An Invitation to Slow Down

The journey is long and the scenery changes very gradually from dense, crowded, action packed to quieter greens with blank spaces and a little nothingness sprinkled around.

Even the entry door to Chaina’s house, which is a makeshift wooden frame tied to a pole with a rope wound around it, demands that you slow down. The wooden cot or charpai placed underneath the shade of the Babool tree, invites you for a pleasant afternoon siesta. Everything is quiet. Which is not to say that the days aren’t busy. There’s a lot of work around. The cows need a bath and milking, the goats need to be herd, the food needs to be cooked, the farm needs to be looked after (it’s groundnut it season), the house which is getting a major facelift (from a straw shack to a brick house), the loan needs to be repaid, sessions need to be attended on internet for their new business pursuits; it all work all day. Yet, something about the beeeze, quiets the din around.

Every time we are there, it’s an effort to get into the process of witnessing. The body and mind begin to slow down and want to just be.