The heartbeat of India is her religion - in the villages.

My daughter's Sanskrit teacher had come home. What she says from the scriptures is what my village people tell me in homely Telugu.

The Pandavas practiced goodness and still suffered - so the worth of goodness was questioned by some, the teacher said. But the question is whether the Pandavas themselves had felt that goodness had been worthless ! It was Eashwaramma's logic again, that the reward of goodness is always given - and the reward is manashanthi. Peace. At having let belief and act harmonize.

And then the teacher said that there is peeda - which is part of life, which comes and goes. And dukham which is different and which one needs to transcend. Peeda, pain, cannot and need not be avoided. In the village Ratnakka said, 'If we are born as people, there will be sufferings. Even the Gods suffered, see."

The teacher said she was reading the Kunti stotram ... where Kunti begs the god to keep her cup of sorrows full - as that keeps her thoughts close to God. Annasamy Anna told me the same thing - how the mendicant who begs for his daily meal is most fortunate because he remembers god all the time.

Everything that is in the Geeta or the Mahabharatha, I am able to find echoes of in the words and stories of the common, illiterate people of the villages.