Update from India

Hi folks,

just an update on our situation. It is now fairly certain that Christine will not get a Visa this year we have tried everything we can we have appealed we even looked at taking it the Delhi High Court but frankly it was just far too expensive and with no guarantee of a positive outcome we just couldn’t afford the risk. We have both been worried about how on earth we were going to cope so far from each other. I know service personnel spent much longer apart from families but that is the lifestyle they have chosen, this is more like 12 months at her Majesty’s service! With no chance of parole!

Christine and I when we met we both knew we had found our soul mate, we had been corresponding via email for months before that first meeting. The day we met we both knew but neither would admit it. Christine was disabled on crutches overweight and depressed, I had lost all hope in ever finding anybody who would forgive my past and was definitely heading down a dark road towards depression. We are both born again Christians although at that time I had not been baptised. I had given my life to Jesus on a road trip in America, after many years of saying ‘if there is a God prove it’ on Mount Tahoe he did just that. From that moment my life began to change as it says in the Bible my eyes were opened. There was very little we didn’t know about each other good and bad because we had been totally and I do mean totally honest with each other online, no secrets no surprises for later just absolute honesty. The advantage of talking online is that you are anonymous you can lie make yourself out to be something you’re not or you can do as we did be brutally honest before we ever met Christine knew about my very violent past and what I had gone through as a child. She was totally honest about her disability and her continuous pain and the future she faced which drove her towards depression. Neither of us were in a good place in our lives.

We could have been on opposite sides of the world but it turned out that not only did Christine live in a village that I passed through daily on my way to work every day, in fact Christine had been sat behind me in her car waiting at the traffic lights in her village. Was all so weird is that for years our lives had crisscrossed many times but that’s another story.

It may sound crazy, and trust me to me it felt crazy but we did not want to make love until we were married. If you had any idea of my past I don’t know about amazed you will be more like shocked that I should think this way. Christine was not a virgin yet we both felt very strongly that to honour God we had to do this properly.

We were on a visit to Lindisfarne (holy island) the site of the first Christian settlement in England. The little church the is amazing it has a sense of peace and love I have never felt anywhere else.

It wasn’t planned but we both knelt before the altar and swore before God that we would be true to each other and that there would be no other in our lives for as long as we lived. We also asked that if we were doing wrong we should feel a sense of guilt, instead we just felt intense joy that we had committed to each other. A small group in the church who had watched this asked us to join them and we sang hymns with them. When we left we were man and wife in the eyes of God. We found a place to live together and six months later formalised our wedding in church in front of our friends and the legal representative.

It always struck me as strange that whilst most in our church accepted we were married because of our oath before God and witnesses some couldn’t go that far and still regarded us as living together out of wedlock. It didn’t really matter to us because we both knew the truth as did God. From that moment at holy island we have been one entity Kris and Chris. Both friends in the church and outside refer to us as just that, even here in India those that know us well call us Kris and Chris or the Chrisis.

We lived here together very happily for nearly 13 years during that time Geeta joined us. Many of you will know her story but briefly she was horribly burned and dying, my Indian sister Deloo (it’s complicated but we have been accepted into an Indian family as part of that family, quite rare) brought her to see us because she had seen Christine Heal a very nasty burn on my leg, bike an and exhaust kiss and boy this was a big one. Well I had been the typical man and ignored it for a few days so when Christine saw it I not only got shouted at for being stupid but she now had to deal with a yucky mess rather than a simple burn. I was not popular. The good thing that came out of this was that Amber (another sister) saw how bad the burn was and watched Christine heal it. She told Christine that her niece was also burned which she mind looking at her, of course Kris said no problem at all. The next weekend to Deloo turned up carrying this little bundle of wobbly arms and legs thin as a rake with burns that covered her right arm and side some of her back and had completely destroyed her right ear. 

It seems she had been in that condition for over a year! The tribal witch doctors had been treating it by sprinkling it with turmeric and then wiping that off to remove the infected flesh. By the time she got to us bone was showing through at her elbow and she stank of gangrene. We rushed straight to our local hospital who immediately recommended amputation is the only way to save her life. Christine has worked in a burns unit and felt she could do more than just amputate so she came home again to live with us and for the next three or four months Christine changed her dressings and cleaned the wound at least once a day sometimes morning and evening but gradually she got on top of the infection and finally beat it. Geeta would not respond to antibiotics as she had been pumped for of anything and everything on the market she was almost totally resistant only responding to 1 or two externally applied antibiotic creams.

Since then she has grown into a lovely young girl, hard working at school and very polite. We are both incredibly proud of her. She still lives with us because her mother and father both agree that here she will get a good education (she attends one of the best private schools in the state) and a good upbringing which they could not give her in the village. Her father in particular is immensely proud of what she is achieving, he calls her ‘my Little Tiger’ If she returned to the village her future would consist mostly of manual labour. Now she can dream of a career.

And that’s about where we were when we again applied for a visa’s something we had done many times before and never had a problem. This time however the Indian authorities decided that Christine would not be granted a visa because she had overstayed on her last one. Despite feeling and fighting and everything else you know the end result refusal reapply in a year. I referred in my last blog to how that felt for a press so I’m not going to labour the point here.

The first few weeks were very difficult for both of us, I carried back a bug from the UK vomiting diarrhoea and dizziness. I spent the first few nights downstairs on the sofa because I simply couldn’t manage the stairs. Not a single friend called in to help. Deloo now back at the village heard I wasn’t well and bless her dropped everything to come and care for me. Gradually I got better, stronger and am now other than walking any distance okay. When I feel completely recovered I will start gentle exercise to get my body back into some sort of reasonable condition.

There have been times when it’s been incredibly funny. today lunch consisted of a yoghurt a fried egg and bacon sandwich and a plum! Lunch has become a bit of a voyage of discovery, bacon and eggs sandwich on one occasion followed by ice cream with cream biscuits in it. On the whole though the bacon and egg sandwich is leading at the moment as most popular lunch. Breakfast for me is coffee, for Geeta it is inevitably my muesli! I never seem to get the chance to eat any but the level in the box continues to fall for some mysterious reason. I try to make dinner in the evening a proper meal for both of us, tonight for instance we are having chicken breast in a rich garlic sauce with chips and peas. Shopping has been a pain in the butt because of the distance of walking involved, I find it very difficult to go very far at all so we have whittled our shops down to those local shops we use and ones in the local area that we can get to by rickshaw. Backup plan is Amazon!

Geeta has gone out with a friend Jackie fruit and veg shopping today it’s the first time she’s ever been out on her own and Jackie promises to look after her. Heaven knows what were going to get all I said sure was we need some fruit I need a lighter and you need some new lead for your propelling pencil..

Geeta is taking the situation fairly well it helps tremendously that Christine always calls her about 7:30 AM before she leaves for school it seems to help her feel that Chris is still here. I telephone her everyday on what’s app and it gives us time for a private chat. We are also emailing each other when the occasion arises. That way we are both fully informed of what’s happening to each other and can support each other through the hard times.

Gradually we are all coming to terms with the situation as it now is, it’s difficult for all of us we have never been apart before and it physically hurts deep inside.

We are keeping our faith in the Lord, I don’t know why he has chosen this path for us but I will accept that he has and do the best I can not only to keep my faith but to follow what he has laid out in front of us.

Every Sunday Christine attendance rising Brooke Church which is also online live so in a way we are together for that

I know she is singing the same song is I am at the same moment, is a degree of closeness which is really good.

Emanuel Church Durham have supported our effort here in India since we first came. There is a great deal of shock and disbelief that the Indian authorities have done this but of course nobody can do anything other than offer their prayers for which we are eternally grateful. Alan Bell has been a tremendous support to us through all the good and bad he has been there for us I just want to say here ‘May God bless you Alan’.

Friends in the UK have commented asking how is Chris going to manage alone in India with his health problems to look after a house and a little girl? Well I won’t lie the first few weeks were tough and at times I never thought I would get through it but now we seem to have settled into a routine Geeta is being a tremendous help in fact without I don’t think I could manage alone. I have a lady that comes in for two hours a day to do the washing up and dust and do the floors. Believe it or not that is such a tremendous help to be able to keep the house tidy and clean was my biggest worry. Lots of people can’t believe what I’m doing I am at the moment the talk of the colony slowly word is spreading that Christine is stuck in the UK and I am managing on my own with only Geeta to help. Despite all that this weekend we are planting sunflowers beans and tomatoes in our driveway beds. By the way the fruit consisted of watermelon, plums, mango, bananas and oranges. That’s a really nice selection all in season so very cheap. Normal veg we have a huge variety of both homegrown and bought in season veggies. It is something we have always done buy it when its cheap or grow it, things like runner beans which we cannot get here. There were times when I looked at the two freezers and fridge freezer and wondered what on earth we were doing keeping all that veg? Well I sincerely apologise Christine I here  humbly admit you are a genius and I was wrong.

The daily temperatures are beginning to fall as the monsoon passes about half done. We have had a huge rainstorm today with a kick off again during the night if it sticks to the usual pattern. It’s 26° C again today but is expected to fall as low as 24° C by the end of the week so getting nice and cool. The humidity and the heat just sap the energy out of you, things you would happily go and do become a struggle, to give you an idea local doctors recommend between six and 8 L of water per day if you are active. If I drank that much 90% of my activity would be back and forth to the bathroom! I do try to drink plenty though and milk and fruit juices each day. I seem to be losing weight, maybe that’s my cooking… Ha ha.

Well I did say this is just to bring you up-to-date I hope it helps you understand what Chris and I are going through but no matter what we will not repeat not give in and just walk away from this. India, Gita and our home here is our life but it won’t be complete again until all three of us are together.

God bless you all

Chris  9/August

 

 

Life with the Hyde's in India. Separation

 

Well this is going to be a hard blog to write, I have been putting it off for weeks, perhaps trying not to admit to myself the situation I am in.

I will tell it as it comes so my apologies if it wonders on occasion.

 

Christine and I are separated, not by our choice but by circumstances despite our best efforts we could not change.

We had to return to the UK unexpectedly as there had been a problem with Christine’s visa. We have never been able to discover what that problem was supposed to be as the Indian authorities had renewed it twice before without any problem.

Christine was suffering from a major chest infection so we discussed it with the head of immigration who agreed to grant an extension for her on medical grounds. We did all the paperwork for this, Dr statements medical diagnosis et cetera et cetera they even interviewed the doctor by telephone to confirm it wasn’t a scam. Everything appeared to go well we never heard of any problems other than the endless delays which is common in Indian bureaucracy. We were both worried about this but the local office told us don’t worry just wait it will get sorted.

The day came that Christine was given a clean bill of health from her consultant and told she was now fit to travel. I must be absolutely clear on this point we did everything required of us produced every form that was asked for and submitted it all to Delhi immigration. We applied for an exit visa which was granted but we had a fee to pay which we assumed was for the medical extension. This was not a planned visit to the UK and it was hard financially question talking here of over £ 4000 in total.

We were lucky that we were able to stay at my daughter’s temporarily whilst we waited for our applications for new visa’s be processed. This is when the problems began.

My Visa was granted with no objections, Christine’s was refused on the grounds that she had overstayed. Now bear in mind we have never applied to these is a different dates or state for different lengths we have always renewed together and been in India on exactly the same dates as each other. We simply couldn’t understand how they had arrived at the conclusion that Christine had overstayed and I hadn’t. We appealed submitting all the dates showing quite clearly that no overstaying had occurred and that both applications were identical in circumstances and detail but only Christine had been refused. Trying to get somebody to actually admit a mistake may have been made was impossible. So we were left with a heartrending decision to make. I didn’t want to come back to India without Christine, in the 13 years we have been married we have never been separated we literally are Chris and Chris a single entity.

With no spare money living day to day was very difficult. We were blessed by having friends and people from the church in Durham who accommodated us for a few days so that we could visit. Weeks had now passed and the decision to return or not had to be made.

One part of me cried out to just give up on India and stay with the woman I love in the UK. Several people suggested we regard this as a long visit and make arrangements for accommodation in the UK. This would have meant giving up everything we have worked for in India, sending Geeta back to her village for a year of no education, emptying the house and giving up the rental. Whether we shipped anything stored it was a detail we never looked at. A good deal of praying holding each other and crying eventually lead to the decision that I would come back and try to cope alone.

Parting at the airport was probably the most painful experience of my life I was completely devastated that I was going back alone. Christine returned to my daughter’s in Stafford to stay with her whilst we tried to come to terms with what had happened.

I arrived in India physically very tired and mentally almost shattered. The first week was vomiting and diarrhoea and a feeling that I could just not go on alone. My Indian sister Dloo (Geeta’s mother) when she heard that I was not well immediately dropped everything and came to help, I cannot bless her enough for this. Family is very important in India her commitment to her elder brother is the same as it would be were we blood -related. It is a tightly linked group. Since I was accepted into the family I have on several occasions shown that I take it seriously and acted as an elder brother within the family. To be clear an Indian family can have literally hundreds of members spreading out over many miles inter related by marriage by birth and by Rakhi as I am. I accept all the responsibilities of an elder brother in the family and my sisters accept responsibility for my well-being in time of need. This has never been shown to me so clearly as on this occasion when I was truly alone.

On at least one occasion I telephoned Christine and told her I just couldn’t cope, I was crying that without her here with me I just couldn’t go on here. I was still quite ill this point not eating properly and feeling incredibly depressed, as Winston Churchill once described his depression as the Black dog following him I knew exactly what he meant. In our past Christine and I have both been victims of depression, if you’ve never been there I can’t possibly explain to you the depths of despair you fall into. Some never recover completely from this, some even commit suicide. Throughout this Christine and I have both fought very hard not to go down that path, not to allow depression into our lives again as it once had been. But it has been hard. And the struggle continues everyday.

Just a note here, where are our friends? Well I can best put it this way they faded into the distance. Several stood up but many came up with I’m just too busy to come and help, sorry. One friend has truly disappointed us, Christine fell out with her over something petty whilst we were in the UK, she has been a guest and a friend in our home many times shared many meals with us but is not so much as enquired since I returned. It’s sad when you discover just how shallow some friendships are, but perhaps it’s better to know the truth than rely on them and be let down.

Well working between us Christine and I have overcome most of the emotional trauma and many of the practical problems. I am fitter and regaining my general health although asthma will always be a problem especially in the monsoon season where chest infections are common.

Geeta has just got over one that had her vomiting and coughing for three days despite antibiotics and lots of cuddles from her mum and I. She has now returned to school but she has missed an awful lot of this term. The thought of sending her back for a year in her village was impossible for both of us. We are the only stability and love she has ever known it would have been a complete betrayal of everything we believe in had we done that.

So to the current situation, Christine is staying in the UK trying to find somewhere to live as cheaply as possible and I am remaining in India with Geeta. Somehow we have got to make one pension support us both, but we will do it as we say to Geeta never give in.

It’s the simple things which are proving to be the most problematic, shopping simply going to the local shops is further than I can walk so any shopping done locally is done by Geeta on her bicycle. Other shopping I am trying to do online and some deliver. I daresay I will learn to deal with these things as time goes by.

We stay in touch by WhatsApp video calling each day and on Sunday when Christine attends Rising Brooke Church in Stafford with my daughter I take part in real-time online so in a sense during this time we are together. I know that when I am sitting here singing in praise of the Lord she is saying exactly the same words only ¼ of a world away there is a closeness that I had not expected in this.

We both know that the next year is going to be very difficult for all of us, Geeta is missing Christine terribly we have tried to explain to her that it may be after Christmas before she gets back but I don’t know if that has really penetrated yet. Every night before she goes to bed she sits on my knee for a bed time cuddle and we say a Little prayer for the Lord to look after Christine and bring home to us as soon as he can.

Neither of us can say what the next year holds for us but we will face it together our love for each other binding us together like an unbreakable rope tied by our faith and our love.

May God bless you all

Chris 

 

Life with the Hydes in India

 Hi folks,

Well it’s been three months since the last blog and it doesn’t feel like three weeks! We have good news bad news, with all its ups and downs, the adventure continues.

I know the English just love to talk about the weather so I will do that first. Summer has been very weird this year. Normally we get rain showers as the weather warms then a steady rise in temperature to around 45/50°C, then it drops gradually as we approach monsoon but only really drops to 8/10° C in the winter. It may look as though it’s a fixed routine but it is highly variable. This year we have had rain at odd intervals throughout the summer, and lower than typical temperatures, apparently it’s been the wettest June for 123 years, for the last week thunder and rain. Floods in summer! We must bear in mind that we just had a cyclone visit us. Only the second Chris and I have experienced and probably the worst. The score so far is two cyclones one earthquake and one massive dust storm that confine everybody to her home for 24 hours because you couldn’t breathe outside. We do after all live in a desert state. On a side note Christine has given up years ago worrying about there being dust on the furniture, 15 minutes after dusting it is back. This cyclone produced huge damage throughout the state with massive flooding and crops destroyed, thousands made homeless and of course sadly some deaths. The villagers fared the worst the buildings mostly being constructed of packed earth and stones or single brick walls with no reinforcement especially those on low lying land. It feels as though the monsoon has already arrived, all very strange. I have just checked the weather forecast it is for thunderstorms and rain for the next 10 days!

We also took some damage, nothing to the house except a broken window on the top floor that blew out. The solar panels for the hot water also survived I think in part due to the steel monkey Cage we have around it.

The garden however is a different story. Generally the plants survived and we only lost a few peppers and our cacti took a battering. Most of the fruit trees in the area were stripped by the wind. Our mango managed to hold on to most of its fruit but our Jamon (Indian plum) was almost stripped. Luckily we had rigged a net under it as each season it drops hundreds of small plums on the driveway if we don’t. Many friends turn up with bags! We only had one tree in fruit this year the other two had been heavily pruned to get them under control so they did not fruit this year. We had our first orange growing on our two year old tree, deep sadness the wind got it. The garden pool is now back to being full from overfull! The fish don’t seem to have been bothered at all by the debris and extra water arriving in their home, if you’re a fish it seems life goes on as normal despite cyclones! The amount of rubbish and debris that has arrived in our garden is quite impressive and will take a day or two clearing. So all in all nothing too dramatic… So far.

We have several trellis fences destroyed but by far the worst damage is to our chicken coup. A wooden frame of 4 inch posts in the ground supporting a chicken wire covering. It’s the third we have built so we know what we’re doing and we build strong, or so we thought!

Devastated

Massive wind and rain for at least 10 hours left the chicken run flat as a pancake by morning. Our first worry when we saw it was obviously the welfare of our chickens. Luckily although the coop had collapsed the wire had remained joined together making something similar to a huge net. As a matter of fact the chickens seemed interested in the new layout and not fazed at all by their home collapsing around them it seems. We had just introduced perhaps a week before 19 new young hens perhaps they thought this was normal at the moment that gives us 25 in total but a proportion of these will be cockerels and will have to be separated and sold, they bring a surprisingly good price in the market especially if we spend a little time fattening them up, believe it or not the sale of cockerels the last time we did this covered the entire cost of buying the replacement chickens, so good deal. Until that time we don’t know how many hens we have. ‘If they crow they go’ Christine and Gita had to catch them one by one, it wasn’t easy! They are now living in our downstairs bathroom! Friends calling in at discovered the bathroom is now out of bounds. Luckily each bedroom has a separate bathroom which does mean however running up two flights of stairs which can be difficult if you’re desperate. They have enough room and in fact they seem to be enjoying themselves discovering a new environment. Several have been found sat in the sink or resting on top of the toilet tank. Sadly we have lost one that wasn’t thriving so it really wasn’t a surprise. Any dead chickens we dispose of quite faraway in the area of the jungle so that at least it contributes to the welfare of some of the wild dogs or Panthers

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In the meantime rebuilding has started. The posts we had such faith in have been completely eaten by worm up to the level of the surface. We didn’t realize it but the whole structure had been standing on the ground rather than embedded within it and of course as soon as you have winds like we suffered its going to tear anything not substantially anchored down. This time the posts and roof frame consist of 2” x 2” angle iron. 1” x 1” Angle iron makes up the door fitted with steel mesh. Each post is 12 inches into the ground and concreted. The whole frame is welded together in place and is super strong. In the event of nuclear war that’s where I’m going to shelter. As we had to clear all the old posts wire and rubbish to rebuild we decided that it would be a good moment to rip out a hedge we had between the chickens and the front garden. It was a horrible thing with lots of dead stuff and mosquitoes in it. Anyway out it came and we discovered that we had actually gained nearly a full mtr in chicken pen width so they are getting a bigger home. The frame is up and a corrugated roof now covers one third of the structure. This will give them protection in the monsoon. As soon as the structure has been wired we intend to move a few more plants that chickens won’t eat in and create a sort of jungle patch they can play in. We both thought of the same tree, a curry leaf tree. It produces leaves that taste like curry, very useful for us and we already know the chickens won’t go near it. They already have a large heap of logs and rotting tree trunk to hunt bugs in. Because of our brick floor the rain did not damage the surface at all. Obviously now we have added a metre we will have to extend that. Believe it or not their lighting survived. We use lighting to extend the day length by giving them an early dawn; this gives them the equivalent of a summer’s day which is important if we want to keep them in lay through the shorter days of the winter. They are on a timer which is backed up by a small battery so that even if we have power failures the timer stays accurate. We estimate that it will take us about two weeks to get the structure up and wired perhaps 10 days but the weather isn’t being very friendly to us.

We have had rain and thunderstorms in the afternoons for about two weeks now, and judging from the forecast much more to come.

Staying on the weather theme (very loosely) it used to take us about an hour and ½ to water the gardens. That doesn’t seem very long when you consider that it sometimes twice a day it adds up. We can’t afford to allow the soil to go bone dry with young plants in it. In the weather we have here the sun is so strong just missing watering one evening can lose us a whole crop of young plants.

It has taken us months to complete but we now have a system of pipes, sprinklers and small bore feeds to every bed in the garden. All fed from our bore well and controlled by various valves. It is far more efficient than using the hose pipe and uses less water as it is only delivered to the plant not the whole area in general. We fitted an extension to a watering line that runs to the chicken coop water bowl which saves Kris the job of topping up the water with watering cans every day. She just opens the water valve waits until the bowl has been washed out and filled and closes the valve again. We have raised beds at the back on sprinklers and multiple containers of herbs fed by individual small pipes. The same system is employed to the beds along the side of our main drive and very front garden. The main garden flower bed has just joined the water club by having a long perforated hose run through it. We have several planters of potatoes being fed from small pipes. This summer we are going to try and grow melon and different squashes some along the side of our house that has no garden just a narrow path (facing the sun) in containers fed by this system. It seems that the general opinion of people on the colony who know us (which is just about everybody) things we are doing is ‘interesting’ I think this is a polite way of saying they think we are slightly eccentric!

On a side note this year for the first time we grew pumpkins; to be honest we grew two pumpkins are little on the small size for pumpkins but definitely delicious. Kris made an authentic American pumpkin pie, I had tried one in the USA years earlier but this one blew that away. Absolutely yummy. We will definitely be growing pumpkins next season.  

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Now I am afraid I have some really bad news, we have lost two of our dogs’ one to age the other illness.

Last month Chile lost her long battle with brain damage and epilepsy.

She has suffered since a very small puppy because of a head injury. She has been on medication to control it all her life. It seemed to get worse very quickly. Over a couple of weeks she just lost interest in everything and began to have changes in her personality she also began to have more frequent fits. We had the vet out several times but there was nothing he could do to help her. He advised us that the situation could only get worse. We struggled with the decision to have her put to sleep, she is only a young dog, but then the next evening after a particularly bad fit she passed away. We all miss her very much; we still say her ambition in life was to lick every single person she met on the nose. Friendly loving dog, strangely she and blue never really goes on and towards the end Chile would try and attack her. She had a longer life with us with more happiness in it than she would have had if we had left her on the street. She would probably have died within weeks of the head injury. She was five years old. The indentation on her head is clearly visible.

We have buried her in our garden in a bed that runs parallel to the drive. She is buried deep in our garden so there is no chance of her ever being disturbed. Geeta put chili's play toy and a bone in with her as well as some flowers. Chili had always been a close companion to Geeta sleeping in her room at night. Geeta knew that she was very ill and that it was getting much worse, she has known that Chile would never get completely better but that we would love her and look after for as long as possible. She fully understands that to save an animal suffering a vet will sometimes put the animal to sleep so that it has a peaceful death. She very much wants to be a vet when she gets older so although we shielded and helped her overcome her grief we did not censor any of the details of Chile’s death. She has taken it very well accepting that Chile is now at peace and not having any more fits.

Then just Last week we lost Moti, the three legged street dog. Those of you who read our blogs who know him well as he has popped up many times.

He loved sand.....soft to lay in
no builders sand was safe!

He has always lived in our road, when he was first injured the people in one of the end houses, a doctor, amputated his leg and cared for him. They have since moved away but Moti never moved from his road. He was the boss. Because he was a street dog some people, delivery drivers or strangers tried to kick him or throw stones at him. Everybody in the street and colony loved him and did something to care for him. He used to visit different houses for meals and was wormed and de flead regularly. He had as I have said only three legs which you may think made him vulnerable however that is far from the truth. If anybody tried to kick him he had a very good defense, he would nip round behind the person as they kicked out and bite them on the other leg. Getting no sympathy from anyone in the street usually ensured that it didn’t happen twice. He adopted whoever moved into the street as a friend and guarded all our properties diligently. Nobody messed with Moti. As the years passed winters and monsoon became more difficult for him. He had cataracts that limited his vision and rheumatism that used to trouble him a lot in damp and cold weather. His last few years he spent more or less living with us, coming and going as the mood took him. Very wet days he would appear and get toweled dry then lay on his bed in his corner of our sitting room. Gradually the frequency of him staying out reduced until towards the end he was not going out very often at all. The last few months he has gradually got slower and less sure of his footing, falling over quite frequently. The vet has treated Moti for years, longer than we have known him and knows him well. Finally in his last week he couldn’t stand and had lost control of his bowels which he was so ashamed of as he had always been a clean dog who only in the entire time we knew him had one or two accidents in the house. The look on his face said it all.

On the vets advice he was put to sleep with some of those  who loved him around him. Geeta talked to him and stroked him as he passed. He just drifted off to sleep, very peaceful.

He is also buried in the same part of the garden as Chile, again he is buried deep. Lots of people from the street have called in to say blessings over his grave. He was a very special dog and lived a long and happy life among people who loved him and cared for him. Moti was 19 years old when he passed.

Bleu’ has been all over the house and gardens not so much looking for them because she knows they have gone (dogs know when one of them dies) but maybe just remembering. She has wined and howled some evenings since they passed but we do our best to comfort her. She has known him all her life, they got on really well and she misses him so much.

We were concerned how Geeta would handle all this but she seems to be quite pragmatic about it. To soften the blow a little we have bought her an albino rabbit, (hinting about having a rabbit for months… The school has one) she completely adores it and has named it ‘bunny’. 

It has a nice big cage that is undercover and has a fan above it and needless to say is getting spoiled rotten. We have also bought some clip together fence panels, about 2 ft² that we will use on the lawn so she can have a good play about and get plenty of fresh grass. We will have to put a chicken wire top on it….We have Hawks! 

White Rabbit on green grass….

                              Our logs arrived today second pile. Now all stacked ready for winter.

We have just about finished preparing the gardens for sowing later this year. We have three tomato plants about 6 feet tall that we are leaving as an experiment. Will they survive the winter? If they do we wonder if they will fruit as well as tomatoes we will plant at the end of monsoon. The next thing into the garden will be capsicum seeds and in several containers we will sow our brassicas. it will all get very silly as we try and keep up with weeding and sowing as the monsoon ends….A crazy time of the year. Monsoon 35° C and 80% humidity rising to 90% when it is stormy, the sweat just doesn’t evaporate and at this time of the year everybody goes around damp. Even the bedding doesn’t feel dry and Kris fights a constant battle to dry any washing. Every now and again we light the stove and heat the house which helps dry it a lot. This year I fully intend to set up Geeta’s pool which has seen good service this summer. Not counting the dozens and dozens of times she and her cousins and friends have been in it Kris and I have also spent several happy hours floating in the cool water in the evening occasionally with a glass in hand.

Well I guess it is time I talked about Kris, Geeta and me. Where to start?

A brief summary; this list is in addition to the normal bruises cuts and scrapes we suffer because of our lifestyle. Kris broke two ribs, I went through a full allergic reaction and a broken toe, Geeta seems to have got away with everything except the odd graze and bruise that all kids get.

Kris being a hero on her own fell off our stepladder and landed on the edge of the raised garden beds (brick and concrete) using it as a ricochet point before hitting the floor. I wasn’t there but Geeta was. She behaved brilliantly Christine was lying on the floor and she asked ‘shall I get grandpa?’ Kris told her to wait a moment, and to grab her inhaler which she did at record speed. Then she came and got me (I was working in the workshop). The rest is pretty straight forward, x-ray showed two broken ribs, one longitudinally and the other a simple break. As anyone who has broken ribs knows it hurts! And there is very little that can be done to help other than painkillers. Strapping up ribs would cause more harm than good with Kris because of her breathing difficulty it would almost inevitably lead to a lung infection. It has taken 4+ weeks for her to be able to move properly again. It was a full two weeks of rest before she could ride her bike again. I should mention that when the school heard about what she had done they immediately arranged for Geeta to be collected and driven back home during Kris’s convalescence. It is a very good private school that Geeta got into on her own abilities despite having missed nearly 3 years of formal schooling she is doing well in most subjects but spelling is not her forte so we will have to work on that as it impinges on every other subject she does. She loves school and hates it if she has to have a day off to see the doctor or a hospital appointment. Kris is writing Geeta part two of the blog with more details and should be published soon.

Now, on to me. It all started innocently enough when we decided as a treat we would have a sandwich each from Subway. Normally Kris would pick them up herself on her way home from town, but on this occasion we ordered by phone. First stupid mistake, never trust anyone else with your sandwich ingredients if they can affect your health! No mayonnaise was stipulated. The sandwiches were delivered and all seemed well. A little later we sat down for lunchtime munches. Normally we cut the subways in half. I had ordered roast chicken with a light coating of spicy sauce. Chomping away it occurred to me that the sauce was really quite spicy but very enjoyable. My tongue was tingling furiously. Second mistake, never assume tingling that feels like an allergic reaction is due to spice in the source…. I did. A couple of hours later it was well under way with severe stomach pains sweating and shivering vomiting and diarrhea. It wasn’t until Geeta said there is mayonnaise in Grandpa’s sandwich (she was eating my other half) that the penny dropped. Until then we had both assumed it was another case of a bug my stomach couldn’t handle. Antihistamine helped but frankly not very much because I had waited so long before using it, mistake number three, use antihistamine if in doubt. Well anyway four days later I’m still on soup and toast and lots of water. My system is coming back to normal, stomach pains and muscle pains from vomiting are just about gone. Just to add insult to injury this has triggered an IBS reaction so anything I eat tends to pass through me very quickly, hence the soup and toast diet. It has now been a week and I am still not 100% .Looking on the bright side, I wanted to lose some weight! The broken toe came from using it to detect furniture in the dark; this is not the first time this toe has been used for this purpose.

Geeta has always been an incredibly brave little girl undergoing operations that gave her a great deal of pain. (The latest operation to straighten her wrist this is four now, possibly two more to go (Kris will elaborate on this) means that she now can reach out palm down. We promised her that when she could do that and rest both hands on the handlebars we would buy her a bike, well I think she thoroughly deserves it and has earned it.

So that’s been our life for the last three months, I have only been able to touch on some of the major events, lots of small things have come and gone and happened that are really of no interest to anybody but us.

Oh Kris saw a mongoose run across the road in front of her!

On a personal note my second book is almost ready for publishing. Mostly for my own amusement I write science fiction. This book is a collection of 25 stories some long some short, imaginatively entitled ‘a collection short and not so short science fiction stories’ by C R Hyde. My first book, ‘the time traveler is already available on Amazon. For those who know me I hope to publish ‘a long and winding road’ my autobiography on Amazon soon to make it more available for anybody who wants to read it? It’s my story, from drugs bike gangs and violence to who I am now. I wrote it some years ago and have been repeatedly asked for copies I don’t have and it is no longer available from the publisher, hence Amazon.

Well I really do think that’s everything, although it is quite certain that the moment I press publish I will remember three of the things I should have mentioned.

The adventure continues.

Chris, Kris and Geeta

Udaipur, Rajasthan, India.

May God bless you and keep you safe in these troubled times.

Life with the Hyde's in India.

 The great Vegetable garden experiment.

We have decided to focus these blogs on what we are doing and our life in general out here, we hope you like the new approach.

When we first moved into this house we had to completely rethink how we gardened, in particular vegetable crops. We are incredibly fortunate to have found a landlord who only uses the house as long term security. He used to rent to short stay Indian tenants (generally about two years) but that led to all sorts of problems. Then we came along, he is very happy man, loves what we doing to the gardens and is totally 100% in favor of staying as long as we want to.

 The three Hyde's!

There is no suitable area other than the front rock garden we have built with our fish pond and fruit trees. It’s where we sit on the swing some evenings with a glass of wine or a beer and chill! No way were we altering that. If we can’t move the garden so we wondered (perhaps because of the wine!) What we could do about moving the climate thus started two years ago an experiment to change the climate in our very back garden.

When we moved in it was simply a solid slab of marble. A back yard which was of no use other than storing the inevitable junk we all collect. We built four raised beds and installed shading. The garden here only gets full sun for about three hours per day, but is gently sunlit by reflection from surrounding walls and buildings that are all painted white most of the day. Which reminds me we have to paint it again it’s looking a bit drab and doesn't reflect the light as it once did.    Later..Painting with what white we had.

After and before the paint

Our first year was surprisingly successful. We grew a good range of salad crops but things like lettuce and radish bolted really early in their life-cycle. Because they are raised beds, basically big containers watering proved to be a problem as they dried out very quickly, despite being 4’ x 6’ x 18” deep. Cabbage grew well but didn’t really enjoy it. We initially installed a drip feed system that was a complete waste of time. We spent more time cleaning out the drip feeders than we did actually watering. That year 90% of the watering was done by a hose pipe, not very efficient and certainly time-consuming when having to water twice a day. The shading fixed across the top of the garden really makes a noticeable difference to the temperature. It is significantly cooler in the back garden with the shading on than it is anywhere else in the other gardens.

Year two we had learnt a few lessons. We built and installed an overhead sprinkler system using bits and pieces of various projects we had laying around. All we had to buy were the sprinkler nozzles and an on off tap. We fed it from our underground pump (bore well) and after a few bits blew apart we got it to work amazingly well. 

That year we grew some fantastic crops, carrots, leeks, celery, long white radish, lettuce and a selection of herbs. Our carrot crop was amazing, five KG of beautiful sweet English carrots from 24 ft², now in the freezer.

The wine that started it all!!

The beans that didnt  

We grew the best crop of leaks we have ever have, deep home-made compost chicken and cow manure fed them wonderfully. Normally our leaks have to ensure a very short growing season. With the shading and the overhead watering we have extended the growing season by at least six weeks. 

We don’t get the big fat leaks you can grow in England but we do the diameter of a thumb, six or 8 inches of white flesh and really sweet half the bed was used for this experiment, six KG of really lovely leaks. The leaks by the way were Christine’s project from beginning to end. Her father used to be a great leak grower in her village and taught her how to grow… He did a great job, nice one Christine. Full bed next season!

    

We also had problems! 

Damp still air leads to mould*, good bye cucumbers (sad, I was looking forward to home-grown cucumbers) and beans. To be fair the beans were also attacked by a horrible bug that nothing we had (unless we resorted to chemicals) would touch them. We also grew lots of different crops in big grow bags some successful some not so, the watering problem again. We really cant describe  how fast things dry out here, not watering one evening can kill an entire crop.

This is year three. We are still learning. It is now mid April 96°F and we have lettuce and Chinese cabbage growing away happily in the back garden and would you believe it beetroot, it’s an experiment (yes another one) to see if we can grow them for pickling, too early to say yet if it’s going to be a success. 

Lettuce and young Chinese cabbage

Also a tub of carrots that belong to Geeta, a tub of red and a tub of green spinach and a bed of spring onions that we have just harvested at about 2KG, pencil thickness for freezing. Also herbs that Christine grows, she makes her own stuffing, pickles shallots red cabbage and mint sauce. (We also make home-made fruit wines and bread) we have some capsicum plants that are struggling but appear to be pushing up new growth after having been cooked by the sun we transplanted them just to see what would happen! Nearly forgot the celery, they have been growing for two years now in bucket pots standing in 30 cm of water. Continuous production of small half inch diameter 12 inch stalks, a bit stringy (we have been told it’s probably the high temperatures) but great for soup, we both love celery soup! Celery as a perennial!

Summer temperatures here can reach 48°C that’s 119°F sometimes higher. It will be interesting to see what it can and cannot cope in the new back garden.

The success of the overhead sprinklers experiment has impressed us both, we use less water because it goes where it’s needed and because the actual time spent watering is practically nothing. Reason enough we thought to replace it with something a little more substantial. We have used plastic plumbing pipe which is much more rigid and far less hassle. 

The black pipe is for individual
feeds to tubs to branch
off from, bits from the
drip feed watering system
again, nothing gets wasted here!

Amba, our Rakhi sister, I'm sure she thinks we are crazy

We have also taken a feed to the new raised beds 2 in the driveway and fitted sprinklers. 

Before

After building the bed, no auto water pipe yet

In these we intend growing tomato and chili Peppers and other sun loving crops. The tomato plants are this year’s seedlings that grew between our main tomato crop plants which have now finished because of the strong sun, the young seedlings are presumably from fallen tomatoes. We had the space so we have planted them in one of the new beds in a more shady location than the others and we will see what happens, some also went to a bed in the back garden so far they are looking very healthy and putting on good green growth. We will shade the tomato plants in the side beds but probably leave the chili Peppers (in the other new raised bed) to see if they can cope with full summer. If we have time we are going to build another raised bed approximately half way between them where the dog cage goes on the drive between the two new beds. We intend to try melons next season! We are also planning to use the plastic plumbing pipe to make a shade for the tomatoes that we can lift easily on and off the bed. This has always been a problem if you build a frame and put shading on it then makes getting to the tomatoes a complete pain! Hence the plan.

Our very front garden has also been a great success growing cabbage cauliflower red cabbage broccoli and Kohlrabi. This garden is also fed from our pump via a pipe that terminates in the front garden and has lots of holes in it. The pipe is fed between the rows and does a really good job of watering. 

We have shaded around it with a 4 feet high shade net, that and the trees provide lots of shade and mulch but allow sufficient sun for all our brassicas. This watering system saves hundreds of litres of water that goes where it is not needed, with this the plants are watered not the entire garden.

A while ago we made a small greenhouse for starting our seeds in. It was quite successful so we rescued it after storm damage but have not used it for a couple of years. We have refurbished it and it is going into the back garden in a semi-sunny spot to be put back into use this monsoon! We are going to try and get a head start with seedlings by sowing in trays late monsoon before winter when they can grow on in the cooler weather. We hope in this way to get the advantage of sowing early without the disadvantage of trying to get tiny seedlings through the monsoon rains and winter storms.

 

*Now the problem of mould. We have decided to scrap our old evaporative cooler. The motor (fan) now only works one speed it leaks a bit which is not helpful when it’s in the house, the pump is okay but that’s about it. The pump lifts water to three straw mats, air is drawn through these mats cooling it then blown out through a grill by the fan, it does however produce moist air as it evaporates water from its supply tank so it is best if running one indoors to have windows open to allow the moist air to leave. Very cheap to run (one fan, one tiny fish tank pump) nowhere near as good as AC** but nowhere near as expensive! We tend to use ours with doors and windows open during the day to keep the main room cool. As yet this year we have not used our AC and the temperatures have been high 80s to 90sF. But it is getting old and tired. (No jokes please) We have decided to put it in the back garden (okay you can laugh). Remember it is enclosed on four sides and has shade netting over-the-top. As stated earlier our problem has been with still moist air causing mould. I’m going to fit the pump with a timer so that it only lifts water during the heat of the day, the fan will run continuously keeping air movement going within this space. A fan and a cheap pump! Let’s see what difference it makes.

Three bags of gravel...it works. The bungee
is holding the sides on, they fall off and
drown the floor if left. Another reason
it had to be retired.

** We have invested in a new chiller (desert cooler). Our original was nearly 8 years old and getting cranky. The new chiller which incidentally we got in an online sale and in fact cost less than the first one is amazing. Things have improved tremendously in their design. In particular the aero dynamic curve on the fan blades. The room to a comfortable level we put it on speed two of three speeds, we have now turned it down to speed one, as good as the AC? Definitely. We are both completely amazed at how efficient they have become, it is quieter, more air and even has a fitting for it to stay topped up. It also can be fed from a plumbing junction (we had one available) so we don’t even have to top up the water level… Cool eh. (Pun intended).

The blue tub is fed from the waste water of the reverse osmosis drinking water supply which would normally be allowed to run to waste. We however try to waste nothing so use it. Christine puts a bag of chicken poo suspended in it and makes a liquid feed for the gardens. The chickens also contribute to our compost bins, as well as being friendly little things they give us wonderful brown eggs.

We have decided if there’s any interest in this blog we will be doing an irregular focus on different parts of our garden and life in general and what if anything we are doing that might be interesting, such as rebuilding Betty the motorcycle and sidecar we have. Christine’s preserving and pickling, the solar hot water system, winemaking… Who knows what?

We have also written the first part of an ongoing blog about Geeta, what has happened since she came to live with us. We call it Geeta’s story. Same blog address as this blog number 100.

Take care and God bless you,

Chris, Kris and Geeta    

And a host of others, dog’s chicken’s fish gecko’s lizards snakes monkey’s hawks and a multitude of nasty little pests that eat our crops.

ETC. ECT. ECT.

Update. 

Geeta has been talking about getting a 'bunny' for ages now, ever since Kris said no to a goat! It turns out that rabbits and chickens get on very well together as long as the rabbits have a separate hutch in which to sleep. Interaction between both is fine as long as we get a female, maybe two, a male tends to jump everything in site which really upsets the hens! So watch this space!