Krishna Balaram Mandir - Vrindavan

  Our first stop during the Vrindavan Parikrama, rather our starting point for the Parikrama was the Krishna Balaram Mandir.  Walking along the streets of Vrindavan is surreal! To think that the very spot my foot was touching might have once been touched by Krishna's feet was a very profound thought. While the mind was busy in these thoughts, my senses were totally tied up with sights, sounds and smell of the narrow streets. The whole town looks so festive and full of life, all the time!

  Amidst the chaos and crowds, stands the Krishna Balaram Mandir! What struck me the moment I stepped inside was how clean and organized it was! It was wonderful to see so many Indians and non Indian devotees in the premisis, so engrossed in devotion and service.  It's hard to overlook the magic of Krishna when you are here!

     The Samadhi of Shree Prabhupada, housed in this temple is peaceful and beautiful. The dieties of Radha Krishna, Balaram, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu are beautiful. As you walk through the temple, the Krishna leela paintings on the magnificent walls make you feel like you are walking back in time,

I have heard and participated in Hare Krishna Mahamantra chantings in many places, but the chanting that goes on here is different from all of them! It seems as though the Mahamantra itself is dancing to  its own chanting! Very difficult to explain this effect! The chanting goes on 24 hours a day and is a blissful experience to witness it and even more blissful to stay and participate!

Delhi To Vrindavan

At some point or the other, we have all been told this… No pain, no gain! As cliché as it may sound, I am going to say it anyway!  No pain, no gain, indeed!

Well, Krishna started his Leelas right off the bat the minute we got off  the flight at Delhi airport. Our driver who was supposed to pick us up at the airport didn’t show up! Being the only “somewhat” Hindi speaker in the group, I called up the driver after getting his phone number from the travel agent. Ever heard those riddles about how a mute person would communicate with a blind person? Well I had to draw on my prior knowledge from all of those riddles to carry on this conversation! Our first conversation laden with my south Indian Hindi and his Punjabi mixed Hindi was quite a showdown. If you ever ate pasta with a side of Tomato chutney or Chapattis with sambhar, you would sort of understand how that went!

I found out that our van was parked 3 miles away from the airport and we had to get there using local transportation! When you travel with 3 senior citizens and 2 kids, you can’t really be a backpacker! On the contrary, you pack like you are headed to the middle of a desert with no oasis! We finally made it to the van with all our luggage! How did we do that? I will leave that to your imagination!

We finally met our driver, Mr. Chatur Singh smiling ear to ear showing off his ruby reds! Well in this part of the world, the staple food is not rice or wheat as one would think, it’s paan. Most smiles don’t reveal pearly whites, they reveal ruby reds! My first impression of this whole package was not great! But one thing I noticed written on the van, gave me some cheer, especially here at Delhi! “The driver of this van respects women”

                 With all due respect to the capital of the great nation, the traffic at Delhi is painful and that’s the mildest way to describe it. As we were waiting in the endless traffic jams, I couldn’t help wondering if attaining Paramapadam would be quicker! Our Chatur ji finally lost patience and decided we would avoid most main roads and high ways. He seemed to know every short cut in this place. He duly stopped at a  Haldirams restaurant and advised us to equip ourselves with “Chatpati” candy to combat all motion sickness!  Now, there was nothing to stop us! We almost entirely traveled on side roads with a lot of potholes. With Chatur and Chatpati on our side, we took off!  Chatur, kept reassuring me , “Sir ji, Chatur aapke saath hai!”

 Krishna, What are you doing? Are you trying to give us a taste of how it was when you danced on the hoods of Kalia?