Downey Drive

Yesterday (Sunday 9/23) we held a drive at the Swaminarayan temple in Downey (in the L.A. area) and registered about 23 potential donors. While this is a modest number, it is a decent percentage out of the gathering here which was relatively small, around 150 or so people by my estimate. In any case, if we manage to find the right donor, then the probability of a match miraculously changes to 1, or so I vaguely recall from something I tried on a math perio once. (As to whether the instructor bought it, I'll plead the dimming of memory with the passage of time).

Many thanks to the temple management for their support and encouragement. It was heartening to hear from a great many of the devout that they had already registered in previous drives. Some of the regular habitues helped us talk to nervous new prospects by detaling their own experiences as donors in chaste Gujarati. 'Kalaben''s Gujarati skills, and Suvasini's Hindi skills came in very handy in chatting with the worshippers. Even Mots and I dredged deep within to come up with some choice nodules of Hindi. Anything for the Phatak, was the slogan of the day.

Mots had the idea that we should get some drives going at the India end. In principle, the idea makes eminent sense to me, what with the slightly larger Indian population there and all that. Any thoughts on this? There are probably all sorts of hurdles, but hopefully nothing insurmountable.

Glad to see Prak doing his job by holding the line on the health front, keep it up.

Bapa Rao