Tea Kadai Closed, Friendship Open

 

Our campus tea shop has recently started a WhatsApp group where the daily menu is posted along with the all-important announcement of whether the shop will be open or closed. On 17th June, the message was loud and clear: "Shop Closed Today."

Now, one would assume that this would discourage customers from visiting. Clearly, the management underestimated the determination of six seasoned regulars! As if responding to a call of duty, we turned up at the usual spot and occupied the benches in front of the firmly shuttered shop.

 

There we sat for a couple of hours, without tea, without snacks, and without any intention of leaving. Passers-by must have wondered whether we were staging a silent protest or waiting for a grand reopening. In reality, we were simply enjoying each other's company, discussing everything from world affairs to whose memory was failing the fastest.

The gathering proved that while tea may have brought us together initially, friendship is what keeps us coming back. The shop was closed, but the conversations were open, the laughter flowed freely, and the companionship was as refreshing as any cup of tea. Sometimes, the best item on the menu is togetherness and fortunately, that was available in unlimited quantities here at Ashiana Shubham Senior Living at Maraimalainagar, Chennai

Life is not a bed of roses........... some have only patches of thorns

Every living being has to die at some point of time.... its the nature but then one does not know when the end is coming. Last week called a friend just to say hello and i was informed that she is in hospital discharging her father who is 74 yrs old and had been diagnosed with final stages of thyroid cancer. A man who was hale and healthy for most part of life and has no vices like smoking, drinking etc , never had been admitted in hospital and this confinement in hospital was a mystery to him also. He had complained of pains and was taken for a check up and immediately admitted for further tests and it was during these tests the doctors found out that he has been suffering from cancer.
My friend was in tears over the phone stating that she does not know as to how to break this news to her father as he has been kept in the dark of his condition and she has to break this new of the impending inevitable end.Some people take this news calmly but then it needs lots of courage and grit to absorb such news.  My friend questioned me why not a cardiac arrest or an instantaneous death instead of the slow death which she has to witness for next few weeks and i had no answer to it nor has anyone in this world. No wonder they say that people who just pass on in their sleep or as they are relaxing without warning are blessed to go to the next world without suffering.

It is pretty bad for the near and dear ones around him knowing that it is matter of days or weeks that he would stop being around them. I pray to god to give courage and strength to my friend and her her family to be able to face the coming days bravely and make her father's life as comfortable as possible.