Hindu Voice UK, August 2008

I was a kid when my family went on a pilgrimage to all the holy sites across India. It was mainly for my grandfather…he had never been able to go on a pilgrimage, and he seemed quite happy that his son was now taking him. I don’t remember much of it though…I was too young.

The other week some extended family came over and they wanted to visit a Kali temple. Now we were told (incorrectly) that there are no Kali temples in London, the closest and in fact the only one in the UK was in Wales. Wales…gosh that far… the only thing I can think of when I think of Wales is Catherine Jenkins and sheep… and sometimes Rugby. And the Puja apparently only happened at early hours of the morning. But if it was Wales we had to go to see Mother Kali, then it was Wales we had to go. With that in mind we decided to hire a coach for fifteen, drive through the night and make the pilgrimage to Wales.

Things didn’t quite work out quite as planned. The idea was that the coach leaves London at twelve midnight, we make it to the temple for the early morning Puja at six, stick around till afternoon, and then back by evening so I can go to work for my evening shift.

Well needless to say we didn’t leave on time; the baby kept crying the whole way, and the DVD player in the coach didn’t work, but I won’t dwell on that. And it turns out the coach could only do a maximum of 60 miles per hour; apparently there are speed regulations when lugging three generations of humans on the highway (I personally think the driver was just making that up because he was too scared to drive faster). And the seats, by Mother Kali, they were the tiniest, most uncomfortable seats anyone has had to sit down on!

So anyways, un-rested and un-entertained we got to the temple late, and even after we got there it wasn’t quite as simple as taking your shoes off and walking in as it wasn’t just one temple; it was a temple complex over a vast area with the Kali or Mahalakshmi Temple situated high up on a hill worth a twenty minute hike. So some of my cousins and I (and also our uncle who feels young at heart) decided to go up the hill and see what the situation is, and thereafter report back to everyone waiting at the bottom.

For some reason some of us decided to run up the whole hill, I think maybe to show-off our fitness level to the others who weren’t running - not a good idea if you haven’t slept the night! By the time we got to the main temple, I had a splitting headache. With my head throbbing we walked into the hall and I could hear the Puja taking place in the main temple. But before I could step in, I was stopped by someone wearing a big rudraksha mala and what looked like a long brown, almost Franciscan monk robe; I could only assume he was one of the holy men. He asked me if I had been vegetarian for three days. I didn’t want to lie in a temple so I told him that I hadn’t, hoping that being truthful would get me through. But no dice, I wasn’t let in. The holy man told me I could watch the Puja from the outside on the tele... ON THE TELE! I drove through the whole night to watch the Puja on the tele! Seeing my plight all my other cousins just lied and got in, while I stood outside staring at the tele.

The Puja finished five minutes after we got there. We were walking down the hill with long faces and decided not to tell the others that they missed it, for fear of disheartening them. We were gonna put it more positively, that there were other Pujas throughout the day we could attend.

As we were all standing there, looking dejected, one of the holy men came up to us and said that apparently there was another Kali Puja later, in the evening. “In the evening? I have to go to work then,” was my first reaction. “Aah screw work… I’m gonna quit in a week anyways,” another voice within me said. In the meantime there was a bathroom with hot water, where we could freshen up, we were told.

Hot water…just the mention of it was enough to cheer us up. So that’s what we did, we went to the toilet, we brushed our teeth and we had hot showers, with soap and shampoo. And by the time we were all freshened up, it was time for the Puja at the Ranganathan (Sri Vishnu) Temple.

Well for starters, this was a temple like no other that I at least had seen or remember seeing. It was like an indoor-outdoor temple in the middle of a lake. The murtis of all the deities were organised in what I thought was an astronomical order. The worshippers could stand at the edges and the holy man would walk up to the middle with the incense and everything. And the holy man was even fitted with a mic so that we could hear the mantras. It was a brilliant puja, I tell you. Even the bhajans sung after the Puja sounded like cool Beatles songs. One of my relatives pointed out (I didn’t actually notice it) that apparently as the aarti was done around the Murti in the middle of the lake, all the fishes also swam around her and as soon as the puja was done, they all went away. How cool is that. And the Prasad they gave, it was some sweet rice stuff, was also nothing like I had ever tasted.

After the Puja, we went to the sitting area and squatted there to gather our thoughts. I gathered my thoughts by completely conking out, right in the middle of the hall, at my table, with everybody still talking (very loudly if I might add) about the Puja they just saw. By the time I woke up, it was afternoon and time for the Puja at the Murrugan temple. This was a different temple – in the sense that it was slightly more traditional, but no less impressive. And the Puja itself was no less impressive either. As it was afternoon, there were a lot more worshippers as well.

After the Puja, there was lunch – which had been prepared by the people at the temple for everybody. The food was something special. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was till I actually ate that food. Some of us were asked to help out with the serving of the food and the cleaning afterwards.

After lunch we decided to hike around the place and have a look around. The temple complex apparently housed deer, elephants, cows, all sorts of animals – they were all part of the life at the temple. The branches and twigs were apparently used for the hot water and other energy needs for the temple complex. We asked one of the people at the temple who managed this whole place and he said “the Great Mother does”.

My younger cousin saw the sign at the entrance to the complex where it said “Community of All Religions” and asked if it was Hindu temple or something else. I said to him that the holy men here worshipped Hindu Gods, with Hindu mantras, in a Hindu manner so it made perfect sense to call it the Community of all religions as Hinduism didn’t distinguish between people and was welcoming and all embracing of people born in other faiths.

So after our sight seeing (there were signs all over the place by the way reminding visitors that this was a place of worship and not a tourist location), it was finally time for the Kali Puja. It had taken us half an hour to get up the hill earlier in the morning, but we decided to make our way up at least an hour early. We were taking no chances this time. On the being ‘vegetarian for three day’ question, we decide to all lie and get it. We figured if the greatest Kali devotee Sri Ramakrishna Pamanhanse could be a non-vegetarian, Mother Kali would have no problem with us. Besides, we were Bengali-Asssamese Hindus; none of our forefathers, from the whole of our region (except the practising Brahmins), had ever been vegetarian. With that in mind we stepped in.

As soon as we stepped in, we could feel the energy of Mother Kali. The Murti was such a powerful one, you couldn’t even look at Her eyes and when you did, you were mesmerised. It’s been several weeks since then, I can still see the image. And the Puja was the most exhilarating one yet. I’m not going to say much about it as I am kind of at a loss for words here. Suffice it to say we all came out with great sense of satisfaction. By the way, as I was coming out of the temple one of the holy men from earlier gave me the look which said, “Didn’t you say you weren't vegetarian for three days.” I had decided that if anybody confronted me I would I would say that my English wasn’t very good and that I didn’t understand what I was being asked earlier in the morning. Anyway, nobody asked and I didn’t have to lie.

As we were coming down the hill and making our way back to the coach (our driver had also slept for a couple of hours now and that was encouraging) we couldn’t help but think (I know I couldn’t) that the whole day had somehow been planned by the Goddess. We were in no state to go to a Puja in the morning. We were tired, we were stale and we wanted to go to the toilet more than anything. It’s as if She was saying “Go down, clean up, clear your heads and when you are ready, come back later and see me. Besides, you can’t just drive up here, see me and then piss-off without being part of this whole natural world now, can you?” And we were glad our pilgrimage, to Wales, turned out the adventure that it did despite the hiccups in the beginning and maybe even because of them.

And before I finish, I‘ll just mention that apparently no one at work really minded that I didn’t show up. I hadn’t even called in sick because the phones didn’t have any reception. But the fact that the phones had no reception only helped to get in touch with our own selves all the more easier.

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