Mysuru Embraces Its Son & Its Guru

We have officially reached the Cauvery river basin area – Karnataka. We’re bracing for a long day ahead. We’re headed straight to the venue of the first public event in Bengaluru at 11 a.m. It’s Sunday and people are gathered all along the route to welcome Sadhguru as he rides into the capital city of Karnataka.

The Chief Minister of the State is at the event and like in other states, the Security is at the highest category – both for Sadhguru and the CM. Nothing deters the people though. They run behind Sadhguru’s motorcycle, calling out to him, laughing, weeping, clapping, screaming. Sadhguru stops periodically where sizeable crowds are gathered to acknowledge them and to seek their support for the Movement. 

The event itself is like all the other public events in other states: capacity crowd, electric atmosphere and an energy that’s both festive and frenzied.

We head straight out to Mysuru after the Bengaluru event and we can only imagine how Sadhguru’s homecoming will be. The event is in the evening at the sprawling Mysore University’s open air amphitheater. The city has turned out in strength to receive its Son and its Guru. The audience is very engaged, Sadhguru is more informal with them, more at ease and tells them it’s going to be a “gossip” session at home. 

A large portion of the students at the event are deaf, but their enthusiasm is as loud as ever. Sadhguru expresses how heartening and fantastic it is that even those who are hearing-impaired have heard the message to save soil.

Several districts of Karnataka, including Mysuru, are implementing the Cauvery Calling project on-ground- an ambitious mission of placing a third of the river basin area under shade by planting 2.42 billion saplings that will turn into an invaluable tree cover for the region. The beauty of it is that the trees will all go into private farmlands ensuring higher survival rates and significantly higher incomes for farmers. It will enrich the soil in the river basin enhancing its water-holding capacity and in turn augmenting river Cauvery’s source flow. It is expected to restore the mighty river to her former glory.

Before we leave Mysuru, the team gets to meet with Sadhguru as night falls on the journey. It feels wonderful to see him relaxed, not riding, not dodging crowds, not getting drenched, or having to brave extreme heat or cold. It’s a magical evening. Though everyone is exhausted, it’s an exhilarating exhaustion with tears and soft spoken sharings of intimate moments and outright crazy moments that make the entire team burst with laughter. 

And somewhere at the back of our minds, all of us know that we’ve had the privilege of witnessing history in the making—experiencing the incredible high of jumping into a vehicle and going from venue to venue, event to event, morning to evening, in the remarkable presence and wisdom of Sadhguru, with one mission to save soil—each emotion slipping away before we can totally grasp its magic. 

An unforgettable Journey, almost unfathomable in its magnitude and definitely, we hope, in its impact too. 

#SaveSoil. Let us make it happen!