IMAGINE MY SURPRISE....


Checked into my hotel - the PRIDE PALACE in New Delhi - not far from the airport, and when I arrived in my room, I looked on the desk and saw a calendar - one of those triangular ones which stands, and one has to clip the pages to access the various months.  And WHO should I see on the JANUARY page? None other than my adoptive niece, Pallavi Mathur Saran (now Gujral) in one of the most beautiful of her dance poses from when she was rated (horrible word) in the top three of classical Indian dancers.  This is a particular type of dance - Bharatanatyam - which is very traditonal, particularly in South India.

Several years ago, when I led a DREAM TEAM to help with tsunami relief in 2005, and we worked in south India, in the state of Tamil Nadu, helping to rebuild communites through the construction of 100 homes, in cooperation with India Heritage Research Foundation (founded and headed by His Holiness Puaj Swamiji Chidanand Saraswati) in a small village which was nearly totally destroyed by the Saint Stephens Day tsunamis of 2004.

Following our work there, Pallavi decided she was going to travel to England and to the Unites States to perform her Indian dancing and to help to raise funds for helping to construct homes in Thevinampattinam - one of the villages adopted by IHRF.  Pallavie stayed at our lake cottage for the summer and performed several times in New England, raising awareness of the plight of the victims of this horrific disaster, as well as raising considerable funds - sufficient to construct 50 of the 100 homes in that village, and she endeared herself to my family and all who met her.

I remember vividly that she needed a clean space where she could rehearse each and every day.  All we could offer was the basement of our office at EXIT Key Real Estate.  After moving everything to the sides of the space, every day, Pallavi would arrive, sweep the floor, wash and mop the floor and then, once it dried, she would offer a pooja (prayer ceremony) and then she would rehearse her dancing for two or three hours.

As my Indian friends would say, it was auspicious that this calendar happen to be on display at the very hotel where I am staying for only one night.  Whatever it is, serendipity, auspicious, coincidence, God-incidence, I am convinced I am here for a reason and that calendar is here for a reason - possibly to welcome me "home".

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