It was around that time that I came to know about a new Hare Krishna temple in the town. It was on Ridge Park, a road parallel to our Lake Boulevard but a mile or so further east. During summer breaks when I would have some time I would walk there. I was not then familiar with the bus routes in that small college town. And quite possibly no bus really ran along Ridge Park. The first time I went there, walking east along College Avenue, I was surprised by the change of locality. Opposite the university campus and down College Avenue, there were lines of shops and boutiques. Besides the numerous fast food restaurants that catered to the students, there were several hamburger joints, a pasta place, the Chinese Chow Mein, the Italian Pizzeria and the Spicy Chicken Wings. There were also the stationary stores, a record shop, a movie theatre, two dance studios and several bars. Right beyond where the campus ended on Sky Boulevard, the line of stores suddenly came to a halt. And the houses on the other side were old and dilapidated. Signs of poverty became all too apparent. The inhabitants mostly looked African Americans. And the few white families that I noticed seemed to be different than the ones I had encountered before. To me, then, they did not quite look like the American Americans, or to put it another way, the white people I associated with being Americans. You know what I mean?
It appeared a little different world there and I did not quite feel very secure. But the folks looked unmindful of my presence. May be they had seen people like me a lot. Around that rugged neighborhood, I took a left turn on Ridge Park. As I walked north, the township appeared to be slowly changing to rural settings. Houses there were not the typical row houses of my neighborhood, but rather scattered and uneven. And then, on the right, there was a small sign proclaiming the existence of the Hare-Krishna temple. It did not look like a temple to me at all. It was just another old house in that quiet semi-rural neighborhood. I saw a young white girl in a Bengali handloom sari carrying a brass pitcher on her waist. “My goodness,” I had to swallow my surprise. I was astounded by the picture. She was crossing the street to the house. Her sari was in the traditional Bengali atpoure (home) style. It was like any young girl in a Bengali village would carry a pitcher. Only it was happening in the middle of America! The girl’s long braided hair was bouncing sideways on the rose colored blouse on her back, a picture any calendar maker in Kolkata would die to print. Coming from Bengal, it was a breathtaking scene to me. The girl smiled at my awkward gaze, realizing my surprise. And that must not have been her first experience from other young visitors before me.
The house was old and unpretentious. There were untended bushes around and a tall maple tree created a long shadow on the one story structure. The disciples have converted the private house into a temple. There were shoes and sandals of various forms and sizes scattered on and around the bi-level stairs, indicating visitors and devotees inside. Bouquet of incense wafting out through the door gave the feel of a place of worship. Entering the house, on your left, the living room had been converted to the visitors’ gallery. And loose mats were spread all over the floor. Dhoti and kurta clad white devotees with shaved heads and rasakali on their foreheads hurried around. They had long pony tails and each of them carried a white pouch containing the japa-mala across his shoulder. Beyond the foyer, in a room left to the hallway, are the idols of Radha and Krishna. Covered in garlands, the idols had the usual ornaments that we have known all along. And in the next room was kept a large picture of the Swamiji, the gentleman who travelled to America and started the Hare Krishna movement.
The partition between the family room and the kitchen of the house had been removed and the joined area had been converted to a small hall, where the devotees, after offerings to the deities, would chant Hare Krishna and dance. They would play the familiar drums and cymbals. Being from India, I felt comfortable in the atmosphere. And I would sit in one corner of the hall, on the floor, cross legged. I would feel strains in my knees, for the habit of sitting cross legged was getting infrequent after coming to this country. The smell of vegetarian foods being cooked with clarified butter in a nearby structure would waft inside. That was also one of the attractions of the trip to the temple. The backyard of the house was huge with a big garden and a large work shop on one side. It was like a barn, the kind you would see in a farmer’s ranch. And I wondered if the previous owner was a farmer. The devotees had converted the barn into a workshop, where they painted innumerable paintings of Radha and Krishna and hung them all along the walls. Few old ladies, all clad in white saris and with sandalwood paste on their foreheads, worked silently there. They reminded me of the old ladies back in the Bengal villages who go to listen kirtan and sit with their heads covered with saris.
I became friendly with one of the devotees, Pancha Pandava Dasa, who would frequently stop by and talk with the visitors. The first day I got his name, I remember laughing silently behind him for the unusual name that he had been given. I came to know more about Pandava a year or so later in a different situation. The head of the temple was another white gentleman, in front of whom Pandava Dasa would prostate in reverence and would touch his feet, the way we young ones do to our elders back in India. He was Pandava’s diksha guru, the teacher who had initiated him in this faith. First I could not understand his pronunciation of diksha guru, but since I was aware of the word, I taught him how to pronounce it in the original way. He smiled and thanked me for my teaching and invited me to come to the temple more often. He mentioned that he was grateful for finding his guru and that Krishna-naam has changed his life. At that time, though, I did not have any clue of his personal life and how that had been changed.
Before that time, the only diksha guru that I ever knew was Mukunda Goswami, the old gentleman whom we used to call dadu. Dadu is a common term in India for addressing grandfather or men of that age. It was from Mr. Goswami that several families from our old village took their diksha. This was when we were still living in East Bengal and I was very young. Mukunda Goswami used to live in a village called Kathalpur, a place few villages east of the Vairav river, which flows past my maternal grand parents’ house. At that age, I was not aware of the concept of religions. And I did not know that he was a Vaishnav. I learned it when I was grown up and our family had fled to Hindusthan, the way we used to call India then. Once I visited Goswami dadu’s home. He used to live in a small mud built house at the outskirts of the village. It had a thatched roof and the four walls made of splintered bamboos. The house had a small verandah in front as well. It had a door made from splintered bamboo. Without hinges, the door was tied to a frame on one side and we had to raise the other side a bit and push it open, something, being too young, I could not do and I remember for the frustration I had.
The kitchen was another smaller structure next to the main one. And in another corner there was a small raised bed, on which was planted a Tulsi plant. The leaves of this plant smells like that of the Italian Basil, that we now use for making pasta sauce in America. An small earthen pot was suspended above the tulsi plant, and through a tiny hole under the earthen pot there were a few strings of dried grass called kush. Every morning, after his bath from a nearby pond, he would fill the earthen pot with water as part of his ritual. The water would drip through the hole and along the dried grass and down on the tulsi plant. He used to apply sandal wood paste on his forehead and had a necklace of wooden beads. I knew that he did not have a family and Mukunda-dadu was never married.
But when we went to his house, a middle aged lady was in the house. She did not have signs of a married lady. Her cloth was saffron colored, like that of Mukunda-dadu. And she cooked for us and mentioned many times to my aunt, a distant relation, how difficult it had been to run the family with Mukunda-dadu’s meager income. When we came home and my aunt mentioned about the lady to my mother I could see fickle smiles on their faces, something they tried to hide from me. Aunty addressed her as Gosain’s bostomi. Bostomi is not a wife, but a consort, may be a partner. And there was a subtle shade of unsavory reputation surrounding that relationship. Because of that early childhood memory, I remained interested about Pandava Dasa’s diksha-guru.
The Hare-Krishna temple had became sort of a meeting place for the Indian students around. In one such trip I met Mr. Sen, a middle aged Bengali gentleman, who was a new-comer in the town from India then and was attending the university for a short course. Knowing that he was new in America, I invited him for dinner at my place once. He was married and his family was at Burdawan back in India. Through conversation he mentioned that his wife had learned how to cook good Bengali foods. It sounded surprising to me. But then he mentioned that his wife was a Punjabi girl. And he showed me her picture. She was very pretty and I immediately felt the contrast between the looks between the husband and wife. Mr. Sen noticed my reaction and told me the story of his marriage. He mentioned that they got married in an unusual situation.
He was a college student then and was looking forward to finish his degree and obtaining a job and helping his family. It was their last year in the college and during winter he, along with his other college friends, was invited to a marriage ceremony. The bride was a classmate named Sukhi, the daughter of a local Punjabi merchant. Sukhi’s father arranged her marriage with a Punjabi groom from Delhi. It was a joyous ceremony attended by family friends from far and near. And all of Sukhi’s college and school friends were invited as well. But before the ceremony was complete, the groom’s family walked out of the house. They were not satisfied with the dowry that was promised and something Sukhi’s father could not arrange at the last moment. He had already borrowed a lot of money for the marriage. And the groom’s family left the house with the groom with them. According to local customs it was very inauspicious for the bride. If the marriage was not completed that night, then no body would marry her in the future.
There was a hue and cry in the family. Sukhi was crying and her mother fainted. Everyone was looking for a substitute groom and then all the college friends asked Mr. Sen if he would help. Though he was not employed and had no earning and did not know how he would support a wife and that his own family was not aware of any of this, he agreed to marry her to rescue her from the tragic situation. In that night, at the last moment of the ceremony, he married Sukhi. He mentioned that they went through a lot of hardship, as Mr. Sen’s own family was not well of. But Sukhi made the family to stand up on their own and brought respect from everyone in the locality. When I heard his marriage story, I was touched by its sheer sublimity. It was like a movie story. Only this one was not from a movie. And I felt a deep respect for Mr. Sen that night. He provided his address and requested me to visit them when I would go to India next. Though I had promised him that I would, I have not been able to meet them thus far.
It was also in this temple, where I went before a Rath Jatra or the pulling of the chariot festival in one August that I came in touch with another story of our expatriate existence. There were lots of visitors that day and the celebration was in full swing. I was enticed by the sad face of a young man, sitting alone in one corner of the hall, demure and teary eyed. I did not expect a man of our age would show weakness in public, at least that’s how I imagined it. And it certainly did not feel like that the love of God, Krishna-prem, has brought him to tears. He must had been in great pain, I imagined. And on close look it appeared that I have seen him in the campus sometimes ago. Suddenly it hit me. It was Kumar, the student I met briefly in a pizza place one evening. And he would have been but another normal acquaintance of mine had not the salacious love story of his that I was told one day afterwards. But that day, in that temple, lost in the joyous rumblings of the festive gathering around, I thought I could see a little more of Kumar. There must had been more to what others might have ever seen or heard about the spicy love story that percolated in the community.