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!