Vanara Seva
Food for the monkeys of Puttaparthi, twice a week
- When
- Twice a week
- Where
- Puttaparthi, its surrounding villages, and Bukkapatnam
2×
Every week, without fail
~15 km
Travelled on each round
Groundnuts
Bananas and soaked kala chana
Hanuman is the Kshetrapalaka — the guardian — of this place. It would be a strange devotion that fed the guardian’s kin only in prayer.
Twice every week, members and volunteers of the Kuteer set out on a round of nearly 15 kilometres through Puttaparthi, the villages around it and Bukkapatnam, stopping at the places where the monkey troops gather. They carry groundnuts, bananas and soaked black chickpeas — food that is good for the animals rather than merely convenient for us.
The town’s monkeys live pressed up against human settlement, and in the dry months there is not enough for them. Vanara Seva is small, unglamorous and entirely uncelebrated. It is also the clearest statement the Kuteer makes about what service means: that compassion which stops at the boundary of one’s own species was never really compassion at all.
Photographs
Vanara Seva in action
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Every one of these services is free at the point of need, and stays that way only because people give their time, their skills and their means.