Between earth and sky

India through my eyes - Short travel notes  

The red earth is colored pink and gives the sky its shade. Next to me a disorderly chirping comes from a cloud of birds happily fighting on a cashew tree.

Drums accompanying the puja resonate in the distance, towards the railway. The chirping stops and the rattling of a train arrives dominating the tribal sound not far away and then vanishing in the opposite direction. A moment of silence and on the same horizon line as the rhythmic beat, as if responding to the latter, comes the call to prayer from one of the village mosques.

Calm descends around me, the even more rosy earth and sky now reflect one another.

Even the birds seem to have understood the beauty of the moment and are listening to that single sound that hovers lightly in the distance, that primordial heartbeat that, pulsating, refers to the heart of the earth. Everything becomes silent. Everything seems suspended.

Until a rustling leaf comes from behind me. And there it was, a leap. Then a breath. And again, one, two leaps. Then a breath.

On time, between earth and sky, a toad welcomes the evening.

CURIOUS FACTS

India is a country in which, since ancient times, different cults and religions have coexisted: Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Muslim, Christian,... And just as the landscapes that alternate along the entire subcontinent (high and mighty mountain ranges, lush hills, vast plains, desert dunes, kilometers of beaches lapped by the ocean) are of the most varied nature, so too temples, churches and mosques define the topography of the country and the customs of the different regions.

Anyone who moves, as happened to me, from the north to the south of Bharat - another historical name for India which dates back to the age of the Vedas - will in fact witness the transition from a Hindu and Buddhist predominance, the latter influenced by neighboring Tibet, to a strong Christian presence on the western coast due not only to the English occupation but, even before that, to the Portuguese and Dutch one. In addition to temples and churches, as I wrote earlier, there are also many mosques, especially going south. Among the first peoples to occupy Indian lands centuries ago there were in fact the Persians who, by incorrectly pronouncing the word Sindhu, meaning the river that lapped the valley south of India, as Hindu brought this term into common language, a term later absorbed by the Greeks as indu and subsequently adapted by the English as India.