Category: Manjula’s Kind

honey puppy wants a home

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. ….
Friendly lovely honey puppy looking for a home.

We’re regretfully looking for a new home for Gingee and we’ll be very sad for her to go.

It was a mistake to adopt two dogs (Stephen’s idea!). It’s too much for us as well as our business (BnB and cycle tours) and looking after Kaveri.

Kaveri with Gingee and Luca.

Gingee is a great character. She’s had all her jabs (inoculations) and comes complete with lead, collar, bed and additional vet fees to sterilise her.

We’re in Siddarthanagar at Mysore Bed and Breakfast.

Do come and meet her and see if she can join your family. All injections are completed, with collar, lead and bed. Plus some food and vets bills covered. We’re in siddarthanagar in Mysore

Juggling the duties has proven too much. We can manage one!!

Luca we’re keeping as he’s the image of my lovely Lucie who died last year.

Gingee is a honey colour.

Recent guests of Mysore Bed and Breakfast, from Germany, playing with the dogs.
Kaveri with Luca and Gingee
When first adopted, a few weeks ago.

Sharing

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I wasn’t feeling well this week and so Kaveri wrote me a note

How kind and thoughtful is that?

… and then I stumbled across this study which reaffirmed what we know —- how relationships are critical to a happy sustainable, satisfying life.

What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness (Robert Waldinger | TEDxBeaconStreet)

Here’s my girls …

My Indian wife and daughter.

Farrell Factoid Footnote

Kaveri isn’t actually my daughter but it’s as if I’ve ‘adopted’ her and support her on behalf of my beautiful caring compassionate wife

Our friend Ina

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all our guests become friends but…

… Ina was very special, having visited us annually for ten years

It’s August and at this time, we’re used to Ina’s Scottish accent — quite how she had such a strong accent after living almost seventy years in Australia, we don’t know — sing songing through the house.

Manjula and Ina became great buddies.

Hanging out together and going on day trips

…

Her first trip here was to visit the Tibetan Buddhist Monk Dorjee

at the settlement .. Bylakuppe, who she’d sponsored as a child but never met before.

Last year we had another outing to our own slice of Tibet, with our very own guide.

She so treasured our times together, especially the year MAnjula and I were married and the celebration of her last birthday that year, in August 2018

Sadly her spirit left her body in 2024 shortly after her last visit.

We fondly remember her kindness, her indomitable spirit

when she took over Manjula’s Mysore and let her presence touch everyone she met and now lingers on in her/our home.

We miss her dearly, and now she joins the motley bunch of my MAnjula and Lucie who we will remember every year through our puja to help their spirits in their way, until we all meet again.

Kaveri

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It’s May and we’ve just celebrated Kaveri’ birthday.

She’s now 11 and she is a star

The past month’s activities included: seaside holiday, skating, swimming coaching and summer camp.

KaverI is now at her mother’s and we hit the uncertainty of whether Chandrika, her mother, will change her school. Kaliyuvamane the alternative residential school she’s attended for two years has helped her grow socially, intellectually and physically.

We can make either options work but the residential school has had the continuity that her home will not provide.

I worry that it maybe beyond Chandrika’s ability if Kaveri is shifted to the day school but we’ll do our best.

Meanwhile

I’m relaxing in Manjula’s Memorial Garden and toying with the idea of revisiting our memoir.

Can I revamp and rewrite? Do

I have the energy and the ability?

Button Madness

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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.

Love

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One of the first pictures Kaveri (aged eight) created after she came to the house and felt MAnjula’s love

Marginalian

Comes up trumps again with great literary, political and philosophical connections.

I like her quote from Simone de Beauvoir

What then is love? Not much, not much; I come back to this idea. Sensitivity, imagination, fatigue, and this effort to depend on another; the taste for the mystery of the other and the need to admire… What is worthwhile, is friendship… this profound mutual confidence between [two people], and this joy of knowing that the other exists.

“The ancient Greeks, in their pioneering effort to order the chaos of the cosmos, neatly taxonomized them into filial love (the kind we feel for siblings, children, parents, and friends), eros (the love of lovers), and agape(the deepest, purest, most impersonal and spiritual love).”

I decided that we would continue Manjula’s sunshine goodness, sharing her love, through events and activities for young people.

The most obvious example is our continuing support for Kaveri.

Kaveri’s most recent art from this weeks summer camp
She also leaves me little messages.

Snow fall, not really.

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Ruth is a poet from the U.K.

A guest of Mysore Bed and Breakfast who has become a good friend.

Not only that she’s actually published books of poetry and some of her poems are about India and her early years living here.

Outside our house

Check Ruth’s latest poem, you’ll realise why I show this image.

Here
Manjula with Lucie and her tree.