Category: meeting friends

Times-they-are-a-changing

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I’ll be reducing the clutter.

By next season (October 2026 onwards) we will be in a new home.

It’ll prove to be challenging — leaving the home that I shared with MAnjula, that we created together. But it’s a positive change and MAnjula would approve.

We’ll continue to share our home with our community from around the world and new friends who find us.

A first step will be to reduce the ‘clutter’ here at home.

Already friends have been eager to pick souvenirs from our home. Furniture, paintings, and Knickknacks as their mementoes.

We continue to invite our community of guests and visitors to spot things they’d like.

Soon I’ll start posting specific things that are available to buy.

So …

Watch this space.

For details of our new home and things that may become available.

Or contact me with your requests.

Birthday happening

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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.

and I became Pinocchio, it was my alternative to being fed cake… repeatedly.

Next morning

Radhika borrows one of Kaveri’s Christmas presents They are ‘sisters’, you’ll understand.
Lucie prepares to go to the vets.

Happy New Year.

Awards

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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.

Please meet Ina

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.

To MAnjula for filling up my life.

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.

Scary

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 T shirt was a later addition after I knew we’d fallen in love

Precious moments

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After watching Ina’s family’s celebration of her life, (funeral).

I’m reminded to try and always leave meeting someone with warmth and care as it might be the last time we see them. I did with Ina but still need reminding to always be attentive, kind and share compassion.

Ina connected kindly with everyone she met, including Billet-Doux
Ina brought cuttings of Manjula’s fave plants
Ina was a Buddhist.
Sensitive to ageing Lucie, Ina bought her a special mattress
Tanuja, Ina and Sowbaghya
That’ll do nicely, Lucie appreciates her comforting gift (having taken over the downstairs floor) and can pretend she’s the queen, when the cat’s not around.
The two big buddies. Manjula and Ina who just might already be having a gas, a great time together, as souls who will reconnect.

There’s more about Ina here

Each year we will do Puja for MAnjula and Ina to help their spirits ‘on the way’ to their new lives.

Manjula and Ina

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Manjula and Lucie (our dog) Welcoming Ina to our home.

After that first visit she would field questions from our guests who came to share our home — Mysore Bed and Breakfast– were we a couple?

Ina acknowledged before us that we’d fallen in love.

Ina came every year (except during the pandemic) from that first visit, for a total of ten years. She became a very close friend of my wife Manjula and a great support to me helping me grieve Manjula. She was our favourite and most regular guest, here Ina is promoting us with the new mug and proving she became an essential part of the team (furniture!).

The photos are from our last year with Manjula visiting the local Tibetan settlement and Somnathpur Temple. Ina, Manjula, Willan (our workawayer in 2018) and myself, Stephen

I was their sometime chauffeur

Together, celebrating Manjula’s last birthday in 2018

There’s more here including Ina’s visit a month ago

We will miss Ina, a wonderful caring character, who has become part of our life, here in Mysore. After Manjula died she often referred to her as a Lotus who had survived and thrived through the mud. They both radiated their goodness as sisters and had a wicked sense of humour

Ina lit a candle for her and what we’ll do each year is a Puja for both Manjula and Ina to help their spirits find their new home.

Just as we recently did for Manjula

We look forward to meeting again

Stephen

Ina

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Meet a wonderful friend.

To both Manjula and I.

Again and again

Ina with Sowbaghya and between them my very own wonderfulness

Ina visited us again this year to become ‘part of the furniture’. It was her tenth anniversary of visiting us.

We celebrated Manjula’s birthday with friends, visited Bylakuppe and Dorjee the monk, (the Tibetan who she sponsored as a child), and Ina got to know and appreciate our burgeoning Kaveri.

Photo from John Small

She left us after a month’s stay to go back home and visit family and friends in Singapore.

Photo from SB

I learned this morning that Ina died last night and her spirit joins her great friend Manjula’s on their next journey.

Photo from Vasanth
From Sowbaghya and with Satish and John

I’ll dive into my photos and post again with memories of Manjula and Ina together.

Recognising Buddhism

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The flag.. a gift from Bylakuppe

  1. Just as the blue light emanating from Buddha’s hair symbolizes universal love and compassion for all sentient beings, the blue color in the Buddhist flag represents universal compassion and peace.
  2. Just as the yellow light radiating from Buddha’s skin symbolizes the attainment of liberation and omniscience through relying on the Middle Way that avoids extremes, the yellow color in the flag represents the Middle Way that avoids the extremes of eternalism and nihilism.
  3. Just as the red light emanating from Buddha’s flesh symbolizes the blessings that flow from Buddhist practice, the red color in the flag represents perfect realization, wisdom, virtue, merit, and dignity attained through practice.
  4. Just as the white light radiating from Buddha’s bones and teeth symbolizes the purity of Buddha’s teachings and the possibility of attaining liberation and omniscience through them, the white color in the flag represents the purity and timelessness of the Buddha’s teachings, which remain unstained by faults and lead to liberation regardless of time and space.
  5. Just as the orange light emanating from Buddha’s palms, soles, and lips symbolizes the unwavering nature of Buddha’s teachings, the orange color in the flag represents the essence of Buddhist teachings, rich in wisdom, strength, and dignity.
The Buddhist flag in our downstairs hall
Our front gate, Tibetan and prayer flags.

From Bees to Birds

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I’m now in Firenze visiting the incomparable Maria, more later but first to the birds ….

… sharing my second breakfast

It didn’t take too long to attract many new friends

I’ve discovered a riverside cafe: great location, bargain breakfast. It’s a low cost place where the community of all ages (and some foreigners), and especially older people meet, chat, draw, paint, work, support.

The view