Breaking the silence.

It has been two months and a week since we wrote our last post on Chai Chats.

A whole life-time has passed by in these 70 odd days.

I am writing this in the almost painful stillness of a Mussoorie night,  Sheba and I arrived at Dehra Dun early this morning just 12 hours after leaving Lalitpur.   I was just finishing off a meeting with my colleagues in the community health and development programme of the Harriet Benson Memorial Hospital at just before 5 PM yesterday, when Sheba’s reminder call came in on the mobile.  I grabbed my laptop and was out the door to our home on the campus. 

A quick prayer and Sheba and I were out the door, rolling our luggage across the campus. We hailed an auto-rickshaw outside the hospital gate for the 10 min ride to the railway station.   We got there 15 mins before the Bhopal-New Delhi Shatabadi was to arrive.  The train came on time (5 mins late) and swished us to Delhi where we had the nerve racking ‘joy’ of arriving 10 mins late (at 11.41 PM) and having to get to our next train in 9 mins.

We got to the Nanda Devi express by the skin of our teeth (and having expended much lung power in the walk/run between platforms 1 and 10 in New Delhi station).  Barely had we actually arrived at our berths, and the train was on her way, taking us to Dehra Dun.  Whew.  Never again.  We have twice missed trains early in our marriage – and this was just too uncomfortably close to doing it again.  I have made a promise that a 20 min gap between trains will not be repeated.

We got up to Picture Palace by 8 AM and tucked into a aloo parontha / chole bhature breakfast when we saw our friend Edwin drive by looking for us.  He had come with his jeep to pick us up and take us to Asha’s school.   

Yes, you are hearing right.  Asha’s school in Mussoorie – not in Lalitpur.

Today Asha started her 2 week summer holiday.  She has for almost a month been studying at Wynberg Allen School where she got an amazing emergency admission in mid May.

Life has us in some very unexpected spins:

Asha at Wynberg Allen.

Enoch with his Oma and Opa for the interim.

Yohan is still in Mumbai – separated from us by a set of circumstances we would never dream about.

Dad is not well at all, which is why we have come up to Mussoorie.

Sheba and I were ‘alone’ in Lalitpur for the past 4 weeks.

Our shift to Lalitpur and diving into the life of the HBM hospital and community work.

There are many, many things to share about.

For most of the past two months things were going at such a rate, and were so difficult to talk about, that I just could not write for Chai Chats anymore.   Thanks for those who have stood with us as we have walked down some pretty unfamiliar roads.

Over the next few days, we will try to untangle some of the stories that we are living through, but writing about where we are right now and what has been happening in the maelstrom of the past 2 plus months.

Thanks for your patience and prayers, gentle readers. 

We want to break the silence, and will be sharing one still-being-lived-out story at a time.