Welcome to Wednesday Witness! Please read this week's testimony and be encouraged! All comments on Wednesday Witness should be encouraging and uplifting.
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Hi. I’m Tejas. I like Jesus. I like other stuff too. Like food and people and ice-cream and money. I make websites both professionally, and for fun. I was born with something cool called hemophilia. I enjoy reading, writing and speaking. I’ve been known to bepreachy and unable to shut up, so let this be a warning to you; you might get insanely bored.
Faith
My faith always comes first. For me, it’s all about Jesus Christ. I’m a Christian through and through. I believe the whole shebang: We’re bad, God’s good, he came as the man Jesus Christ on a rescue mission to save his lost sheep, sinful scum like me. It’s pretty scandalous, but true. Many-a-listener have expressed interest in my passion about God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, one guy even asking me how I met him. It’s a really cool story (at least to me), and I’d be honored to share it with you. I’d be even more honored if you actually read it.
How God Saved Me
It all started the moment I was born. Actually, with God it kind of started way before that. But for me, it started at birth. You see, I was born with hemophilia. It’s an incurable genetic disorder in which you bleed more than your average Joe; not to be confused with von willebrand disease. With hemophilia, this happens because when blood vessels rupture, clots do not form with an essential protein called fibrin, the protective shield that keeps them strong. As a result of which, I bleed. A lot. Internally, externally, every-kind-of-ernally. It was especially “awesome” when my teeth started to fall out. It looked like something out of a vampire movie. Blood everywhere. It was not pretty.
I have to take a moment here to tell you about something significant that happened when I was 4 years old: I almost died. We thought it was a little stomach ache. It was something much bigger. My amazing parents urged me to go to the hospital, but were gracious enough to allow me to say no. We all know how stubborn a 4 year old can be when it comes to hospitals. Later on, I started, on occasion, getting super dizzy and losing consciousness for no apparent reason. Upon inevitably arriving at the hospital, we found out what was wrong: I had been bleeding internally, into my abdomen, continually, for a period of days.
After that much blood loss, I was just about dead. They laid flowers on me and everything! I can say this confidently: the only thing that could have saved me, would have been divine intervention. It was that bad. All I remember is waking up to a bright light and finding my mom at my bedside. My family says that I was right at the doorstep of death. I’m told that there was an abundance of chaos: doctors arguing, nurses wailing, whole bags of blood being transported… it was a ruckus. Additionally, my mom mentions a doctor telling her this: “Ma’am, I don’t know if you believe in a God or anything, but now would be a good time to pray. ” Needless to say, it easily could have easily been the end of Tejas Kumar.
You would think I’d come to grips with the limited number of hours, minutes and seconds we have left on this planet. You would think that I’d be aware of the brevity of our existence. You would think I’d try to be a “good person” and do all that I could to make a difference. The exact opposite was true. From the ages 4 to 17, I was the most rebellious, disrespectful, spoiled little <expletive> you could imagine. All of my family and friends who knew me back then would attest to that. Though in my moronicity (I like inventing new words), I always sought healing. I always sought Jesus Christ because of the one cord that bound me to him, the one problem that nothing, not even myself, nor my doctors, nor modern medicine, but him alone could fix: my sickness, my curse.
You see, I grew up in a Christian home. I knew who Jesus Christwas. I knew all of that. I just didn’t care. I cared about why kids laughed at me at school. I cared about how many friends I had. I cared about how many hits my websites got. Jesus Christ seemed less important. I was perpetually in sin. Thought, word, deed, motive. Until I met some amazing individials, with whom by God’s grace, I still happen to be friends to this day. All it took was an invitation to church. All it took was me accepting it, and everything changed; ultimately culminating in the blog you’re reading today. God is just that good.
Technology
I first laid hands on a computer when I was 4 years old. Right before dying. I instantly fell in love. Bright screen with a file manager that could perform a myriad of cool tasks, Microsoft Paint in all its colorful glory, and best of all, games! Which 4 year old boy can resist the bliss that computer games bring? Ah, this was the bees knees.
I often used to play games on the computer. When I got bored of games, I eventually ended up browsing through the file system and toying around with what I know now to be critical system files. I only know this because I messed them up in the past and destroyed the family computer on many, many occasions. Hahaha, good times.
Web Design
My parents, being the awesome encouragers that they are, saw this love of machines that I had from my youth, and sent me to attend a computer course when I was 10 years old. They asked the guy in charge, the proverbial “principal” what he recommended that I learn. He said “Object Oriented Programming with C++”which, for a 10 year old is crazy. They agreed. It was alien to me in the beginning, but I later caught on.
While they sent me to learn C++, they sent my now affluent accountant elder brother to a web design course. The grass on his side of the technological garden looked greener, and so I got him to teach me a bit of basic HTML, which I would later tweak and experiment with and build upon. Ultimately, he lost interest, while mine was increasing rapidly. I had picked up skills in software like Photoshop and FrontPage (which, in its day was quite epic), leading me to build a few amateur websites. The rest, up until now has just been practice upon practice.
Web Development
While learning about web design and hosting and Photoshop, I managed to stumble upon what I believe to be the most effective learning and troubleshooting tools ever: forums. I learned such a great deal from them, it’s not funny. I learned about a certain type of software called a Content Management System and how one could practically build an entire website for you. I learned about something called PHP that Content Management Systems were powered by. I sought to learn this mysterious language called PHP.
I eventually did. I then thought: “oh cool, I might be able to build some software of my own now!” I eventually did. I actually started a web-software-building-company-website-thing back then, around the age of 13. What did I call it? RoboticRodeo.com. You know, because everyone wants a web-software-building-company-website-thing called RoboticRodeo.com. (sigh)
From there, I went on to build software like Content Management Systems, Message Boards, Blog Platforms, et al. It was fun. Until it became boring. Having acquired all the know-how, I eventually entered a contest and won first prize, built websites for some amazing businesses and acquaintances, and kept going from there. The rest is spoken of in the Web part of this website.
Music
In the winter of 2008, my brother, recently having moved to Australia, came back to our home town to visit. He was a passionate guitar player. He used to play quite regularly in his younger days, whenever he’d get a break from studying. He used to unleash nuggets of knowledge and information on me every now and then. During his visit in 2008, he taught me a great deal, and also greatly participated in helping me get my very own guitar. Straight away, we would jam almost every day playing Sum 41 and Goo Goo Dolls covers. Ah, good times.
Now that I had my own guitar, and not much to do (I never had a life; still don’t haha). I would go on Ultimate-Guitar and look up songs I liked in hopes of learning them and playing covers of them to myself and feeling smug about being able to do so. I did this for quite a while. Later on, after winning first place in the Web Design contest, I decided to get myself a MacBook Pro with the winnings. That MacBook Pro happened to support software like GarageBand and Logic Pro.
7ATE9
A few friends and myself ended up getting together and jamming for the sake of satisfying our hunger for music. We would mostly cover songs by The Fray. Good band. We later decided to form a band you may have heard of called 7ate9. If you haven’t heard of our band, I’d suggest doing a little dance. With my shiny MacBook Pro, my love of music, and with GarageBand and Logic Pro, we put some music together and shot it up the cloud to YouTube. To our surprise, we ended up getting around 30k views. Weird, but pretty cool.
Sound
Though people who listened to our music seemed to like our songs, I never really did. The sound never…sounded right. There was something not quite right about it, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. The same was true with my independent projects, they never sounded quite as they should have, according to me. This drove me to great frustration, which ended up in me taking a sound course and getting a diploma in Audio Engineering and Record Production. Music I make sounds relatively better now.
The Future
So here’s where I’m at: I can build a few websites, I can produce music, and a hold a diploma in Audio Engineering and Record Production. Where to from here? Probably follow in my brother’s footsteps: go to a developed nation, attend university, get a degree, get a job, live and work, right? Wrong. Hemophilia changes things.
I’m dependent on Factor VIII, the treatment for hemophilia. Hemophilia patients, by God’s grace, get treated for free where I live. Non-citizen hemophiliacs incur ginormous costs everywhere else in the world, costs that no one a dollar less richer than Bill Gates can afford in addition to university fees, housing, transportation and the like. Costs upwards of $300 per treatment session. I require these sessionsat least twice a week. Do the math, it’s just not viable.
So what’s the solution? That’s where I’m at now. I honestly do not know. The nation I live in now is great, but I can’t stay here forever. They don’t have a citizenship program. I’ll have to leave at some stage. Here’s where it gets difficult: if I don’t somehow become a citizen of a developed country, I’ll have to eventually depart from here, to the country on my passport: India. India is not the best place for a hemophiliac to live. I’d explain why, but I don’t like stating the obvious. Something needs to be done, and it needs to be done now. I can panic, I can worry, I can freak out… but I’ve got faith. I’ve gotten this far. haven’t I?
Tejas Kumar,
Christian blogger at www.tejaskumar.com
