Well it was a busy weekend all told, having been suitably beautified on Saturday morning, I was well fed at lunch time, with Joshua, Rachel and extended family. Rachel made me biryani for lunch, to the recipe she first gave me in about 2000 and which I try hard to replicate for Indian visitors and occasionally my own family at home in Edinburgh. I should say that Joshua and Rachel arrived at our church in Edinburgh, Holy Cross in 1996, 6 weeks before I came out to India for the first time and the God-incidence of them coming from this small town in South India, the same on to which I was going was extraordinary. They were with us for over 4 years as Joshua acted as assistant priest at the church while he completed his MTh so we saw their first daughter Angeline grow from a 6 month old baby to a5 year old ready to start school back in India. It was lovely to see them and to be made to feel part of the family, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to Jessie the secretary from UTC after whom Jessica was named and who is the other god mother.
I then went to Kiruba Victor's in the evening. The girls were all waiting for me on the house roof - people spend a lot of time here in the roofs of their houses as there is sometimes a breeze there. We had a wee catch up with me telling them about life in Scotland, silly things like there being long days in the summer and going to bed in daylight which does not happen in equatorial regions, about the different seasons and what they mean to us. We then played a couple of Simon Said type games... why does your mind go blank when someone says "I told the girls you would teach them a game?". They sang me Head Shoulders Knees and Toes in Tamil which I had taught them in April. Kiruba had offered me dinner last week when she invited me, so while there, on the roof, cake and veg puffs were handed out so I tucked in, we then had a cup of tea. After a while we went back down to the main house and to my horror Kiruba seated me at a dining table positively groaning with food! 3 kinds of rice, chappatti, 3 types of chicken in sauce and a deep fried drumstick each... don't know where they found chickens with legs like that! they were huge.
Sunday was the day of baptism conducted entirely in Tamil except when they asked me if I believed in the Holy Trinity... it was OK though, Jessie speaks Karnatakan as she is from Mangalore so she didn't make out much either, however I made my own promises and hope they were similar! We of course had the obligatory video made with red hot halogen lights attached to the videographer and dazzling the rest of us! By the way as you can maybe tell from the pics, Angeline is taking after her dad when it comes to height, remember she is only 12! She is looking more and more like Rachel facially though. When I was here in 2005, and visiting them in Bangalore, Rachel had just discovered she was pregnant and apart from a brief meeting last January 2007 in Leicester, at Chrispal Anand's wedding when she was almost a year old, this is the first time I have really seen them since then!
Next to the church hall for a lovely meal and then Kiruba and Victor sang to Jessica. They are professional singers.
Victor gave me a lift along to Military Lines Church in time to hear Reggie doing the sermon.
As a hectic finish to the day, Raja took Carrie and I to RMKV to do some shopping, it is 'Sale' month and the place was absolutely mobbed, almost as busy as it was on opening night, the 16th March, which was also a Sunday. What made it worse was that the AC was not working so they had about 1 fan per floor which was making no difference at all to the tropical humidity we were all creating!
This morning I met Bishop Jeyapaul and Violet who to my amusement told me that they had not been able to sleep for 3 nights at Lambeth because of the heat.
Talk about coincidences by the way, I've often said that Carrie is like another sister to me and we often find we have done things simultaneously, well I found out today she had a crown fitted on Friday!
