January 6th 
Regular readers of this blog will be able to imagine the warmth of our welcome from the teachers and ayah ( Priya, Rani and Bhuna) at the centre. There were hugs and kisses all round. In this culture people don’t hug and kiss on meeting up as we now do in UK ( but never did in my childhood). But this is something we’ve brought to our friends here. It is difficult not to throw your arms around such dear old familiar friends when the emotion between us is so strong in the air. There were smiles and namaste greetings all round, from the elderly and from the children. Then, swiftly, flowers had to be pinned in my hair. Much nodding of approval from the elderly women- ‘ Suoer!’ And ‘Nella!’
We caught up in our masala mixture of ‘some small English’ and my ‘kunjum Tamil’ on how all our families are. In five years much has happened of course, and there is much proud talk of qualifications gained by offspring. As we’ve noticed before the girls here often do really well, and more often than not they study STEM subjects ( science/ tech/engineering/maths).
Bhuna provided us with coffees. In the kitchen she was busy chopping and preparing brinjals and ladies’ fingers for the elders’ lunches. The SHG women ( self help group) who do most of the lunch cooking are Indra and Vimula, who work two weeks on two weeks off. The first two weeks of the month it is Indra, who duly appeared, to be followed a while later by Vimula. Here began the requests to come to lunch / afternoon snacks -( even breakfast but I put a lid on that one!) Within moments we had lunch and afternoons fixed for Sat, Sunday, Monday.
We watched the children playing and then were treated to songs from them, some in English, some in Tamil ( the old favourite Pachaikili parum- about a green parrot) They were eating their packed lunches and the elders were having their hot meals served as we left in a tuc tuc to go to Balaji’s house for lunch at 1.00.
Part 2 of our Wonderful welcome back was equally warm and emotional, of course. This time at Balaji’s house there is a young baby, born September 8th, who has been given the name Sally. She is a perfect little doll with dark hair and eyes, who is full of smiles! In that house are Balaji’s parents, his brother Shankar and sister in law Santi, their two daughters and his wife Priya, their 7 year old Subashri and now baby Sally. All of them are completely in thrall to the new family member, so she is held, talked to, rocked, and played with every waking hour and she is obviously thriving on this.
Santa, Balaji’s mum, had prepared as always a lovely feast for us. She had cooked for our breakfast to which somehow Balaji thought we knew we were invited. Bless him, he wants us there all day every day, and I think he believes he can make this happen just by being persistent. We were garlanded and then photographed of course. Somehow between us we stretched our knowledge of each other’s language to bridge the barrier and communicate. After a while Santi came home from her lunchtime school meals supervisor job and her English is good. They had samples of organic cotton in the house ( connected with Jaki’s new venture I think) and Santi set to and hemmed them so we now have several new very nice hankies.
By mid afternoon next door neighbour Padmini had come in ( former teacher at Pachaikili) and her daughter who has completed an engineering course- a diploma level I think. She is a very keen student and now she’s looking for an internship but there is a real shortage of such positions in India, as they explained. Padmini was quick to get a lunch date in the diary for next Sunday. As we were feeling weary by now we managed to say our farewells and off we went in Balaji’s friend’s tuc tuc.
En route home through KVK we had one more stop however. Balaji wanted us to call in and see the government English medium school which his daughter Subashri attends. The teachers were about to start a meeting but everything had to stop for these weird visitors from England! The staff were all women and they seemed delighted to meet us, made us sit at the head of the table, took endless photos- all very odd and unexpected. Subashri was fetched from her class and eventually off we went with waving and smiles. By 3.30 we were home to our guest house for a lovely lie-down under the ceiling fan!
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