March 18th: day 3 at the ashram

Day 3 at the ashram. Today we went to Chandi's farm and....cleaned up trash!!! Chandi lives in a huge red sandstone house with lots of guard dogs and more construction workers than furniture. In the one furnished room we saw, was a monkey in a carrier who had just had his arm amputated after sticking his finger in an electrical socket at the ashram and getting electrocuted. All the walls of the house are glass. We were quickly hurried out of the house and riven to the farm, without getting the opportunity to meet Chandi. We asked when we got there if we could help with the harvest and they said firmly, no, and just to pick up trash, so we did that, even though there wasn't much trash to be collected. We had been told the farm was next to a bird sanctuary, and while we were there we saw 5 egrets, so I guess that's what they were talking about. Around noon, it got too hot so we came back to the ashram. Later that night we went to a "concert" in a temple. The concert consisted of lots of people, women on one side, men on the other, sitting cross-legged around 3 men singing and playing instruments. They sang about 7 renditions of the "hare krishna" chant while we were there. The melodies changed each time, but the words stayed the same. Everyone sang and clapped and prayed to the deities that were on display. The deities looked like the means for a puppet show. A red velvet curtain would open to a stage which gets lit up and everyone runs over towards the deities to pray. I really expected music to start and the deities dolls to jump up and start telling a story.

After the concert we went to a restaurant that served western food. Most of the hare krishna devotees are westerners who make their pilgrimage to Vrindavan. It actually became more interesting to me once I learned more about Vridnavan, and it being the place where the religion started and where krishna was born. One woman we met compared it to people making their pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It made me a little more understanding of how intense everyone's devotion was, as this really was the mecca of krishna, rather than just being a cult town.