Category: our friends

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

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.

Matching Money

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Kaveri is already an ace negotiator

I’ve now agreed to match whatever she saves this (financial) year, with the equivalent each year up until she reaches 21.

We’ve started counting her savings and placed them in a box at my home

That’s now over 5,000Rs from the two years I’ve known her, from selling bracelets at the kids market and generally extorting from the foreigners. 🤔🤭🙂

It’ll be put into a protected account so no one else can get their grubby hands on it.

One of the many many lessons I learned from Manjula is how she experienced people, particularly men but not exclusively, and also family members (and first husband) who would take her money, gold and send her out to the moneylenders to borrow more.

We will have protections in place, help educate Kaveri and hopefully the strong woman I know she will become will help safeguard her as an adult.

…

Plus she’s astute at reminding me of my ‘pearls of wisdom’ when I forget to follow my own advice. So we’ll also keep an eye on each other.

..

So Kaveri… the savings are for you to choose how to use BUT it’s a waste to spend on parties. Leave that until you’re rich.

…

Here’s how we arrived here —- from Facebook

I’m back in Mysore

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To meet my queens (both sets)

What’s one of the first things they want to do on my return?

Go for a walk

After a lovely time in Italy with Maria

With plenty of lovely food …

They want pizza….

And presents

and to watch the movies…

I’m so lucky to have them in my life…

Mama Maria

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“Don’t forget your sun screen and water!”

Maria checks that I’m properly equipped for the day ahead.

Maria first visited Mysore five years ago, a few months after I lost MAnjula.

I’m on my annual trip to the U.K. but Maria had noticed I was coming and sent an invite for me to visit her in Italy

This wonder puts me up at her house, ferries me around, provides simple sophisticated food, takes me on day trips, guides me on walks, introduces me to her fab friends, provides happy insights into her own life and Italianeeeeez.

Maria is a good example of the lovely people that visit Mysore Bed and Breakfast but she’s even more special.

I’m trying to emphasise BK with Kaveri who can quickly tell me what it means: Be Kind.

Well Maria is overflowing with kindness.

Not just in hosting me…

That’s nothing by comparison with the total package …

…. she goes way beyond the stereotypical caring mama … to be a caring precious friend.

She has a social conscience reflected in the life she leads and her work in helping others to flourish through the organisations she sets up and the services they provide. She lives and breaths this throughout her living.

She’ll be revisiting Mysore again in August to undertake training as a yoga teacher and look forward to her becoming Kaveri’s Italian auntie.

I’m honoured to count Maria as an important person in my life, a cherished friend.

Footnote

She claims I photograph her as much as her dad (I think mine capture her essence as I’m certain her dad does) but she’s tolerant and I love that she’s my friend.

….

Thank you Maria for a happy time and the closeness we’ve established. I look forward to more to come.

Love from Stephen.

The family grows

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No not (just) the car.

It’s important to recognise and realise how much my adopted family here in India as helped me survive the most difficult years in my life.

Sowbaghya is so critical to my life here in Mysore

She’s project managed and coordinated the rejuvenation of the radical red, that is now attention seeking in and around Mysore and Srirangaptnam

That’s the tip of the mountain of help she has been.

Sowbaghya is important to me and has kept me and the business going.

Thank you Sowbaghya for all your help.

I firmly believe that grief is always with us but becomes more manageable as we fill the space around it with important valued people and ‘things’ we do.

The next member of the family, everyone knows, the irrepressible Kaveri. Grief manager extraordinaire.

I can’t begin to list what she does for me.

She makes me smile (and cry.)

She’s cool.

She’s a big thing.

Our mini team is complete with Kaveri’s ‘sister’ Radhika, a wonderful young woman.

I look forward to witnessing her develop and we growing together through the years.

Oh ….. Trishalla and Eregowda, have been a great support through difficult and remembering times, you’ll have to wait to see where that leads.

A special mention for: Sarvesh, Vasanth, Satish, Tanuja and their families.

We’ve all worked together to cherish and continue Manjula’s radiance through our projects: events, school, community meals, creativity days, supporting Kaveri, and making Manjula’s garden in the park.

Not to forget our guests who have become family and my very own DNA family folks in the U.K. and Canada

Ina, our every-year guest who was a big buddy of MAnjula and now me, in front of the banner created by other guests.

There’s not only humans in my family…

Anjali gets married.

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Since Punith introduced us I’ve realised how much Anjali is a real star

She got married today. Every wedding is same but different, down to caste, experience, attitude and get-on-ableness of the generations, so it’s not unlike absolutely everything else in consistently inconsistent India.

Even in the midst of planning a wedding and balancing the interests/preferences of in and out laws Anjali was instrumental in making our creativity day for the children at Kaliyuvamane.

Thoughtful dad.

There was a great mix of people and more recently found great friends.

They were obviously also having fun

Guess which twit forgot to put his kurta on?

Congratulations to Anjali Sakleshpur and Veethahavya Kootanoor Sheshadrivasan

Any ideas why we share our home?

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You’d be correct in assuming it’s to celebrate MAnjula and help more people meet her.

It’s also ..

.. because it’s life affirming and fun.

… meeting new lovely lively people,

what’s not to like?

Thank you to our latest new friends from near Barcelona (one of my favourite cities) for spending time here and we getting to know you….

… that’s Martina, Jana, Marta and Angel

Jana created a lovely image and wrote a beautiful message, for me. Fab!
I’ll need to learn Spanish. Those who know me, realise I’m ace at languages! 🤪