Free Publicity

So, I’m guessing that if I’ve posted this second new writing, I’ve posted the new photos from Holi… anyhow, life has been fun here. To my surprise one night, as I came home, I thought I heard familiar voices in our awesome guest house, the Welcome Center, I peaked to the table where the voices were coming from, and seeing no one familiar, I shrugged my shoulders and said to my friend, “Nope, I guess no familiar voices…” Before I could walk away, the New York accent that seemed so familiar to me said, “Hey, how are you?” Whether or not I’d met them, good ole Americans are always familiar in India.

Regardless, the guys were very amiable, and we got to talking. By and by Soami Das (the owner of the guest house) sat down with us and we had some good conversations. I admit, it was largely an “us guys” vibe, but I was more than okay with it, as I set in to doodle on my cast (will send a picture later).

The other guys who were visiting the Welcome Center started to drop a bit of information about Darren (one of the two guys) being a director, so I asked what films he’d done. Anyhow, long story not-so-short, it was Darren Aronofsky, director of “Pi” and “Requiem for a Dream”—two really great movies. (i.e. my response was a sobered: “Those are damned good movies.”) Anyway, Alan Ball still takes my heart completely, but Darren Aronofsky, I would stretch to say, is one of the best directors out there right now. Free publicity: He said this fall’s movie, his third big one, is his best yet, and is called “The Fountain”—Who wants to go see it with me??? In one moment of our conversation when Soami Das mentioned how Brad Pitt was just in Rishikesh, Darren basically said how it was all BS. I asked, “You don’t believe it?” “Well, I texted him and he said he was in France.” I couldn’t tell if he was pulling my leg. Daniel, his friend, a hair stylist for musicians and actors and such, laughed and said, “If Brad Pitt was in Rishikesh, he didn’t know it.” And I kind of scratched my head, feeling, like I have so many times on this trip, that the world was a bit smaller than I ever had imagined.

So that was one fun experience… I’ve been taking classes with a cool guy named Palla at the Welcome Center, and he teaches something called Body Love Stretching, which is sort of like a cousin of Osteopathy… yesterday especially, I literally rolled out of bed and into class… can’t beat that, and classes are about $2-3 for two hours, which sure beats Osteopathy in the States: $100 / hour, easily.

Hanging out with my buddy Atma, the merchant I know in town who has been able to organize so much sanity into my otherwise insane ventures, he asked kind of out of the blue if I wanted to go to Vrindavan (Brindaban, any variation therein) the place where Krishna grew up. Throwing my all to spontaneity, I said I’d love to, not really trusting he was 100% for real… none the less, within 24 hours, we were in Vrindavan…

William Dalrymple wrote one of the opening chapters of Age of Kali on the city, calling it the City of Widows, since all the Vaishnava (Krishna devotees) widows head to that city when their husbands die. In Hindu society, a widow loses all her status and wealth when her husband dies, left with nothing but the gold she wore when she was married and the bangles on her wrists. These women, often falling from the top of society to the bottom, solemnly take Krishna as their formless lover and their only comfort in life. In the Krishna temples of Vrindavan, many of these widows are “employed”—they chant songs to Krishna for 8-hour shifts in return for a handful of rice. Many of the temple pundits are said to be corrupt, running the poorly maintained temples simply as a means to take the donations, and doing nothing to aid these widows.

I had read all this before coming to Vrindavan, so, to see how amazingly normal the city seemed was actually quite a shock. Knowing that the city was teeming with social problems, yet looking around, it seemed like all the other cities of India I’ve come to know. Walking up to one of Radha and Krishna’s gardens, there was a strip of 20 or 30 beggars outside, pleeing for alms. Going the jungled maze of side streets to another garden we passed several elderly women who were malnourished and had shaven heads. These were the only signs of the poverty of Vrindavan that seemed to depend upon the generosity of pilgrims, the only reminder that Vrindavan was, to some extent, known for this.

Thinking about it now, I may be desensitized to beggars who focus on pilgrims because I’ve been in Rishikesh for a month and the pot-smoking saddhus and destitute widows live similarly here, begging from the international tourists who come for Rishikesh’s ashrams and yoga centers.

Protected, somewhat, by my upper class friend and guide, we ran through Krishna’s gardens on a special holiday in Vrindavan (which was very tiring crutching my way through and trying to keep up) and saw a couple more temples before checking in. One garden had a bedroom that was used by Radha and Krishna—every night (I was unclear whether this happened every night or just on the specific day of the year that people celebrated while we were there) the pundits would leave the room neatly arranged and lock up the gardens. Yet, every morning, Radha and Krishna would make love on the bed, leaving it a terrible mess. The windows that face this garden must all be boarded so that no one sees all of this, and locals swear that the monkeys aren’t the perpetrators, since they all leave the gardens and go to sleep. It is said that people who have hidden in the garden to try to catch a glimpse of these miracles are struck deaf or dumb or blind after that night. Regardless, it was a kind of cool place to feel, “Oh, I’m here, at this spot.”

In the morning we made it out to the new and pretty famous ISKCON / Hare Krishna temple of Vrindavan, and I got some surprisingly great shopping done before hopping back in the car and rolling back to Rishikesh. Don’t tell my Mom, but I bought some cow dung incense.