Tag: Manjula

AWOL

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one of the directors is absent without leave.

Mycycle tours and travels Pvt ltd was set up to ensure a secure income, home etc for Manjula but now it’s not needed in quite that way.

As we’ve decided to continue two good friends, Manjula’s adopted sister Tanuja and brother Satish have stepped into the breach to become new directors.

We’re at the accountants having provided: national identity card, PAN (tax) card, bank account details, 3 x ID photos and then been videoed online to prove who they are! It’s not straightforward to put it mildly.

so here we are, the new team, continuing in Manjula and MyCycles good name.

Key Stage: behind the scenes

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I’ve had a bit of a wobble over the past few days. (Nothing surprising there, at the best of times).

With the invaluable and repeated help of Tom and Ann and of course my support hammock of friends (including Amy, Sue, Dave and you) around the world. I’ve reached a certain stage.

Clap of Thunder just came to Mysore nicely timed to emphasise.

I know it’s not absolute and there maybe some wavering or even three steps back in the board game of life.

Fact is I’ve been haunted by that final instruction to the Doctors to ‘let her go’ and not resuscitate Manjula after her second heart attack.

There is no way of knowing, there is no ‘best’ or ‘if only’. I did what I could do in the circumstances, in line with Manjula’s wishes to stop any further suffering, there was no choice really. She was very poorly, lost a lot of weight and was unable to fight anymore.

Intellectually that’s it, no argument, sort of accepted. Emotionally I continue to bounce around on the roller coaster.

Thank you for your support in this impossible situation.

A smile

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Manjula had a most beautiful smile that many have said lit up the room and left a presence in their heart.

A smile brings us together and Manjula most definitely brought people together, crossed social, class, cultural caste and international boundaries and made connections. Just one of her astonishing attributes. (There’s that Farrell bias again 🙂)

“Care granted to the sick, welcome offered to the banished, forgiveness itself are worth nothing without a smile enlightening the deed. We communicate in a smile beyond languages, classes, and parties. We are faithful members of the same church, you with your customs, I with mine.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I know this of Manjula, she beamed her smile, passed on her warmth, lit up our way regardless of the toll her gattling gun of illnesses was making on her poor depleted body. To her very last she squeezed out a giggle and a smile.

Thank you to Janie for this wonderful portrait.

Stop the magic roundabout

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I want to help Manjula get off and get back on at an earlier time, let’s relive…. let’s try again…. if only

The special flexi specs (First introduced here) aren’t good enough. I need a Tardis. (Dr Who’s time travelling gizmo)

or….. I want to jump to an alternative reality rather than just time travel so that I can rerun our life but with a different outcome!. Let’s try again. I help Manjula get off one merry go round and then jump on another. In my magical thinking in this alternate world…. We meet, fall in love, this time she doesn’t get the series of crushing illnesses and we live happily ever after.

Maybe in this current world where she’s died she only had a very limited cache of ‘good’ luck; she used all the good luck that was left over in her life in the nine years we were together and thats why she had to go. In this alternative world she’d have more good luck.

You will see more of the total picture when I share her story. She did have a very very very tough time throughout her life and what seems like astonishingly bad luck in the 36 years before we met.

Yet she remained positive, a bright light with a beautiful smile she radiated joy.

Since we met she’s had better luck and we’ve had a wonderful life but Manjula still had to deal with her illness and its impact.

Maybe this bad luck in Manjula’s life would be interpreted by some Hindu’s as repayment for ‘mistakes’ or even repayment for ‘bad’ in a previous life. Whatever, there can be no doubt that she has now well and truly repaid her debt for any transgressions in that life.

Surely she now has a massive deposit of wealth in the Karma bank because of the good soul she has been in this life. So I hope and believe she will be kindly rewarded in her next life.

and not just with ice cream

So where is that other magic roundabout to jump onto and experience the different alternate reality? I realise I’m rambling now but miss her terribly and want her here with me now.

We have sent her off with our love and kept some of her in our own hearts.

Today is a difficult day

To live in others hearts is not to die

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Manjula’s Mysore, our shared passion, will continue

Manjula has created a home to share, where people from around the world have visited and connected with others of like minded openness.

Her essence permeates the space and she’s left a piece, a mark with all of us.

We will honour her wishes, her work, and follow her pattern.

Manjula’s Mysore Bed and Breakfast will remain and change. We’ll build on what Manjula created and ensure it’s the same but different.

You can help

Come to visit and send your friends.

If you’d like to get more involved we also invite old and new friends come and help out. For a couple of weeks or longer come and help look after the place. In return for bed and breakfast help keep the place clean, welcome guests and maybe help create a new dimension to Manjula’s place.

There’s even been a few guests interested in setting up their own BnB so why not come give it a try and dip your toes in the water, just learn by doing.

I’ll be away over the next two months then reopen.

Unreturned love of my star

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This poem is not about my situation at all. But is it or isn’t it?

In my current state, I’ve become ‘masterful’ at Seeing the world through my very specific spectacles (flexi specs) Without a doubt they are not bifocal or even trifocals, they are progressives.

I can see all sorts of things. I can see what I want to see.

I’ve got them on now, I turn the metaphorical (!?) dial.

First setting ‘reality’ to see the smile that lights up the room of my beautiful my lovable (it’s what Manjula means) Manjula, the one who I adore whose presence I carry with me and who I miss intently. She’s absolutely perfect (OK, that’s the rose tinted setting and comes with the territory).

Second, I look back to see how Manjula grew and blossomed, showed strength through endless challenges, changed me in so many ways and through the connections she made, left a part of her with her friends throughout the world.

Next

Oh no, I slipped and mistakenly landed on grief 2 (you know the guilt trip, ‘what if’ one where we don’t HAVE to be there) whoops, move it back a step to grief 1 (dealing with the gaping hole, the big loss, we just have to manage this one)

And finally I turn it to magical thinking to cherish and hold her with me as a star in the sky, she’s not quite here or there for that matter, maybe she does feel something, maybe not but it doesn’t matter, as my love, sent out as a ray, a beam will still hold strong. I can be the more loving one, in fact I’m the one that’s left, so I have to be

THE MORE LOVING ONE
by W.H. Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

ap pagal hey

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I’m getting into a weekly routine. Buying gorgeously fragrant flowers

Then back to the Ashram as lunch arrives.

I’m invited to partake but I’m not taking photos of the people who live her as requested by the home.

And a word from one of the sponsors

Tom and Amy remembering…

‘ap pagal hey’ is what Manj and Tom used to say to each other all the time. Means you’re crazy. Haha

On my remembering, it’s sometimes getting harder. It’s easy to remember the last few weeks of her life but more difficult to recall the older more positive memories without falling into the blubbering brook

It’s a significant anniversary

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Today, exactly four weeks after my beautiful died I’m at the old people’s ashram.

In memory of Manjula we’re gifting all today’s meals. I’ve arrived an hour early so it’s time to chill, remember and reflect and in a very limited way feed my addiction to share with you guys.

Back in Siddarthanagar smileys have appeared on the road, overnight.

Using stencils and water soluble spray paints they are another simple way to discreetly and publically remember and acknowledge.

There’s a fair amount of sweeping goes on at the ashram.

Checking out Manjula

Memories of Manjula

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There are just so many….. photos everywhere (Manjula would complain that there were too many but I never believed her)

These are in prominent positions in the house.

This one with lots of her things as part of the pooja on specific days, they’re not always there!

The logo created by Punith.

videos ….

Article in the Guardian (photo is taken from the article)

The river Kaveri where Manjula said a prayer after our wedding celebration in the field on Srirangaptnam. A tender memory.

Facebook and blog postings, meals at the Ashram for the elderly residents ……. remembered happenings, and most importantly the piece of her that’s in my heart that will always make me smile, ( the T-shirt I gave her in recognition of this and the rosette I made awarding her best maid in Mysore after working for her for one year…. early signs of my love?)

the jokes, the giggles, bossing me around, the hair (she was losing it) I still find in nooks and crannies.

And what about this from Kate who came to stay with us years ago?

A lovely gesture, trees planted by treesthatcount.co.nz in New Zealand in memory of Manjula.

Thanks Kate, love it!