A visit to Krishna's hometown

While in Vrindavan, we stayed at the MVT Ashram, which happens to be located just behind the town’s massive ISKCON temple. It was surprisingly nice, with hotel rooms on one side of the complex (the room itself was clean, comfortable, and included a kitchenette) and apartments on the other for long-term residents. Unusually for India, it also had gardens with green, manicured lawns and lush landscaping. It was sequestered off the main road, so that you couldn’t hear the street noise or even have to look at the gutters filled with free-flowing sewage just a few steps outside the door. It was a little oasis at which you could really forget that you were in India. Considering that the majority of people staying at MVT were Westerners (mostly Americans and eastern Europeans), perhaps that was the point.

Vrindavan is the town in which the god Krishna grew up in. He was a mischievous child who stole butter and played pranks on people, then grew into a young adult who danced with gopis (cow girls) and stole their clothes while they bathed. There are sites in Vrindavan that you can visit, such as Nitivan, a grove of sacred trees that, every night, are still believed to turn into gopis who dance with Lord Krishna. It is overrun with macaques, who are said to have been Krishna’s childhood friends.

ISKCON, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, is a new age movement based in Vaishnava Hindu traditions and which views Krishna as “the Supreme Personality of Godhead.” It was founded in New York in 1966 and has since spread around the world, though it has the biggest presence in eastern Europe and India. It is considered by its followers to be a “consciousness” rather than a religion. ISKCON devotees are often referred to as Hare Krishnas, and, as I’ve seen at home, are known to preach Krishna consciousness by walking down the street, wearing orange, beating drums, and singing devotional mantras.

There were a number of interesting things I observed during our two days at the ashram. The first was the way the mostly Western devotees dressed. The men wore simple T-shirts or kurtas, and all wore dhotis, which is similar to a sarong – I never saw a single man who wore regular trousers. The women wore printed cotton saris (as opposed to the embellished polyester saris that I often saw non-ISKCON Indian women wearing), or a combination of a long skirt, choli, and shawl used to wrap around the torso, sari-style (what I called a “cheating sari”). The women also sometimes wore elaborate necklaces and earrings. The children were especially interesting to me, as they were also dressed in what I came to call the ISKCON-style. One little girl wore a Krishna T-shirt, long skirt, and a scarf pinned to her hair as a head covering.

The other thing was the food available at the ashram’s dining hall. Hare Krishnas follow a strict “pure vegetarian” diet, which, besides no meat, means no eggs, onions, or garlic. Almost all of their food, though, was Western – more specifically, American. You could order a couple of Indian dishes, like a samosa, curried vegetables (called the “daily vegetable”), or dal. But the rest were foods I’d be most likely to find at home: lasagna, spaghetti, salads, even a burrito, which was actually a very large chappati wrapped around beans, lettuce, salsa, and cheese. Surprisingly, the majority of the food was done really well (except for the burrito, actually, which was a challenge to eat and, of course, not really like a burrito at all).

The stars of the show were the pizzas, cooked to order in the wood-burning stove. In a country where pizza usually features a thick, bread-like crust and plasticky processed cheese, I was quite impressed by these thin-crust creations with the kinds of toppings I’d find at home, like olives, pineapple, and tomatoes. The chocolate cake, which was moist despite being egg-less, took second prize.

Despite their move toward dressing more “Indian,” the food seemed to allow the devotees to hold on to the familiar foods of the West. Hidden away from the outside world, they could come to India and not actually have to really deal with the “annoyances” of the country (touts, pollution, squat toilets, spicy Indian food) if they stayed at MVT.

Also, as opposed to most people here in India, the devotees were very quiet. In the corridors of our various hotels, the guests and the staff always seem to be shouting at each other about something, and there are always people in the street, shouting to sell their wares. Not so at MVT. The people there chatted quietly, meditated, or chanted the Hare Krishna mantra to themselves. It was very peaceful and very different from my experience with the rest of India.

I became extremely fascinated by the followers of ISKCON during my short stay at MVT. In the future, I hope to learn more about ISKCON and its devotees, through talking to them and also through reading histories and critiques of the movement. I’m even thinking about putting together a research project about Hare Krishnas, as I’m particularly interested in the identity development of children who grow up in this group. I wonder, too, if I’ll be able to find delicious Hare Krishna food at any of ISKCON temples in the Bay Area – or, at least, be able to buy tasty ayurvedic Gokul tea.