We have been stunned by Cheryl’s hospitalisation and departure from this world on August 29, even as she had seemed to have been improving.
What a wonderful friendship it has been, stretching back to the early 1990s, when we moved from Delhi to Jaipur and first came to know the Lobos.
Cheryl and I had similar hairstyles in those days, and she would laugh when someone told her he had seen her an hour earlier driving a green Maruti, even though she had not stepped out of her office the entire day.
Cherylann came from an Anglo-Indian family and belonged to the Church of North India, while Vijay, her husband (and Arvind’s friend from childhood), was Goan and Catholic. With his characteristic humour, Vijay described himself as an “out-standing” churchgoer. Tall, slim and pretty, Cheryl was nearly six feet and inches taller than Vijay, but the two made a wonderful pair on the dance floor, especially when they jived.
We celebrated many Diwalis and Christmases together. When their daughter, Carylann, married Abhinav Puri, who came from a Hindu Punjabi family, his parents were surprised to discover that she knew the rituals. We always took our sons for midnight Mass at Cheryl’s church.
Christmas at Cheryl’s house began a week early. There were cheese straws and the traditional rum cake; at Easter, hot cross buns. She made wonderful jamun wine and hosted large family gatherings for birthdays and anniversaries.
She had had to discontinue her education after school in order to support her family and begin working. In Jaipur, I started exploring whether there might be a way for her to resume her studies. A friend told me that her years of work experience could be recognised and that she could enrol for an MBA through an open university.
She joined IGNOU, and I would urge her to focus on her studies. Years later, she reminded me of something I had told her, “No one is going to give you a degree for cooking.”
She worked successively at the Bureau of Industrial Promotion and then PDCOR, and helped Arvind set up both organisations. She was supremely organised, whether at work or at home, a quality that somehow never came at the expense of warmth.
Her green fingers had given her another kind of companionship—the early morning hours spent tending herbs, flowers and greens, watching things grow under her care. When Carylann came to live with us for a while, the Lobos would occasionally visit, and Cheryl would bring us seedlings from her garden.
In her later years, seva came to occupy much of her life: first caring for her mother, and then for her younger sister. Both losses were deeply painful.
Yet life also brought her new joys. Her son, Lindsly, married a loving Jain girl, Aashika, and Cheryl would occasionally show me her affectionate messages.
How I wish that the last time we met, we had sat together and opened again our most precious treasure house: the memories we had made over all those years.
Our Holi getaways took us to places like Sambhar Salt Lake with my parents, happily treated to Cheryl’s goodies and Daya Krishna’s recitation of Mirza Ghalib. There were the two trips to Ranthambore, when we were lucky enough to sight both tigers and cubs, and longer holidays together.
With so many growing children in tow, food inevitably became one of the major preoccupations, and supplies had to be packed into our vehicles as we stayed in low cost “dak” bungalows. “Once breakfast is over, we’re already thinking of lunch,” she would say.
Our families slept together in a dormitory at Haldwani, en route from Almora. And at Binsar’s Forest Rest House, Aniruddh’s comments—especially his endless Vijay Uncle jokes—kept us laughing past midnight as we snuggled into our sleeping bags.
There was little Lindsly, gradually graduating from his mother’s lap to the more grown-up declaration, “Can I sleep with the boys?”
And there was the story of Cheryl’s aunt from Mount Abu, with her unforgettable command: “Boy, bring some dal curry.”
How many such moments there were, ordinary at the time and now suddenly precious. They are what remain: the laughter, the journeys, the food, the children growing up, the teasing, the shared celebrations, the endless hospitality—and above all, the warmth of a friendship.
Shail Mayaram
