With Love, In Mathura

Mathura Visit- 3/2/2015

Untimely rains in India have always played havoc with people’s life especially a farmer’s life. In the midst of sprawling malls and supermarkets, the core of rural India has not yet undergone much change. Still, the life, love and leisure of a farmer are quite similar to what Prem Chand said almost a century ago in Godaan. I am travelling to Mathura on a typical March day when winters and summers are making love to each other and for the last few days it has been raining cats and dogs. During my journey, I see vast wheat fields with crops destroyed by untimely rains. There are farmers with sullen faces and sheer hopelessness. One of my co-passenger, Vishwanath Singh is a young boy who is travelling to Mumbai to get his driver’s permit renewed. He says that he hails from Ayodhya district of Uttar Pradesh, where his Thakur family owns 80 to 90 bighas of land. There is no dearth of water and natural resources but due to government apathy, primitive methods and lack of technological innovations agriculture in his region has become a most unattractive profession. He comes from a family of landlords whose finances ruined because of decline in agriculture, and as result he started driving a rickshaw in Mumbai at the age 16. He complains about the menace of untimely rains and the doom which this is going to bring for farmers. For him, the only pleasure now lies in occasional walks on Juhu chaupati(sea beach) but he still misses his life spent on the banks of Saryu river watching Ramleelas (dramatic narration of Ramayana) and spending lazy afternoons in the green fields of sugarcane. But he knows that he can never go back to his village and life has taken an irreversible march towards a restless urbanization.

Finally, I have reached and in the entire journey the ticket checker did not ask me for the ticket which is not just surprising but quite delightful if you are living on a low budget in city like Delhi. It’s unusual for the weather to stay cold at this time of the year otherwise it generally becomes quite difficult to travel in a general compartment in Indian trains at this time of the year.

I am greeted with a melee of pilgrims from Gujarat. They are mostly dressed up in very colourful attires and the males are generally quite effete with distinct patterns of holy sandalwood smear marks on their forehead. A mark on a Hindu’s forehead (Tilak) is said to keep one’s mind calm, cool and composed as the people who regularly meditate are said to have their aagyachakra (pineal gland) very warm and, in a hyper-energetic state. The families are here to visit Lord Krishna as their, most important religious ritual.

I am taken by an old ramshackle rickshaw to the square outside the main temple. I have decided to take a short walk in the main bazaar and as I walk on the rain-soaked dirty roads with my half drenched clothes I feel some kind of time travel which could have easily gone unnoticed. But, it’s like gradual passage into the subtle silence of past and the innermost recesses of one’s inner core where even the atheist of the highest order would feel the most natural instinct of connecting with the cosmos. And, I am feeling those little and sublime breaths just like a small ant crawling on your skin, marking a smooth and deeply aware beginning of a soothing spiritual journey.

I don’t know why I am not getting frustrated with the dirt, congestion on the road, traffic, small peddlers ready to pound on you and squeeze all your money, at the earliest chance they would get. I feel I am just harmonizing with the cool mystic breeze around smelling of sandal. In this effortless journey of harmonization, I am having a refreshing cup of ginger tea, with a setting sun right in front of me as if playing the mystic flute of Krishna.

I am now in the Aarti chanting of Lord Krishna, where hordes of people are swarming the place to get one glimpse of Krishna’s statue, which I must say evokes very powerful emotions and kind of sends you into a soothing meditative trance.  Now, I am walking again on the wet and dirty pavements to reach the birth place of Krishna. On my way, I meet an old saint who seems to be a Krishna devotee as he putting a characteristic sandalwood paste on his forehead and wearing a light coloured saffron robe.  He looks very divine in his silvery-white beard, fine white and clear complexion and mystic sparkle in his eyes.  Along with him, his sweet daughter with yellow complexion and saffron robe normally worn by Krishna devotees, was smiling with the most pious and pristine smile as if divinity descended in those two eyes.

Initially, I thought of them as rag tag beggars but one glance into those eyes assured me of a soothing presence. Something strange happened and I found myself drawn into the spell of a soothing trance. Radha was singing a melodious devotional song “Mhari Preet Nibhajo” with her ‘tuntuna’ which to me appeared like a medieval prototype of Guitar. The voice had so much dedication, an unfathomable spirit of surrender with essence of love which transcended human consciousness and I found myself drowning in a bottomless pit of faith, love and timelessness. It seemed that my fast-paced world of hurry, mobility, turbulence, desire for power, money and prestige had come to a sudden standstill as if there is no destination to reach, no destiny to chase you, a deep thought less sleep and I found myself losing the sense of being into those mystic twinkling eyes and the tear-laden mesmerizing voice. 

What is happening to me? I fell like a freely floating in the domain of effortlessness. I vaguely remember that something strangely left my body and just flew like a bird with the mesmerizing voice into those twinkling eyes and I saw old man emitting a radiant smile of some kind of enlightenment through his silvery white beard, in those dark, rain-soaked alleys of Mathura. The world inside the eyes of Radha was a journey into the world of consciousness or rather ‘Bhav’ as some yogis put it. It felt as if she was my true timeless companion who had come to remind me of my true call under some divine orders.  I was just mumbling Radha------radha ---radha  and my head was spinning as if someone had given me an opium shot, and I heard, babuji, oo radharani ke mandir  jaoge ka (Sir, will you got to Radha rani’s temple). I looked around a found a thick dark-skinned pan-chewing Rishshaw puller and I asked where is Radha and the Baba. He replied,”Mathura me to bahutai baba ghoomte rahe sahib and Radha rani ke mandar chalo to hum le chale abhi”.  

I did not understand what had happened but certainly craved for meeting her once again. I saw my watch which showed 8:15. I rushed towards the station in a hurry to catch the train. I slept with the thoughts and remembrances of the same voice and eyes .

“Mhari preet nibhajo”…………..mhari preet nibahjo………mhari preet nibahjo………….radha… you are here. I was so passionately looking for you. Where had you gone? Take me with you. Babuji, I am always within you………….your secret…hidden, romantic,  mystic, spiritual  and the finest, the most subtle one. Close your eyes and look into your forehead, I shall see you there every day. I am you, since the beginning and into the eternity. We have been in romance for countless years and. Go and see your Baa, sometimes I sing for her.