Vathsalya

Monday was a beautiful day! It rained for the majority of the weekend, and when the sun peeked through the clouds Monday morning and revealed the glorious day it would be, Cindy and I were pretty excited about it. We decided to take the kids from the orphanage to the park. The office was closed Monday, so only the five children that live at the orphanage were there. The others are in foster care and because of the holiday and office closure they stayed home. We walked to the park which took about ten minutes with all the children wanting to walk holding our hands in a long line.. this did not please the cars and two-wheelers that wanted to get around us, but we managed. Now, the "park" consisted of a tall double slide. There were stairs and a slide on each side that formed a triangle with a small platform at the top. Also there were two see-saws. This was the park. I played on the see-saw with the kids for a bit.. they thoroughly enjoyed my panicked expressions every time they had me up in the air and suddenly let me drop. On more than one occasion I had a vision of myself falling backwards or getting knocked off and seriously injuring myself as the seats were inadequate and I felt far from safe, but I'm still alive in one piece. After I had enough of that, I decided to go on the slide. The kids were having fun on that so joining in seemed like it could be a good idea. The slide was steep. Really steep. It was only about ten-twelve feet long, but it looked like one could pick up a lot of sleep if he/she wasn't careful. Also, at the bottom of the slide, unlike the gradual stop that the slides come to, the stop was abrupt. The harsh angle of the slide met a piece of metal parallel to the ground with no curve. It was a solid angle. When I sat down at the top, I needed a few seconds to prepare myself and figure out how I was going to arrive at the bottom uninjured. Unfortunately, I had not been watching the kids closely enough to see how they did it when they got to the bottom. Well, in the middle of my contemplation, one of the kids decided he wanted to go with me, so he sat down behind me and gave us a bit of a shove, because obviously I was taking too long! We went sailing down the slide, my hands gripped to the edges to try to slow us down, and came to an abrupt stop at the bottom. Ouch. I can still feel where I hit. I'm not doing that anymore. I later learned that I should have stopped myself with my feet.. that information would have been incredibly helpful before I started down the slide... It was a fun day and it was very enjoyable to watch the kids laughing and playing. They are such joys.

-Anappa and Lakshmi, Lakshmi is the girl I have been tutoring

-Anappa and Naveen.. and in the lower corner is Ashwath

-Anappa and me