Oh India!
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I’ve been back in India for a month now, and feel I’ve just settled. Although I’ve been visiting India on a regular basis now for over thirty years, and was just here back in May, I still experience mild forms of culture shock every time I return. Each culture (East/West) is so powerfully absorbing, that spending a few months in either completely engulfs one’s being and it always takes some time to readjust to the other world. And they are like other worlds, both mysteriously cohabiting this planet together but running on very different energetic frequencies, historical backgrounds, seasonal patterns, population densities etc. etc.. The list could go on and on, East is East & West is West and all that. But as the years roll by, the cultures are definitely moving closer together despite my own perpetual culture shock syndrome. In India the pace of modernization is so rampant and upwardly mobile that it makes the West (UK) look like a Imperial Relic, floundering through the economic crisis.
My beloved Vrindavana the holy place of Krishna’s divine sports (Lilas), just three hours south of Delhi, has become a victim to this new wave of economic prosperity sweeping over India’s middle classes. Spiritual tourism has become extremely popular these days and Vrindavana has become a convenient pilgrimage destination for city dwellers wishing to escape with their families to somewhere different for the weekend. Unfortunately the infrastructure of Vrindavana is unable to cope adequately with the massive influx of Vehicles plowing into the small town. To make it even worse, work on the roads was left unfinished during the height of the popular Kartick season, thus creating even more havoc, dust, pollution and disturbance than usual.
A new bridge is also being built across the Jamuna river right next to Keshi Ghat, and none of the public seems to know who has authorized it’s construction or why it is there. Apparently there are various parties and organisations both political and non political in the Vrindavana area, that are competing with each other to implement their various agendas and blueprints for the regeneration of the area, and some seem to have more powerful connections than the others and it looks like the more questionable parties have the upper hand at present.
Let us pray to Sri Sri Radha Govinda that some sort of sincere civic sense eventually prevails and that development in the Holy Dham can move with times without completely decimating it’s remaining charm and natural beauty in the process.
Peace & Love
Mathura das
