I like auspicious days. Not the kinds which the Pandit anoints with special powers, nor the ones when the Moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars. The ones I like gain their importance from association and coincidence – a birthday coinciding with a wedding which mysteriously happens to be on the same day as a homecoming. Just for example.

December 4th is a miraculous day in our family. It’s the day we brought Moy Moy home – she was two weeks old and weighed just under a kilo. (Remember that story?)

Five years later when we decided to start Karuna Vihar – a school for Moy Moy – Paula Hughes arrived from England to train our team and whip us all into shape. Imagine our astonishment when we discovered that her birthday was – you guessed it – December 4th.

How we loved imagining her birthdays through the years, all, in our egocentric minds, preparing her for the day when she would come to India. Especially her 43rd birthday! While she was innocently blowing out her 43 candles there in Manchester, England, unaware of what was in store for her, Moy Moy was arriving in our home in Dehradun. What were the odds?

So December 4th. Big day.

Shipra Pande (remember her?) came personally to my home to invite me to her son’s wedding and of course I knew I would be attending. But when she mentioned the date, my heart did a little flip.

December 4th. Big day. What were the odds?

Shipra worked with us at the Foundation for many years as the Coordinator of Latika Vihar. What did she not do for us? She was an anchor, a touchstone, a rock of security and joy. She knew each child as she knew her own – she knew what made them tick and just how much they could be stretched. She understood when they needed a hug and when they needed a push. She believed in them. She loved them.

Parents trusted her without reservation. Leaving children with Shipra was like leaving them with a sister or a mother. She made Latika Vihar the place it still is today: a home, a haven, a safe place where children can grow and learn. We owe that to Shipra.

But no place is entirely safe; nothing in life can ever be totally in our control.

Shipra’s husband – young, healthy, at the peak of his career – developed cancer. In just a few short months, he was gone, leaving his grief-stricken wife and their two beautiful children.

Shipra was offered a job at the ONGC where he had worked but – in a brave, intuitive move – she opted instead to return to us at the Latika Roy Foundation. Sensing, perhaps, that the Foundation would offer her more than just a paycheck, she came home to us and, in the process, created a legacy for her husband which the children of Uttarakhand will forever be grateful for – whether they know it or not.

Gubbara, the assessment centre for children with disabilities at the Doon Hospital, is a direct outgrowth of Shipra’s work at the Doon Hospital over so many years. That in itself is huge. Imagine working at a Help Desk which eventually becomes a major diagnostic centre for an entire state!

But December 4th. Shipra’s son’s wedding. Stick to the point, Jo.

Well, first a photograph. Not of the groom and his bride (that comes later). This one is of Shipra and her two adorable, brave children:

I love this picture because – without a word being spoken – it says all we need to know about how one family overcame a great loss and a terrible grief. They stood together. They made each other’s happiness and well-being their first concern. They lived for each other. What an inspiration!

At Gautam’s marriage, there was a reckless kind of joy I have seldom seen at a wedding reception. Every guest seemed to feel the same way. Everyone seemed overwhelmed with gratitude that things had worked out for this wonderful family, that they had won the prize, that – at last – though no one could ever replace her husband, their father – they would again be four.

Here’s the complete photo, with Molshree:

See how beautifully she fits in, how amazingly she completes the line. This is a marriage made in heaven. Meant to be.

And, because I can’t resist taking a tiny bit of the credit, here’s Shipra with two of us, two who would do anything for her, two who rejoice at her new life and who sing and dance at the thought of how this all fits in with our vision of inclusion and delight and Moy Moy who came home on December 4th and Paula who was born on December 4th and Gautam and Molshree and Maya and Shipra and the great dance which is life, which is life, which is life.