About Wesley

Two roads diverged in a wood,
and I took the one less traveled by
and that has made all the difference.
- Robert Frost (1874 -1963) in The Road Not Taken

Winner of four Pulitzer awards, American poet Robert Lee Frost frequently explored intricate social and philosophical subjects. This poem, especially its last lines, where the narrator declares that taking the road “one less traveled by” “made all the difference,” is to me a statement of the significance personal freedom to move past stereotypes and appreciate my own distinctiveness. “The Road Not Taken” illustrates to me that once one takes a certain road, there’s no turning back, although one might change paths later on, they still can’t change the past. The poem is essentially the thoughts of the traveler, thinking back on a preference he had made, wondering if it was the right one. I come from a family of teachers. My grandfather Srinivas, grand uncle Murli and grandaunt Sagrika worked extremely hard, with very little resources, to educate their children in the first half of the twentieth century in south India which was still recovering from the ravages of World War I. They worked in cramped, one-room houses to educate their children who, for the most part, would work on the family rice fields once they returned from school. They valued education and showed that there was more to the world than rice and paddy fields, and that the world extended further than their community did. Yet perhaps the greatest legacy I received was from my luminous and devout mother.

Today, having entered a new millennium, I would like to believe that I am also guiding students through these turbulent times in India by teaching them to value education. I chose to teach because I thought I could make a difference in the lives of my students. Over the past couple of years, I can say with all sincerity that I have achieved this goal. Many students that I taught in previous years have contacted me to let me know that all that I had done had not been in vain. They carry lessons taught from Scripture about Doctrine and Life to this day. That, the road “one less traveled by” “makes all the difference. I hope that I have shown them the value of education and that the world extends beyond the boundaries of India, just as my ancestors did.

In the initial stage of my life I found myself on a tightrope, stretched somewhere between Nietzsche’s nihilism and Sartre’s existentialism while using a Kafkaesque mindset to guide me. Jeremiah 2:13 describes my life, I had committed two sins: I had forsaken my Creator, the spring of living water, and I had dug for myself my own cistern, a broken cistern that could not hold water.” I had been trying to quench my thirst with salt water. My inner void and purposelessness began to frustrate me. God simultaneously began knocking down all the props and crutches in my life. He finally took away my mother, the only one with whom I could really bond. Irish author and scholar, C S Lewis, (1898 – 1963), known for his work on medieval literature, Christian apologetics and literary criticism was one of the principal influences in my life. Lewis perfectly portrays me in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, he piles up metaphors to show the Divine pursuit. God is the great angler playing his fish; I never dreamed that the hook was in my tongue. God was the cat, chasing the mouse. I had heard people talk about man’s search for God. Lewis says, they might as well have talked about the mouse’s search for the cat. God was like a pack of hounds…and then the Divine chess player – who gradually maneuvered me into an impossible position. Lewis calls the penultimate chapter of his autobiography, Checkmate. All over the board my pieces were in the most disadvantageous positions – my challenger began to make his closing moves. Ironically, it was at my mother’s funeral when I was seventeen that God finally checkmated me. I saw plainly that all my securities outside of Christ were at best only insecurity. At her death I found Life! I gave myself unconditionally to Christ. All my apparent ruined plans had integrated themselves into His perfect plan.

By this time I had completed my Mechanical Engineering and began my career with Larsen and Toubro, as a Service Engineer. I operated in the field of Heavy duty “Eutectic Machines,” fusing at the lowest possible temperature designated mixtures and alloys with melting points lower than that of any other combination of the same components, I served as service engineer in general, and in the department of “Rapid Eye Detection” and “Technical Correction” in particular. However, after about five years with Larsen and Toubro, I began to be restless with the very work that gave me so much contentment and pride. Life was all about me, and I had reduced my value to nothing. I had initially resisted a call to ministry as I felt awfully inadequate for such a high calling and what’s more I was doing very well for myself at Larsen and Toubro in Zurich, Switzerland. A year later, I resigned from the company. God confirmed to me His Call on my life over this period of time, through His people, through circumstances, and mainly through His Word. Revered Chinese thinker and social philosopher, Confucius ( 551 BCE – 479 BCE) whose thoughts have been developed into a system of philosophy known as Confucianism, held a long time ago “He who wishes to secure the good of others, has already secured his own”. I completed my theological education where my dissertation where I endeavored to recover the Patristic embryonic of solidarity with the Subaltern, that was nascent and emergent in Ante-Nicene writings, with a particular examination of Shepherd of Hermas, an apocalyptic document (in the sense that it claims to be revealed), modeled after the Book of Revelation, as a normative for a comprehensive Indian subaltern Christian theology. The term subaltern is elaborated in the work of Italian writer, and political theorist Antonio Gramsci (1891 -1937). A founding member of the Communist Party of Italy, he was imprisoned by Mussolini’s Fascist regime. His writings are heavily concerned with the analysis of culture and political leadership and he is notable as an extremely original thinker within the Marxist tradition.

He is renowned for his concept of cultural hegemony as a means of maintaining the state in a capitalist society. The term subaltern refers to groups who are outside the established structures of political representation. Colonial writings form the subordinate colonized ‘Other’ primarily as a means of defining the colonized ‘Self’. After my ordination I served as the pastor of Eaton Memorial Church. Eaton Church is one of the largest Churches in Bangalore with Eight Hundred families, so much for an appetizer. Ironically it was here; I perhaps for the fist time realized my methodical skills as I was catalytic in building effective working relationships with people from different backgrounds and occupations.

Paradoxically, it was the forth century BC, writer of the central Taoist work the Daodejing, Lao-Tse whose delightful observation helped me “Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profundity. Kindness in giving creates love.” Eaton members, in the majority belonged to the lower middle class where alcoholism was a major problem. I formulated mission programs for the Men’s Fellowship and Ladies Fellowship. During my tenure at Eaton, I was involved with a team who researched and documented, peoples groups within the Indian Evangelical Mission (IEM), providing data and source material for both Indian and overseas missionaries, to get a picture of the context of various peoples groups the mission served. I was then called to Pastor the Hope Baptist Church, an urban church, of around 10 years, with a membership of roughly two hundred and fifty, some of its parishioners are from The Baptist Hospital, The Indian Institute Science and Agricultural Science Institute, all located within a radius of six kilometers. My responsibilities were both administrative and sacramental. During this time, I introduced and formulated Bible studies for Paramedics from selected portions of the Synoptic Gospels. While at Hope Church, Trans World Radio invited me to do a grammatico-historical, hermeneutical study ‘Through the Bible” emphasizing the context, scope, and plan of texts with a comparison of parallel passages, desiring to enthuse listeners to a deeper reverence for God and His Word. From the Old Testament I taught the Books of Genesis, Nehemiah, Esther, Job, the Psalms, the Songs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Ezekiel. From the Gospels I taught the Gospels of Matthew and John. From the Epistles I taught the Epistles, Second Corinthians, Colossians, First and Second Thessalonians, First and Second Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and Hebrews. I was the Spiritual Director for an Inter-denominational Pastors Fellowship during my tenure at Eaton.Married for eight years now, to the very gifted, resourceful and disciplined Elizabeth, formerly a marketing executive in Aptech Computers Ltd, formerly Apple Computers and in Pentasoft Ltd, computer establishments that have made a niche for themselves in Bangalore, Elizabeth pointed prospective students to their specific professional careers. Elizabeth has also been a teacher in Sunday school, disciplining children between the ages 4 -15 in the way of Christ. We are blessed with a daughter, Prathana (etymologically prayer in Sanskrit) Charis (grace in Greek) now six years old.

I’ve learned that I must hold everything loosely, because when I grip it tightly, it hurts when God pries my fingers loose and takes it from me…