Updates from India: March 2022

It’s been a while since we last blogged but our lives have been in turmoil.

In September 2019 we joined a well known NGO which seemed a good idea at the time. We originally asked for a five year contract but agreed in the end on a three-year contract. We explained that at the end of the three years we would become eligible to apply for citizenship having completed 12 years continuous employment in the country with an allowance made for us to return to the UK every five years to renew our employment visas.

The end of our second year with literally only days left before we had to submit forms for the third year the NGO announced it would not be renewing contracts. This left us in India with no employer in the middle of a covid epidemic.

To say that we were hurt and upset by their attitude would be an understatement. What upset as most was the manner in which we were informed.

A WhatsApp message. The owner didn’t even have the good manners or integrity to inform us himself or speak to us directly, the WhatsApp message being relayed through another person. Treating us simply as a disposable asset left us both hurt and frankly insulted. It is customary to at least give the people in your employment notice of this sort of decision. We got none.

This decision has literally cost us thousands of pounds in air flights and extra visa costs that we had not budgeted for. Consequently the credit card is maxed out, our jeep has had to be sold and we have had to borrow to be able to get to the UK and reapply for new visas. Needless to say a large proportion of our income must now go to paying these debts. To comply with Indian government rules we had to apply for an exit visa at that time. At the same time the Indian government closed its borders to all flights as did the UK. We were in the unenviable position of officially being told to go and officially being told we couldn’t because there were no flights. Needless to say trying to understand Indian bureaucracy is not a skill we were used to using!

Bye Bye Jeep, you were a good beast.

Quite what this has done to our citizenship eligibility we don’t know yet. It will probably mean putting it on hold for a few years but until we inquire we really just don’t know.

The Covid epidemic that has swept the world cost many lives in India. For a time here we were in complete isolation on government instructions because we were foreigners and because of our ages. Time after time lockdowns were imposed and gradually the death rate fell. I think it is fair to say that India has fared better than a lot of the European countries have and certainly far better than the USA. The habit of wearing a mask to prevent infection spreading has been accepted here. There were a lot of people who are one reason or another didn’t bother. By the time of the second wave most people had come to realise the danger having seen so many die in the first wave. Masks became compulsory wear with strict action taken against people who would not comply. We were finally able to get permission to fly in December on condition that we have full Covid tests before check-in.

In one respect we have been very fortunate to find a reliable and trustworthy company here in India that was actively seeking people with exactly our skill sets to join them.

Sadly warm aid hasn’t happened because of the Covid epidemic. We were hoping to start again in 2022 but selling our jeep means we are without transport to deliver the blankets to the more outlying villages. This is a problem that we will have to look at and see if we can find a solution. Warm aid was a very successful enterprise helping many hundreds of the most desperate people stay warm in winter. Warm aid has already received recognition and an award from Udaipur collectorate (for UK read town Council) for our work in and around the city.

We have now returned from the UK and were shocked whilst we were there by the apathy of the general population with regards to preventing further infection by wearing masks. Some people we met with justify this by saying that they had chosen not to be inoculated against infection and were relying upon diet and other ways to ensure their safety. This attitude completely baffles us. By all means choose to take the chance personally but to then expose others to possible infection from you by not wearing a mask is totally irresponsible. I have no problem with the right to choose to be inoculated or not. My problem is with them not having the right to put us at risk by possibly spreading the infection by not wearing a mask. By all means gamble with your own life and the life of your family, but please do not gamble with other people’s lives.

We left for the UK at the beginning of December. We were really looking forward to being able to spend Christmas with my daughter and her partner. We made one attempt but problems with our exit Visa meant we had to reschedule. We had already told Frances and Sean that we were coming but had to disappoint them. We set up a new date and this time successfully left for the UK. We didn’t want to build them up just to disappoint them again so we didn’t tell them. The first they knew was when we telephoned them from a pub in the UK to tell them we were waiting for the bus from Heathrow to Stafford and that we were in the UK. They were blown away! I won’t tell you what Francis actually said but it wasn’t very polite! Anyway we arrived in Stafford at 4 AM. One minor problem, the coach dropped us 11 miles from Stafford at a bus stop in the middle of perishing nowhere. Pitch black and raining. Eventually we got a taxi to take us into Stafford to Frances and Sean’s place. Frances and Sean were both up and waiting for us and we had an amazing greeting. We cannot express how welcome they made us feel. Remember this was only the second time Frances and I had met for some considerable time and then only for a few days. There was no tension, no feeling like we were the visiting parents they had to behave differently in front of.

Christmas was brilliant, Christmas dinner and friends calling in although because of the Covid restrictions and of course our vulnerability to UK bugs having been away so long meant we had to be super careful who visited. Vicky, a friend of Frans from the flat downstairs was a regular visitor. She has a wicked sense of humour. She is a lady painter and decorator who has actually been on a television DIY program, can’t be certain but I think it was called DIY SOS.

Vikki, Frans neighbor and friend

Wheres the food?

Frances and Sean only have one bedroomed flat and insisted that we use their room. So the situation was four people living in a one bedroom flat, confined by Covid. This went on for seven weeks. Much longer than we had initially anticipated. For all this time we always felt welcome and a strong family bond has grown between all of us.

Sean with his new car..........he wishes

Ah Johns Smiths a decent beer
at long last

Frans dream car, she had
a little trouble getting out ha ha

Yes that's the way to do it

Chris giving Fran a cookery lesson

You can never have too much wine

Brief outing a little cramped but welcome break

Kris and Seans mam
Carol at her home

Fran and Seans local shops, fabulous butcher
Fish and Chip shop, Chinese takeaway, post office,
grocery shops and Chemist

Christian community centre

Chris and Maggie

Local area where we stayed in
Stafford

Vicki's parrots

London pub just before closing time, one of
our cases in the foreground

During our stay with Frances and Sean we had the opportunity to meet some of the members of the church she is attending. Because of Covid we are only able to attend the church twice but were made very welcome. It was quite a novelty to have people from India visiting them.

One of the highlights of our visit was the sheer joy of seeing my daughter baptised. She was in all senses born again. She has taken Christ as Saviour which obviously is a very big step in anybody’s life. It is taken as a decision made by an adult and is in no way the same as being christened as a baby. Christine and I are both born again Christians who have committed ourselves to following where God leads. We originally came to India following God’s Word so it was particularly poignant to see Frances commit herself to the same life during this visit. I had the honour to speak and to pray for her. I could not have been more proud.

Fran speaking before her baptism

Splendid testimony from Fran

Chris, Kris, Amanda, Carol and Sean getting
ready for Frans big moment at church

Chris speaking at
Frans Baptism
very moving occasion

She is now baptised, Praise the Lord

While we were in the UK we would have loved to visit friends and family both in Durham and in the south of the country. We couldn’t do this simply because we didn’t have the money.

It may be hard to understand just how short of money we were. Had it not been for Frances and Sean we could never have afforded anywhere to stay. Bear in mind that we were still paying rent and of course electricity and normal running costs for our house in India. For at least the next year plus a large proportion of our income will have to go to paying these debts we have incurred because of the situation we were put in. We have one great consolation, we are incredibly happy to be home again in our adopted country.

Christine suffered very badly from the damp cold weather. Her pain levels were such that she had to begin taking serious painkillers again just to get some margin of relief. I was also taking painkillers to a lesser extent because of my arthritis. We both contracted a lung infection during the first week in the UK. This was severe enough for an ambulance to be sent and the possibility of hospitalisation contemplated. We were however adamant that we were safer where we were and that we had a good relationship with the local doctors who are temporarily registered with. The infection itself was dealt with in about 10 days but the effects were much longer lasting as we were in a damp climate. We had both forgotten just how miserable grey and damp a UK winter can be, chilled you to the bone. We didn’t even get to see any snow so Christine couldn’t go sledding!

We helped out as much as we could and contributed what little money we had to the common fund. Frances and Sean were absolutely brilliant taking it all in their stride. We both remarked privately that we had never visited anyone before who made us feel so welcome and so at home. We wish that we had had enough money to take them out, wine and dine them but it was not to be. We did however manage to take them out to a pub for a roast Sunday lunch and a beer or two.

Local wildlife in the park

Downtown Stafford, not much
activity these days

At least the buses were usually
regular and comfortable

Local park and castle
Popular visitors
attraction

Dukie and Maggie
out on their walk

Photos to show Gita that cars all drive in the same
direction

Gita wanted photos of English
animals

More sheep

Local graveyard as
Gita only knows about
burning on pyre when a
loved one passes

Local church

At last a whopper from Burger King for Kris,
Fran having a subway on our journey to heathrow

The castle a local attraction worth
a visit

A few more photos of the castle inside and out

We met Santaa

Local pub great carvery

Park with lots of wildlife really nicely done

The highstreet is becoming deserted
just like so many other towns and
cities nowadays

More clicks of the Castles grounds below

Shop in Stafford

Yes they have a great selection of the oldies
but goodies

More impressive in person, Delhi
Airport sculpture

Sculpture at Delhi airport, amazing

The journey home was fairly uneventful. My granddaughter took us to Heathrow.

Amanda and Carol

From there it was the big silver bird to Delhi and then the overnight train to Udaipur. I should also mention that before we could leave we had to have Covid tests and again when we arrived in India the same process was repeated before we could leave the airport. I have to admit that the Indian authorities at the airport seemed to be far more concerned about infection than we had noticed at Heathrow. It was wonderful to feel the wheels hit the runway and know that most of a very long journey was over with only the rail trip to go.

We arrived at Delhi railway station to catch the overnight train back to Udaipur. I needed to find a toilet as probably due to stress my IBS was misbehaving. Heading up a long flight of stairs, a walk and then a flight down I finally arrived on the platform that Kris and I knew had a bathroom. Meanwhile Christine was sorting out porters and luggage and would meet me on the platform. It sounded like a good plan.... It wasn’t. To begin with the directions we had for the platform we wanted were wrong or misunderstood so I ended up on entirely the wrong side of the station. After a good deal of searching I found a toilet block looked after by little man who charged me five rupees to use it. Being an Asian toilet you have to crouch. This is where things started to go badly wrong. As I began stand after finishing my foot slipped on the wet floor I grabbed a valve on the wall for support and ended in a heap on the floor with water pouring from a pipe that now didn’t have the valve on it, but was in my hand! Struggling and flapping around like a wet fish I finally got back to my feet by now I was completely soaked. Mumbling apologies and giving the guy ₹50 I set off back towards the flight of stairs I had come down. By now I was tired, wet and very cold. I had reached the point where I could not go on wandering around any longer and had decided to head for one of the station offices and ask for help. It was at that moment that a porter and Christine saw me and both shouted. It seems she had realised that the directions were wrong and had been searching for me. I cannot praise the people at Delhi too much it seems there were at least four may be five people out searching for me. I spent the remainder of our time at the station wrapped in blankets. I don’t think I have ever been so cold. The combination of the cool weather and soaking clothes completely sapped any energy I had. In retrospect it’s quite funny, especially the look on the guys face as I offered him the valve back! I guess it must have come off before because all he did was Ram it on to the pipe and hit it. Repaired.

During our time away Deloo, Geta’s mother, my second rakhi sister lived at our home to take care of her and the house and gardens. She has done a brilliant job. The gardens are all looking good other than one area that hasn’t had enough water. We didn’t know what to expect when we got back and it was a very pleasant experience to see how well our gardens had been looked after.

Gita spoke with us every day via Skype, this helped an awful lot. As soon as she knew we had got our Visa’s she started a countdown to us coming home. When we got here crazy excited does not really cover her reaction she hasn’t stopped cuddling us since.

Our visit to the UK has left us both exhausted and because of the cold damp weather our arthritis and rheumatism is very bad at the moment. We are both in considerable pain. Every day we are keeping a log burner going. Although it is much warmer here than the UK (15° C) the extra heat is helping. Sleeping is still a problem as our body clocks are completely out of sync! Slowly we are getting back to normal. Lots of friends have been calling in and wishing us well. What was going to be a few quiet days has been anything but! It’s been brilliant.

It’s at times when you are having the greatest difficulties that you find who your friends truly are. We are both blown away by how hard everybody worked to look after Gita and ensure her education continued and to make certain that our house was looked after properly. In particular I cannot thank Peter, Melissa and Tush (sorry I may not have spent this correctly, but that’s how it sounds) enough for all they did and to the many other friends and neighbors who contributed their help whilst we were away. Knowing our home was being looked after and Gita was safe lifted a huge weight of worry from us.

Tush and Peter enjoying
a traditional Christmas Turkey meal

Mel and the snowman

I have come to the conclusion that I hate Windows 10! I was quite happy with Windows 7 but 10 had some features that I thought might be useful to my writing. I have never had so many problems as I have had since loading Windows 10. The PC I use is quite powerful with plenty of memory and a very fast processor so it can cope with anything that I throw at it including speech to word which demands a lot from the processor. The latest problem… When I load photographs to the blog simply put it won’t. Windows 10 saves pictures in a different format than a simple JPEG. This may seem to be a very good idea and probably has some advantages however, it is no use to me at all for our use. To cut a long story short Windows 10 will be departing shortly from this computer! My apologies for the lateness of this blog but I am at the moment unable to load any of the photographs we want to show you. Fingers crossed we can get this sorted out fairly rapidly. Lost some of our pictures in the process.

Well I have made it another year! I was 71 on February 16. Friends called in which was lovely with food and congratulations. I also gained two bottles of whiskey. All in all a very good night.

I mentioned a while ago that I had published a book to Amazon ‘The time traveller’ and believe it or not at RS40 I seem to have sold some copies. A review by a well-known author was very positive. He liked the story and the struggle the main character has to retain his identity but did criticize sentence structure and punctuation, never has been my strong point! I only write for my own amusement. So saying I am in the middle of ‘tales from the forest’ a book of short stories for children centered on the animals and characters within a forest. I am getting rave reviews from Gita so this may be another one that will end up being available on Amazon. The book is dedicated to her and her love of bedtime stories. Maybe one day she will read ‘grandpa’s book’ to her own children. (:

Chris wrote these superb
stories for Gita
she loves them so much

So here I sit writing this blog looking out on the sun shining across our garden and the blue skies above. It is a wonderful feeling to be home again although it’s a bitter sweet feeling as we both miss Frances and Sean. They have promised to try and save enough money for the airfares to be able to visit us. Perhaps in two years it is us who will be giving them our hospitality. If you’re reading this guy’s start saving the sooner you can come the happier we will be.

We haven’t covered everything that has happened to us since we lost our jobs at the NGO but I think this blog gives you a flavor of the chaos which has been our life for the past few months. Those who know us well will understand that we are still in our boat paddling with Jesus steering. The course we are on is his. There are times when we have no idea where our life is going but we never lose faith in the fact that Jesus never gives you more to handle then you can cope with. No doubt in later blogs we will refer to different things that happened that we have not mentioned here.

One more important thing

Christmas Mk2

when we got back home because we missed Christmas with Gita we decided to have another one! Tree Christmas dinner and presents.