What is an Oriental Jewish Boy doing here ...

at the second oldest european settlement in Nebraska? at a Church Hall?

PM is a patient of mine, and had impressed me with his curiosity about his medical condition and his willingness to try various natural remedies to combat the diseases of the civilization which was forced upon him. His curiosity combined with generous medical help from the Indian Clinic and his faith were a good combination for me to talk to him, soon after I arrived from Cambodia after witnessing the Peer to Peer Programme run by Maurits van der Pelt.

Couldnt PM get together a group of people in the village he lived in, educate them with the fact he had learned from his curious wanderings over books and Internet and from us in the clinic? On my next monthly visit to the Clinic, there was a message from PM wanting to talk to me, would you, as you promised me come and talk to my group? Your Group? yes, i have gathered together seven people from my village and we have met two or three times already where we discussed health related matters, how to prevent diabetes if we dont have it, and how to prevent complications if you already have diabetes...and educate ourselves about nutrition outside the channel of conventional nutritionists, the dangers of plastics.. in short the dangers of living in an artificial food environment.. among other things. would you come and talk to us about Sugar.

I was very proud fo him, a new begining among the ordinary people, who are tired of the propaganda of big companies and their emissaries in the medical profession..

I arrived as promised at 7 30 pm, I had asked only for fifteen minutes to explain to them the various sugars, sugar additives and sugar substitutes.. but the talk went on for one hour with multitudes of questions and a grateful small group of people, connected to each other through their faith, their isolation and their integrity..

Do you eat more sugar now than in 1980? the pastor replied, they put it in everything now.. yes sugar substitutes are added to everything, but the actual amount of sugar, as it was known before the 1970 corn revolution, has actually decreased per capita in the united states to the tune of about 35 pounds per person per year...

I explained to them the various sugar additives, all derives from the plentiful corn in their backyard.. The dangerous artificial additives.. High Fructose Corn Syrup, Maltodextrin, Dextrose, Corn syrup solids, Crystalline Fructose, Corn syrup solids... all affecting our metabolism in unpleasant ways.. why invite unwanted visitors to our bodies? Then i told them the stories about sugar substitutes and the american model of stressing calories without revealing the ingredients.. One such example was a package of Stevia powder in packets sold in bulk at Walmart Supermarket.. on the cover was words like Natural, no sugar and other ornate words to fool the audience.... with caloric content displayed prominently.. then if you look under ingredients... Maltodextrin appears.. Why like in a bottle of Peanuts sold as Dry Roasted peanuts, this corn by product of hydrolysis, the effect of which on our bodies are at best dubious appear? What drives the manufactures to pollute peanuts and stevia?

I gave them a guarantee, try avoiding these artifical foods and also hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils and especially palm oil and within a month, a sensation of well being will overtake them.. I told them it would be difficult to do, since an average american consumes 75 pounds of these products per year per person...

This hour spent with these kind and gentle people of Bohemian and european origin, children of dreamers who left Bohemia for a better life in America.. now being poisoned.. was so satisfying to me.. as i drove back to the Indian reservation where I was to spend my last night of this visit to them, I felt a glow inside of me, matching the fading lights of the horizon and i thanked Maurits van der pelt of Mo Po Tsyo in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

The SweatLodge prayers for Little Froggie, MM, my sisters and loved ones..

The phone rang as soon as I entered the Blue House at the Reservation. Hey Doctor, we are going into the Sweat in about half an hour, would like you to come. The voice belonged to a good Indian friend of mine. I had felt a need to pray, in face of the multiple sickness related news that had plagued me for the past month and just this past week I had asked her if there would be a Sweat Lodge ceremony during the week I was to spend with this group of Indians.

The fire had been prepared and the rocks shone brightly with embers flying off. A gentleman was affectionately attending to the fire and the stones that were being heated. Even the stone by suffering through the heating process is sacrificing itself for you, a Indian teacher had said. They have been around for a while, he had added.

They were sitting around, the man who was to lead the ceremony, his back still fresh with marks of the Sun Dance. The others sat in silence, with occasional small talk.

When the white man goes to church, he gets dressed up, I remember an Indian teacher of mine saying, but we feel humble and we become as naked as possible while praying to the Great Spirit. The men were dressed just in shorts, and the women protected their modesty. Two children were present, a boy and a girl.

The singer entered and secured his position by the entrance of the sweatlodge. The inside had been cleaned and there were blankets covering the earth, surrounding the depression on the earth where the stones are to be laid. The Lodge was covered with blankets and heavy tarpaulin, can be completely sealed off from the outside light and the world, as usually happens.

We crawled in one by one in the anticlockwise direction, the women sitting together and the men on the other side. With seven adults and two children, it had just enough space. The water, the pipe were brought in, and the fire tender began bringing red hot stones one by one. With deer antlers, the singer organized the stones, praying and showing respect to them by showering sage and touching them with the pipe. The temperature inside began to rise slowly.

When there was sufficient stones in the central depression, the fire tender himself got in and sealed the lodge and now there was pitch darkness, only the embers of the stones flickering. The ancient songs began drifting in.

They must have done this hundreds and thousands of years ago, this getting together to worship the Great Spirit.

You cannot see each other inside, but one could hear people talking to themselves or praying or singing along with the well known prayers in the Lakota language.

Soon the discomfort of being in intense heat disappeared and I began concentrating on what I had come here for: to pray for some dear ones to my heart.

Without effort tears began to flow, the heat, the songs, smoke arising from the sage.

Oh my Little Froggie, come into this world, make this world a better place, come and comfort all of us, bring your mother contentment and happiness. Bring people around you the happiness they had not known before you were there.

Oh Great Spirit, take pity on this poor mortal, this humble human being, and bless my sister, make her suffering less, let her go through the treatment with dignity and ease and without much pain. If you take pity and grant my sister this request, I can be confident on what would happen next Thursday when she receives her first chemotherapy.

My little sister who is lying at a Denver Hospital, pinned and mangled, with her pelvis reconstructed from the accident which also injured her sister, my good and close friend. I cried for them, I felt the pain, and also the pain of their mother, a wonderful human being, who sits and waits and waits substituting her own suffering for the suffering of her children.

I thanked my best friend in Asia who had just been with me, for honouring me with a visit, getting the spirits of this air and territory know her, and for bringing her close friend from Istamboul. They had gone back to their respective homes, but I know that Indians will have touched them. I thanked them for their love.

Then without efforts, those who were important to me, began to appear in the vision of the darkness..my mother in India… my mother in Malaysia.. my mother in Cuba.. Cari and her family and little sofia in Havana, amaparo eager for a reunion with her son.. my lovely friend Loraine with a bakery of dreams in her deep eyes, my affectionate friend Adriana with strings of love for her son and her husband..

These are people who are close to me, who traverse daily through the trajectory of my emotional sky.. then faces began appearing at random..

The face of the dentist, East Indian in origin, who had come to the Rez with a group of other humanitarian dentists, I thanked them for their generosity towards the Indian people.. An Indian nurse from the Clinic, who had wanted to talk to me about some health related matter.. A lovely dancer of a grandchild of a close friend of mine…my HoCank sister who was at that time sitting next to me and her daughter..

The minutes dragged on emptily, eerily and the lack of sense of time or space, one began praying over and over again , beseeching friends and lovers for their love and understanding, for their forgiveness for the intransigencies, trying to see the face of a little girl who leaped like a baby orca, black and white in her skin, her mother holding her close, an eagle demonstrating the power of its beack against the dark marks in the lungs of my sister, Sandra kennedy and her husband John in my native Australia… all those who meant something put on an appearance to demand justice in this world of humility.. or to say a kind word with their looks and disappear into the oblivion of this darkness…

Raise your hands, the singer advises and the healing song is sung.. the heat is very intense, and I beg the Spirits, please forgive me, please forgive the times I have not been the best of the persons for those who love me and depend upon me.. forgive me if I have committed an error of omission against you..

The fingers were burning, the legs were numb, the body bathed in sweat, surrounded by blackness and the rising smoke and hot air purifying you inside and out, what better time than that to beg on behalf of those you love …bring happiness to those who strive for contentment, bring Little Froggie into a world of equality and sharing, let my sisters body free of invaders… and my friends in KL and NY blessed with more than their sense of balance… my mothers.. my sisters.. my loved ones…

The tears were pouring stronger than the sweat… the lodge slowly opened, the darkening sky from outside peeked in.. the breeze blew in, there was still silence… just a marvelous sensation of accomplishment on behalf of some human beings who tug at your heart…

It was a powerful reminder for me of my space in this universe, solidifying contact, each of us touching the corners of other hearts, defining and redefining ourselves in terms of our relationships with birds,beasts, trees and human beings and the other elements…

It was an important evening to me, on this Monday at the centre of their ancestral land they call the Turtle island.

The Third Day of the Hocank Pow Wow July 26th 2009

The third day of the 143rd annual HomeComing Celebrations of the HoCank tribe coincided with the 56th anniversary of the Begining of the Cuban Revolution in 1953.

It felt good..to think of the revolution that freed an enslaved people while being with the most oppressed group of people ... there is a common thread, both the cubans in cuba and the indianz in the indian territory laugh from their hearts, are content and willing to share..

much closer to the goodness of what a good human being can be, despite all odds ..

Second Day of the Hocank Pow Wow

Indians are very happy when you come to their Pow Wow, it is the time of gathering and social mingling. they are even more happier when you bring your friends, they take it as an honour that you thought so well of them that you wanted to introduce your friends. So when my two friends, MC from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and SY, from Istanbul via New York were being presented to my various friends and it was gratifying to see the reactions of the indians.

143rd Annual Pow Wow of the HoCank of Nebraska

Today begins the four day ceremonies of thanksgiving and celebrations and getting together offriends and relatives among the HoCank in Nebraska. This is one activity in which Americans have very little influence or say. It is INDIAN in every respect and it is one of the few occasions they can truly feel feel and self confident in their Turtle Island which was usurped from them 300 years ago.

It is a joyous occasion, not a sad occasion , mainly getting together of friends and relatives. Many Indians from near and far come to participate, dance and eat together for the next four days.

Each time when all the dancers enter the arena, tears come to my eyes, thinking of the time when they had lived their own way of life and when they were free. It is a privilege for me to be here and it is a privilege to say hello to so many young and old indians and enjoy the ancient ambiance of these celebrations.

Reading Pablo Neruda among Los Indios

it is incredible how beautiful this part of the world looks, especially through the eyes of a stranger, after rain and fog rising out and at dusk, many cotton tail deers darting in and out.. you feel you are in an entirely different country...

there is indeed a magical quality to it all..

when i was a student, i had the habit of carrying a book of poems of Pablo Neruda with me and reading and reciting it when the appropriate moment arose.. Once someone said to me; This is the first time, on a date, someone is reading poems to me..

so you can imagine my surprise and my happiness when i found three of my favourite of Pablo Neruda's book of poems and i started reading them with all my heart.. pronouncing each word, enunciating with proper tone and feeling that sense of loss i had felt in many places.. Melbourne, Australia; Miami, Florida...

Who does not know Viente Poemas de amor...? Poema 20... on a night like this, i too loved her...

what triggered me off was that i was drinking a glass of white wine ( sauvignon blanc made in RSA by Penfolds).. memories of my days as a trainee doctor in Melbourne and a certain dr JT.. the poema 20 would always bring her to my mind..

How can not think of a great friend of mine with whom I had gone to Jamaica, Australia and Fiji islands.. ah such a long time ago and the poem was Josie Bliss !.. i remember her saying to me distinctly... if this poem is what you would use to remember me, please do me th favour of forgetting... i remember reading the poem to my brother while we were dining not too far from the river Irrawaddy.. Pablo Neruda was a consul in Rangoon and the passion shows through...

The third poem i read aloud tonight... a certain love poem called LOVE... once again my mind transformed itself as wind and passed through the tunnels of love and forgetting..

and i put down this on the paper..

I am just a traveller in this galaxy of stars who are carving out their oblivion in this endless sky.. that line for SY whom I had met recently , who would adore the lines of Pablo and if she doesnot, it would be her loss.. she is a star and if she is not careful, the world she would create would be filled with the silence of the darkness..

All the time I was reading the poems, my mind was fixated on just one person.. who has become more important to me than any one else, who fills my life with poems of infinite variety and strength..I wish her well, over the waves that separates us..

Pablo Neruda is about passion and love, sensuality and the universe, tenderness that can be found everywhere..

New York New York

charming and seductive

energetic and draining

eclectic and futuristic

polyglot and fusion cuisines

with a price to pay

hard work

with little time to enjoy

so if you are a visitor to this magnificent city, come and stay with a friend, have friends with you, taking you and showing you around, and in the evenings, settle down for nice dinners and glasses of wine..

then you could say, you have enjoyed New York.. New York is not only Museums, street life, food and restaurants, buildings and book stores but it is all of the above plus your friends who know the right places to go.. try to enjoy New York like a local does, not like a tourist does...

special thanks to MC from KL, and SY with whom I stayed in W54th in the midst of everything and new friends with delightful minds and manners, and NW, who still maintains her balance despite it all..