More meetings at the crossroads

Since I just wrote about how you meet interesting people... Just before leaving Montreal, I made contact with an old friend from my teenage years--the first one, in fact, since I returned to Canada in 1985. She wrote me a few days ago to tell me that a friend of hers from Montreal was coming to Rishikesh, and so we set up a meeting.

This woman, Maila Shanks, first came to India in 1996 and lived in Vrindavan for 7 or 8 years, staying at the Neem Karoli Baba ashram on the Parikrama Marg, not too far from Ananda Dham, where many Narayan Maharaj disciples stay. She learned Brijbhasha, mostly by ear, and did a lot of seva and things. Then a few years ago she got married to a Kashmiri who owns a hotel on the beach in Goa, Meems Arabian Sea. Their season in Goa has finished and they are in Rishikesh for a bit of a spiritual refresher before she goes to Canada for the first visit in a couple of years.

Maila (Neem Baba ki Maya) came by yesterday and we had an interesting talk about life in India and "dealing with the goondas," as she calls it. Try to get anything done in India, whether in Goa, Kashmir or Vrindavan, she said, and sooner or later you are going to have to deal with the "Tony Soprano types." She knows Michael Duffy who used to play an important role in "Friends of Vrindavan," but burned out and left some time back. "The trouble with cleaning up in India," she said, somewhat facetiously I hope, "is that people take garbage to be a sign of prosperity. The bigger the pile of plastic bags and bottles they can burn outside their house, the more they can claim that they are doing well. Look at me! I can afford to drink water out of plastic bottles!"

That's the second hotel owner from Goa that I have met in the past little while. Makes you wonder. Radhika Priya, who as you may gather from the previous post is always looking for opportunities to set up a program, and Maila were quite happy to make each other's acquaintance.

Radhe Radhe!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

O Mind! Meditate on Radha's Breasts

Image
Flickr As I go through the dāna-līlā episode of Chandi Das's Śrī Kṛṣṇa Kīrtana , there are many songs in which Krishna describes Radha's beauty, and a regular feature of that includes descriptions of her breasts. In fact, breasts are a subject that is prominent in all Sanskrit poetry, and is even standard in prayers to goddesses. There does not seem to have been any inhibition in talking about breasts in the ancient Indian culture, even though I dare say, there is more of one in the modern society, in spite of Bollywood. There is, however, an apparent restriction in talking about genitals, male or female, in the so-called erotic poetry of India--Sanskrit or vernacular--even when lovemaking etc., is described. Such descriptions would automatically fall into some other genre. In Radha and Krishna descriptions, I cannot recall ever seeing or hearing a passage that mentioned genitals or overt sexual activity. It is nearly always spoken of somewhat euphemistically. I remember ...
Read more

Swami Vishwananda's Bhakti Marga and Parampara

Image
It has been a little strange here at Jiva these past few days. Swami Vishwananda is here with his troupe of disciples, of whom there are a goodly number, perhaps 80 or so. When I arrived in Vrindavan already a couple of weeks back, almost the first thing I noticed at the corner of Mathura Road and the Parikrama Marg was a big billboard with Swami Vishwananda’s charming smile and glowing tilak staring charismatically out at the world and announcing that he would be giving darshan on March 8 at the Jiva Institute. Below him, in a smaller frame was Satyanarayana Dasa Babaji, who besides being his host will be speaking on the Bhāgavatam at the darshan event. This is not the first time that Vishwananda and his group have been at Jiva. Satyanarayana Dasaji calls Vishwananda a friend, and indeed the relations between the two are very cordial. Vishwananda's group is mostly young and enthusiastic, predominantly European (German and points east), who are very enthusiastic about...
Read more

Erotic sculptures on Jagannath temple

Image
This was written on the basis of Sundarananda Vidyavinode's Sri Kshetra and intended for a devotee audience, as it was done on a commission by disciples of Bhakti Promode Puri Maharaj. It has never been published. I decided to put this on line since there was a discussion on Facebook on the subject and I thought I would revisit what I wrote here nearly twenty years ago. This is from chapter ten on temple renovations. Please note that I have removed the images that I had found of some of the sculptures. I have been blocked from posting links to this blog on Facebook for some infringement of its "community standards". The only thing I can think of on this blog that might have offended some prudish person in cyberspace is this. I do not have much hope for redemption as it has been over six months since my ban is "under review" and there has been no sign of action. Needless to say, I find this heavy-handed action on the part of Facebook dangerously authoritar...
Read more