Dobbie - India: the elephants blessing

Published by

An Imprint of Melrose Press Limited
St Thomas Place, Ely
Cambridgeshire
CB7 4GG, UK
www.melrosebooks.com

FIRST EDITION

Copyright Aline Dobbie 2006

The Author asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Cover designed by Sophie Fitzjohn

ISBN 1 905226 85 3
eISBN 978-1-908645-55-5

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by:
CPI Bath, Lower Bristol Road,
Bath, BA2 3BL, UK

Also by the same author:

India: The Peacocks Call

India: The Tigers Roar

Further details about the author can be found on:

www.thepeacockscall.co.uk

This book is dedicated to all the children who so tragically lost their lives in the Asian Tsunami on 26th December 2004, children from all parts of the world who were also on holiday in affected areas as well as the local children who were innocently enjoying a new sunny day of holiday and festival; most especially my heart goes out to those children who are orphaned as a result of this tragedy in all the countries touched by this terrible natural disaster. Their lives have been abruptly and cruelly changed for ever.

Aline Dobbie

May 2006

I would like to thank my husband Graham for all of his love, help and support throughout the research and journeys that have made this third book possible. In these last ten years he has come to know and also love the Land of my birth and so enjoy revisiting India. To all of the many people who have helped me for nearly a decade, my heartfelt gratitude for their friendship and hospitality in homes, hotels, planes and other forms of transport. I hope very much that the next generations of our family will come to know and love India as we do.

Aline Dobbie, June 2006

Christmas 2005 has come and gone and provided a happy peaceful family time; now on the fourth of January 2006 I too am settling down to write as indeed so many people have returned to their own form of work. It is a frosty silvery-white world here in my beloved Tweeddale so it will be no hardship at all to cast my mind back to the start of a wonderful journey through sunny and warm southern India. The pheasants in our garden are croaking at me once again to remind me that I am their food slave and the garden birds are frantic on the bird table which Graham has thoughtfully filled before going off to work. Raju my adored little black cat is curled up on my bed having completed his morning meander. I shall keep a keen eye on him however, he has a tendency to feel hungry and quietly slink off, go hunting and return stealthily, if I am not totally vigilant, with some poor unfortunate prey that he proceeds to devour on my side of the bed! Sometimes the terrified little creature is unharmed and is therefore let loose in our bedroom. What follows is a complete hiatus until I secure the wee thing in a jug we keep especially for these occasions, then I take it outside and gently let it go; Raju all the while looking bored with the whole caper. The low weak winter sun is shining into my study and thus filling me with optimism and the thought of spring and indeed yet another possible trip to the land of my birth India.

My very clear memory of Boxing Day 2004 is of me standing at the window looking out onto the snowy scene; I marvelled at the full moon low and huge in the western sky, and how it lit up the whole vista in front of me. The sky was still dark but with that first tinge of blue that the dawn brings; the beautiful full moon was ringed in the way that only a cold moon can be and I cast my mind back to the previous years Christmas moon when we had been cruising in the Arabian Sea en route to Sri Lanka. I thought with a smile of the balmy night air on deck and the wonderful sunrises and what a lovely experience it had all been.

The bedroom radio had come serenely to life with some evocative Christmas music, and then there was a silence punctuated by the staccato voice of a newsreader: We are receiving reports of a huge tidal wave in the Indian Ocean that has caused death and destruction to all the countries surrounding the Indian Ocean. As I listened in absolute horror I looked up at the moon, this beautiful tranquil silver orb and realised that whereas I was at the start of a pleasurable Boxing Day, 26th December 2004, the area in the world that I had been visiting exactly a year before was undergoing a dreadful natural disaster. We raced downstairs to put on the 24 hour television channels for a detailed update. The news continued to worsen with appalling images on screen and the western world started to come to terms with a colossal unfolding tragedy.

Woodenly we went about preparing for a happy family day, only too well aware how fortunate we were to have our son Stewart and his new bride Corinne back just days before from their honeymoon in The Maldives. The areas of Sri Lanka that we had so happily visited under a year ago were totally devastated and there was the sobering realisation that had we been there we too might be dead. Indeed, our own holiday in The Maldives in September 2004 to Hakuraa Hura became very vivid in our memories and both Graham and I were saddened subsequently to hear that the tiny island had been decimated and the manager of our resort was dead. Galle, Trincomalee: all these lovely places in Sri Lanka were the scenes of nightmare in the unfolding drama on the worlds television screens. The Indian coast of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu also were greatly affected and of course we know of the coast of Thailand and Bandeh Acehs huge devastation.

By the first of January 2005 I had received two government invitations to visit India and very soon resolved to go to southern India and research the four states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka for a third book. I had been in Goa previously and also experienced the west coast of Maharashtra and Karnataka, so I felt that this would be useful work to complete a trilogy on India.

2005 has also been a year of great natural disasters in both North America and also yet again in the Indian sub-continent; As I write I am constantly thinking of the poor people in Pakistani Kashmir and the surrounding areas who are suffering so badly after the devastating earthquake at the end of 2005. It is going to be a freezing night here in Scotland and I think of them on cold hillsides and damp valleys; orphaned children, old women and injured people left with nothing, their security and their futures destroyed without home or possessions, many of them still dreadfully injured and traumatised. Their tragedy could in fact swamp the fatality figures of the tsunami if practical help is not brought to them in sufficient quantity. Truly it has been a year of government ineptitude, be it Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka or India, the United States and now Pakistan. Millions of pounds have been donated but we the donors are left frustrated with the inertia that abounds in many of these places and the negativity that swamps their respective politicians and administrations.