Kavishaila, the heavenly hillock. Silence! To speak here is a sin. The hill is in meditation Joy is worship and silence is prayer In this Nature's Temple. Ah! Nothing like being up here In the company of only a gentle drizzle.
These words from 'Kruththike', one of Kuvempu's collection of poems, reflects the love and respect he had for his favourite spot and he longed to return here everytime he was away. From the 'Kavimane', the poet's house, one can tread the same path as the poet did to get here, or by the same road that leads to the house. A massive three stoned gateway opens up the imagination of the visitors to Kavishaila. He spent a lot of his time here as a little boy and in his later years when he retired to Kuppali.
This charming and secluded spot was home to Kevempu's muse and many of his poems were inspired by this heavenly retreat, and when you get there it is not difficult to realise why.
As we walked about, I once again broached the subject with my wife: Little Puttappa must have had a splendid time here playing with his numerous cousins with not a care in the world; , picking berries, chasing squirrels,climbing trees and eating mangoes. She gave me a stare only a wife can give her husband.
My grand father was a recluse, seldom spoke and when not watering plants, spent a great part of his time reclining on his easy chair reading spiritual and philosophical works or literary classics including those of Kuvempu. He went out of the compound only once in a month carrying a bag full of books he had finished reading and returned a few hours later with replacements. I would sometimes secretly approach his bookshelf to see if I could find a volume of Huckleburry Fin or Tom Sawyer. The books were old and not from a library since there were no seals on them. Since I dare not ask him where he got the books from and nobody else in the house bothered, I could never discover the source from which he procured them. It is my guess that he had a friend in Udupi who was also a recluse like himself.
Many years before I was born, Grandpa ran a grocery in one of the shops you can still find around the Sri Krishna Mutt complex in Udupi. He had to close down after he sold excessively on credit to all and sundry without first learning the skill of how to recover the payment due, and as a consequence borrowed excessively to keep the stocks from running out.
When I once remarked that I found him very strange, Grandma recounted how when still in his mid forties and having fathered eight children, grandpa was overcome by an overdose of spirituality and like Buddha, quietly abandoned the family in the middle of a night and took the train to Varanasi. After a region wide search and speaking to everyone who knew him, the family gave up all hopes of ever seeing him again. Some months later , a few piligrims from Udupi returning from a Kashi yatra rushed to inform my grandmother that they thought they had a glimplse of her husband somewhere on the ghats , but he suddenly disappeared in the crowd.The man had long hair, a flowing beard and wore a saffron dhoti due to which they could not authenticate his identification. It was still a ray of hope although a bleak one, and my grandma's elder brother and his friend made haste to board the next train to Varanasi. They returned a few weeks later, dragging grandpa by his dhoti. The first thing they did was to urgently summon the barber in secret to give him a good haircut and shave off his overgrown beard.The whole town knew by sunset. Grandpa sired two more children after his dramatic return.
Upon retiring from service at the Mazagaon Dock, an uncle of mine from Mumbai ( one of grandpa's son) bought a secluded acre-big property near Moodubidri and built a house on it. Two other houses within a 100 meter range formed the neighbourhood and it was reachable only by a rough mud road. He moved there but his wife, a lecturer, categorically refused to leave the city. Upon his insistence, she visited him once for a few days and did not consider a repeat visit thereafter. Uncle had some training in classical Hindustani music and spent 12 years here all alone singing to himself. I visited him a couple of times for a day when I visited Udupi, and quite liked his place. There was no furniture in the house and two rolls of beds were stacked up in a corner of a room. A coir mat was unfurled on the floor for the rare vistors. He woke up at 4a.m and spent the mornings watering and tending plants in his garden, an alaap in one raga or the other on his lips. The plants were not sown in rows or in any specfic arrangement, and it was a wild riot of colors when the flowers bloomed. Uncle proclaimed with reserved pride that it was an English garden. As dusk fell, he chanted the
Hare Krishna naam and methodically massaged himself with an ayurvedic oil specially ordered from Kerala before he went to bathe at the well. His diet mainly consisted of only a bowl of curd with honey,fruit and a few almonds in it for breakfast,and two thin
methi chapathis in the afternoon and one in the evening were his lunch and dinner. He retired to bed by 7 pm. I observered he drank water at frequent intervals all day long from a clay pot which he filled with water drawn from the well by dawn, and he always sprinkled some fresh
Tulsi leaves in it. He was 62 when I visited him and looked not a day older than 45. I once curiously asked what he did to keep himself engaged in the monsoon season when it rains without a stop for days on end, to which he casually replied,"Nothing!".
Grandpa's unsual visit to Kashi, Uncle's becoming
vanaprastha, my reading habits and love for the countryside prompts my wife to make some definite connections. She greatly fears that it sort of runs in the family and has told her mother that after my grandpa and uncle, I was showing imminent signs of being the 'Chosen One' to keep up the family tradition. Also, the fact that I was named after the presiding diety of that sacred and ancient city has consolidated her belief that history could repeat itself. After returning to Bangalore from this trip, I told her that I would one day like to write a novel. She gave me a stare that only a wife can give her husband.
The three-stoned Stonehenge like installations add to the awe and mystique of the place and they blend well with the dark hillock and the woods around. When his soul left the flesh in 1998, the poet supreme's remains were cremated here and a
samadhi built on the spot.
While getting back into our car, I could not prevent myself from one last time humming the old song:
"Doni Sagali, munde hogali, dooratheerava serali"
My wife gave me a stare only a wife can give her husband.