Sunday, February 1 was our appointed date with the executive committee of the WCTU of India. Lori had been in email contact with Ms. Vandana Charan beginning sometime in mid-2013 about our wanting to meet with them. We had been given no other information other than they were meeting and that we would be guests at their meeting. I had wanted to go to St. James Church (the Skinner church) and it turned out that Temperance House at 24 Rajpur Road is not far. They are both north Delhi near the Old Delhi train station in the Civil Lines. We got a car for the day from Hardeep and set out at 8 am for the 9 am service - we were only 10 minutes early.
It was a partially sung Eucharist but the tunes were not singable. The Vandana and a couple of the other Executive Committee were there also and we gave them a ride over to Temperance House.
The meeting that followed included prayers, songs, me praying, me and Lori singing "Abide with Me," Lori praying, and many, many photos taken on many, many phones. Several of the senior members were there with clippings and many stories of earlier times. There were some older records but most had been destroyed by white ants and the damp. A lunch of rice, chicken curry, chapattis, and bananas was the meal at 1 pm. We took a tour of the building which is large and ram shackled, needing lots of repair but still the bones of a grand old building.
We were given red roses, gifts, a hymn book and asked many times to write down our names and addresses. We were numbers 22 and 23 on the attendance roster. We left amid a lot of hugs, kisses and exchange of phone numbers. It is hard to sort just what we learned but Lori is going to send a follow-up set of questions and possibly write a brief history for them. We will try and prepare a greeting to put in their souvenir booklet they are preparing for their annual convention.
Returning via the Lotus Temple, which was so crowded we had no chance of getting in - a line of several hundred. So Lori got a glimpse and we came back to Vasant Vihar. I wanted to regain some feeling of normalacy so we went to Sartoria for dinner and wine. To put it mildly it was quite a day.
On giving it more thought we are going to design a brief survey to send to all the members of the Executive Committee to give us more information about how they organize and hold meetings for the WCTU. We also need to send the photograph and get names for those pictured. Lori says the materials in the WCTU archive in Evanston have vital historical information about the India WCTU. There promises to be a continued connection with India through this initial meeting.
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