Week Ending September 15, 2019
This week just flew! We spent the first part of it in Delhi. On Tuesday evening we visited our girls.
They really enjoyed creating charades to illustrate how to show kindness to others. The older girls are so sweet as they guide and encourage their younger sisters.
Traditionally the idol is thrown into the Yamuna River at the end of the celebration but in an effort to protect the river, the city has created artificial bodies of water in which to dispose of the idol. Ganesh ended up in this one in the park across the street.
Thursday afternoon we flew to Kolkata to help the members there prepare for the 25th Anniversary of the Branch . Friday we went with Anita Pyne to visit the Joint Municipal Commissioner of Bidhannagar, the municipality that includes Salt Lake City, and the mayor. We stopped at Fleurys, a Kolkata institution, for a little mid-morning snack.
Saturday morning we, Anita, her daughter Bubbles and President Sujal, Grant and I, met Owais Aslam (far right) who heads up the Indian Pluralism Foundation. He took us over to the Gurdwarda Sant Kutiya. We took off our shoes and covered our heads and toured the place.
Afterwards we helped the volunteers distribute food. It is done every Saturday here.
Rice, roti and dahl.
From there we walked to the Victoria Memorial. On the way Anita stopped to choose some good ripe guavas which we ate on the way.
Built between 1906 and 1921, the Victoria Memorial Hall was dedicated to Queen Victoria, Empress of India.
Among the great English administrators represented inside is General Cornwallis who was appointed in 1786 as Commander-in-Chief of British India. He was posted to Ireland in 1798 but was sent back to India in July of 1801. He died in Ghazipur the following October.
Bubbles and I admire an idealized image of Victoria.
The view of the rotunda floor from the gallery.
By the time this memorial was finished, the capital of colonial India had been moved to Delhi.
Declared Empress in 1876, Victoria never did make it to India.
We had a great Chinese lunch at the Golden Dragon on Park Street and then took an Uber to the offices of the Telegraph, one of Kolkata's leading newspapers where we had a good meeting with an associate editor and a writer who covers Salt Lake City. We left them with invitations to our Anniversary dinner and open house. The associate editor, Sudeshna Banerjee, had visited the U.S. on a Rotary exchange program 10 years ago and stayed four nights in Amory, Mississippi with an LDS family. She has kept in touch. The father, Vern Christensen is now a bishop.
That evening we again had dinner with Amrita Kundu and her mother Manosse.
Sunday, after meetings, we met with the committee and further refined our plans for the upcoming celebration. Left to right: Grant, President Sujal, Soumya Kambhakar and his sister Rachana, Sayantanee, Manosse, Amrita and Anita.
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