On a
beautiful day of August 9th 2012, Shree Seetharam Kedilaya
started his Bharat Yatra from Kanyakumari on foot. He started his Padh Yatra
towards Kerala then traversing through Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra, Rajasthan,
Chandigarh, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakand. Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Assam,
Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram, Tripura, finally arrived at Meghalaya on
the 9th July 2015.
Throughout
this entire journey, covered a striking distance of 15,000 kms on foot and with
great zeal to meet fellow Indians living in remote villages, on the seashores,
around the mountains, in the jungles and by the banks of the rivers.
Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights. It is a touch of emotions,
feelings and opinions, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living together.
I had the opportunity to meet him at Jorabat in Meghalaya on the
9th July 2015 at 6:00 pm. Unlike our earlier meetings, this one
was an emotional one as he warmly embraced me and conveyed his best wishes. He
narrated, how he had covered the entire North East and had gone upto the Indo-
China border. Furthermore, he was grateful as he got the privilege to pay
obeisance at Parshuram Kund, a pilgrimage centre situated on the Brahmaputra plateau
in the lower reaches of the Lohit
River and
21 kms north of Tezu
in Lohit District of Arunachal
Pradesh. I looked at him with utter admiration and respect as he had no signs
of exhaustion or fatigue but was full of vigour and enthusiasm.
On my query on how the experience was throughout his entire
journey, his reply was all positive about the people he had met along the way.
He said to me: “I could meet and converse with the people of India. I had
experienced utmost love, affection and compassion. In this long journey
of 3 years, despite facilities and amenities being made available to me, yet, I
chose to use my God’s given feet and walk the entire distance. I did not starve
or go hungry. I journeyed through all the States and covered the entire
distances with wholehearted support of the people of India. There are
hundreds and thousands of incidents that I have experienced throughout this journey.
I came across Temples, Churches, Mosques, Gurudwaras, etc. and it was here that
I met people from different communities including Hindus, Christians, Muslims,
etc. I met Sikhs, Jain Munis and Sadhvis. I met our Dalit brothers
and shared meals with them while listening to their talk about their daily
livelihood. It was a wonderful and rewarding experience to have been amongst
them”. Furthermore, the undercurrent in India is of an enormous amount of
divinity, goodness and divine love of the people which I experienced all along
the journey.
He told me that in the coming 2 years he would tour a further
10,000 kms on foot covering the rest of Assam, Bengal, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh,
Tamil Nadu and finally arrive back at Kanyakumari.
On meeting him at Jorabat, as a mark of respect, I presented him
with a Ryndia, a Meghalaya traditional shawl, sweets and garland of flowers. As
I spoke to him at length my respect and admiration for him, grew. There
were a few hundred people present there eager to meet the wandering monk of our
times.
Travel is the real education. The rendezvous with Shree
Seetharam Khedilya has been very inspiring and fruitful and which I hold dearly
to my heart.
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