By Bhairavi Mujumdar, Belagavi, Karnataka TadEkam Sevaka • Kangundi Bouldering Festival, 2nd week of January 2026 • CM’s Visit, 30 January 2026
I came to Kangundi running away from grief.
I did not know that was what I was doing at the time. I told myself I was volunteering. I told myself I wanted to be useful. But the truth — the truth I can say now, on the other side of those two extraordinary weeks — is that I came to Kangundi because my mother had just died, and I did not know what to do with myself.
She passed away after two months of complicated illness. Two months during which I had watched, and waited, and hoped, and slowly understood that hope would not be enough. When she left, my mind went blank. I moved through my days like a machine — eating, sleeping, doing what needed to be done — but nothing felt real. Nothing felt like me.
I had come to TadEkam in March 2025, introduced by my dearest friend who was already part of this family. I had cleared the first level of Reiki, then the second. That journey had already begun to change me in ways I was only starting to understand — quieting the anxiety, stilling the overthinking, softening the edges of the restlessness I had carried for years. But grief is a different country. And I was lost in it.
Then came a call from TadEkam Foundation. Kangundi Bouldering Festival. Would I like to volunteer?
I pounced on it.
I did not know what I would do there. I did not know the place, the people, or what service I could possibly offer. I just knew I needed to go somewhere that was not inside my own head. I said yes before I had finished reading the message.
What I Was Asked to Do
When I arrived, the TadEkam team welcomed me and gave me responsibilities that I took on with everything I had. I was placed in charge of the reception of climbers — coordinating the arrival and registration of participants who came from across the country to scale these ancient boulders. I oversaw the decoration of the Bouldering Park itself, working with the team to make the space feel festive and alive while staying true to the natural, sacred character of Kangundi. I managed the Village Haat — the cultural marketplace that brought Kangundi’s traditions and local produce into the hands of visitors. And I was responsible for maintaining order during the stage performances — ensuring that the Mahabharata Natakam and other cultural events unfolded with the dignity and space they deserved.
It was the fullest I had felt in months. Every task, every problem to solve, every moment of coordination — I was present for it. Not mechanical. Present.
Later I understood: this is what Guruji Naushir meant when he said seva is also sadhna. The work was healing me while I was doing it.
What Kangundi Did to Me
I did not expect Kangundi to surprise me. I thought I was coming to help. I did not realise I was coming to be helped.
The moment I arrived, something shifted. Working with TadEkam members, I never once felt like an outsider — never felt like the woman from Belagavi who didn’t quite belong. I was simply one of them. And the villagers — the people of Kangundi themselves — they embraced me as one of their own from the very first day. No distance. No adjustment period. Just: you are here, you are ours.
This, I understood later, was not an accident. This was the fruit of one full year of TadEkam’s relentless, patient, loving work in this village — the kind of work that changes not just infrastructure but the very quality of a community’s heart, its openness to strangers, its willingness to let the outside world in. The slogan ‘We Love Kangundi’ with a fist bump curated by TadEkam was the epitome of this.
Being adventurous at heart, I signed up for rock climbing — my very first experience of the sport. I will not pretend I was not nervous. But the moment I was on that mobile rock-face installed in the Village Haat by Indian Mountaineering Foundation, something unlocked. I still can do things. I had not been sure of that, these past months. Now I knew.
The Boulder and the Tears I Could Not Explain
But the moment that will stay with me longest was not the climbing.
It was the meditation.
I sat on a boulder facing the Inselberg — that ancient, primordial formation of rock that Swami Dattapadanand Ji has recognised as a living Shivling, carrying spiritual vibrations that reach back before recorded time. I closed my eyes. I settled into stillness. Mount Kailash appeared in my mind — Mount Kangundi Shivling is nearly as powerful as Mount Kailash.
And my face began to stream with tears.
Not from sadness. Not from any thought I was having. From something I cannot name and will not try to — a force, a presence, a connection that reached right through my grief and touched something underneath it that was still whole. I sat there in that ancient silence, with tears running freely, and I felt — for the first time since my mother left — that I was not alone.
“Guruji Naushir taught that Sadhna and Sewa are one. That when we serve, we are also being served. That when we show up for others, something shows up for us.”
I understood that teaching in my body, on that boulder, in Kangundi.
Bhairavi meditating on Mount Kangundi Shivling
Kamalpalika and the Chief Minister
Now for the part of this story that still makes me laugh with disbelief.
Kangundi is home to Mahabharata Natakam — an ancient folk performance tradition in which the stories of the Mahabharata are enacted through elaborate costume, face painting using natural pigments, and ceremonial dance. Clay, ash, plant extracts — these are applied with skill and ceremony, the same way they have been for generations in this corner of Andhra Pradesh. It is a living tradition, and TadEkam’s seva includes protecting it from being swallowed by a world that has stopped paying attention.
Bhairavi as Kamalpalika of Mahabharata Natakam
I volunteered for face painting. I dressed as Kamalpalika — a Mahabharata character — in full traditional costume and natural pigments. Part of the stage performances I had been maintaining order for all festival long now had me as a participant in it. The atmosphere was, as I can only describe it, totally insane in the best possible way. I felt I had stepped out of 2026 entirely and into something much older and much more alive.
And then — who would believe this — the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Sri Nara Chandrababu Naidu Garu, arrived for his visit on 30th January 2026.
He saw me. He appreciated what I was doing. He appreciated TadEkam’s efforts to protect this ancient tradition of Mahabharata Natakam.
He understood, in that moment, what the hashtag #ClimbInCulture actually means: that Kangundi is not just an adventure destination. It is a living museum of Bharat’s dharmic heritage.
I was photographed with the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh while dressed as a Mahabharata character, in a village most people have never heard of, having arrived there running away from grief.
Babaji works in ways I will never fully understand. And I have stopped trying to.
What I Carry Home
I came to Kangundi to escape.
I am leaving — or rather, I have left, because I am writing this on the other side of it now — carrying something I did not arrive with. A renewed sense that I am capable. That community is real. That grief does not have the last word. That there are places in this world where ancient things are still alive, still speaking, still capable of reaching into a broken heart and doing something gentle and irrevocable to it.
My journey with TadEkam began with Reiki in March 2025. It has taken me through loss, and through a bouldering festival in a village in Andhra Pradesh, and to a meditation on a living Shivling that left me in tears I still cannot explain, and to a photograph with a Chief Minister while dressed as a Mahabharata’s Kamalpalika a.k.a Hidimba who fell in love with Bhima, saved the Pandavas, and became the mother of the warrior Ghatotkacha.
I can only say: this journey has truly dignified my presence.
We love Kangundi. And Kangundi — I believe — loves us back.
Bhairavi Mujumdar
TadEkam Sevak • Belagavi, Karnataka
Seva Roles: Climber Reception • Bouldering Park Decoration • Village Haat Management •Stage Programme Coordination
Kangundi Bouldering Festival, January 2026 • CM Sri Nara Chandrababu Naidu’s Visit, 30 January 2026
Leave a Reply