On 10-08-2004 friday night, my friend and I left Bangalore for a place called Hornad which is around 300 Kms west towards a place called Hassan. On early hours of next morning, I was greeted with natural greenery of uninhabited land with a small lane of curly dark roads. I reached there at around 7 o clock, and took a small temporary shelter. After that we went to the temple, which is dedicated to Goddess “Annapurneshwari” or Goddess of food. The temple had a unique radiance which attracted me a lot. Somebody meantime advised me to visit the Ganesha temple on the top of a hill. We walked through an uninhabited place and finally lost the way. But the nature was beautiful enough to give us energy to walk and finally we visited the beautiful temple.After a wonderful lunch at the temple we left for Sringeri.
Sringeri is one of four centers of learning established by Adi Shankara.I was surprised by the amount of cleanliness there, even though it is visited by thousands of people daily. We got a room provided by the “mutt” for a negligible rent and decided to rest there. I spent a lot of time walking inside the well –laid pavement trying to assimilate the peace and tranquility, which existed there.
On next afternoon, something tragic happened for me. I went to the river “Tunga” for taking bath. My friend was an amateur swimmer and he was trying his skills. After sometime I found his troubled face while he was desperately trying himself from taken away by the current of water. Seeing this I rushed in, I never knew that after few steps I am going to a deep zone .I was thrown into the current, I was grappling my hands to save myself from drowning. For the first time in my life I was completely surrounded and I thought that I am going to die very soon. I could see my friend shouting and I saw couple of people running towards the bank. And finally I could rest one of my legs on a rock, then I tried to place my other leg over a rock, I could do that. I was saved. Then I was helped by a person there to reach the bank. I sat there for few minutes and I vomited .I think I drank a lot of water. Finally God saved me ! I know some lucky persons like me who escaped this .I know it all happened because of friend’s adventure to swim there rather than taking bath in shallow waters. I told him it is really good to be adventurous for a necessity, but not for fun. You can be very close with death.
