Where there are no locks

I have been out of blog for quite sometime, even I had stopped reading blogs for quite sometime, somehow the days have just been going away and going on but there are so many things to say and write about.

I have been travelling and reading a lot, I read yet another book from William Darlymple called, nine lives, in search of the sacred in modern India, another of his book which I really enjoyed reading, do grab a copy of it if you get a chance. I am getting to know so many things about India from his books, which I never got to know growing up.

So here is one of my travel story as well,
It is about last year when i was travelling to Adilabad. From the map of India Adilabad, falls in that part of map, where news channels normally mark as a Naxalite area. We were little sceptical, but we had heard from lot of our other friends who had been in such areas that individuals seldom have problems in Naxalite areas, generally there is always fighting between the government and Naxalite (the recent news is the new development).

The train journey to Adilabad itself was quite interesting, met few people who told us interesting stories. We were very sceptical and very careful about our luggage and were putting locks and chains, and so on when this discussion about locking and theft started. The guy sitting next to us told us the story about this village Shani Singanapore, where there are no locks. Apparently people believe that if you steal from here then you will not be able to get out of the village, something bad will happen to you, like a snake bite or something. I have heard such stories before, and this one particularly, and as it always happens I thought that it might be true at some point in the past and now things would have change drastically.

Well this episode ended, and we reached adilabad, next day morning, ofcourse not before I had had this another interesting conversation with Naga Sadhu.
Adilabad is a super small town, clean, hot, quiet, suvar rickshaws, slow and peaceful. We were supposed to stay with this one very amazing person called Guruji Ravinder Sharma, (will write about him some other day). Temporarily we were asked to put our bags in a small art room kind of place, which was beautiful but no doors, and little did I know that it was going to be where we were going to stay for few days. Every day all our samaan used to lie scattered, camcorder, phone getting charged, and everything. Further the house was next to the road and Guruji never locked the compound gate as well.

"Yahan se chori karke kaun kahan jayega" Guruji said.