I’m away with Kaveri for a few days with Naveen and his mum Sowbaghya.
Manjula’s Mysore supports their education and now we’re on holiday together.
Our annual trip
Category: Kaveri
Button Madness
A new summer school holiday activity — Button Masala.
Incredible creativity and innovative design from cloth, button and rubber band!
A great addition to the swimming, summer camp, reading, storytelling, crafts, skating, seaside, badminton, cycling, TV and phone that’s become a staple of Kaveri’s school holiday
A really cool event presented by the creator of Button Masala —Amuj Sharma and supported by Sri Vidya MR of the Anubhuti Trust.
Girls are back in town
Radhika was 17 this week so with Kaveri back for a skating race we made Sunday into an extra celebration.
Happy Birthday
Radhika B Radical
Kaveri grows fast.
Birthday happening
Well if ‘last’ years birthday is anything to go by I’ve fully localised.
31st December can seem a weird day for a birthday. Or maybe not.
Endings and beginnings
There’s always multiple celebrations
It was wonderful.
A steady stream of lovely friends making it a day to remember.
Plus my girls were here (kaveri and Radhika) having missed Christmas together, we shifted Christmas to the morning and began my birthday at noon 12.35 sharp 🤭
and Rinkal and Sheetal are seriously becoming an integral part of the team. Welcome to you.
Next morning
Happy New Year.
How amazingly
fortunate am I?
A beautiful wife — of many wonders — one of my many gifts from India.
Now in addition to my MAnjula
memories living
in my heart there’s a little thing
Helping fill my life and manage my grief …
Putting it in its place. …
Thank you
MAnjula and Kaveri.
a man, his dog a girl and a tree
Yesterday evening as I was waiting outside a shop selling dots for one’s forehead —
—Manjula used to give them as gifts as we travelled through England—
A woman asked where she was.
I pointed to, inside the shop and after a perplexed reaction, realised she wasn’t asking about the little girl (Kaveri) or Manjula, for that matter, but the dog (Lucie).
The girl was stocking up for the return to school.
I’m well known in my area and in Mysore generally but usually because of my appendage.
I am nothing, not even a number.
…
I once walked into a hotel (restaurant) right on the other side of the city, for the waiter to ask me where’s the dog. He also lived in Siddarthanagar.
So I’m well known for who I’m with …
As of this morning, as I realise, I stick out like a sore thumb as generally there’s rarely other firangis (foreigners) here. There’s a new appendage.
A tree
As I was tossing and turning in the midst of my AWOL, nightly sleep I realised there was only this morning for me to be able to decorate the tree for Christmas.
Kaveri will be going back to school.
Kaveri is here for less than 24 hours and we’ve decorated it together for the past three years since we met. I’ll not see her again until a few days after Christmas Day when we’ll belatedly celebrate Christmas.
A bit too late to do the tree
Plus our usual totem is now too big and heavy for the hall aka lounge.
What to do?
Easy
Get up before the girls and after walking as man and dog, I go out again, to the nearest ‘nursery’. It’s run by guys from UP on the roadside. I haggle with them from the Firangi-Gora (white) — tax – price, to something resembling the price a local would pay. About half.
Then as I’m trudging home— convincing myself that I’m exercising my muscle diminishing 60+ years arms —- with very regular rests. I realised I’m another spectacle of the foreigner ‘variety’ who is entertaining the locals, especially the men at the chai shop and the women sweeping the streets. They’re interested as no one can possibly work out why the rich foreigner is carrying a tree and not using an auto rickshaw.
A wonderful young man, rescues me from the ordeal of the last stretch, stops for me to balance precariously on the back of his bike and gets me home.
I’ve become the foreigner, not only with dog and girl but now the tree
It suits me
…
Ok it doesn’t look very heavy but the weight is in the pot.
It’s now decorated.
But now the cats eyeing it up, for a potential attack thankfully for the moment she seems satisfied with the empty decoration boxes.
Important Rituals and fun things.
October update.
We have our fair share of things we do … at Mysore Bed and Breakfast.
Here we commemorate MAnjula and help her spirit find its new body.
Support Kaveri in Manjula’s name and share her sunshine
Go cycling with our guests
Ask the goddess to make our ‘tools’ work for the next year
“There are some people who have sun inside them.
It’s hard to explain.
Their presence just brightens, it’s not about their beautiful smiles.
They have an internal being that sheds light and feels like sun.
It’s a calm energy. Inner peace.
But most importantly; it’s not wanting anything back in return.
It’s sun.”
— Unknown 🎀
As is this …..
We even invented a sun cake.
Awards
Everyone who visits Mysore Bed and Breakfast deserves an award, partly because they’ve tolerated me and also missed MAnjula.
Some people go above and beyond such as …
Ina visited every year and became our biggest and closest friend. Here she’s sharing memories about MAnjula.
Her award is for constantly reminding me of the wonderfulness of MAnjula, visiting us each year and being a solid support after ‘losing’ MAnjula.
Tom and Amy, also became wonderful supportive friends being part of our life, through many visits and helping me in so many ways including at short notice, visiting to support me after MAnjula died.
She adapted the ‘glass half full’ saying to full full.
Florian a good friend who recently returned to Mysore from Germany for some bizarre reason has read the blog site. He’s commended for fighting his way through that jungle.
Kaveri for being my adopted granddaughter who miraculously popped into my life and with her fab character reminds me so much of MAnjula. She could have been our daughter. Here’s a video taken shortly after we met.
… and a thank you to the many people who’ve found us via the net and just said hello in the street, at a hotel, or visited us, particularly those who attend our reflective space event or come to stay in our home.
We couldn’t, of course, forget Lucie and Billet-Doux.
or Sowbaghya (aka SB) who
manages everything
Seen here with Ina
The very first reward was given fourteen years ago and still hangs in Manjula’s Library.
The sweet-ish sisters ..
… Leave for two nights with Kaveri’s mum.
It’s been the usual joy having them here for the week.
There’s one more before they return to school and college.
The T-shirt was left as a gift by a recent guest but nicely sums up the impact Manjula’s Mysore wants from our support to them
Footnote
Chandrika has re-utilised the money I’d given them for the auto ride. No surprise there then.
Life’s lessons
The illusion of control.
I expect I’m doing my usual and stating the bleeding obvious.
In this unwelcome necessary extraordinary extended period of reflection and potential growth, I realise the greatest challenge.
Yes it’s about loss and grief, goes without saying, I suppose.
There’s been many but especially three (many more of course but three for listing here) . Losing someone through splitting up with a lover, second losing Manjula when she died. Now I’d count my tonic to deal with the grief as the third. It’s not loss but deep down it’s the equivalent.
So why do I put them together?
They represent times when I felt unable to do anything … actually experiencing powerlessness, learning lack of control in some situations.
That realisation comes … After a lifetime of reinforced messages that it’s up to us, we’re masters of our own destiny and in control.
The third example is having the wherewithal to support and guide Kaveri but to realise how handicapped I am in the face of a completely dysfunctional family who don’t understand or care.
Well done, Farrell — that’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into (only yesterday, Kaveri was asking about Laurel and Hardy) — But of course it’s about regaining one’s equilibrium, being positive and constructive, working out the way that works and the benefit I can gain from another of life’s lessons.
So in a different way, it does depend on how we take it and manage the situation — critically it’s in the eyes of the beholder—and mostly about our relationships.
So as I said bleeding obvious.
I send this to you because you might not believe it but you are very important
As Kaveri knows, BK
Me and MYCycle 