I write this...

I write this in the stillness of a Lalitpur night.  Still that is, other than the thumping music of a marriage party at “Hotel Rhim Jhim” which is at the back of the hospital campus.  It is marriage season, and early this morning I took a prayer walk around the outer perimeter of the 11 acre campus, and passed the aforesaid hotel which has a large space for marriage receptions – and a permanent display of flags along the approach road to make sure that the nuptial celebrations are suitably grand.

I write this under a razai, wearing a sweater.  Tonight is not as cold as yesterday.  My first day in Lalitpur was a baptism by ice.  It was raining when the train pulled into the station, and the sun did not shine at all, leaving everything in a cold clammy embrace.  I soon realized that my shirt and sweater did not cut it – and so put on the long-johns, the extra sweater, the scarf.  My whole winter wardrobe – all at once.  A man in black.

The day was spent plunged into the arcane world of proposals, with Thomas from the central office in Delhi paying a visit to check out how the watershed programme has been running – and finding a number of gaps that need to be rectified.  I was nursing a tiredness headache that didn’t get better  with the cold and the reams of columns to look at and logistical frame-works to try and decipher.  Welcome to the accountability structure that undergirds the community health projects of EHA.

I write this after having sweated for the first time in the 48 hrs that I have been here.  This evening – after a good first session for me with the ‘Men’s club’ (a group of men on campus who are fathers and who want to be better dads) I played 3 rounds of table tennis with Daniel K. and then 2 games of badminton with Lukas, Perrin and Murmu.   It’s been a while since I have done anything physically active – and I have a belly to prove it.

I write this with an ache in my heart, missing my dear ones in Thane.  I have their photo on this laptop, but they are ever on my mind.  I feel like a kind of ‘John the Baptist’ going forward to prepare the way for them.  And there is a lot to prepare.

I write this having met almost all of the community health and development team at a get-together in the village of Bar.  Both the watershed management and reproductive child health project staff and local workers met up – partly to officially welcome me – and also to work through some of the task that have emerged out of Thomas’ visit the day before. 

I want to write more, but my yawns are threatening to have my jaw drop off, so I shall call it a night.  

More tomorrow about the community health and development programme – of which I find myself appointed as the director.

For now, I will snuggle further under my razai and after prayer, I will let my closed eyes take me to dream-land.