Location: Hampi, Karnataka
Spotlight on: Shama Pawar Shapiro
Commentator: Meenakshi Doctor
Eleven years ago, Shama Pawar Shapiro fell in love with Hampi. She talks about the decade she's spent in preserving an ancient paradise
There is something unreal about Hampi, as the sunrise breaks over the Tungabhadra River. Flowing between huge boulders, it froths and frets over the ancient shoulders of the Deccan Plateau, that spreads out like a giant — all crooked bones and knobbly fingers pointing to the brilliant expanse of sky. Hiding in the midst of the wilderness, there appear the remnants of Hampi, once said to be the kingdom of Kishkinda, ruled over by the monkey king Sugriva, and where Rama met the great Hanuman.
As though to complete the illusion, amidst the rocky landscape, bright green banana plantations mingle with the darker green of coconut groves. Armies of monkeys occupy the strategic vantage points, coolly walking up giant palm trees to look down with infinite disdain as another generation - the humans - traverses their natural habitat...
NATURALLY HISTORIC

Shama Pawar Shapiro, an artist and social activist, is part of a small but dedicated band of people who call Hampi home. To them, it is not just another historical site. To Shapiro, every rock and layer of river-born silt represents the living record of a region that is so filled with the living past; she feels it is her duty to preserve it.

“The villages around Hampi, with their dramatic sun cracked and rain carved landscape, have a natural history of three billion years,” she says. Her office is in a small and ancient village called Anegundi, inhabited since the 10th century, located along the north banks of the great Tungabhadra in Karnataka.

It is a village with an impressive past. The historic Devaraya dynasty of Vijayanagar, that dominated most of South India in the 16th century, originated in Anegundi village. Across the river, south of Anegundi, lies Hampi, the historic capital of which most of the ruins of the Vijayanagar empire can be seen today.