What has sustained us for millennia and stills continues to sustain robustly is our very own faith. Invaders could damage it, alien rulers, marauders and tyrants could dent it but it never lost its basis ethos. Bharat lives on while ‘India’s may get bent under pressure, suffer or languish but break it wouldn’t ever. Mughal India and Company India could only enrich it internally.

Our gods, saints, seers and rishis of yore have such a strong hold on us all that the values they stood for preached and practiced sustain a culture that is vibrant with eternal values. It is nor just a deity but a whole Parthenon of them, a plethora of personages that guide us in this veritable sojourn on this earth.

The mere thought of the conception of the divine and the universe as envisaged in purushasookta is ennobling for sheer glory of sublime thought. This sookta is supposed to be the quintessence of the three Vedas. There is universality and total inclusiveness in their envisioning, which is sublime. The Vedas stand as the most ancient and pristine as recorded declarations relating to creation and enlightenment. These hold all creation as holy, sacred and the handiwork of the Supreme Being.

The faith reflected extends to all creation, animate and inanimate. To get insights into our basic human ethos, it is essential to travel, not with a questioning investigative frame of mind but a thirst to experience looking beyond the dates, proofs and authentication. It is impossible to know whether Shravankumar really existed or whether King Dasarath (remember that he was Dasa Rath – the one who held ten chariots (of senses) firmly under control) trusting his sabdavedi shot the only son of the blind parents near that small river Tamasa)

What is electrifying is the faith of the people there who congregate for five days for a mela remembering Shravankumar. Thanks to graameen sadak yojana, a road is laid to this far-flung place. A six or seven km drive from Akbarpur (about 600 km from New Delhi or about five hours by an express train from Lucknow) takes you to the Shravan kshetra. There is a small enclosure with a Shivaling and a small structure housing the a cement sculpture of the young Shravan Kumar carrying his blind parents in wicker baskets slung across on a bamboo pole (kaavadi) carried across his shoulders.

Very near, again to Akbarpur, is Rishyashring Guha where the sage performed tapas. Both the places are extremely relevant to the main itihasa of Srimad Ramayana. Both the places are about 50 km from the renowned Ayodhya.