More from India

Happy Valentines Day, I can’t believe it is Monday again so soon! It has felt like such a short time and yet such a long time since I last wrote.

The end of last week was busy but good fun, on Thursday I went back to Ooty to finish my registration with the visa office so I am now fully legal, which is a relief. I took the opportunity while out of the hospital to spend some time walking around and just looking at things. I managed to go to the Tibetan market and buy myself a rather nice woollen shawl to keep me warm in the evenings, which can have a bit of a chill at times. I also managed to wander into the municipal market there which was really staggering, so many sights and smells, all the fresh produce so colourful with branches of green bananas and oranges, bright pink radishes and these really massive cauliflowers. Walking past the flower stalls the smell of Jasmine is just intoxicating. By the evening I was worn out from all the walking, and the long bus journey there and back along windy roads, as you can imagine I slept well that night!

On Friday, after a busy day in the hospital I walked into town to pick up the outfits that I had ordered, see picture attached for the more vibrant of the two! Talking to my friend the midwifery teacher and some of the nurses it became apparent that a plan was afoot to visit the circus which had been in town all week, so I decided to shell out the 20 rupees (28 pence) for the cheap seats in the gallery and see what it was all about. Well, the cheap seats in the gallery turned out to be some very rickety wooden benches arranged in a slope stadium style and threatening to give way at any time. The dusty old big top certainly seemed to have seen better days and as my friend pointed out the most nerve wracking and adrenaline rush provoking aspect was not so much the bored looking acrobats or the knife thrower with the slightly poor aim but rather the generally unstable appearance of all of the equipment used. Being in India I had rather assumed there might be an Elephant or some other exotic creatures on display but in actual fact the grand finale involved a slightly more domestic performing animal. A tightrope walking goat, I kid you not! No pun intended. Still a good time was had by all and it was brilliant to have a night out.

The rest of the weekend had highs and lows as you might experience in any other hospital in the world. A couple more entrances into the world with two extremely beautiful little girls who were thankfully delivered safe and sound by the nurses, and one very sad exit as I experienced my first patient death here on Sunday. Despite the extremely hard work of the very talented doctor on call and the support of the nurses we just didn’t have the resources here to save our young patient or the time to transfer him out. Births and deaths, the unavoidable currency of human life on whatever continent you find yourself.

So here I am at the start of a new week, looking forward to what it might bring, as always missing you folks back home and really thankful for all the exciting messages I have been getting keeping me up to date with news from my lovely, rainy homeland.

I will try and write again soon, but for now signing off with love,

A x