praying to Lord Krishna and Srimati Radharani for Their mercy in composing anything worthwhile. . .
This Vrindavan place is WILD. Monkeys everywhere, trash everywhere, dirt everywhere, rickshaws and motor rickshaws everywhere, putt-putting insane amounts of carbon monoxide into the already thickly smoky, dusty air.
Vrindavan is recognized, by those in the know, as the place of Krishna’s early activities on Earth. Krishna is recognized, by those in the know, as the Absolute Truth, One Without a Second, the Supreme Being, a.k.a. God.
What a place to hide out. I mean, we generally think of the Supreme Person (if we think of Him at all) as majestic, big, shining, opulent, brilliant, and spectacularly clean. We might (if our imaginations ever worked themselves in this direction) imagine a place full of gems, blue skies, jeweled lanes, sparklingly clean waterways, impeccably maintained gardens, nicely dressed inhabitants, all kept in pristine condition 365, 24/7.
So what a manifestation of Krishna’s sense of humor (and perhaps modesty) to have as his hometown the kind of place I recently found myself in again, after a nineteen-year absence.
I remembered the smoky smell from cow dung fires, the sandy lanes, the intrepid bicycle rickshaws weaving their way through the narrow, dusty marketplaces. I remembered the monkeys hanging out on the ramparts of every building, looking for the prime opportunity of stealing something, anything, from the hands (or head) of the unwary visitor.
in the intervening time since my last visit, much has changed—on the level of purely mundane vision. Shops have sprung up across the street from the Krishna Balarama Mandir and Prabhupada’s Samadhi—the Vrindavan headquarters of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness—where there once were only trees and a couple of bamboo-framed tea stalls on a country road. Motor vehicles were everywhere, competing with loads of foot traffic, cow traffic, water buffalo traffic, and now tour bus traffic. There were no traffic lights or directions of any kind. it was everyone for himself, and inconceivable to my suburban upbringing, body parts and blood were not constantly flying every which way. The laws of nature were clearly different here.
As our taxi approached the village of Vrindavan, after an eye-popping, smoke-choked mad taxi ride from the Delhi airport—where we began to awaken from our American dream of tidy, smooth, wide highways—my wife asked our taxi driver to stop so we could get out and offer respects to this holy town. I had been intermittently napping and chanting, holding on to my beads for dear life while our driver, Gopal, oblivious to the shock I was feeling as he narrowly missed slamming into every size and shape of vehicle and living being traveling the Delhi-Mathura Road.
He pulled to an abrupt stop and announced “Vrindavan!.” not recognizing where I was, but nonetheless terrified enough and dazed from international travel, I hesitatingly opened my door and stepped out onto the dusty, broken street in front of a similarly dusty and broken tea and pan shop, offering fully prostrated obeisances.
“Dandavat! Dandavat!” Shouted the inhabitants of the shop, as I began to brush off the dirt and straw from my forehead and clothes (Translation: “Look, someone’s falling down in front of our shop just like a stick”).
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