

Raindrops ... fallin' on my head

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heavens: a time to be born, and a time to die… a time to weep, a time to laugh, a time to mourn, and a time to dance …..

The rains have crept into Patna, pussyfooted in as a gentle and welcome shower around mid-day on Monday and then after a pause of an hour or so, a drizzle elongated itself into a droning, pattering, watering-can that went on through the evening and the night and it rained on, almost without a pause the whole day…

Hardly any thunder and lightening, just dull rainfall, drab skies, mud-filled streets and an erratic electric supply…

Rather early for Patna in Bihar… the monsoons usually break with a crash somewhere around the third week of June or later.

The weather’s cooler, the mosquitoes have revived and are swarming through windows, skylights, any orifice they can find, the frogs are a-croaking

the kids, as usual, are having the time of their lives splashing about
but there was a rather cross young man who just couldn't figure out why car drivers have to be so uncivilised as to crash through the water- logged streets soaking pedestrians ...

…. And I’m caught unprepared, without a brolly…

…

toodle-umba umba… toodle umba umba, toodle aye-aie
any umbrellas, any umber-rellas to mend today?
Bring your parasols, they may be small, they may be big
I will fix them all in what they call a jiffity-jig ….

Four letter word...

If somebody says ‘I love you’ to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol-holder requires? ‘I love you, too.’ – Kurt Vonnegut

Love is an extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. Love … is the discovery of reality.

The other night someone whom I care about quite a lot and I
Touched upon the subject of love, attraction, and sex
We talked late into the night and didn’t stop till the grey light of dawn turned azure.

Is attraction the first step of love, or is it the first step to sex?
Can I be in love with someone and yet not feel the need for the intimacy of sex?
Is it possible to be in sex with someone, but not in love?

Like Auden, we sigh:
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,
Or soft as eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love…

The other night I shadow-boxed in the dark
Not wanting to get hurt all over again,
perhaps not wanting to let my defences down and admit to myself …

that the feeling is mutual
that the first time in September when he opened the door and pushed his way unannounced into my life I saw him I liked what I saw
and within the week I knew … yes, I knew

that love is a terrible thing. You poison it and stab at it and knock it down into the mud ---- way down – and it gets up and staggers on, bleeding, and muddy, and awful --- like the ghost of Rasputin… it haunts you …

But, perhaps, I’m too battle-weary, tired and exhausted
How in hell can you handle love without turning your life upside down? That’s what love does, it changes everything..

Love is like the measles – all the worse when it comes late in life …

But here I am, I’m growing accustomed to his face … he makes the day for me begin …

Cracking the code

"The Hunter"

The hunter crouches in his blind.
'Neath camouflage of every kind.
This grown-up man, with luck and pluck,
Is hoping to outwit a duck. -- Ogden Nash

Just a small reaction to a couple of anonymous reactions to my post on the asinine stance of the pompous and lunatic fringe of the Catholic Church calling to ban a not-so-hot piece of fiction – the Da Vinci Code.

The Brother of the West Wind [hopefully nothing to do with gastric juices]
seems to say that if the lunatic fringe of the Muslim community goes on rampage --
[I heard very sane voices from the Muslim community including a descendant of the Prophet – a Saudi Arabian princeling-- categorically say on the BBC that the Prophet (MPBUH) would never have approved the ruckus being created by fundamentalists over the cartoons. He even said that destroying the Bahmian Buddhas was anti-Islamic.] --
and if the lunatic fringe of the Sangh Parivar takes umbrage at Valentine’s Day cards –
Then the Christian lunatic fringe can also get a film banned if they want to… tsk .. tsk…
So the Church Militant rises again and Jesus Christ is buried…..

The second anonymous posting … a long torturous piece possibly posted by the same brother, interestingly uses the same language as the Sangh Parivar … ‘pseudo secularists’.. etc… etc…

Fascism raises its ugly head. What difference between Hitler and the neo-nazis of the present day: the terrorists of the cross, the crescent or the cause of the Parivar?

Heil il Papa –Ze Nazi Pope and his new breed of black-shirts [or turncoats , who will not use their God-given intellect. It’s so sad..]

Dogs of War???

NO ONE is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite – Nelson Mandela


I have been silent for a few days. Observing. Cogitating. Listening to so many anger-filled voices, spewing so much of venom.

Politically, the resident doctors’ strike is a replay of the Mandal Nightmare that shook the VP Singh Government. In a country where resources are limited, and state-of-the-art educational resources are scarce, the competition becomes fiercer. And here we are, fighting like dogs over a plate of tripe. The ones with the most muscle bark and bite the loudest, as they want to snaffle the juiciest bits. The weaker ones retreat to the very edge of the bowl, and then there are those poor mongrels which can’t even get a sniff in.

There is this one plate of tripe, and a kennel-full of canines to feed. No prizes to guess which dogs muscle in on the feed … a couple or three of the strong ones. But that plateful of tripe is not to nourish the three strongest dogs, and so the guy in charge has to make sure that the others in the pack get some share as well.

When the man in charge wants to set aside some of the tripe, the stronger dogs growl, bare their teeth, even try to bite. So the man has to resort to a stick, to force, in order to facilitate the weaker ones to snatch a bite or two from the plate. Now there are far more weaker dogs than stronger ones … and the objective of the keeper is to see that the special, nourishing tripe is utilized in a way that the general well-being of the kennel is maintained, not just a few smart dogs with velvet coats.

I have witnessed the howls of protests, the bared fangs, the threats of the top-dogs who are using everything in their power to hang on to that plate of tripe.

The top dogs have used the internet, the English language, and their vast international resources. Well, natural animal instincts at work here. Might is right in the animal kingdom, and might is not just brute force… it’s pedigree, breeding, the whole blue ribbon.

Social Justice, however is something that animals can’t understand. That the meek will inherit the earth. That the extra cloak in your closet belongs to your naked shivering brother….

And perhaps therein lies the rub...

Why we need reservation

Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field. Edmund Burke 1729 -97.

My take on the reservation issue exactly.


Most of the real India doesn’t have a level playing field.
Have you chaps who are making such a fuss about skipping a couple of meals all in the hope of making a point in the overfed media, ever have tried to live on what the poor in India make?
Between Rs 60 and Rs 90 a day! And only if and when they can get work. Most people on the poverty line [those fortunate to earn a dollar a day] hardly scrape together a thousand rupees a month because work is seasonal and scarce.
And they have to feeds their whole family on that.

The reservation issue is the biggest non-issue ever. Why increase seats when most of the real Dalits can’t ever make it near those high-tech Medical institutions, ... except to clean toilets, maybe.

And let me tell you exactly why we need more doctors from the ‘lower castes’ even though they may not be as ‘brilliant’ as the well fed and pampered upper classes: we need them to look after their own community, to work in places where your so-called upper class doctor yuppie kids will never be. To man those several thousand health centres in rural India that have absentee doctors. To give the very poor and disadvantaged access to health care. A Dalit doctor will be a damn sight better at forensic medicine than the Brahmin fellow who sits outside while an underling does the autopsy, because good Brahmins never touch dead bodies. I have researched this one and I have seen this with my own eyes, so don’t get cute with me and contest it.

The government of India has been subsidising medical studies for decades, and it only benefits the rich, the urban, and those with means. It’s time that some of that subsidised education is accessible to doctors who will not flinch from bringing succour to the untouchables, the Dalits, the humble communities in the remote villages.

An ordinary non-brilliant physician is a damn sight better than no physician at all.

Da Vinci Code

The politics of the Catholic Church surfaces once again

Pity those foolish people who are braving the heat protesting over a stupid film!
Is the Christian faith so fragile that a fictional movie can smash it?
Looking at those absolute idiots protesting makes me think that The Church of Christ
must have been built on SAND... must we sacrifice freedom of expresion to base sentimentality???

So what if Jesus Christ is linked with Mary Magdalene ... if they say he married he and had kids ... I certainy can't picture JC himself getting his underwear in a knot over that little piece of fiction ...

When will all these religious fundamentalists SHUT UP and let the rest of us people live in peace and enjoy a flick or read a book.

For Christ's sake, the film has been reviewed as a bloated drama... it's panned by the critics ... who but the stupidest would even BELIEVE that it's a true story ... The Church is terribly pie-eyed. Catholic priests have said that there's nothing wrong with the film... uGH!!!

I suggest that if these fundamentalist Christians feel so strongly about this entirely stupid film, they should climb upon the nearest cross and crucify themselves to death .. it would certainly relieve the earth of a tremendous burden ...

Mother's day ...

Mother of mine
you gave to me
all of my life to do as i please
I owe everything
I have
to you
Mother, sweet mother of mine....

So here's another 'imported' festival gaining ground in India.
Mother's day , ce;ebrated on the second sunday of May
is probably of American Catholic origin
the Month of May is dedicated to
Our Lady the Queen of Heaven
and a special time of devotion that devout Catholics have
to felicitate Mary, the mother of Jesus

Anyway,
there are a great many things that are not so great
inspired, or driven by evil maters around the world ...

But, happy celebrations to all
and for the time being
MUM's the word ....

nuthin' to say

if a fire raged
in one room of your house
could you sleep in the next room?

if a dead body lay
in one room of your house
could you sing in the next room?

If corpses lay rotting
in one room of your house
could you pray in the next room?

if yes
then i have nothing
nothing at all to say to you ...

And I see no bravery

And I see no bravery
No bravery in your eyes
Only sadness…

James Blunt

Once upon a time there was a tavern
Where we used to raise a glass or two
Remember how we passed away the hours
Dreaming of the things that we would do…

As I scan the inner reaches of cyberspace
I come across this news item from Iraq
That some ‘moral enforcers’ entered a neighbourhood
Dragged out a fourteen year old boy and butchered him
Because he was ‘gay’ …
The reality was that he had no other option but to have sex with other men
In return for food or cash
In order to feed his starving fatherless family
This is the fallout of the so-called war against terror
It has reduced a secular nation, no doubt a dictatorship, but a fairly stable, secular one
To utter chaos, anarchy, and it has unleashed the blinkered forces of unreason.

I see the look of defiance in the eyes of many an activist
fighting for the basic rights of those in same-sex relationships.
I read about the protests and processions in Bangalore, in Bengal, and elsewhere
These protests by Hijras, transgender people, kothis, Gay men, lesbians calling for an end to discrimination and that they be granted basic human dignity …
And I sense, not just the bravery of these activists who speak for the silent majority
But the infinite sense of sadness ...

Heterosexuality isn’t any more natural than homosexuality, it’s just more common.

Wordification … vilification … venomspewing…. Rot

Cry, the beloved country … but how?

Gujarat state, the birthplace of the “apostle of peace” in the modern world
Is the post-modern graveyard of sanity
The fifth Reich rears its head : gorgon-like,

A four hundred year old sufi tomb-shrine
Labelled an encroachment and razed by men in uniform

Who’s happy about it?
Certainly not those of us who hold our own beliefs as sacred as those of others.
Certainly the hundreds of Christians, Jains, Hindus who would take part in the rituals around the tomb are dumbstruck, shocked, sorrowful.
Certainly those who love history and heritage can look at this as an act of insanity, remember the Taliban and the Bamiyan Buddhas?

Strange how these rightists, these fundamentalists work together.

The Orthodox, narrow, fundamentalist Muslim fringe can’t stand the Sufis
Because the sufi saints spoke about a divine love that surpassed the narrow limits of written lines on some ancient parchment.

The Muslim fundamentalists call the sufi cult an aberration, a satan, something to be eliminated…

So who’s happy at this turn of events?
The Muslim fundamentalist clerics … the splinter Islamic groups … those that spread hatred and separation in the name of religion.

How wonderful for them … the sufi shrine being destroyed …
and their false doctrine of Moslem-being-victimised can be vindicated

so riots …
and then the pseudo-doctrine of Minority-being appeased
and Hindu-being-victimised can flower…

Remember, every time the bell tolls
It tolls for me … and you….

Let’s not get trapped in vilification and verbiage
Let the power of bhakti… of divine love .. shine all the stronger

On the 30th of April, right after the Bihar Low-cost videofest, I was admitted to Holy Family Hospital, Kurji with severe renal colic, this post springs from a weird experience I had there…

I belong to the generation whose parents spent a great deal of time instilling ‘up-bringing’ into. Along the way we picked up certain notions that are being severely tested these days. One of them is that you can rely on whatever the doctor says, because a good doctor always works in the best interests of his patients.

Another belief that has been taking a beating is that the doctors in the good old mission hospital are doughty pioneers who do their best to serve their patients, not for filthy lucre, but because they respond to a higher calling. The good Lord knows that in the many summers that I have roamed this earth, I have had the great good fortune to have benefited from the ministrations of such angels in the shape of human healers – Dr Anne Neidfield MMS, Dr Ekka, both surgeons at the Holy Family hospital at Mandar, now in Jharkhand’s Ranchi District and ‘Doctor’ Tom Gunther, an apothecary who dispensed DeChane’s herbal medicines that saved many a child from the grim reaper in those days when routine immunisation was unheard of in India – were such people. They walk the earth no more.

What does one say when they come across a doctor in a Mission Hospital whose whole purpose in treating patients seems to be to direct them towards another hospital and more expensive treatment, literally scaring them off?

This slimeball, who had responsibility for my case, confronted me with reports within 12 hours of my stay in the hospital, suggesting that the levels of certain chemicals in my blood were unusually high and suggested that there was indication of possible kidney damage and that I should waste no time in getting the latest non invasive treatment for a stone in my left kidney and also visit a nephrologist who also happened to own a “stone clinic” and a hospital. Holy family hospital, he warned, did not have the competency…. Strange, I thought, because I had received very satisfactory treatment for stones in my right kidney from this very hospital almost twenty years ago …. Being the suspicious creature that I am, I did some quick checking up using my mobile phone, to find out that the particular joint he was trying to pack me off to was his favourite on the referral list, and some other patients had not-good experience there. And very curiously, I found out that the calculus was not in my kidney, and that the particular chemicals that were ‘abnormally high’ were so because of the extreme pain I was in when the tests were taken.

I immediately switched to another surgeon, a Doctor Hamidi who had butchered me before, when my appendix ruptured in the 90’s and had done a pretty good job of putting me back on the road. Guess what, a second round of tests showed that the chemical balance was normal, so IVP could be performed – what a relief, my kidney wasn’t damaged, and I left the hospital with choices, all information provided by the doctor so I can decide for myself what to do with the calculus bouncing around inside.

It’s a pity that today’s mission hospitals have few medical men with vocations, merely lots of younger ‘career doctors’ who are time-servers … wonder what will happen when the old guard, the practicising professional stalwarts hang up their stethoscopes?

We don't need no ejukayshun

Oliver Goldsmith, the poet chap
Wrote this poem about the village schoolmaster
And all of us kids in middle school had to mug it up …
There was something about the people in the village wondering how such a small head could carry all he knew.

The village schoolmasters in Bihar [and also in some other states of the country I believe] have the people in the villages wondering whether they exist at all!!

As late as the 1960s, the village education system in Bihar was pretty good, because the schools were managed by a committee of villagers. Okay, there may not have been as many school sites [notice I have not said school buildings] as there are there today, and it may be that there was no great inclination to cram every child into the classroom, but teaching actually took place because the teacher was accountable to the village headman or the family who donated the school house or whoever.

Then the Government stepped in and ownership was taken away from the village or the Panchayat and the government began appointing teachers, transferring them around at will, and generally made them accountable to the State education department.
The ‘free’ education and ‘free’ service on the one hand, and the fact that the teacher was no longer accountable to the villagers , but to a ‘higher’ power made them snooty. Education was no longer a service but a ‘privilege’, a ‘free gift’ a ‘hand-out’ and since neither the parents nor the village authorities had any jurisdiction over the non-resident town based teacher, very soon teaching and learning activity dwindled….

In the 1990’s the Bihar Education Project, prodded by the Unicef and funded from various foreign governments came up with the ‘education for all’ slogan and tried to get the schools back in the hands of the villagers….

However, fifteen years later … there’s still a long way to go…

Shit

As convenor of Abhivyakti 2006 the video festival
at Ravi Bharati .. I get to watch all the films before everyone else
Absolutely amazed at a documentary called SHIT
by a tamil alternative film maker called Amudhan KP
a somewhat disturbing film
because you are forced to literally watch human excreta as you accomapny
a woman municipal worker on her daily rounds
of scooping the stuff off lanes around a public toilet somewhere in Chennai
....
and scavenging - carrying human excreta - is supposedly prohibited in India?

In Memoriam

Yesterday, through the incredible internet
A long lost Aunt and Uncle contacted me from the land of Oz
It’s amazing what those ‘family tree’ web pages can do.

I had been out of touch for more than half a century …

And then, just today
Through the self-same internet
I learnt that my Aunt Myrtle had passed away on the 8th of April
At the Prince Charles hospital in Brisbane
The funeral was on the 11th at the Nudgee Cemetry

And this post is in memoriam of one of my favourite Aunts
Aunt Dorothy … who graduated from this life summa cum laude
Last year – and I didn’t even know.

Such is the pace of modern existence
Of deadlines
Travelling schedules
Misplaced visiting cards
Too many changes of addresses
Strange isn’t it
With all the wonderful progress made in communication
So fast, so easy, so instantly accessible

Words don’t come easy
Words are left unsaid

We keep putting off writing that letter
Buying that stamp
Sending that letter by snail mail
To the ones who helped us grow up
And who haven’t got comfortable with pounding the keyboard
On a new-fangled computer



Now all that can be said
Is requiscat in pace
Rest in Peace ……

Spinnin' as usual

Every morning, unfailingly at seven, the voices of two Bangaloreans break into my reverie just as the cock crows – and you bet it does, literally, loud and clear at 100 watts of RMS.
That’s the time I listen to Spin, a radio station that has grown on me ever since I invested in a Worldspace Radio receiver as a special New year gift all for myself.

The two culprits are Anjana and Hari who generally seem to be on air for the sole purpose of stumbling through the morning with their cups of coffee.
The music is good and recognizable, a morning mocktail of the classics and the new stuff. However, one wishes that the Big Bang had a small request slot worked into it, maybe from about 8 to 8:30 where messages and dedications could be worked into the patter.
Of course, Spin does have the occasional special show where listeners are contacted and actually get their requests aired in their own voices, but that’s very few and far between, the last one being on Valentine’s Day.
Anyhow, here’s wishing Happy Birthday to Spin … which completed one year on the 15th of April... and best wishes to all thepeople behind the shows like Spin Gold, and the Sunday Morning Show

Cheers to radio … someone still loves you!!

morning musings

What's in a name?
In a face?
In an ethnicity, or nationality?
African, Afro-american, Austrailain aboriginal ..
Adivasi? Santhal? Oraon? Munda?
West? East? North? South?

Put on an American flag bandana
Stare into the camera with confidence
who can say whether you are from the east
or the west

Here is Amrit Toppo from Bodh Gaya
clowning for my camera
looking like one of those BOYZ in the HOOD ....

words

Sometimes words don't come easy
they just refuse to spring up
locked in impotency... unejaculated, unformed
as if encased in this condom that prevents
the union of feelings and expression
thoughts thwarted, unformed,unable to reach even foetal stage
until this writer's block dissolves
it's going to be a period without passion
without stimulation
without release.....

"Description"

George said, "God is short and fat."
Nick said, "No, He's tall and lean."
Len said, "With a long white beard."
"No," said John, "He's shaven clean."
Will said, "He's black," Bob said, "He's white."
Rhonda Rose said, "He's a She."
I smiled but never showed 'em all
The autographed photograph God sent to me.

-- Shel Silverstein

The technique of using children as mouthpieces to examine philosophical questions is by no means unique to Silverstein, but it is a technique he wields very well, and it makes his poems both a pleasure to read and a source of reflection.

Resurrection….

The Easter vigil. Night –time. Candles alight, these people walk into church while the Exultet is sung… Rejoice now, all you heavenly choirs of angels, rejoice all creatures around His throne, for the mighty King is victorious….

Every year, this ritualistic renewal of the faith… the reaffirming of baptismal vows. Do you reject Satan? And is he a man in a long beard that looks like Osama Bin Laden? Or is he furrowed fore headed and shifty eyed like George Bush?

Let us proclaim the Mystery of Faith, the celebrant intones at the head of the altar, as the congregation duly sings out ‘Christ is dead, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.’

Christ dies everyday.
Christ dies every time a Christian turns against his neighbour.
Christ dies whenever the Church encourages discrimination against women, against gays, lesbians and transgender people.
Christ dies every time a sanctimonious pastor demeans others , the non-Christians, the un-baptized.
Christ dies every time some idiot seeks to defend him and pays disrespect to other people, their religions and cultures.
Christ dies everyday in Jharkhand, in Orissa, in Gujarat, in Kashmir, in Palestine, in Uganda … he dies every time there is violence born out of ignorance, hatred, and greed.

Christ is risen everyday.
Christ is risen whenever we speak out in favour of justice, speak out against discrimination for the marginalised and the vulnerable.. the poorest of the poor.
Christ is risen in the voices united against the displacement of the people by the Narbada Project.
Christ is risen in the heroic deed of a teenager who saved children from the burning fires in Meerut, even at the cost of his own life.

Christ will come again.

Every child that is born carries a promise of that second coming. Every child, no matter whether male or female, black, yellow, white or brown, comes to this earth with the potential to make a change, to create something wonderful and lasting. Every one of the young people on this planet - Hindu, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Athiest, Buddhist, Jain, animist, humanist, - has the option and the capacity to change the place around him or her for the better. To bring in brotherhood, plurality and true peace… for that is what the kingdom of God is all about.

Alleluia. Happy Easter!