A Rainy Spell

Ayse's garden (she now lives in the house across the road from Samuel)

It rained heavily the day we left Prien for Switzerland. I mean not just rained, it poured as we started out, though it cleared up later on and parts of the journey were even somewhat sunny. But as we neared Solothurn it came down in sheets, almost like a tropical downpour. Luckily it stopped for a few minutes when we reached Rupert and Brigitte’s place in Lüsslingen, long enough for us to dash in without getting drenched. We found out that it had been raining heavily for over a couple of days, and part of R and B’s house had got flooded the night before we arrived. Everyone was making jokes about Noah and the great flood and it being time to build an arc and escape to safety. I thought of our flat in Bombay which gets regularly soaked during the monsoon and told people that I thought this kind of thing happened only in India where the fittings were bad and the doors and windows all had cracks or were not waterproof for other reasons. The subsequent days were not too bad and on Saturday the sun appeared for several hours and it was mostly dry.

Sabine B

It was great catching up with old friends, many of whom are now willing to pitch in to get the trainers group in India going. Brigitte has offered to do a course in body work and Sabine B whom I recently got acquainted with, is a musician who would love to do a workshop in India based on music therapy. I stayed at Ayse's place. She lives a lot of the time in Switzerland now in a beautiful house with a garden frequented by many of the kids in the community. The side of the drawing dining room overlooking the garden is sheer glass and gives out onto a patio which is semi enclosed. Brigitte

Apart from people at the workshop, old friend Jean Pierre came over to Ayse’s for breakfast on Saturday with his wife, Karin and their two kids. K. is going to have a baby and yet planning to come to India for the workshop in December, when she will be seven months pregnant. She was uncertain about it and they had earlier written to ask me what I thought. When I forwarded the mail to our friend in the village he remarked that they had had several women come to to the village who were pregnant and everything had been fine. As long as there were no complications to do with infections a person might already be carrying he felt it ought to be all right. Of course it is one of those things. After hearing it all you have to take full responsibility for the decision you take and JP and K felt that having got all the pro’s and con’s they would still like to come to India.

The workshop itself was a masterpiece, as I never tire of telling people. One of the best I’ve done with Samuel or for that matter with anyone. What we all realised is that you cannot bring healing to others until you yourself are healed and so that is what it turned out to be. A workshop with a real healing touch.

The night we returned to Prien we discovered it was Tilmann’s birthday so naturally we opened a bottle of wine to celebrate and sat up till almost three in the morning. The weather is cold and wet and last night in spite of it being technically “summer” I was forced to turn on the heating. And Feli and I are back to roaring like dinosaurs and chucking plastic balls and soft toys around and at each other.