Afterword

A beautiful Indian sky on our final evening

Daddy and Maya at Bangalore airport, leaving India

We are back!

Maya watched enough tv on the plane to last a lifetime (her eyes had gone an unhealthy pink colour by the end) and Lily did lots and lots and lots of pacing the aisles with one or the other blurry eyed parent in tow. I had a whole cup of orange juice chucked over me, but thankfully this was towards the end, so I only had to sit in a damp, sweet-smelling soggy puddle for the final hour, which I thought was pretty good going.

The first thing I noticed when we walked out onto English soil, far more than the cold, was just how dark is was already getting by 3.30 in the afternoon. And the first thing that Maya noticed as we hurtled round the M25 was that there were no yellow rickshaws on the road. Just as well, as they would have been flattened in an instant.

We're now safely at my parents-in-law, and here we shall be until we find somewhere to rent. Where we'll end up is still a mystery as we just can't work out what we can afford at the moment, and it's a difficult thing to admit that it's not much!!

Maya is in heaven - she's with her beloved grandparents, is living in her Peppa Pig spotty wellies and has a whole host of new (invariably pink) clothes to wear, passed down from cousin Daisy. And of course there are all the sparkly Christmas decorations, trees and Father Christmas's wherever you look so yes, it's a good time to come back.

I've had a good long think about whether or not to continue this blog now that we're back home, and I've decided I'm not going to. Now, it's not that there aren't plenty of adventures to be had back here in England. But the reason I started Maya's blog was to record her months in India. I've adored writing this blog for her and a part of me feels really sad to stop, but I feel that the original purpose of the blog has been achieved and it's drawn to it's natural conclusion.

HOWEVER....because the field that Maya's daddy is in is water and sanitation for the poor, it is 99% likely that after 2-3 years back in the UK we'll be heading abroad again for pastures new. Maybe Maya's writing will be good enough by then to do a blog on me (tee hee) or perhaps by then I'll blog about her little sister Lily's adventures in a developing country.

The other thing I've acknowledged is that I don't want to just put a full stop at this end of this post and say hey, that's it. So that's why I'll still be posting sporadically to let you know how Maya's getting on (and Lily of course), how Maya's mama copes without her chai and curries and where the devil we end up living on this funny little island. I have no idea how frequent these posts will be. I'd say infrequent, so if you'd like me to drop you a line to tell you when a new post is up, please just send me an email to rnarracott(put the '@' sign in here)gmail.com

As I said last time, THANK YOU for reading this. It's a funny old thing, is blogging. I've always thought that I'm lucky if I get a handful of readers, so when I occasionally check the stats and see that I'm getting 30-40 hits a day, I'm flabbergasted. Now, I know that for blogging terms, this number of daily hits is nada, zilch, rien but for me...well, it's great and has far surpassed my expectations. On another note entirely, I was commended in a blog post competition for my post, Muddling through in the monsoon, which I was dead chuffed about. I follow the blog of the lady who won, Fran Hill. Well done Fran if you're reading this! Click here to see her winning entry, and you can also scroll down a bit to see mine.)

Ok, I'll stop jabbering now. It is impossible and completely inappropriate that Maya's mama should have the final word on Maya's blog. So here are a few questions for the little lady herself, utterly unabridged.


Mama: Hello, Maya. How are you?

Maya: Fine

Mama: How old are you?

Maya: Free

Mama: What did you do today?

Maya: Play with Lily

Mama: Are you happy to be back in England?

Maya: (Big definite nod)

Mama: What things do you like in England?

Maya: Balloon. Car. Bunk bed. The puzzles.

Mama: What do you miss in Bangalore?

Maya: My skipping rope. That dress, not the other one Banglore, that one, that stripey one with the pockets.

(At this stage of the interview, Maya goes AWOL and when I say I have a few more questions, she exclaims 'Lily do it!' Hmm.....Eventually she is coaxed back.)

Mama: Do you miss any people in Bangalore?

Maya: Aanya. Only that.

Mama: Do you like travelling or being at home?

Maya: Being....travelling.

Mama: What would you like to tell people on your blog?

Maya: (Dances a little jig) Just don't want to say anything to people.

Mama: What would you like for Christmas?

Maya: I don't know, you choose. We will see. Will we see?

(Obviously depends what mood you catch her in - last week she put in a request for a bike, a plane and a puzzle)

Mama: Maya, thanks for letting us be part of your life in India through your blog.

Maya: No (very adamant face), I haven't got a life.

(Mama laughs)

Maya: Well, maybe I got a little bit life.

Yup, I'd say you've got a little bit life, darling Maya. In fact, you've got a whole lot more than a little bit life and you've got so much to look forward to.

And I can't wait to share it with you.

You've coped so very well with being dragged to the other side of the world. And then back again. You are my little curly haired starlet and I'm proud of you.

Your Mama

xoxoxo

Blighty calling

It's been a manic couple of days, packing up, seeing people, trying to fend off the encroaching ants that Deepa did so well to keep at bay...

We've moved out of our apartment and are staying with some french friends (airport hotel tomorrow night as we leave at stupid-o'clock the following morning) so I don't have my laptop, hence no photo which makes the page feel a little bare!

This will be my final post from India but no doubt I'll post something when we're safe and sound back in England. So here goes, off the top of my head, a few things that Maya and her Mama are looking forward to back in Blighty....

Maya is looking forward to:

the toys and bunk beds at Nannie and Grandpa's house, wellie boots, tights, sausages and baked beans, seeing her aunties, uncles, grandparents, cousins, splashing in puddles, jumpers and coats and Christmas time...

(Andy has just peered over my shoulder and chuckled, making the point that Maya lives very much in the present and therefore isn't 'looking forward' per se to these things. I know what he means, but I'd say that if you bring the subject up about going back to England, her excitement is palpable.)

And Maya's Mama is looking forward to:

peas, toast, seasons, cold bright days, composting, apples, proper cheese (not paneer), a comfy bed, having a soak in the tub, blackberries, recycling, long walks, pears, log fires, cooking with an oven, making granola for breakfast, catching up with family and friends, libraries filled with hundreds of luscious books, pizza express (!), farmers markets, pubs (yeah right, when do I get the chance to go to pubs these days, but in principle I'm looking forward to a cosy pub with a roaring fire!), sunflowers seeds and oak trees.

So there you go.

Both the girls are fast, fast asleep. It's been a long day for them and we also went to visit Deepa which was difficult for us all. But so necessary.

Tomorrow we need to run a few errands and then, if we get everything done and all goes according to plan, we'll go and have a swim and lunch at the hotel we normally go to. And when we get a taxi to the airport hotel, I'll wind down the window and breathe in the scents of Bangalore, good and bad.

Thank you India for being our hosts for the past few months. It's been amazing. And thank you to all of you for reading this and being part of Maya and her Mama's adventures.

Night night x

What will we miss?

Thanks to many of you for your kind emails about Deepa's son, Akilesh. We're going to see Deepa and her family on saturday and I'll relay to her how much she is supported from afar.

The days are whizzing past...just a few more to go...and we're bracing ourselves for the chill of an English winter. Here are a few things that Maya and her Mama are going to miss about India...

Maya is going to miss swimming outside in the warm. She was pretty scared of the water when we first came here but is now a little mermaid. She'll also miss the stready flow of ice cream. After all, every day is like summer here! And not just the icecream, she's going to get a shock back in England when she finds that not all teachers freely hand out chocolates and sweeties!


Maya will miss her school and her teachers and all of her friends, especially Aanya. It's amazing to think how far she's come since those early days when she really, really didn't want to go. Now, she adores it.


She'll miss Monkey Maze, the great soft play area where we've gone about once a week since being here.




And what about Maya's Mama? What will she miss? Ah, there are trillions of things... At the end of my big trip to India in 2000, I had to travel all the way from Ladakh (in the far flung north) to Chennai (in the south) to catch my flight home. I think it took about a week of solid travelling so I had ALOT of time. And I made four lists: What I'll miss about India, what I won't miss about India, what I'm looking forward to in England and what I'm not looking forward to in England. I seem to remember the lists being very long, but after all I had serious amounts of time on my hand.

I'm sticking to the positive this time around, and am also giving you just a selection. So, first of all, I'll miss the colours that you find everywhere, sometimes in the most unexpected places. Like the license plate on the back of the truck above.

I'll miss the music.

I'll miss the fragrance of frangipani and jasmine. I wish I could bottle it up and take it home.

I'll miss Deepa.

I'll miss opening my messy wardrobe in the morning, seeing the wonderful Indian fabrics and colours to choose from (well, I know I'll have that again in England, I just need to wait till next summer...and hope it's a good one!)

I'll miss the palm trees which always remind me I'm in a tropical country. Speaking of which, I'll seriously miss the climate too - there are many things about Bangalore I don't like but the climate is amazing. Never too hot and never too cold.

I'll miss the food. If you gave me south Indian food 3 times a day for months on end, I wouldn't get sick of it.

I'll miss the tropical fruits that haven't been flown half way round the world.

I'll miss the tailors, the cobblers, the men who go round on their bicycles calling for 'paper' and the chai wallahs. You know what, I even think I might miss the rickshaw drivers.

But before you think it's all doom and gloom, next post I'll write about what Maya and her Mama are looking forward to back in Blighty!

Akilesh

This is a very difficult post to write, and one that I wish with all my heart I didn't have to.

It wouldn't be right, or possible even, not to write about this since Deepa has been such an integral part of our experience in India.

Yesterday Deepa's five year old son Akilesh died.

If you've been following Maya's blog for a while, you'll know that Deepa is the lady who comes in every morning to do some cleaning and cooking and looking after Lily while I write. She is twenty-eight years old and a wonderful, gentle, calm spirit who works incredibly hard and is completely and utterly devoted to her husband and two little boys.

Akilesh went to school on friday, right as rain, but over the weekend developed a fever, was vomitting and had diarrhoea, so they took him to hospital and he was put on a drip. Deepa and her husband, Gopi, were about to take him home in the morning as he seemed much better but he had a sudden, violent epileptic fit (the first ever) and passed away. Sorry if this is unpleasant to read but, as I said, I really feel that I need to write this.

Akilesh was a gorgeous, bright-eyed, happy little boy. Over the months in India, Deepa has become a real friend to me and the truth is, I've never had a friend who's lost a child before. At least, not a friend of a similar age. We feel devestated, but of course our feeling of loss can be nothing in comparison to that of Deepa and Gopi's.

I just hope that in the next week before we leave I can be a friend to Deepa in some way as she has been to me.