In January this year 40 of us visited South India to celebrate the Centenary of the Holdsworth Memorial Hospital in Mysore City. In 1906 the hospital was built by the Methodist Missionary Society, but in 1947 it became part of the Church of South India. (A union of Methodists, Anglicans, and Presbyterians).
I arrived to work in the hospital in 1948 about 3 months after the CSI had been formed and I stayed there for 12 years. Shortly after my arrival Lord and LAdy Mountbatten returned to visit India where they had worked until it became a Republic in 1947. Lady Mountbatten visited our hospital one morning and insisted on speaking to every patient. That evening the Maharajah of Mysore invited the Mountbattens and us to a party on the racecourse. The Palace Band decided to play something English and so they played "Under The Spreading Chestnut Tree" and "Teddy Bears Picnic".
There's no Maharajah now but we toured the Palace and saw it illuminated with thousands of electric bulbs one night. The hospital is doing well and reaches out to villages to vaccinate children and help pregnant women. We visited several villages with our excellent guide Bhasker.
For the 50th anniversary in 1946, a children's block was built that has done well, but the idea now is to put the children elsewhere in the hospital grounds and use the block for nurse training.
We stayed at the Southern Star Hotel and so did some of the members of the CSI Synod which met while we were there. It was good to see the hospital and the present staff and to discuss the ideas for the future. It was also much warmer in India than in Fareham at that time!