Tag: family

Bereft and tearful

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It’s late afternoon, post lunch of pizza and smoothy ….. I’m listening to the shouted messages to ‘eat properly’ and look after myself. I even got to yoga this morning. It hasn’t been feasible for the past three months. I still however sweat like a pig.

I’m in this park now.

Where there’s lots of young lovers hanging out. I don’t know how Manjula and I came to be here, it’s the other side of town. It was probably on one of our endless trips to clinics.

We’d make them extra special times. We’d turn the tables and make a positive out of the hassle of the clinic crawls. Regular visits to clinics all over the city. Sometimes we’d turn it into a trip to a salt cave (yes we have one in Mysore!) and we haven’t been there for a long time, or lunch at one of her fave places, maybe to get some fish or a drive miss daisy/Manjula style outing into the countryside.

We were such idiots (flashback) … I love you, i love you two, three, four, five a crore…. childish, innocent, emotional, warm, connected to the extreme. Now I’m Nourished by my memories of Manjula but of course also bereft, pained and tearful.

It is however, good to stop, becalm, remember, smile and try block out the crap.

It’s been a difficult few months. Manjula has lost so much weight she was the proverbial stick-insect. See she’s here and not at the same time.

We discussed at the beginning of the season whether to keep the BnB open. Manjula was adamant, it was a no-brainier and critical to her. The whole point is …. we have an open house, our home that we share, we invite and welcome people to come and connect. That was her ‘quality’ she might have been ill but this was her life and what she wanted.

I’d keep checking as the weeks went on and always it was the same. She had to take more and more pillS, was confined to the ground floor, a bit doddery on her feet, needed lifting up from the toilet. Her day was made by coming out and speaking, even if only for a few moments, to say hi, connect and get to know her guests, share herself. It would enliven her, be a kick start, we’d get chat, smiles, fun and laughter. You guys know what I’m saying.

So in that spirit I’m Looking for help to come and be part of what we’re doing here.

I’ll get back to you on that, in my next posting.

the BIG trip to the UK

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Madam English, as she’s known hereabouts is back from her BIG trip. We travelled the length and breadth of the country, for over six weeks, fitted VERY important family events in, had a reunion camp, got muddy in Wiltshire, met lots of Mysore Bed and Breakfast guests, spent a fortune and had a rare old time!

Thank you to the lovely people we know and love for making this such a super trip.

Presents (limited, of course, to sensible cost and numbers), include: spinners (mad craze in the west), nail varnish (highly sought after western quality), shiny things, and various other odds and sods are being distributed as I write. A really big hit for the guy who runs the veg shop (hi!) is Gordons Gin, from duty free. He’s paid for it (we’re not made of money, although many think, I am) and he’s ecstatic about the flavour, its clearly a notch above the local gin.

Well what a trip it was……

 

We’ve covered the North, South, East and West, wet old things in Yorkshire,

Dorset, Teesside, Tyneside, even Lancashire (there’s long-standing issues between Yorkshire and Lancashire), Derbyshire, Wiltshire, my son’s wedding to Alice,

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sorry wrong photo (I’ll deservedly get into a lot of trouble for that!)

Oliver, my other son’s visit from Canada,

connectiong with my lovely Granddaughter Poppy, family reunion camp, WOMAD music festival,

family in Sheffield, Hand made parade in Hebden Bridge….

oh, and London, of course

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Madam English now knows why we Brits go on some much about the weather, we’ve had it all. She now knows about being prepared for it to change in a nano second, carrying endless clothing variations, layering and Hot Water Bottles when camping.

She’s so English, she has learned how to complain (Indians, generally not being big complainers and just tend to get on with it, really?) but still manages to have a great time.

we thank everyone… so much… for making this such a wonderful experience.

We’ve  lost count of how many of our old and new friends, including so many Bed and Breakfast guests we’ve seen, met in London, visited their homes, bumped into at the music festival, its been superb…. and did we mention all the meals we’ve eaten….

and at the end of it all we’re a bit tired

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all our photos (these and many more) are at the usual place at flickr

So what does Madam English think about the place?

How did  Lucy manage with Eric?

want a boy or a girl 2

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Remember back in November I relayed Manjula’s discussion with friends about whether they would want a boy or a girl? Its here if you wish to check back.

It was triggered by the pregnancy of one of her friends.

Well, as I mentioned in the postscript, the pregnant woman’s husband subsequently died

Now we’ve just heard even more news of the suffering of this poor woman. Her mother has just died during a visit to her daughter whose baby is due this week. Manjula and her other friends have now gone to console her.

I’ll let you know how things develop but imagine what the poor woman must be going through.

Why India? 2

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Why move to India…

I fell in love with India, its culture, people and places from afar and planned to visit in the 1970’s when I took a year off from my university. (I made a bit of a habit of taking years off).

True or False

True

I was a bit of a wus and not an adventurous traveller. I’d got as far as Turkey and the message from those who’d travelled overland from India was that it was particularly dangerous at that time to go to India, via Pakistan as they had just hanged Bhutto. So my visit to India just didn’t seem destined to happen.

Would I even manage to get to India in the next decade?

Nope

I hooked up with Liz and Ben in my late 20’s (We’re in the 1980s now). Liz had already lived in India for a couple of years in the early 1970’s so with one kid already (Ben) and potentially another one to come (Ol), India, was most definitely not considered by Liz to be a suitable place to take a young family.  Her experience of India was as a hippy  and she wouldn’t reconnect with India for many more years.

So that means I wasn’t also going to get to India, not yet anyway.

Farrell Factoid

I have subsequently met many people who have found a love for India (not least the visitors to Mysore Bed and Breakfast). There are of course many different attractions and often its difficult to define what it is that they particularly like. For many people they are inexplicably drawn to India, it has a sort of magnetism from a great distance. Maybe it is the free flow of ideas crossing the ‘bridges’ west and east (especially Britain and India) that stimulate people’s interest, there has of course been many exported ideas (and zero) for hundreds of years. There’s been icons such as the Beatles, the travelling Yogis, the hippies themselves, Yoga, whatever, there is an incredible range of things that we’ve heard about that help feed our seemingly insatiable desires for India, India things and Indian-ness.

Michael Wood in his book (Big Recommendation) to accompany the BBC series ‘The Story of India’ writes of becoming ’emeshed with India’, ‘the great privilege to be welcomed into another culture and to spend time in it, especially one so rich and diverse and perenially illuminating’

Of course many cultures and countries could fulfil this but

…what is so special about India?

I’d have to wait, quite a bit longer to find out.

Fond farewells

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D

We absolutely love having our wonderful and diverse range of guests. There’s no continent which hasn’t been to see us, except perhaps the Eskimos and Penguins, and their neighbours.

Stephen is often heard declaring how it’s one of his best jobs he’s ever had (except it’s not really a job), because it’s providing great opportunities to engage and communicate with people and we realise how much people appreciate our efforts. It’s Fab!

We’re so lucky.

So as we reach the end of yet another season, we celebrate being one of the top 1% around the world for the fourth year running, because of the wonderful reviews on TRip Advisor. Our MyCycle family extends, the Mysore BnB community grows, and as we say goodbye, we feel a warm glow but it’s also sometimes feels sad to say goodbye.

Thankfully, so many of you return.

Stephen and Manjula