Anegundi is delightfully tranquil and rustic and it’s the first place we visited where people respond genuinely to our ‘Namastes’ and where people take their shoes off, if they’re wearing them, whenever they enter a shop, home or temple. We stayed in a beautiful homestay, which exists thanks to the good work of the Kishkinda Trust. The village is bordered on one side by the vast Tunga Bhadra river and the surrounding landscape consists of monolithic rocks (like in Tayrona in the north of Colombia) that make you feel like a very small human being in a pre-historic era. There are monkeys all over the place and the Hindi monkey-God Hanuman is said to have been born closeby. I had to cut short a yoga practice because three large monkeys came lolloping along the edge of the rooftop where I had set myself up - aaaahh! Stray dogs and cows wander the streets, people get around mostly by bicycle and Kannada is the local dialect spoken. Rats! Just when I was getting my tongue round a few Hindi phrases!
Various religions coexist peacefully in this village of about 1,000 inhabitants: there are Muslims, who celebrated a procession through town ya few days ago, and whose prayer call we heard, booming from the Mosque’s loudspeakers several times a day (how that disembodied voice penetrated my dawns!); Hindus, whose small temples are tucked into many corners of the village, and whose chants to Durga join the Mosque dawn chorus; and also Christians, Buddhists, Jainists and Sikhs according to local sources. We got talking one night to a rather wise man who runs the only restaurant here; he said,
“They are all after the same thing. The message is the same, though the God may have a different name. It is all meditation, praying to God, the divine supersonic energy, to give them peace, and to take away their tensions.”
So many new and rich experiences: discovering Rama’s cave on the banks of the river and being enveloped by a deep energy which naturally compelled us to sit in silence and be - nothing else was called for at all in that moment; glorious sunrises, being taught to eat thali properly with fingers, zipping around on a scooter, getting used to the presence of monkeys!
Of course it’s not all roses and there are harsh realities here that we are feeling our way into and finding a way to be with and respond to. I feel that remembering our shared humanity is a good starting point, which can mean simply looking people in the eye with respect, or using intelligence to see beyond the chaos to a daily life, that may well seem dirtier, noisier, more dilapidated and less efficient, but one that is still turning in the same direction as all of us.
