Sunday, March 20th, 2011

A Day of Colour

Ahmedabad, India

It's another day of celebration in India. "When isn't it?" You may ask.

Holi is a day of color when people smear each other with powdered colors or colored powders. It commemorates the greatness of Rama and the biggest supporter of displaying this is young Krishna who celebrates in the form of teasing His friends, both boys and girls in the fun-making of covering them with rich colored dyes. They reciprocate of course.

The crowds at the temple, our place of accommodation, were huge, as they were the previous day. When you are a monk, and particularly a swami, there are demands made for giving attention, some of which are planned and some that are spontaneous.

"Please come to my Gita group, Maharaja, and tell them about japa meditation," asked one group leader. I complied. That talk, plus one lengthy one in the morning, a dramatic reading of Chaitanya's ecstasies in the evening, a home program and a meeting with our group of young acting mendicants, was all tempered by the morning's trek. It is important to have some time to yourself.

To give a different spin on the Sunday program each member of our group was called on to give a three minute talk about their personal spiritual evolution to the big crowd. The guys, mostly in their teens, "broke ice" talking to a sizable group of people. Our senior group member, Doug, who is 67 and a silver award winner for the Canadian tae-kwan-do championship, also spoke about his introduction to Krishna Consciousness.

All of the group had a remarkable time in Ahmedabad despite the fact that half of us (myself included) discovered our shoes stolen when left outside the temple. It's always a bitter-sweet sentiment that hits when such things happen. Someone out there is teasing is. Agents of our providence I should think. Or perhaps do we look at the Ultimate-in-Charge who's testing us?

8 KM