Ina was already at our house as I returned from the U.K.

Ina was an early guest who returned to visit every year bar the coronavirus blot on our landscape. She quickly became a close friend of Manjula helping us celebrate our engagement in 2015. They would mostly hang out together and she’s the guest who’s stayed the most and longest.

We’ve also become good friends. She’s also lost her loving partner and been a great support to me.

Ina has seen Kaveri two years running and appreciates how she’s progressed.

Ina has a strong Scottish accent even though she’s lived in Australia for almost seventy years, having escaped Britain, on a ship, to settle there as a young girl with her family.

Ina, is most definitely one of Manjula’s kind. Thoughtfully helping, all around her, emanating a positive energy, appearing to be decades younger than she is but we don’t mention age.

Her initial visit was to meet a Tibetan monk, for the very first time, that she’d sponsored since he was a child.

She regales with stories of her family and her great times looking after her grand kids.

As she says herself

I couldn’t agree more. I’m still learning

Ina leaves at some ungodly hour for the flybus to Bangalore airport for a week in Singapore en route to home in Australia after our last meal together at Olive Garden

She’s supposed to have gone but I thought I heard her calling out downstairs. Now that’s worrying.

I look forward to her return next year