Durban, South Africa
The safest place to walk in Chatsworth, a suburb of
Durban, is indisputably the temple grounds. Although South
Africa is a fabulous country it does have a reputation for
being a high crime rate territory.
Having satisfied my wanderlust for the neighborhood in
past years, I have become content to just remain on the
temple grounds where you can take advantage of the paved
path surrounding this circular edifice. It may be hard to
believe but if you just keep going around and around, you
cover a distance of 10 kilometers in two hours.
Walking, however, is not my main intent for being in South
Africa. I’m really here to spend time with youths and
engage them in devotional drama for the weekend festival.
The biggest challenge I encounter is to try to make
pliable something that is rather stiff. Yes, indeed, some
of the young volunteers for acting have little experience
and are used to a rather formal approach when coming to
the temple. For this year’s requested drama, “The
Ramayana” it calls for tribal rakshasa (cannibal) scenes.
You can imagine especially for young girls that came from
fairly orthodox Hindu families when you ask them to
portray wild forest women then you can get an interesting
response. Some of the girls declined coming to further
practices because it was their anticipation to be on the
stage to look like glamorous Bollywood stars.
It became an easy task to indulge the young men in tribal
dances and of course, the local Zulu boys who have taken a
fancy to Krishna Consciousness. They’ve got rhythm and it
is incredible to work with them on it. One scene from “The
Ramayana” drama is a real tear jirker when Ram, the
prince, discovers the loss of his princess Sita through an
abduction by Ravana, the king of the raksasas. It’s
touching.
10 Km
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