dharmic expressions

vaibahv wasnik’s comment on this pic: and these are going to be life givers. they hate 85 percent of the country, the sc/st/obcs so much that they cannot even tolerate people from these communities as co-doctors. how can these be expected to treat the illnesses of these same people.

kuffir, calls this picture “the ordinary faces of hate.”

i recently read an academic paper which was laboring to make a point about UN recognizing caste as a race issue and trying to decipher the relation and difference between race and caste. this is what this picture made me write “caste is not a sibling of race, it is not even the parent, it is the God of all forms of discriminations.”  just look at those women’s faces, there is no hate, there is only a supreme conviction of righteousness, such pure dharmic expressions. who needs conical masks and nooses, who needs to disguise hate that is so pure that it does not even require the face to contort into a negative expression.

Rise to learn and act

Rise to learn and Act

Weak and oppressed! Rise my brother  

Come out of living in slavery.  

Manu-follower Peshwas are dead and gone

Manu’s the one who barred us from education.

Givers of knowledge –the English have come

Learn, you’ve had no chance in a millennium.

We’ll teach our children and ourselves to learn

Receive knowledge, become wise to discern.

An upsurge of jealousy in my soul

Crying out for knowledge to be whole.

This festering wound, mark of caste

I’ll blot out from my life at last.

In Baliraja’s kingdom, let’s beware

Our glorious mast, unfurl and flare.

Let all say, “Misery go and kingdom come!”

Awake, arise and educate

Smash traditions-liberate!

We’ll come together and learn

Policy-righteousness-religion.

Slumber not but blow the trumpet

O Brahman, dare not you upset.

Give a war cry, rise fast

Rise, to learn and act.

+++

Sunil Sardar and Victor Paul have translated this poem along with four other poems for a chapter in a lovely new book titled: A forgotten liberator: The life and struggles of Savitribai Phule. These poems were translated from M.G. Mali’s original marathi collection Savitribai Phule Samagra Wangmaya.

This book is a first of its kind in English on the social reformer and first woman teacher of India Savitribai Phule, by independent  authors.

Indian history is not just porous and one sided but is often a naked lie for and about the large majority of people who were once forbidden any formal education under the caste system. It would have us believe that this vast humanity produced no thoughts and actions worthy of mention in its pages. Occasionally stray strands do get woven into this brutally selective reading of the past like the 9th century Saint Nandanaar and 13th century Janabai. These are names that have escaped and appear in literature inadvertently; perhaps a rare occurrence of negligence in the maintenance of tightly clamped literary facilities. The hegemonic majority treats any acknowledgement of original, radical thoughts and actions emanating from the lower castes akin to radiation leaks. It has to be avoided at all costs and they use every single resource they command to do so. However, when such histories are far too powerful to fall into the usual traps of appropriation and co-option, they have the strategy of just saying and writing nothing about it. Stonily waiting for the collective memory to erase itself over generations.

In the last century a small group of people from within the lower castes have emerged to retell Indian history. This they do by finally claiming and owning the alphabet, taking us to the ones who made it possible; Savitribai Phule and her husband Jyotirao Phule, the visionary educators and social reformers. How cruel and effective a system we face, when this lady who in the mid-late 1800’s sought English as a liberating tool for the masses, only now in the year 2009  an independent well researched book on her life and achievements gets published in English!! This effort has been done by a group of dedicated scholars and researchers on their own steam. To the marginalized these efforts come as iridescent showers of enlightenment connecting us to the vibrant ancestors and their vision of an egalitarian society, their compassion and empathy rooting us firmly back to this soil. We stop feeling like ahistorical entities as we begin reading about the life and struggles of Savitribai Phule. A feeling of sudden awakening grips and removes the hovering disconnectedness for members of the oppressed communities, to whom she dedicated her life!

The startling strength and razor sharp intellect of this pioneer leader taking on society’s myriad evil and unquestioned practices of inequality among humans and between men and women is stunning in its forcefulness and sincerity. We receive this rare and fantastic effort of bringing out a book on Savitribai Phule like a sparkling oasis to quench the thirst of a million throats, charging us with fresh energy to continue on with her legacy.

I chose this poem of the five in this book as it brings us closer to the multifaceted personality of a reformer whose engaged poetry weaves her politics into her verses. In them one gets a glimpse of the mind of a woman completely dedicated to education of the downtrodden. Her impatience to see them empowered, her conviction that knowledge alone is the ingredient for salvation of people caught in unending cycles of servitude and destitution speaks volumes. Her revolutionary call to shake of the mantle of ignorance and fear of scriptures can be grasped only in the background of a time when her husband and she were ostracized from their family and home as they feared a backlash against the couple’s move to educate women and untouchables.

The undisputed place Savthribai Phule holds as the pioneer in women and human rights movements in India at a glance below:

Events	Year
Birth of SavitriBai.(Naigaon,Tha. Khandala Dist. Satara) Father’s name- Khandoji Nevse, Mother’s name- Laxmi.	3rd Jan.1831
Marriage with Jotirao Phule.	1840
Education started.	1841
Passed third and fourth year examination from Normal school.	1846-47
Started school with Sagunabai in Maharwada.	1847
Country’s first school for girls was started at Bhide’s wada in Pune and Savitribai was nominated as the first head mistress of the school.	1 Jan.1848
School for adults was started at UsmanSheikh’s wada in Pune. Left home with Jotirao for educating Shudra and ati Shudra’s .	1849
First public Til-Gul programme was arranged by Mahila Seva Mandal.	14 Jan.1852
Phule family was honoured by British government for their works in the field of education and Savtribai was declared as the best teacher.	16 Nov.1852
Infanticide prohibition home was started.	28 Jan.1853
Prize giving ceremony was arranged under the chairmanship of Major Candy.	12 Feb.1853
“Kavya Phule”-the first collection of poems was published.	1854
A night school for agriculturist and labourers was started.	1855
‘Lecture’s of Jyotiba’ was published.	25 Dec.1856
Orphanage was started.	1863
Opened the well to untouchables.	1868
Adopted son of Kashibai, a Brahmin Widow’s Child.	1874
Done important work in famine and started 52 free food hostels in Maharashatra.	1876 to 1877
Adopted son, Dr.Yashwant was married to the daughter of Sasane.	4 Feb.1889
Death of her husband Jotirao Phule .	28 Nov. 1890
Chairperson of Satya Shodhak Samaj Conference at Saswad.	1893
Again famine in Maharashtra. Forced government to start relief work.	1896
Plague epidemic in Pune.Had done social work during this hour.	1897
Died while serving the Plague paitents during plague epidemic.	10 March 1897
Centenary year in Maharashtra and National honour.	10 March 1997 to 98
Government of India honored her by publishing a postage stamp.	10 March 1998

=============

Source: A forgotten liberator: The life and struggles of Savthribai Phule. Page 66.

Edited by

Braj Ranjan Mani

Pamela Sardar. 

Update: A earlier NCERT book on the life of Savithribai Phule is also available.

UN begins to move on caste discrimination

“The most widespread, pernicious and intractable form of discrimination on EARTH”. Pay attention to the very last bit on religion. Every word is worth its weight in gold, or may be platinum.

(i listened to this short speech the second time with my eyes closed, the two ladies are beautifully distracting )

UN set to treat caste as human rights violation

I want to say, FINALLY! but i think i’ll wait. But i’ll definitely say, Yeah, to Nepal. One small Hindu nation country has the moral courage to acknowledge this ancient but persisting atrocity. 

——-

Manoj Mitta, TNN 28 September 2009

 

NEW DELHI: If the recent genome study denying the Aryan-Dravidian divide has established the antiquity of caste segregations in marriage, the ongoing session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva looks set to recognize caste-based discrimination as a human rights violation. This, despite India’s opposition and following Nepal’s breaking ranks on the culturally sensitive issue.

Nepal has emerged as the first country from South Asia — the region where untouchability has been traditionally practiced — to declare support for the draft principles and guidelines published by UNHRC four months ago for “effective elimination of discrimination based on work and descent” — the UN terminology for caste inequities.

In a side-event to the session on September 16, Nepalese minister Jeet Bahadur Darjee Gautam said his county welcomed the idea mooted by the UNHRC document to involve “regional and international mechanism, the UN and its organs” to complement national efforts to combat caste discrimination. This is radically different from India’s stated aversion to the internationalization of the caste problem.

Much to India’s embarrassment, Nepal’s statement evoked an immediate endorsement from the office of the UN high commissioner for human rights, Navanethem Pillay, a South African Tamil. Besides calling Nepal’s support “a significant step by a country grappling with this entrenched problem itself”, Pillay’s office said it would “like to encourage other states to follow this commendable example”.

The reference to India was unmistakable especially since Pillay had pressed the issue during her visit to New Delhi in March. Pillay not only asked India to address “its own challenges nationally, but show leadership in combating caste-based discrimination globally”. The granddaughter of an indentured labourer taken to South Africa from a village near Madurai, Pillay recalled that in 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had compared untouchability to apartheid. Adding to India’s discomfiture, Sweden, in its capacity as the president of the Europeon Union, said, “caste-based discrimination and other forms of discrimination based on work and descent is an important priority for EU”. If this issue continues to gather momentum, UNHRC may in a future session adopt the draft principles and guidelines and, to impart greater legal force, send them for adoption to the UN General Assembly.

The draft principles specifically cited caste as one of the grounds on which more than 200 million people in the world suffer discrimination. “This type of discrimination is typically associated with the notion of purity and pollution and practices of untouchability, and is deeply rooted in societies and cultures where this discrimination is practiced,” it said.

Though India succeeded in its efforts to keep caste out of the resolution adopted by the 2001 Durban conference on racism, the issue has since re-emerged in a different guise, without getting drawn into the debate over where caste and race are analogous.

Alas you will die.

I recall a November day, he was not six months old and the master came into the shack…..

And this man was speculating over my son’s cradle, a slavedriver’s cradle.

MOTHER

Alas you will die.

REBEL

Killed….. I killed him with my own hands……

Yes, a fecund and copious death…….

It was night. We crawled through the sugarcane.

The cutlasses were chortling at the stars, but we didn’t care about the stars.

The cane slashed our faces with streams of green blades.

MOTHER

I had dreamed of a son who would close his mother’s eyes.

REBEL

I chose to open my child’s eyes to another sun.

MOTHER

……O my son…… an evil and pernicious death.

REBEL

Mother, a verdant and sumptuous death.

MOTHER

From too much hate.

REBEL

From too much love.

Spare me, I’m choking from your shackles, bleeding from your wounds.

REBEL

And the world does not spare me…… There is not in the world one single lynched bastard, one poor tortured man, in whom I am not also murdered and humiliated.

MOTHER

God in Heaven, deliver him!

REBEL

My heart, you will not deliver me of my memories……

It was a November night……

And suddenly clamors lit up the silence,

we had leapt, we the slaves, we the manure, we the beasts with patient hooves.

We were running like lunatics, fiery shots broke out……… We were striking. Sweat and blood cooled us off. We were striking amidst the screams and the screams became more strident and a great clamor rose toward the east, the outbuildings were burning and the flames sweetly splashed our cheeks.

Then came the attack on the master’s house.

They were shooting from the windows.

We forced the doors.

The master’s bedroom was wide open. The Master’s bedroom was brilliantly lit, and the master was there, very calm…… and all of us stopped….. he was the master……. I entered. It’s you, he said, very calmly…… Its me, it was indeed me, I told him, the good slave, the faithful slave, the slave slave, and suddenly my eyes were two cockroaches frightened on a rainy day…….. I struck, the blood spurted, it is the only baptism that today I remember.

———

Source: Lyric And Dramatic Poetry. by Aime Cesaire.

Translated by Clayton Eshelman & Annette Gail Smith

Dedicated to Raj Kumar’s Mother

Citizen-criminals rats and $40 billion

In India you can by accident of birth be a criminal at birth. In India you can be severely malnourished, be forced to catch rats and eat them and be labelled -rat eaters. In India we will spend $ 40 billion to uniquely identify its citizens and everybody wants a piece of the pie.

Will the marginalized be identified by the UID? Will this magic number hinge them to the nation as  Indian citizens and allow them to start the long trek to gain full citizenship rights; to food, wages, education, health, services and  protection?

causation

smashed skulls, speared groins

water  in Karamchedu.

raped, spread naked dead

land in Khairlanji.

unclothed, unbathed, unschooled

food. on streets. in hovels.

in my country of delicate thoughts

and ancient wisdom

the white man has answers.

the poor man the reason.

pure untouched intelligent and human,

we the ones with land, water and food.

Its not him

even before i reach the periphery of the school playground, my eyes scanning the variously colored heads to pick out the black haired boy, voices call out his name “your mom is here” and he comes towards me not on a run, but with careful strides, his arm held up in midair, gently turning it, his eyes glued on a tiny creepy crawly, concentrating hard on  not disturbing that little life taking a stroll on his arm. And reaches me to share that moment. His name is not Mangal. 

gorges that were frozen in a winter landscape now gush through the early summer, we seek out glens where the water takes a breather under cool maple trees, peering into the crystal clear depths, he asks “is it true, that if we dip our feet in one ocean we’ve touched all the oceans?” I tease, “the water in your bottle must have been the water that dried up in your grandfather’s village pond, 50 years ago, or it could be the water from the hyacinth choked artificial lake in amma’s city back home, it is not just oceans, all the worlds water is touched.” He is eight not eleven.

on a quite trail in the woods, where my subtropical eyes expect dangerous creatures, instead it has story book animals; deers, rabbits, foxes, squirrels and chipmunks. i come here not to study the forest but the silence, breaking it, he says “big cars are more polluting.” i point to the bracket fungus on a rotting log saying  ”those release almost the same kind of gases and they have been at it since before the wheels got a motor” . To to his accusing, so? I smile a “i just wanted you to know that and this“. He’ll never be  described as a servant ever. 

we read a book about the dreams of a young woman who journeyed in the back of a train on hard wooden seats, separate from the white folks and he asks  ”what is a whiz? Oh, Bessie Coleman being good at numbers must have helped her become a good pilot.” My thoughts wander to what his response might be on seeing Mangal eating his lunch? Would he ask  ”are there no social services vans that come to pick up people ill treating children, in India? Or will he ask what happens when the the law is broken? Or will he just ask which school does Mangal go to?”

only the grossest element in the picture repulses us adults into expressing or not expressing our feelings of helplessness.  In our silence about all the other elements of injustices, things gone so wrong in our society glaring at us in the picture, lies the exposition to the levels we have  stooped to in our expectations from our systems -when it comes to the children who are not ours.

He could have been him.

and I Mangal’s mother. Her quite anger consumes me. I will my mind into imagining that mother and son are right now, sharing a moment of wonder at a rain drop at the tip of a leaf, swelling into a perfect pearl drop, catching the luminous moonbeam and their synchronous smiles before it drops gently into the grass. Darling, it is the same water that made us.

At the table

Images

for the Indians who feign ignorance

for Indians who are cleverly in denial

for Indian do-gooders who are blind

for genteel sophisticated Indians                                                                                                   

for rich Indians who flaunt their connections

for Indian academics who pass off privilege as merit

for Indians who are not at that table

for Indians who are at different tables at different times

for Indians on whom the camera did not focus

for internet accessing Indians who stumble on this blog and wonder what it is all about

for Indians who feel comfortable seeing this child under the table

This is the reason you feign ignorance, and court denial but mostly some of you are seeking out these images, if not,  how would you feel superior, kind, generous and continue doing the myriad good deeds to save the world?

While enjoying the rush of satisfaction on seeing this image, you can go ahead and forget that some of those under the table types have moved out, who know exactly how learned and kind you are. And they know how different you are from those two men at the table.  But do keep in mind they have better things to do than  educate you out of your real ignorance. 

Mass of Separation

My parent’s home in Bangalore is on a lane that ends in a Mosque.  Its location gets us many interesting comments from friends, guests and from total strangers too. One such comment “I thought of stopping by yesterday, but forgot it was Friday, the lepers were sitting in front of your home.”  A supposedly self-explanatory statement, a reference to the weekly gathering of the needy and afflicted to collect the alms, dispensed at the mosque after the prayers. They usually sat under the shade of trees eating their lunch, talking among themselves and dispersed after sometime. Their very presence stops some from even considering venturing into this street. Why? A primal fear, perhaps. A fear that a rational mind should be able to overcome, given the amount of information in the public sphere on leprosy, that 95 % of humans posses natural immunity to it and when treated with antibiotics the disease loses its contagious state within 90 days. We have known for some time now that leprosy is curable and it is far less contagious than many other diseases. Yet!

Senses and objects

As a child growing up in Bangalore city, leprosy afflicted persons registered in my mind as people who went about their daily lives by mostly using some kinds of objects to move around. A wooden board with wheels, a metal rod with a flat base, a wooden grip to move the wooden board or a wheel barrow pulled by a rope. These mobility-aiding tools appeared to be made of material forced into a design stemming from determination and grit. Wood against tar, metal against concrete, human will against odds, providing the necessary mobility the rest of us take for granted. These aids lacked any kind of uniformity, a sure sign that they were not manufactured but innovated and handmade by the ones who used them. Manufacturing would’ve meant that the need and demand for these objects was translated into a process of providing. It would mean the involvement of several sections of the society other than the users. That could have included me. Why was I not involved? How do my senses and fears exclude me from their lives? Fear of losing those very senses, perhaps! The image of an impaired human body is distressing and remains in the subconscious even when it is no longer in the vision. The possibility of losing the functionality of body parts, and worse, being disfigured are not easy mental obstacles to overcome. 

A few facts about leprosy are highlighted below from fascinating papers that recount the history of the disease and the ongoing struggle humans have with managing their fears that have no rational basis. This should help us along a bit to see the disease for what it is and the silent havoc our senses play on the patients –forcing social exclusion as the only way of life for them.

Indian Origin

 

It has been known since a long time that leprosy and the pathogen, Mycobacterium leprae have evolved in the old world. Historians of the disease have explored two prominent lines of evidence, that of an African or an Asian origin. Recent studies have added significant archeological evidence that show India is probably the place of origin. In this fascinating paper (linked below), the authors reporting on the skeletal remains of a male, excavated from a burial site in Balathal, in Rajasthan, along with interpretation of Vedic references to leprosy gives us several insights into many aspects of leprosy and practices associated with it in Ancient India.

As the Sanskrit word kushtha referred to a plant used to treat leprosy and tuberculosis (rajayaksma), the Atharva Veda is also the earliest text to infer a connection between the two conditions, at least in terms of treatment. It is not common to find adult burials after 2000 B.C. In contrast, infants and children under 5 years of age are common in peninsular sites. These features of second millennium burial practice are suggestive of Vedic tradition. Given this, it is interesting to note that it is customary in Vedic tradition in parts of India to bury lepers alive rather than cremate their bodies, which as diseased are not considered an appropriate sacrifice to Hindu Gods. The biological evidence presented here indicates that similar mortuary behavior for people with leprosy was present at a rural Chalcolithic village in northwest India by the beginning of the second millennium B.C.

This ancient disease has elicited the most severe forms of ostracizing in all parts of the world, however, in this paper the authors note that it was not universal and many kings, knights and crusaders who suffered leprosy carried on with their public lives.

Afflicted Royals

Robert I, King of the Scots (1306-1329)

Baldwin IV, King of Jerusalem (1174-1182)

Henry VII of Sicily and Germany (1212-1242)

Afonso II, King of Portugal (1212-1223)

Henry IV of Bolingbroke, King of England (1399-1413)

Constance of Brittany, Duchess (1186-1196)

Afflicted Subjects

Leprosy had long been rampant in the Eastern Mediterranean lands and apparently reached Europe during the Roman campaigns of the first century A.D. During the Medieval period, leprosy sufferers were often ostracized from society and condemned to living in seclusion without recourse to social contact with the community. They were declared legally dead and their goods were confiscated. Their spouse was however expected to honor the sacramental bond and serve the leper until his/her death. Once identified as a leper, a “Mass of Separation” (13th century) was performed by the priest at the site of the leper’s hut. 

India has a long history of individuals and organizations dedicated to healing of leprosy patients, but to a large extent, the patients have been subjected to exclusion. In the few cases that I’ve known personally there was no ‘Mass of Separation’ just a massive dose of shame and self-preservation of family members and efforts to find a quick means of dispatch to an institution. That brings us to the role of infirmaries and institutions; legacies of care and treatment in different cultures are varied and well documented in some parts of the world. One of the best  known traditions of caring for leprosy patients is the Order of St Lazarus. 

The care of the sick was during the Medieval Period viewed a Christian duty. This attitude encouraged the philanthropic establishment of infirmaries or centers to serve the sick and infirm of the society, including lepers. The Latin Kingdom and some European leprosaria were managed by a hospitaller chivalric Order dedicated to St. Lazarus set up in the Holy Land with the specific aim of caring for lepers. Various members of the European and Latin Kingdom Royalty acted as benefactors to the Order furnishing it with land and monetary donations to help it achieve its functions.

Legend of the Leper King

Closer home, in Cambodia there are various versions of the legend of the leper king, including one that draws from Indian literary narratives of Rama’s banishment associated with leprosy. I found this interpretation of the Khmer legend riveting

Cambodia’s leper king is also the king who rebuilt the kingdom better than ever before, Jayavarman VII’s epigraphic exegesis of the conjunction of physical health and social justice embodied by the king is given full form in the legend and its artistic representation at the Bayon. Suffering with the people’s suffering, the king in these scenes finds curative source for his own body, thereby implicitly curing the body politic.

Institutional confinement

The fact that royalty who suffered from leprosy have ruled their kingdoms dispels two powerful and persisting myths, a) that leprosy always meant exclusion irrespective of class or position, b) despite the debilitating nature of diseases several of these monarchs led very productive lives, some of their actions have positively changed the course of World history. And modern medicine has proved that this disease is far less contagious than many other diseases that we routinely live with, without resorting to exclusion of the afflicted of those diseases. 

Exclusion of leprosy patients is therefore only to shield us from our fears. There is no justification for it at all.

Take a peek at this bit of Institutional history of leprosy in India,

British government sent its Leprosy Commission (comprising both physicians and administrators) to India to investigate. The commission’s report in 1891 concluded, “the amount of contagion which exists is so small that it may be disregarded” . Initially, the colonial government accepted these findings but, under increasing popular pressure from England and within India, enacted the Leprosy Act of 1898. This law institutionalized people with leprosy, using segregation by gender to prevent reproduction. For the self-sufficient individual with leprosy, segregation and medical treatment were voluntary, but vagrants and fugitives from government-designated leprosaria were subject to punitive action. It was repealed in 1983 after the advent of effective multi-drug therapy for leprosy.

Current figures and claims

India recently made the dramatic announcement that leprosy was eliminated. Indeed, this is welcome news; does it mean that no more new leprosy cases will be reported? A more realistic picture appears to be along the facts and figures reported in this study.

 The most striking trend in global leprosy in recent years is the decline in India, which reported 137,685 new cases in 2007, representing a decline of 74% from the 537,956 reported in 2000. This implies that India’s contribution to the global leprosy burden has declined from 73% to 54% of the world’s newly detected leprosy cases over these years. It is unclear the extent to which this decline reflects changes in ascertainment and criteria for new cases to be counted in India–e.g. Whether single lesion cases are being systematically counted, and whether cases are being counted only if the diagnosis has been confirmed by medical supervisors (both of which procedures have been used in India). Without such information, these important trends in India’s (and the world’s) statistics remain difficult to interpret.

According to the latest available information, intensive efforts are still needed to reach the leprosy elimination target in five countries: Brazil, India, Madagascar, Mozambique, and Nepal. In the United States there are approximately 6,500 cases of leprosy, 90 percent of which are in immigrants from countries where the disease is endemic. The number of cases with active disease and requiring drug treatment is approximately 600. There are 200 to 250 new leprosy cases reported each year, with about 175 of these being new cases diagnosed for the first time. 

The above numbers are a sober reminder that the disease cannot be won be use of words, bold statements and incomplete information.

While we salute all those who have dedicated their time and effort in making the lives of leprosy afflicted better – social and medical, the task of eliminating irrational fears from the public seems quite insurmountable. Research and treatment of the lepromatous nature of our fears, our faith in believing, living and perpetuating myths by actions and words, needs equal attention.

In an imagined state of being safe from the microbe -we are the reasons for the existence of the thousands of leper colonies. As long as these colonies exist, they are reminders of our weakness of character and poor reasoning abilities. We cannot make claims of being moral, ethical or being in the possession of a scientific temper as a people.

Elimination of the disease will have to go hand in hand with the integration of the once affected and one’s in treatment back into civil society. That is entirely up to us. We can continue to be prisoners of our fears or conquer them.

+++++

Mobility-aids as school projects and shortening the path of integration of leprosy-afflicted, to be continued.

Leper King Source: History, Buddhism, and new religious movements in Cambodia / edited by John Marston and Elizabeth Guthrie.

Images: Internet

+++++=

For my Son, on his eighth B’day. To all the fears that paralyzed me before he was born and fears that constantly hover now, about his health and well being. Wishing him many many happy days playing and fixing with precision, bits and pieces of material trying to make them move. Wishing that he always remains curious and interested in the world around him.