It was while taking a series of photos of this Bulbul pair perched on a tall tree in our garden, on a cloudy morning with darkened sky, I was taken back to memories of 1985, when Anna and I faced dark clouds ahead of us, with only faant light to lead our path ahead.
We moved to Chennai in 1983 to engage ourselves in Child Development and rehabilitation for which we started a Child Development Centre and formed a voluntary organisation, ASHIRVAD.
The response to our initiative was less than we anticipated. With children trickling in, we realised that we lacked sufficient clinical skills to engage children and families when the rehabilitation needed skills which we did not have. Having embarked on this journey, and feeling confused, I experienced a feeling of meandering. The opportunities at the Rainy Hospital and MITHRA, a rehabilitation centre, did not pacify the inner restless.
The secretary, Ms Yoga George, who helped us at work, having heard me talk about the different aspects of the implications of the liberalised policy of the government of India, on the Medical Termination of Pregnancy, introduced in 1983, asked me once, 'If you are ready to write a book on this theme, I shall take the dictation and transcribe to make the typescript'! I brushed aside the suggestion. On two other occasions in a fortnight she reminded me about this.. I could not think beyond the disappointing outcome of our efforts in child development and our limited skills to carry on.
On one morning, Yoga came to my room at 8.30 am with a dictation pad and said, 'I have come to take dictation of the book on issues related to abortion'. I felt moved by her interest and offer of help. For the next one hour, I spoke and she used short hand to write. At 4 Pm before leaving, Yoga gave me six pages of the typed text on the introduction of the book.
For the next six weeks, each morning, Yoga took dictation and completed the text ready for editing and cross checking with others for feed back.
I was a member of the governing Council of the Christian Medical College of Vellore, representing the Bible Medical Missionary Fellowship (BMMF) (now Interserve). At one council meeting in 1984, on its first day, the Director Dr L.B.M.Joseph moved a resolution to have a policy on the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP). At lunch time, I went to Dr LBM (that was how he was known) and showed my interest in the discussion on the MTP through a Biblio-centric perspective. He was interested to hear that I had a typescript I was editing on issues related to abortion, titled, 'Let Me Live'. He asked for it and read most of it that night and shared to the council next morning, a summary of the Biblio-centric view quoting from Let me Live. He surprised me when he concluded his presentation by proposing the formation of a sub-committee to take this matter forward with Dr V.I. Mathan, Dr K.C.Mammen and myself as its members. It was possible to propose a document on the policy for CMC Vellore on MTP in the next council meeting.
Anna and I felt that we were meandering and were feeling concerned about not being professionally engaged meaningfully! This book, the way it was written through dictation at the spontaneous nudging of Yoga came to us, as a sign that meandering is a desert experience, part of the formation process of becoming.
Ms Yoga George was a refugee in India, who came to escape the ethnic conflict which was raging at that time in Colombo. She became the midwife for the birth of a book.
The book was published by the Evangelical Medical Fellowship of India when Dr Kuruvella George became the general secretary in 1989.
It was only when I heard from Dr Bruce Nicholls and Dr Zaphir Athyal of the Union Biblical Seminary, Pune, I realised that it was the only book written by an Indian doctor through a Biblio-centric optic on the Medical Termination of Pregnancy, available at that time, which therefore had become a reference book in theological colleges in Medical Ethics.
There was another significant turning point in early in1984, when Anna and I were invited to be partners of the BMMF. Ms. Margaret Parkinson, the India representative of BMMF, suggested to her counterpart in England, Mr Arthur Pont that Anna and I be given an opportunity to train in Child development in England. She did this after spending two days with us at the Child Development Centre, where I was largely involved in the clinical appraisal of developmentally challenged children and Anna was providing the neuro-developmental support for children. Seeing us improvising and doing what was possible with our skills, Margaret felt the need for us to have a wider experience and connect with other professionals overseas as the speciality of child development did not exist in India at that time.
Mr Arthur Pont in 1985 June got in touch with the academic officer of the Institute of Child Health, attached to the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, London. Mr Duncan Guthrie having heard about our need to be trained in Child Development offered me a position in the newly started course on child development and community based rehabilitation and offered admission for the 2026 academic term. Mr Guthrie offered a scholarship and the Mr Arthur Pont of BMMF offered to underwrite all other expenses including family travel, family accommodation and living expenses for fifteen months. That was a door, was opened to us for further training, when we felt that we were meandering!
On the last day of the course, Prof David Morley, walked with me up to the exit of the Institute and held my hand to say farewell. He said this to me, " You have a long journey ahead to help children and bring meaning to parents in their lonely journey". Those words had a resonating appeal !
Those fifteen months of training moved away all the clouds which had besieged us during our earlier three years at Chennai. When we returned to Chennai in 1987, we felt that the desert was not just meandering, but a formation process essential for a long journey ahed.
This training became an incentive and a foundation for a good start in a scientifically based Child Development practice in Chennai in 1987.
The next nine years at Chennai took us to another level of academic ambience of child development, helping us to lay the foundation for beginning the speciality of Developmental Paediatrics in India. The post doctoral training at the Institute of Neurology, Madras Medical College for three years in Developmental Neurology reinforced the academic pursuit in Developmental Paediatrics.
That is how ASHIRVAD was asked by the Christian Medical College, Vellore in 1996 to enter in to a Memorandum of Understanding to incorporate the Child Development Centre at Chennai to become the first Unit of Developmental Paediatrics in Indian in 1997.
I have a suspicion that Dr William Cutting of Edinburgh would have primed CMC to take this step. By then the following book, Beginnings by a British writer, Ms Katharine Makower was also published, which summarised the story of ASHIRVAD and its child development centre from 1986-1996, which would have made the CMC administration to include starting this speciality along with other four specialities in connection with its centenary year 2000.
The new speciality of Developmental Paediatrics was started at CMC Vellore in February 1997, which was the first academic unit of Child Development In India.
Now, forty years later, it was good to have been reminded by the two Bulbuls perched on the summit of a tree, looking around on a cloudy morning with dark clouds all around, about our inner optic forty years ago.
We felt we were meandering. We were in our late thirties at that time and facing the mid-life transition towards finding meaning to life.
We were given an opportunity to travel safely through a desert experience.
The oasis experiences I referred to above came to us in most unexpected ways.
As Anna and I look back, we remember a large number of friends in this country and overseas who held us close to them in an endearing way. That provided us the shelter, protection and fortitude while meandering and walking in the desert!
What young people of today need when they enter mid-life is such supportive and formative friendship!
M.C. Mathew (text and photo)
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