Marge

As many of you have already heard, Marge passed away last night. I just wanted to say a few words about her and invite others to do the same. I met Marge at a lunch in 2003. I had only been in Chennai for a couple of months and was, of course, lonely. I felt too insecure to try to make friends with what I then considered the 'fancy' ladies of the Overseas Women's Club since most of them were older, lived in huge bungalows and had husbands who worked for major corporations at very high levels. My husband and I were trying to start a business and felt like a bunch of bunglers at that time. But Marge was nice to me. She was open and funny at the lunch and said some hilarious things about her life in India. She made me realize that we all had the same problems adjusting to our new home. She mentioned that a cat in her garden had kittens. Being Marge, she already had the mother cat sterilized and the other compound cats, as well. She had even adopted two of them and was now looking for homes for these kittens. I ended up calling her and adopted two of the kittens. When I came to get them, she was again open and friendly. Like a breath of fresh air to me at the time. I remember her sitting in her garden sipping coffee. She looked stylish, cool and timeless in sunglasses and a T Shirt. We became friends at that point and I learned to appreciate Marge's open and uncritical take on things. She was the person you could always go to if something was wrong and she wouldn't judge and she would actually listen! And she was funny. Every lunch I had with Marge and our friend Cathy was pure hilarity. We laughed about the absurd things that happened to us. Marge never let anything get her down too much. Her spirit was too fun-loving and light for that. To this day, I don't know how old Marge was. She wasn't my age, but she could have been. She was just cool. For any age and anywhere, and I loved her and I know a lot of other people did, too.
Please use the comment feature of this blog to write something you remember about Margaret.
-Natalie