Bhula

This is Bhula. She was one of the older ladies at Prem Dan and was a little slow mentally. The first day I met her she grabbed my hand and made me sit down next to her. As I sat with her I held her hand and rubbed her back and she just smiled. She never said anything more than her name..."Bhula" and then she would laugh. She was more like a child than an adult. There were always masses of flies swarming the benches where the ladies sat and as I was sitting with Bhula one landed on her hand. She looked at me, gave me a sly little grin, then quickly smacked her hands together, she slowly pulled her hands apart and with great pride showed me the smooshed fly on the palm of her hand. "That's nice, Bhula!" I replied and she flicked the dead fly on the ground, gave me a great big hug, then proceeded to hold my hand and I tried not to think of the fly guts being shared between our palms. Every morning I would find Bhula and give her a hug before I started my cleaning. She was always beaming.
About one week into our trip I was having a rough day, just trying to process everything and really think about our work at Prem Dan and I didn't say good morning to Bhula. I knew she wasn't all there mentally and with all the volunteers that go through there I figured she really didn't know me from any of the other women. That afternoon I was helping pass out plates of food and as I walked by her she reached out and grabbed my arm. As I looked at her she smiled and stood up to give me a hug. After that morning I never skipped saying good morning to Bhula because I realized that she does remember me.

One more story about Bhula:
On our last day of work at Prem Dan I was putting lotion on Bhula's arms. My roomie, Sylvia, was standing with her back to us to the right of us and Bhula kept looking at her, looking at me and then laughing. All of a sudden she swiftly reaches over and grabs Sylvia's butt and looks at me and starts laughing...One of those belly laughs that little kids do and you can't help but laugh too. You put a bunch of Westernized volunteers with Indians and this happens! I'm not quite sure who taught her that but she was not going to let anyone get by her without grabbing their rear. Maybe she knew it was our last day and wanted to give us some parting gifts...so this is Bhula!