So why is there a photo of a chess board in the gallery? There are at least two themes to my story. The second is about chess and a safe place and the first is about the greeting "Namaste". 

We have to go back to around 1975 to 6 Fowler Street, Blakenhall Wolverhampton. I found out that I had a cousin in Zambia who was arriving sometime that night. I was 16 and at High School. So some time during the night this stranger came and slept in my bed. I was fast asleep. When I woke up that morning to get ready for school, I heard footsteps coming down the stairs in our three bedroom terraced house that still stands today.  I thought that I would act like a man and greet my cousin with a handshake. Instead, this dark person joined his hands together and bowed down to his younger cousin. That was how I met Girishbhai. ( The mountain, that's the meaning of his name and he lived up to it.) Many years later, during lockdown, the leader of our Philosophy School here in Wellington, New Zealand, asked Vandna and I to research and present the meaning behind this humble greeting. We were not allowed to meet in large numbers so we had to present on Zoom. That was in May 2020 and Girishbhai actually joined us despite the fact that he would have been on a tight schedule to go to work and visit his parents as he did most days. It was 7.00pm here and 8.00am in West Bromwich so he would also have been dropping of Minabhabi to work. What a true mountain! 

Girishbhai, you touched me in many ways over the years since 1975 and now three months after you left  us, I rest in the knowledge that you are finally in your safe place.  More about that and our story about chess in a later post... 

Here is a link to the PowerPoint presentation that Vandna and I presented at the Wellington School of Philosophy.

https://1drv.ms/p/s!ApO3zj_-vs2whS6j-9pYBY40SEgE?e=Ws5d72

A further  link if you like reading. 

https://livingharmonyondemand.com/2018/01/11/yoga-namaste-in-our-life/comment-page-1/

Namaste its humble greeting hands
The gesture (or mudra) of Namaste is a simple act made by bringing together both palms of the hands before the heart, and lightly bowing the head. In the simplest of terms it is accepted as a humble greeting straight from the heart and reciprocated accordingly.
The word Namaste is a composite of the two Sanskrit words, nama, and te.
I bow in front of you ( Divine light in YOU)
Te means you, and nama means to bow; together they point to a sense of submitting oneself to another with complete humility. The word nama can again be split into two, na, meaning negation and ma meaning mine. The meaning would then be ‘not mine’. Namaste is thus the necessary rejection of ‘I’ with its associated phenomena of egotism. It is also said that ma in nama means death (spiritual), and when this is negated (na-ma), it signifies immortality. 

My soul honours your soul.

I honour the place in you in

which the entire universe resides.

I honour the light, love, truth,

beauty and peace within you,

because it is also within me.

In sharing these things,

we are united, we are the same.

WE ARE ONE.