We have been here in India just over two weeks and remarkably, when we look back over our stay, we have achieved quite a lot in the circumstances. By Saturday some of us are feeling pretty exhausted and frustratingly our planned meeting to discuss ‘costings’ is once again delayed due to arrival of upper management. Brian and I decide we need to catch up with Alemelu’s family in order to update her profile on the web site and we are desperate to see Selvi’s mum at Tutithangal so we leave the others drinking coffee at Paul’s Hotel with resident crows and take an auto rickshaw to BTC where we have lunch with Lee and George. We manage to persuade Selvi to come with us to Poonsoli to translate and off we go. Selvi knows a short cut which involves turning off onto a narrow uneven track which winds around the countryside, through people’s yards, through the bushes and along narrow ledges at an alarming angle. Round and round we go with Brian muttering about so called short cuts and Selvi shrieking with laughter every time we almost tip over into the snake infested scrubland. (We aren’t really sure it’s snake infested but after Selvi nearly had a close encounter with a cobra at BTC we are seeing snakes everywhere!) Eventually we emerge unscathed onto the Tutithangal/Vadaganthangal road and turn right to Alemelu’s house.
We haven’t seen the family for three years, at which time Sudha was about to give birth, so we are looking forward to finding out what other changes have occurred. As we walk towards the house the family erupt into the road and we are welcomed warmly. Tamil Selvi, wife of Suresh grabs my hand and leads me into the courtyard which is overflowing with people. There has been an explosion of babies including baby ‘no name’ who is just 15 days old, and it takes some time to match babies to parents and catch up on all the news. Thank goodness for Selvi who is able to translate. We were fortunate to attend the love marriage of Suresh and Tamil Selvi in 2005 and on our last visit we met daughter Monisha. They now have a son and Alemelu’s daughter Sudha, who was a schoolgirl on our first visit in 2003, now has three children! The most exciting bit of news is that Nuresh, brother to Suresh and Sudha, has fallen in love with and married a Muslim lady who has been welcomed into a Hindu household with love and respect. They have two beautiful daughters. What an amazing family they are and what a heart warming story!
We pay a very quick visit to Selvi’s home to see her mother who hugs us with delight and then drop Selvi off in time to cook supper for the guests and prepare for the arrival of Carolyn and David the following day. We are feeling pretty pleased with ourselves having managed to achieve what we set out to achieve with the minimum of fuss, including persuading Selvi that it was not necessary to cook supper and send it up to RUHSA. The team are suitably impressed- no-one so far has been able to deter Selvi from feeding us – but I suspect a little sad that we have to set forth instead to Paul’s hotel for dosai in the company of various dogs and mewing cats and the usual cacophony of a Tamil film blasting from the TV.
Monday dawns with the usual morning crow chorus and we are looking forward to our promised trip to the new and beautiful Golden Temple in Vellore. We have been invited to the 8am raising of the flag for Republic day but no one is very keen, especially as we are all still pretty tired after our mega trip to Chennai. We fail to attend. By 9am we are in Paul’s drinking coffee and waiting for Raghu and friends who are taking us to the temple. They are late and at first we think they are just operating on Indian time but eventually we realise they are not coming and we don’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved as it’s hot and we are all flagging. None of us relished the thought of queuing for hours to see the deity in the heat but we have heard such a lot about this new and marvellous temple, built by a local man who made his fortune, and we are sad not to see it. It seems unlikely we will be able to find time to see it before we leave. We later learn that due to a partial eclipse of the sun today all the temples are closed and that is probably the reason the boys didn’t turn up.
We’ve used our unexpected leisure time to catch up on our sleep and the scientist in our midst has taken up the challenge of solving the problem of the leaking water tank on the roof of our building. This has been a constant source of concern to us over the last few years. I was astonished that not only was the building still standing but in fact it had also been cleaned up and painted. No rats so far and only one cockroach and the remains of something that looked remarkably like a scorpion in our kitchen. The drain in the bathroom has been fixed and I miss the little green frog who used to live there but cannot now get through the grid. The one thing that has not changed is the amount of water flowing constantly from the water tank onto the roof directly above Sally’s flat. Andy was determined to do something about this and the result is a wonderful Heath Robinson contraption which directs the water through a pipe into a bucket balanced at an angle on a lump of wood and then into a drain pipe down to the soil below. We all feel much safer!
Some of us went to the market today and Wendy had the misfortune to pass the butcher’s stall just as the knife was about to slice into the throat of a poor little goat. Within seconds the head was laid down in the front of the stall and it was skinned and butchered in 60 seconds flat- Wendy’s words! She and Brian are now planning roast goat and Yorkshire puddings for next Sunday’s lunch.
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