A special blessing we received this year was the gift of having four talented yoga teachers with us on our pilgrimage. As the sun rose above the Bay of Bengal, the day after our arrival in India, most of our group had gathered on the beautiful wooden floorboards newly built at our favorite beach resort. The stretched, they twisted, and joined their palms in reverential namastes. The ornate gazebo in the middle of the pool almost looked like a shrine, except that it contained a hot tub. Mmm … what a wonderful way to get started!

That evening we sauntered over the dance festival in town. Since we were early, we took in many of the large stone artifacts. Then, as the sky was turning reddish yellow, the program began. The musicians were fabulous. A mridangam player created elaborate textures on his two-headed drum, while one of the vocalists, created intricate syllabic patterns with mantra-like sounds simultaneously adding percussive accents with a small hand cymbal. Then the other vocalist would come in, singing lyrical passages, as stories of Shiva and Krishna were enacted by the dancers with elaborate gestures (mudras) and complex movements.

There were two presentations. The first had many dancers of various ages, some just young as five years old. They were excellent.  Most of the selections had small groups of dancers who came in and out of the sequences which were all choreographed by the main presenter, one of South India’s most prominent dancers.  Many of us were tired and slept through the second set, but the music continued to ring in our ears as we made our way back to the hotel for a sumptuous meal.

The next morning we set out for the temple. As the sun rose over the ocean, we stepped into the water to perform our morning ablutions, typical of millions of Hindus across the nation. Then we walked along the shore in silence, quietly reciting our mantras till we arrived at the temple. There, we oriented ourselves toward the powerful symbolism of its cosmological pattern, and then we sat on the lawn for an hour, in the fashion ancient Indian schools of learning, as we discussed the evolution of the Indian temple.

 After lunch we set out to meet our gypsy friends. Each year we had put together a donation that had helped them in a substantial way. This year our contribution went toward their attempts to secure electricity for their new homes. They now had their own land with a government water supply but needed electricity. There previous settlement, a makeshift situation near the temple, was not easy on them. It felt good to reconnect with these simple people as they sang and danced and told us their stories, all of them talking at the same time. It was a wonderful reunion!

As we drove toward the city, we stopped again at the healing Shiva shrine. Not too far away we discovered a row of goddesses shaped from mud and stone. They were grama devatas, village deities associated with the earth, healing and protection. These seven mothers, saptamatrika, are believed to guard many towns throughout the subcontinent, each mother a specific aspect of the Divine who may be beseeched in times of particular need.

The woman priestess joined us in holding hands as we circled the deities and chanted shakti mantras to invoke the energy of the goddess. After the chanting, she waved a flame in front of the deities and smeared holy ash upon our foreheads. “Whatever you ask for will be granted” she assured us with a smile. Just a few days later, one of our pilgrims recovered a lost bag

This trip, we also witnessed an extraordinary Vedic ceremony at the yogini ashram, with our female tantric friends. This homa, or fire ritual, was being performed to honor a couple’s 25^th wedding anniversary. Numerous mantras were chanted as butter and sacred sticks were offered in the holy fire altar. Later, the girls at the yogini’s orphanage performed and danced for us. We, in turn, did the hokey pokey for them. For some reason, it makes them go crazy. It’s a joy to be back here. Home Shanti!