Under armed guard to eat cake!

Wow, the weeks are just flying by – can’t believe we have reached the end of another one.

   

Ken had a ‘perfect’ day on Sunday – he went off to the New Delhi World Book Fair at Pragati Maidan and managed to spend all day browsing books with Sandeep, one of his students. They arrived at 11 am, when the fair opened, and walked right in. However, when they left at 4 pm the fair was packed and the queues to get in were enormous. 

I, on the other hand, decided to have a ‘book day’ of my own and so finished off reading a book I bought here called, "I Inspire" – the story of Neerja Malik – very inspiring!! I then totally indulged myself catching up with the ARCHER’S (for those of you who are listeners and fans, you will appreciate just how wonderful this was.)

This week has been all about CAKE – again!

Ken’s birthday has kept ‘Supreme’ (the cake shop in R K Puram Sector 8) totally in business this week. We had a birthday lunch on Tuesday with the Asha Operations team and Ken had a pineapple cake with candles.  He was also presented with a green hat to wear and, from then on, green seemed to become a theme to the birthday and everyone grabbed something green for the photo!!  

He is also sporting a very smart new (green) gumjha (scarf) and a wonderful (green) Nehru jacket. (Don't mention the hat!).

 

Thanks guys!

Partying continued on Wednesday, and Ken’s students decorated the classroom with lots of messages of Happy Birthday.  

 

It was an afternoon of music, dancing, samosas and cake – not a lot of teaching I guess, but lots of fun! After the party it was back to the Asha centre where he was able to blow out even more candles on a massive cake and share it with all the team leaders from the various slums (fortunately they had all had a meeting that afternoon, so they were able to join in the celebrations).  Too full of ‘cake’ to even think about a birthday meal out, we limped home and had a ‘quiet’ evening.           

On leaving our flat on Thursday morning, we were greeted by armed soldiers either side of the entrance. They lined the whole road. The shopping area opposite us was cordoned off with soldiers; all street stalls, our lovely veg stalls, street food vendors, all had to remove themselves and were cleared away. In fact,  there was very little sign of normal life at all – it was really quite eerie and strange. This continued down all the major roads and for a lot of our route to Asha. We understand that perhaps a Government Official was due to visit the area for some reason. It was quite incredible to see how street life, businesses, street dwellers and vendors were ‘not to be seen’!!  When we returned in the evening, our local traders were beginning to rebuild their lives and stalls – what an amazing inconvenience and loss of trade for them all! (Sorry about the rant, but felt quite angry about it all).  

On a happier note, we were treated to a lovely birthday lunch by Shalini, Azad and Narayani in our teaching centre – so kind of them!  Thank you. (Asha is definitely all about eating, as we have said before!)

It’s a big teaching day tomorrow, so better get on with more prep – it was so lovely to see our Saturday students last week after a few weeks holiday – they really are amazing people and just love being together and having this time with us. We see the Asha values being lived out all the time as we get to know these guys and work closer with all the staff.  Log onto the Asha website (www.asha-india.org) and read this month’s News Letter. It has some amazing stories of their work and the differences they are making everyday. You will be inspired and encouraged by what you read.