Dinner with friends

What an awful night’s sleep we had last night! The power went off at three in the morning and didn’t come on again until six. It was really hot and, without the fan, the mosquitoes were eating us too. Beyond that, a bunch of dogs started barking. After getting up early for breakfast we went back to sleep for a bit and when we finally got going we were a bit out of it. Yasmin had to remind me that they hadn’t had their breakfast yet, and then we had a bit of a scare because I thought they had taken the wrong malaria pills and we all had a little panic before we eventually figured out that they had taken the right ones.

This evening KY and Naseem picked us up to go back to the school for deaf and mute children. We wanted to give them some sweets because they don’t often get special treats and we felt remiss the last time we had visited them. Perhaps KY has ulterior motives. He’s a dentist so perhaps he thinks giving them sweets will be good for business! It was really special to visit these kids once more.

After the school visit we went to Meysam and Farzaneh’s home. This is the Iranian couple that we had met in Ooty. We had had a nice time with them at Naseem and KY’s home for an Ayyamiha dinner and they had invited us for this evening.

They are students and live in a small apartment, but they’ve made it into a comfortable living space. We had an amazing feast. It was great to have some Persian food and they even had some special Persian items direct from Iran. They are well informed politically and it was great fun to have an evening discussing various things going on in the world. It seems to me that they like the freedom of India. As we left, Farzaneh gave the kids a little gift. Yasmin and Roya got beautiful little journals and were quite pleased with them.

Tomorrow we’re off to Bangalore for one night before we take the train to Kerala. I feel a bit sad to be leaving the friends we’ve made here. I’m hopeful that we’ll see them again before we leave India, and who knows, perhaps one day we’ll meet them in Canada.

CM