I watched Saley, Shantha and Shalini making table candles in the department on Wednesday when there was an in between time! This is towards getting ready for the Easter Cheer in April, 2022.
The process of melting flakes of wax, transferring it to containers and fixing the wick when the wax was about to solidify offered me a learning experience of the steps and details involved in this process.
The process of pouring wax without any air bubble getting trapped in the column of wax is indeed the most important skill that this process would demand.
As I watched the above process I was reminded of three experiences which happened on the first day at the Christian Medical College, Vellore 25 years back when I started my life as a faculty in that institution. Through a Memorandum of Understanding between CMC Vellore and ASHIRVAD Christian Concern for Child Care, I was given the responsibility to begin the services to establish a Developmental Paediatrics Unit at CMC Vellore.
Ms Annie George who was at ASHIRVAD Child Development Centre at Chennai since 1996 had also joined on the forest day to start the activities of Developmental Paediatrics. Premila and Shekar were to join a month later!
Anna too, stayed back at Chennai till all the services at Chennai could be wound up and all the facilities and equipment got transferred to Vellore.
The First experience
Around 9.30 on the first day, when we were getting ready to organise the unit at the side room in the W ward of the Gastroenterology department, a professor dropped in to greet us. This professor, Dr Mathew Alexander had his training in other institutions and had joined CMC to support a department which needed to advance in new areas of service and innovation.
During the hour long conversation, he referred to an empty cup and the efforts to fill it in his own way through what he was doing in his department.
He turned to me and said that 'Most of us know nothing about Developmental Neurology and Developmental Paediatrics. You come to create a facility to convey the vision that you carry from the fifteen years at Chennai. In so doing, do it by collaborating and integrating with the ethos and character of the institution'. Turning back to review my experiences at CMC Vellore for eleven years before I retired in 2008, what stands out was a learning journey to collaborate and integrate with the ethos and character of CMC Vellore.
It was on that day, I felt that I needed a work ethos to high light the mission of the Developmental Paediatrics Unit. It led me to define on that day, that the Unit can offer three features through its work style: caring and sharing; people centred approach; small and yet beautiful! Yesterday while on a zoom meeting with the current team at Developmental Paediatrics Unit at CMC, this three fold purpose of the department was mentioned as the character of the unit.
I remember the professor with gratitude for his wise counsel on the first day of the unit. That made all the difference to know the way we are to be in a new setting!
Inspite of all the care taken while pouring the wax in the container(last photo above), there was air trapping, which involved refilling the container!
Doing and redoing would be the only way to pursue a calling!
Second experience
Miss Ann Bothamlay, a senior nurse educator at CMC who heard about the department dropped in around mid day to greet and share her suggestions to move forward. Just before she left she noticed that the room was not well lit. In about fifteen minutes an electrician arrived with two tube lights to fix in the room. Ann arranged to provide the tube lights from her ward stock. I was new to the system and did not know how to intend for fixtures. I had no idea that it was Ann who arranged for the tube lights till in the evening when she returned to check if the tube lights were fixed.
In the conversation when I profusely thanked her for her generous gift, Ann mentioned something which had a historical impact in the formative thinking about the philosophy of caring. She mentioned that 'while working in any institution, we have an opportunity to build to belong- each person doing something to help the other person to create a sense of belonging' !
It was this perspective that helped ASHIRVAD to incorporate this calling in its attitude to work and relationships. Dr Nisha George while working in the Developmental Paediatrics Unit in 1999 helped to design the following logo to highlight the mission of 'build to belong', which has appeared in the ASHIRVAD publications since then.
What an insightful message Ann brought in word and deed on the first day of the beginning of the partnership activity between CMC Vellore and ASHIRVAD to start the services of Developmental Paediatrics Unit.
Third Experience
The Director of CMC Vellore Dr V.I.Mathan, who was also the head of the department of Gastroenterology dropped in around 4 pm to greet us on the fist day of starting the Developmental Paediatrics Unit. We had set up the space to make it inviting for children when they would come for consultation. He took time to understand as how we would get going in a small space when children come visiting for their needs! He felt the need for more space for us. He suggested that he would look for more space for us. Dr Mathan called me to the directorate next day to say that he was in touch with the housing committee to find a house in the hospital campus to give for the department till the new centenary building would be ready in 2000 where the unit would be located.
That was what happened. We were offered a two storey house with all the modifications needed to have rooms for the different activities we needed to offer to children. That house with garden space on three sides became an ideal setting for children.
Dr Jacob Chacko, professor of Paediatrics Surgery was moving from an independent house to an apartment in a multi-storey housing complex in the campus. He had a lawn in front of his house from which he had gathered a pot of grass when he left the house, just before it was demolished. Finding the garden space around the Developmental Paediatrics facility, he dropped in with a pot of lawn grass and offered it to us to use it to grow a lawn around the building. It was the monsoon season and the we were able to use this pot of grass to develop a lawn on three sides of the building in. short time. That lawn became an activity place for children for out-door therapeutic play.
It was from this lawn, grass was gathered to create lawn in many empty spaces in the hospital and college campuses, when the Developmental Paediatrics Unit shifted to the centenary building in 2000.
Two gifts connected with the first day of Developmental Paediatrics Unit: the director voluntarily offering more space to the Unit and Dr Chacko offering a pot of grass which grew into multiple lawns in both campuses of the hospital and college!
Annie and I closed the day on the first day with Annie praying, 'Lord make this small beginning a blessing to children and families'!
It was Annie who closed the zoom meeting with the Developmental Paediatrics unit at CMC yesterday, gratefully remembering the 25 years that have gone by since that beginning on 24th February 1997.
The first day of many significant happenings in this journey of 25 years!
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
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