Christmas in Poona is a wonderful time - who needs snow! Its mostly in the 60's to upper 70's - cool in the mornings & evenings & pretty warm/hot during the day. There are Christmas carol competitions, church talent shows with carols & skits. Youth and other groups go carol singing to Nursing Homes, Hospitals, Orphanages etc. People lead busy lives like everywhere in the world but there is a different excitement of coming home and setting out to attend these events. One such event is a Christmas Party given by a highly generous "Mr. Aranha". He owns some well-known schools in Pune & invites a list of at least 500 people from the community to his annual Christmas Party. My parents are one of them & this year I got to go with them. There is good liquor and lots of good food going around. But more importantly I got to meet people whom I had not seen for years & years, some like 25 years!
The picture below is of my Dad and a friend Sangeeta Jadhav. She was always an enterprising person so it was no surprise to know that she runs a big parochial school i.e. under a Christian organization. Churches & church organizations in Pune own some prime properties and institutions. Sadly most of these are mismanaged, so it was refreshing to see what my generation represented by Sangeeta can do!
This is me with my 6th grade homeroom teacher Mrs. Lazarus. She is happily retired but still looks great! I had not seen her for at least a couple of decades!
These are church friends of my mother (in the purple sari). Mrs. Lokhande in the pink sari & Mrs. Borde in the maroon. Mrs. Borde is a lady that I greatly admire, a people influencer, she really does awesome work among women. She organizes these prayer meetings where she invites a good speaker, provides a nice social time for the group coupled with great food, takes them out on trips to places of common interest, has medical & other counseling for them & on & on.
In Part 1 I mentioned that I experienced grief closely. I also experienced contentment closely. It has always been my intent to revisit Mukti Mission, a now large institute that Pandita Ramabai started for destitute women & children in the 1800s. I've visited this place on a Sunday school trip when I was in 5th grade and then a couple times after that in my teens. Have always wanted to go back, especially since some of my cousins have moved into the area. My Dad's younger sister lives right outside this place and has 3 daughters living in the area. One of them Ratna and her husband Prashant are employed by the Mission. Prashant is involved with outreach and helps to establish the Mission in 5 other locations across India. Ratna, who was a brilliant student & an excellent nurse is now a hospital manager. Both of them are very dedicated and are blessed to raise their 3 sons in this institution where they lacked no family. Everywhere we went the women were warmly greeting their kids, its like the whole institution was involved in raising & loving them!
So we first visited the blind women's area. These women are taught to be independent - they cook their own meals! They light the stove make their simple meals & clean up all without any supervision. Each of them is given an area in a large kitchen with a simple cabinet to store their pots & pans. See pictures below. Prashant called all of them back to the verandah where they then sand a couple of songs for us with one of them playing the harmonium to accompany the singing! The content & joy reflected on their faces was a real eye-opener for me. I resolved to bring that contentment & joy in my life in this coming year!
Cleaning up their kitchen area - this lady who also plays the harmonium & has a lovely voice is completely blind.
Here is also an amazing thing that they are taught to do - they can thread a needle and weave these beautiful baskets.
Then we proceeded to the area where little blind girls live. These young ones are cared for by very loving caregivers. There are a total of 72 blind inmates ranging in age from 2 to 92 at present. This one is the 2 year old who had just finished her bath - shower under a tree!
With their caregiver grandma!
This was a special area for the special needs children. The 2 young girls standing & the one sitting at the table are very loving, very dedicated young women who have given up more lucrative careers to care for these most special angels!
They sang for us accompanied by this bongo!
This is a cut out of Pandita Ramabai - she is as short as Mother Teresa. In her day, she was a very learned scholar having studied all the Hindu religious texts - hence the title "Pandita". She would be the equivalent of a Ph.D. in religion.
My cousin Ratna - who manages this hospital with clear dedication & drive - with a 92 year old patient who is blind. There are no resident doctors just a few who visit on certain days for a few hours. The hospital has an operating room, a small lab, a pharmacy etc. The whole place looks like a hospital from a movie about Africa - very bare bones - and this small village is less than an hour away from a hustling bustling town!
More later...
