How do I feel in a new place after one month!
It is a new experience living in a cottage, which is about 90 years old. It gives us an introduction to how facilities were different at that time in most middle class homes. The thick foliage around the house is a home for many birds. Anna and I are fascinated by the sight of wood peckers, parrots, magpie, sparrows, Minas, Koels, squirrels, etc. We are still looking for any nest we can locate. The canal that carries water, passing through the property leaks heavily and has made a few permanent streams of water. We can listen to the play of water in the stillness of the night. The lawn grass we planted has taken roots and this makes the surrounding more homely and aesthetic.
Anna has formed a bed for a kitchen garden. After much search, we found hedge plants and they are already blooming in less than two weeks, with pretty little white flowers. The thick overgrowth around the house is sometimes annoying, as they are stubbornly resistant to our de-weeding. But it houses, insects, butterfly and bees. Our aquaria inside and outside the house are already breeding fish. It is a relief to have fresh water without any chemical treatment, which is good for the fish. Our thirty minute drive to work and back is through several villages with houses and gardens on both sides of the road in different settings and patterns. There is a feeling of prosperity, if one were to go by the size and appearance of these houses and the gardens around them.
Anna has formed a bed for a kitchen garden. After much search, we found hedge plants and they are already blooming in less than two weeks, with pretty little white flowers. The thick overgrowth around the house is sometimes annoying, as they are stubbornly resistant to our de-weeding. But it houses, insects, butterfly and bees. Our aquaria inside and outside the house are already breeding fish. It is a relief to have fresh water without any chemical treatment, which is good for the fish. Our thirty minute drive to work and back is through several villages with houses and gardens on both sides of the road in different settings and patterns. There is a feeling of prosperity, if one were to go by the size and appearance of these houses and the gardens around them.
This is the third 'strike' we are observing in the last one month. All the shops including the medical shops are closed today. We still do not have proper broad band internet connection. All my attempts to down load a file from Apple stores have failed. I am unable to upload pictures into the net. Whenever I am ready to post a thought on a blog, the net could not be connected.
I welcome about five children and families for consultation on the out patient days. The families convey the stress under which they live- pressure of work, social pressures to achieve, financial struggles as cost of living does not match with salaries they earn, children find the academic work demanding, marital conflict, etc. Each day families tell these in different ways.
There is a drivenness I sense in people. There are queues at the liquor shops from the morning so much so the HIgh Court in the state made a recommendation to the government that liquor be sold only in the evening to reduce the number of people going to work after consuming alcohol and an effective de-addiction plan be pursued. We had a visitor yesterday to enquire whether we would lend some time for starting a de-addiction programme for college going students.
There are mixed feelings as we adjust to these experiences. A visitor reminded me this morning: Every change moves us and unsettles us. But it can be like a rain that washes the hills and trees to give them their original look. How refreshing it is to define a change in that way!
M.C.Mathew( text)
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