Carly was coming to the end of her wonderful and nurturing sabbatical trip to India. She’d started off in the north in Rajasthan, but when it started getting cooler, she headed off southwards. All her kids had been out individually to see and stay with her. At her own expense. But that is nothing new she muses! They were still under 25 and all at Uni. She had one final month to go and decided she would head to Hampi – home to enormous boulders and huge numbers of Hindu temples. This was on her colleague - Eli’s recommendation. She did this out of duty as she felt she needed to pay Eli back. This was due to the real underlying truth of why she had persuaded Eli to let her have one of kittens. Eli’s cat had had a litter and Carly wasn’t all that truthful about why she was so keen to have one of these kittens.
Carly’s family had recently re-homed a lovable canine rogue - Bryn, from “All Dogs Matter”. But despite being told otherwise by the pet charity staff that he was fine with cats, this clearly wasn’t the case. Bryn was a tri-colour collie who terrorised their cat StinkyMirandaTalulah (known as Mandy or Fatne) who sometimes found herself in his mouth. Never a cool look for a cat. Or really any good at all. Bryn had clearly been badly treated before and couldn’t manage stairs and kept trying to gobble up large garden pebbles. With love and affection, Carly and her family were able to help Bryn with this. He became a wonderful therapy dog and got so many brownie points in the local chemotherapy unit where he went weekly for patients to stroke. But clearly, he had a thing about cats that no ordinary amount of love, affection and clear boundaries could sort out.
So, Carly brought home one of these kittens in an attempt to teach Bryn otherwise. His birth family called him Panda, on account of his multiple black and white splodges. But Boo, Carly’s daughter, didn’t like that name and called him Gus, short for Asparagus. For some bizarre and unfathomable reason, Boo and her brother took to calling Gus another name – Miss Kitty. This is strange for a male cat who isn’t having any binary or other gender issues. Anyway, Carly brought in a pet psychologist into the home. She took a toy kitten, similarly patterned to Gus, and rubbed it in his scent. Then she presented it to Bryn. If he went snappy, snappy straightaway, then Gus would need to be returned. But he didn’t and so the training could begin. The family could teach Bryn to treat Gus with respect. This was all to do with testosterone. Well, that makes a change, laughed Carly. They had to buy an enormous cage for the kitten. The same size as Bryn’s. Carly would feed Gus inside his one with Bryn watching from the outside. If he desisted from going snappy, snappy then he would be rewarded with a couple of pieces of dried kitten food. Things went well and Bryn learnt to respect Gus, who, like most cats, ended up in charge. Except for Carly. She really is in charge. All the time! Well so she thinks. Cats have another idea of who is boss…
So, as a token of her gratitude to Eli, Carly goes to Hampi. She actually stays in a place across the water called Anegundi. She saw lots of boulders and visited a few temples, but really, she did what she always did during her sabbatical. Making things to fit with her theme. Purple, Spiral, Prime. She even had banana flower curry there as it was purple. She walked around singing Anegundi to the tune from “Fiddler on the Roof” called Anatevka. She isn’t sure why. They have the same number of syllables, and both begin with an A. But there is very little else that is similar. But it was amusing. Well, it was for Carly. Additionally, she did hum it pretty quietly, so she didn’t invite so many strange looks.
Carly then arranged to stay at their sister site Andeshe, outside of Pune, near Mumbai (previously Bombay). The website made it look sublime and it would be a quiet and isolated place for her to complete her projects before returning to her normal hectic life in “The Smoke” (London). So, Carly left on an overnight bus to Andeshe which only had three rooms and she was the only guest. She was a bit hesitant to be so isolated. But she was welcomed by a wonderful Nepalese couple who were running the establishment, Bishnu and Ganga. They spoke limited English, but Carly is tenacious, and she knew she would get by. She was worried, however, whether she could last three weeks by herself there? Oh and no phone signal or Wi-Fi. She quickly went to sort out a sim card and reader for her computer so she could continue to publish her blog. And then one morning, Meenaxi arrived. Phew. She was the owner’s mother and spoke impeccable English. They got on like a house on fire. Eating all their meals together and planning what they would eat. But for the bulk of the day, they did their own thing. Meenaxi sorting out her organic rice she grew at Andeshe and Carly making her stuff. Carly marvelled at how long any person could sift through this rice to prepare it for sale. She was impressed. She certainly would not be able to commit so many hours to something so very monotonous.
Every morning before breakfast Carly and Meenaxi would do their own thing. Carly would do her yoga on the roof and run with Johnny the dog. Meanwhile, Meenaxi would do her stretches and prayers. This arrangement suited them both and they sat down to a hearty breakfast. Carly was trying to complete her list of 133 (19 x 7) ideas for making things she had set herself for her sabbatical. Meenaxi suggested she help. One was balloon sculpturing. Rather than make various animals that entertainers do for small children at parties, Carly had a different idea. She had 53 purple balloons, and everyone helped blow them up. She noticed that even balloon blowing is cultural, and Indians blow it up to the side of their mouths! She then put all the balloons on the open water of the small freshwater pool and jumped in. The wind picked up and they all hopped out, popping on various prickly plants. It took longer to blow them up than for them all to come to a sudden bursting end. Carly collected a few of the ruptured balloons and “imprisoned” them in one of her A3 montages. Homage to a balloon monument!
On another occasion, Meenaxi baked a banana bread. Carly decorated it with purple icing and ticked off both bread and cake making from her list! She also allowed Carly to use her very efficient treadle-foot sewing machine. This was the most efficient machine Carly had used in India. She was very pleased to be ploughing through so many projects. Zip, zap, zop went Carly working at an intense speed. Towards the end of her stay, Meenaxi invited Carly and some neighbours to a ceremony to celebrate the installation of a machine to prepare rice. It was a great, big ugly metal thing, but Meenaxi decorated it with important Hindu symbols including swastikas. She was very careful to point out to Carly, who she knew was Jewish, that this was an ancient Hindu symbol, misappropriated by the Nazis who flipped it over. Carly was so touched that Meenaxi respectfully decided to explain all this to her.
At the weekends, they returned to the bustling and busy town of Pune. Meenaxi to her son’s home and Carly to a hotel near the synagogue. It was fun for Carly to go there. On the Friday night there was only the caretaker and cantor who took the service and had come from Mumbai. At the end of the service, the cantor blessed Carly who felt very emotional and cried. No great surprise there. Carly is forever crying. Happy. Sad. Whatever. Carly is crying. The Saturday service was much busier. On the second weekend Carly brought along a fancy purple challah (bread) cover she had made for this warm community. She also made beetroot halva to share with them. She gave a short talk about the colour purple in the Old Testament. And explained that the food she had brought connected them. The beetroot was a typical staple of Ashkenazi Jews from the West where they ate borscht and halva was a favoured dessert of Sephardi Jews from the East.
When Carly thinks back to her time in India it was chock full of people looking out for her and after her. It was such a special place. It was such a special time. Yes. So good. Carly is really grateful. And, of course, this has made Carly cry. Again.
