Our friend Ina

August 18, 2025August 18, 2025 SFLeave a comment

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.

Awards

October 21, 2024October 22, 2024 SFLeave a comment

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.

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

Precious moments

October 19, 2024 SFLeave a comment

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

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

October 14, 2024October 16, 2024 SFLeave a comment

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

October 6, 2024October 8, 2024 SFLeave a comment

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.

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

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

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

Meet a friend — Ina

August 28, 2023August 28, 2023 SFLeave a comment

Ina was already at our house as I returned from the U.K.

The lunatics had taken over the asylum. We have a similar sense of humour but that doesn’t necessarily travel well. 🤔🤭 sorry to Charles, the Canadian giant. He gets it.

Ina was an early guest who returned to visit every year bar the coronavirus blot on our landscape. She quickly became a close friend of Manjula helping us celebrate our engagement in 2015. They would mostly hang out together and she’s the guest who’s stayed the most and longest.

We’ve also become good friends. She’s also lost her loving partner and been a great support to me.

Ina has seen Kaveri two years running and appreciates how she’s progressed.

Ina has a strong Scottish accent even though she’s lived in Australia for almost seventy years, having escaped Britain, on a ship, to settle there as a young girl with her family.

Bonding over chai and a phone on Manjula’s birthday.

The second celebration of what would have been Manjula’s 50th birthday. Satish is photographer

Ina, is most definitely one of Manjula’s kind. Thoughtfully helping, all around her, emanating a positive energy, appearing to be decades younger than she is but we don’t mention age.

Her initial visit was to meet a Tibetan monk, for the very first time, that she’d sponsored since he was a child.

She regales with stories of her family and her great times looking after her grand kids.

We keep remembering celebrating Manjula’s last birthday.

Fun together, Ina with Kaveri and Radhika. Aroma Bakery after swimming.

As she says herself

I couldn’t agree more. I’m still learning

Demonstrating the new balancing pod thing, whilst worrying Paul from France

Visiting Chandrika and Mani, Kaveri’s mum and dad.

Ina leaves at some ungodly hour for the flybus to Bangalore airport for a week in Singapore en route to home in Australia after our last meal together at Olive Garden

She’s supposed to have gone but I thought I heard her calling out downstairs. Now that’s worrying.

I look forward to her return next year

Ina

November 3, 2022November 3, 2022 SFLeave a comment

Ina leaves … The premises and now I’m sad.

Ina from Adelaide was Manjula’s closest friend., amongst our guests

It was as if there was an essence of MAnjula wafting back here with me, as she regaled me with the stories of the times they’d spent together. More dimensions of my wonderful were revealed.

They’d sometimes, maybe usually arrange for Ina to visit when I was away.

I can’t think why.

After first visiting in 2014 she was back in 2015, shortly after we got engaged and then each year with breaks solely due to the pandemic.

In 2018 we had a great time (yes I was allowed to be here) celebrating Manjula’s 45th birthday, also hosting our first ‘ workawayer ‘ Willian from Brazil.

During this visit which lasted two months! The longest ever. 👍🏽🤔🤭🙂

We went to a traditional dance to share with MAnjula. Then made a special celebration of Manjula’s Birthday as Ina had missed our big event in August on her birthday itself.

Led Lucie astray.

… revisited places on Srirangaptnam close to MAnjula and I, that had featured in our wedding.

Ina together with reading ‘a pocketful of happiness’ by Richard E Grant has helped me realise — as oddball in Kelly’s Heroes would say: “less of those negative waves man,” —- that I’ve allowed the grief gravy to engulf me leaving angry bitter negativeness in its forever trail.

So I’m going to sort it and get myself back on track to rewrite our story with one or two innovative tweaks.

Ina’s farewell note:

Stephen having Manjula in my life was one of the best things that happened to me, I still think of her a lot and she continues to be a great inspiration.

Tears again