I shortly mentioned yesterday that Apra gets a lot of attention. And she definitely does with all those loving people around her. There are not only Ramona and I, there are my brothers, parents and grandmother who are there all the time. Yashendu might be away for two months but that does not make the number much smaller. There are also the boys, Pawan, Jay Singh and Mohit who carry her around and of course our employees who enjoy being with her and talking to her in the same way. So she has simply lots of contact persons with whom she is bonding.
On top of that there are those family members and friends whom she sees regularly on skype like her German grandparents or Thomas and Iris. I don’t know how much bonding you can do through the computer but our little one definitely recognizes the people on the screen.
And then there are of course lots of people coming by at the Ashram and everyone gets to hold her for some time to experience the wonderful feeling of this little child on your arms. I would not keep the joy of that feeling only to me and share it with happiness with our guests.
The most important thing about this is: Apra does not mind. With open eyes and definitely an open mind she comes to sit on anybody’s lap. For her it does not matter whether she is looking at the world from this person’s arms or from that person’s arms. She is fine to fall asleep here or there.
Obviously she recognizes familiar faces and voices and smiles when one of us unexpectedly appears in her view or talks to her from close-by while she is sitting on a stranger’s lap. But she does not cry when she is passed on to another person whom she does not know. She observes and enjoys experiencing the new person’s look, touch, smell and sound. And maybe that person has a new toy to play with or a new game with the face or the hands or just a new noise to laugh about.
Yesterday one of our employees brought her niece who is only two weeks older than Apra. Babbaji came into the office with the little girl on the arm, just as he always brought Apra. For Ramona and me a second of confusion followed with the thoughts ‘Her eyes look different – her hair looks so much longer! Oh, no, this cannot be our girl!’ We laughed and took her on the arm, too, to let her meet Apra. Through this all however the baby was shy and after a short while started crying, wanting to go back to her aunt. It is normal – she is not used to all these people! She was happy though when we gave her a small gift and safely back on her aunt’s lap she gave us a smile, too.
So we are happy that our little Apra is so open with people and we definitely hope and believe that it will stay like this in the future. My friend Michael expressed this in words that made me laugh. When I handed Apra to him the first time, the day when he arrived at the Ashram, he said: ‘Hello, I am another tourist!’ And she came to sit on his arms, looked at him and gave him one of her lovely little smiles.
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It is so lovely that Apra has such a friendly, open nature and likes to meet all the new and exciting people around her. I think we can all learn something from her innocent acceptance of anybody.
It is wonderful that Apra is at home with so many people and able to show her cute little smiles to anyone who is there at the time, not making strange with everyone but rather I guess you could say welcoming. We could learn from this to welcome everyone and love everyone with the welcome and acceptance that a innocent child would use for a stranger.