Connections: Yoga for Bhopal. Novelist Meaghan Delahunt explains her connection to Bhopal and the work of the Sambhavna Clnic in Bhopal which uses yoga as one of a range of treatments.
I was in India in 2000, a place I had always wanted to visit. I was there for three months on a UNESCO International Literature fellowship.ย I was writing my second novel, The Red Book, which at the time I thought of as my โyogaโ novel.ย As usual, when writing a novel or a short story, I didnโt start with a plot or a plan but rather an image, a colour, a line. ย Itโs always an intuitive process.
Shortly before I left Edinburgh I had a dream which involved the colour red, a Buddhist monk and the city of Bhopal. A child hovered at the edge of the dream.ย I took these images as a sign. On the day I arrived at Sanskriti Kendra โ the artistsโ ashram outside Delhi which was my base – ย the first person I met was a young Muslim man from Bhopal.ย We became good friends and he said, โYou must stay with my family.โ Thatโs how I came to visit Bhopal several times and how I first made my way to the Sambhavna clinic. This clinic in Old Bhopal was pioneering Yoga therapy and Ayurvedic medicine in the treatment of the gas-affected population.
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