Festivals
The residents of Vrindavan lived for their festivals! Every week there was something different to celebrate. With so many Gods, it was no wonder. And with every God came 20,000 gurus who all celebrated a birthday or disappearance day. There were seasonal festivals, festivals for cows, festivals for springtime, festivals for weddings, and so many more you could only wonder what was coming next. In the rainy season, a ‘Green Festival’ was held when everyone wears green and all the deities in town are covered with bowers of green leaves and have green clothing, as well. Who needed a television? One night I experienced something different. I’m not sure if this festival was celebrated all over India or just in different areas, but the event was two-fold.
The Chandan Yatra Festival and the Akshay Tritiya Festival both happened on the same day. Akshay Tritiya, according to the Vedas, is the day when the universe is created. It is also the day the Ganges descended to earth. It is reputed that this is a good time astrologically to start any new venture. If you started a project or a journey or a new job on this day, your venture, project or job would be successful. So it was said.
The Chandan Yatra Festival was the main event in Vrindavan. The idea behind the festival was that, marking the beginning of the extremely hot season, the deity in the temple is covered from head to toe in sandalwood paste. Sandalwood paste, mixed with saffron and camphor cooled the body, and people used it in India for thousands years, for exactly that reason. Later it became more of a worshipful gesture rather than something practical. For a solid month, an area in our temple was roped off where at least a dozen people were grinding sandalwood on flat stones until there was enough paste to cover eight deities that were at least five feet in height and numerous 10 inch deities. I only saw this in pictures, so I thought I would check it out. In the morning I ran into my friend who said, “Oh yes, what we do first is visit our own temple and then travel around Vrindavan to visit as many of the other main temples as possible.” “Cool,” I said. “Count me in.” But in Vrindavan, you never really knew what would happen when you left the comfort of your home. I was pleasantly surprised on that occasion.
We first saw our deities, gloriously drenched in sandalwood with decorations like stripes and flowers and jewels all made of the paste. The temple was crowded as expected because we were somewhat of a novelty here, being the minority, you know, basically pasty white with some Africans and some Chinese. We were also the home temple of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami who spread Krishna Consciousness all over the world and everyone wanted to see his temple. So, we were used to crowds. And it was definitely crowded. You literally needed to push your way through hundreds of Indians to get a view of the altar. But it was worth it. The imagery was stunning! And the flower decorations were dripping off the canopies and forming curtains as backdrops and enclosures. Smart phones were popping off pictures from every visitor. We made our way through the crowd and outside to hire an auto rickshaw for a ride down to the center of town where all the old deities (and I mean 500 years old) were located.
We checked out one temple, then another and found ourselves in the middle of the downtown district. (This was a village, remember, dirt streets, monkeys, cow shit and all.) The streets were barely wide enough to get one car through and there were no cars that night. A hundred thousand people or more were crowding the streets, Indians, Europeans, Russians, Americans, all mixed together like a thick pudding moving from one temple to the next. If you didn’t flow with the crowd, you’d be pushed aside or maybe even trampled on or tripped over. The people were mad with joy, if you could possibly imagine. They were so happy they were dancing and twirling around in circles and raising their arms with shouts of exhilaration. This pudding of people were literally being stirred by volunteers as they guided us here and there.
On top of the genuine joy of the people seeing their beloved deities covered in sandalwood, the locals were offering service to the pilgrims. As we walked down the street, groups of people were offering us flavored drinks and sweet pastries. Local vendors put large fans in front of their shops to cool us off as we paraded by. One vendor set up his fan with scented water so that the fan blew a fine perfumed mist on us and you can bet we stopped to take that in. Then another local held a bowl of sandalwood paste mixed with saffron and camphor and with a small flower was decorating the heads of everyone who stopped to absorb the cool feeling of the heavenly mixture. When the aromatic paste hit my forehead, it not only cooled me instantly, but lifted my spirits so high I felt like I reached an ethereal plane of existence! What could I say? Another old man stood outside of the Radha Damodar temple with a large hand fan and was furiously waving it to cool the pilgrims as they left on their journey. I turned to my friend and said, “These people are mad!” and she knew what I meant. The love was overflowing, and why not? This was, after all, the home of Bhakti, the yoga of devotion. The next big festival would be the Swing Festival when the small Radha and Krishna deities would be brought off the altar and people would stand in line to take their turn swinging their beloved Lords. Sweet and beautiful! Unbelievable devotion!
Then, there was the Boat Festival where the entire center of the temple area is flooded with water and covered with rose petals as the small Radha Krishna deities are pushed through the cool water in their own special boat for all their devotees to see up close.
It would take a whole book to tell about all the wonderful celebrations in the holy land of Vrindavan, the land of devotion and protection of the cows. I was happy to be living in Vrindavan, but felt my devotion was lacking when I saw these mad Indians running to see their favorite deities and giving a portion of their income to each and every deity they visited. I thought to myself I would never have a chance to see my lord because I did not have enough desire. Anyway . . . the days passed and I was becoming accustomed to the madness and love flowing throughout the entire town.