Bye, Jammu, October21, 2011

Bye, Jammu!  I love you.

Kashmiri travellers to New Delhi from Jammu. They visited jammu to invite their relatives to attend the wedding. I had a very nice interaction with all of them. 

Jhelum express at Jammu train station on 21 october, 9. 45 pm. Ready to board.

Beautiful flowers. Deedi has a good garden.

Deedi and Dr. Sharma live here. It is my jammu family

I visited Dr. Avninderji and Deedi. Arti called her Deedi, I too followed her in calling her Deedi. She is siter of Dr. Satya, Arti's husband. I visited Dr. Bahri, whose daughter is married to Avninderji's son. Avninderji , his mom and Deedi visited Kerala  year ago.  Amma is a wonderful character. Our communication was perfect in the sense she could not speak Malayalam or English and I could not speak Hindi or Panjabi. But we could very well commnicate our emotions. I sang a dogri song, 3 hindi songs which amma loved to hear. Amma is now 82, the same age as my amma at home.  


The day arrived for my exit from Jammu. I got many opportunitiese to visit several other colleges, schools and universities. I postponed them for the next trip. I had to leave before the Diwali, teh festival of lights. In north India, it is a big festival. I prepared sambar, raita, thair satam, chicken curry, rasam, and thoran. Satyaji, Arti and I enjoyed the Kerala dinner. They ensured that I was boarded in the Jhelum express bound to Pune via New Delhi. The train started at 10 pm.  There were 4 Kashmiri women in the compartment in which I was boarded.They were happy to hear the dogri song. I enjoyed the train trip to Delhi.