THE SPIRITUALITY CIRCUS

In the last posting titled “My Mumbai Visit”, I had cited our experiences during our visit to the ‘happening city’ of Mumbai including that of the day when we had taken for Mumbai Darshan. I had mentioned how disappointed we were with the Mumbai darshan. The last part of it was visiting the Hare Krishna Mission temple @ Juhu/Versova. A small experience therein, I thought it worthy to be mentioned here. Honestly, I do not know if this temple really qualifies to be a darshan point. There are so many historic spots that the travel agency could have taken us to. Anyway, we were there at their mercy. 

 It was indeed very crowded at the temple. We were queuing up to see the Deities. The main one was Krishna & Radha together and there were so many other sub-deities. That day, in the evening, there was this special prayer and pooja connected with Narsingh avatar of Vishnu. Having nothing else to do (we were given more than an hour for the temple visit) and being pious people, we decided to sit through the prayer for sometime. There was the ‘homkund’ and some of the Hare Krishna sanyasins were sitting around that. At another side, there was this main prayer singer with his harmonium surrounded by sub-singers (again, Hare Krishna sanyasins). And there were some more of them hovering around, the very look of them showed that they were senior sanyasins. They had a managerial look about them. 

The prayer was about to start. Then there were special dignitaries who were the invited guests of the mission. I saw about thirty of them, all decked in costly silk cloths, both men and women, sweating profusely. Behind these VIPs, were their ‘chelas’ (ADCs) with a requesting look of “Saheb / Sahiba is here, please get him/her to be seated properly please”. 

And then I saw the politics of the body language. There were these ‘yajman’s of the Pooja (the senior managerial swamis) who were giving scant attention to the VIPs. ‘Who is bigger, you or me?’ was in their eyes. The junior swamis were trying to accommodate the VIPs but were embarrassed because the approval of the senior swamis did not come about. The VIPs were sweating and standing awkwardly not knowing what to do. The VIP chelas were getting terribly pale on their face because their bosses were not getting accommodated well. In between, the main prayer singer swami started singing the bhajans and the sub singers and other disciples started their accompaniment of that. There was this Pooja swami looking very angry because his chanting was not heard by any. Around the whole premise were so many people with high decibel noise around them. 

Suddenly one heard the main prayer singer swami announcing that a missing boy was found, requesting his parents to come and take him home. There was this small child with the security guards wailing loudly for his mother. It was indeed chaotic. It was the last place where one could feel the ‘bhakti’. All of it looked like a circus with lots of clowns around, doing things in their own way, without any synergy. Being from a background of very conservative and orthodox temples and rituals, I was really amused to see this expression of ‘bhakti’ by a movement that is very well known for their stereotype culture. 

My impression of the organizational skills of the Hare Krishna mission seriously took a dent. “Let us get out of this circus”, I told my family and we vacated the scene immediately. What I saw was an over-expression of the materialistic definition of spirituality. Definitely this is not what our saints meant through the Vedas and the Upanishads that they created, to make the man a spiritual being. What is practiced by the cults is exactly opposite of what was preached by the Rishis. Any thinking person will be shocked to see the ostentatious, materialistic expression of spirituality that we see in places such as above. I worry that these things only will degenerate man into lower beings.