Bhopal and Sambhavna

On Sunday, four volunteers, including me, and one of the Sambhavna staff, hired a car to go to Bhimbetka, which has ancient 10,000 year-old cave paintings spread over an area that reminded me of the Ubirr site in Kakadu. I really am enjoying the time I spend working and relaxing with Sambhavna people. Next weekend Andrea and I will be going to Sanchi which is a famous Buddhist site.

After leaving Bhimbetka we went to the Narmada River ghat a few kilometres further on. The river is a pilgrim site, worshipped as the daughter of Shiva, so there were a number of linga and nandi statues on the steps beside the river and we namasted with women pilgrims bathing at the ghat. The following is a précis of a passage in Gita Mehta’s book, A river sutra.

‘It is said that Shiva was in an ascetic trance so strenuous that rivulets of perspiration began flowing from his body down the hills. The stream took the form of a beautiful young woman innocently tempting even to ascetics. Her variations from dancing girl to romantic dreamer to seductress so amused Shiva that he named her Narmada, the Delightful One, and gave her in marriage to the ocean, Lord of the Rivers.’ Can you imagine Guruji now saying, “This way happen have”?

All the staff and a couple of volunteers have gone on a ‘picnic’ to Chittrakut, a 10 hour journey, for the Indian national day weekend. Most of the volunteers and interns have stayed to complete project work as the majority of the group of 8 currently here, are due to finish up soon.

I cannot begin to describe just how lovely this group of people is. We spend a lot of time together – after hours last week we went to a couple of classical Indian music concerts at the cultural centre by the lake, by day we roamed the chouk together.

Emily, Darmesh and Prabjit on the terrace. Union Carbide is 400 mtrs in the direction directly behind them.

Nicole, Sambhavna library

I have really enjoyed my time here – and the work in the library has been very rewarding. A Local call number system has been created and the collection has been reorganised and classified. The knowledge I picked up regarding Ayurvedic resources from the librarian at Swami Ram Dev's Ashram has been very useful.

There are some really interesting items in this collection, particularly on ayurveda, yoga and pranayama, covering everything from women and spirituality to satsang! I even discovered a couple of Sanskrit books. Mataji would enjoy browsing here.

Shahnaz has quite a work program mapped out for the 18 months ahead before I expect to be back here, cataloguing and indexing the collection. Hopefully we’ll then be able to switch to an internet-based catalogue. KOHA??

So as my work here comes to an end, I’ll be leaving mid-next week for Sevagram, Ghandi’s model ‘village of service’. Well, I’m actually going to the ashram 3 kms away set up in 1938 by his disciple Vinoba Bhave who started the ‘land gift’ campaign to persuade farmers to give farmland to the poor. The sadhakas at the ashram are all female and the ashram is self-sufficient, so gardening and weaving will have a high priority there.

Today Andrea and I are heading off to Udaigiri where in the C10 AD, temples and shrines were carved into rock caves. It is about 2 hours from here, and then we'll go on to overnight at Sanchi, a World Heritage Buddhist site of stupas and temples built by the emperor Ashoka in C2 BC.

..next day…Just got back from Udaigiri caves. Most are devoted to Shiva – we really enjoyed our visit.

We then caught a share taxi 10 kms to Sanchi -

there we all are to the left - 20 sitting on benches,

3 on the floor and countless hanging out the back!

and enjoyed a very restful stay in the rest house and lots of cups of tea in the delightful garden with a great view of the stupa site, which is of course, fabulous! -

a living museum was Andrea's description.

The inscriptions on the main stupa contain warnings from Asoka to monks and nuns not to create a split within Buddhism.