Learning Faith From Students In India
Nathan Sigworth
We were photographed together, my brother and I, and then my cab was pulling away. I looked back at him standing on the side of the steep road. “Be careful, Jonathan, on those mountain trails!” I felt a sudden urge to tell him. But I couldn’t bring myself to stop the taxi and run back. What silly fear!The taxi brought me seven hours south to New Delhi, where that night I boarded a flight to New York. Three days later I drove up to Dartmouth and settled back into my apartment.
The following Monday evening I was sitting with my cousin in our apartment. The phone rang; I could see it was from my dad. I didn’t want to answer it. At that very moment I was describing how I needed a break from my family. My Winter-term plan was to ski and work for an engineering professor. My skis sat, unused but ready, in the corner of the apartment. The phone rang. I picked it up. In that moment everything changed.
My apartment filled with my friends. I packed the bags I had just unpacked the week before. I bought two airplane tickets from Continental Airlines and collapsed into bed. Early the next morning, Peter Rice and Lindsey Dryden drove me to New Haven. We walked into the living room where my parents were praying with Pastor Josh. Mom and I left for the train station. In New York we wandered through the Indian Consulate on 64th Avenue trying to get my mother a visa. By the time we left, everyone seemed to be whispering. “Do you see that woman? Her son just fell off a cliff.”
Over Norway, Mom is on the airphone with the doctor, “Sure, take off his braces; just do the MRI.”
Touchdown in Indira Gandhi Airport – it was just as I left it a week before. After a cold walk through the parking lot we slipped into the back of the car. Almost immediately we arrived at the hospital; it wasn’t far from the airport. I did not expect to see him but there he was, in drug-induced sleep, delirious. His head was grotesquely swollen and shaved with a mask and a thick tube over his nose and mouth. He must have heard Mom’s voice. His arm moved and his broken neck moved also and so they rushed us out of the room. I hadn’t expected to see him so soon.
The surgeon, Dr. Chabhra, was a Sikh with a bright blue turban, a strong presence, and a reassuring expression on his face. He described the surgery. “We’ve done all we can do,” he explained. “The rest is up to Him.” He pointed up.
A week later my mom and I came back to the hospital room after shopping. The bag in my hand was filled with Western comfort food for her: Starbucks coffee, cheddar cheese, bread and Nutella, and yogurt. She was lonely, emotionally exhausted, and homesick. Sitting in the waiting room a young man got up to greet us. “My name is Namathang. I am from Jawaharlal Nehru University and I am here to stay with Jon.”
Namathang and the JNU Christian Fellowship had heard about my brother’s accident and how Jonathan had no family besides my mother and me to take care of him. They had been studying the book of Amos and the biblical imperative to look after those who were in need. In a simple decision, he had decided with some friends to come and see what he could do to help.
That night my mother gratefully stayed with some people we knew in a neighborhood nearby while Namathang and I talked late into the night, each of us taking turns putting wet cloths on Jonathan’s burning forehead. In the morning I thanked Namathang for coming and he went on his way. “I’ll be back tonight or send someone,” he said.
The following night, two girls came from the university. The next day another came and yet another student at night. For five weeks, more than twenty students took turns between classes to come feed, bathe, and take care of my brother. Most came from the JNU Christian Fellowship but soon their friends came as well. Some nights I needed to get away from the hospital and would stay in Namathang’s room or Leepok’s dorm room.
Jonathan was getting better when the meningitis happened, that damned infection that caused him so much pain. As Jonathan slept restlessly, Sanjeevini, Leepak, and I had whispered conversations about love and faith and death and rebirth. “Maybe my dad should come out tonight?” I ask. “It might be the last time. . .” It never came to that. But some nights Jonathan would cry in his sleep and I would cry too. And someone was there to put his arm around me. And we would massage Jonathan’s hands, even though he couldn’t feel it.
Five weeks later, I listened to the low rumble of the engines behind me as I settled once again into my airplane seat. In front of me Jonathan and his doctor were discussing whether two tea bags are better than one. I sipped my cappuccino and looked out the window at the coastline of Norway as it melted away into the night ocean, pockets of warm light in the blue icy night. And I wondered, would it be the same in America? Would I have the faith to reach out to others the way the students at JNU reached out to my family?