Gopinath

 

Gopinath  
By: John McCane

                The trip was my first to India in several years. I had missed so much the smells, sights, and tastes of a place I had come to love. I had flown in for two weddings of separate college friends in north India. Being back in this wonderful place, I was still slightly disheartened as I would not be visiting the south's deep green jungles where I had spent most of my time on previous trips. Joining a friend on a trip to the holy city of Vrindavan, the birthplace of Krishna, I hoped to at least visit some of the places of Krishna's pastimes on earth before flying to Kolkata for the second wedding of the trip. 

                The taxi car sped along the dusty highway from Delhi with my friend Arjit and I in the back seat. He had pressed the driver to be as fast as he could as we had a late start in the morning and had gotten caught in the infamous Delhi traffic, extending our driving time by several hours. His long and curly brown hair jostled across his face as he opened the window to let fresh air flow over us. In preparation for visiting this holy city, he had been chanting, his hand hidden in his bead bag, since the early morning. He smiled at me from across the seat as we began to see signs saying that we were getting closer to Mathura and Vrindavan.   


                The car sped past fields of golden flowered mustard and gigantic brick kilns that dotted the landscape. Bullock carts plodded slowly on the edges of even this major highway, and on occasion, camels could be seen pulling overladen carts of crops. This whole area would have been one massive forest during the time of Krishna though today it was hard to imagine. Small stands of low trees dotted the landscape, but the new houses and villages outnumbered the trees in number. The fields of mustard and wheat had long ago pushed the forests to the periphery. 


                Sandstone gateways appeared to mark the entrance to the "Vraja Bhumi" or the land of Krishna, and the real start to our trip. The air's feeling seemed to change as we entered the village of Vrindavan slowly and coming to the edge of the area called Raman Reti. Arjit had arranged for us to stay in a hotel run by ISKCON (The International Society for Krishna Consciousness) that sat just behind their temple. We checked in and almost ran to the room to shower off the dust of the trip and change so that we could begin our pilgrimage. The room had only a tiny mirror, so we helped each other apply the sacred marks of Vaishnavas (Urdhva Pundra) before leaving the room and first visiting the ISKCON Krishna Balaram temple. 

                A new temple constructed in the 70's by the first westerners to visit Vrindavan was a beautiful white marble edifice whose towers shot up into the sky around an open courtyard with a beautiful Tamal tree. The deities of Radha and Krishna, Krishna Balaram, and Gaura Nitai looked out on this courtyard at the devotees who came to visit them in grand splendor. The sun was already low on the horizon, so Arjit decided to surprise me and brought me to the other side of the city to the "Sri Rangaji temple," a huge south Indian temple built in the 1800s. He realized how much I missed the south, and so we both hurried inside the colossal temple tower entryway only to discover the temple was closing and the main sanctum had been closed. Disheartened yet again at the loss of a  chance for a taste of south India, we began to leave the temple. A group of the Tamilian priest's sons stopped me while noticing my Sri Vaishnavite markings. Telling us that they were on their way to Radha Ramans temple, a tiny but beloved temple dedicated to a deity of Krishna that manifested for Gopal Bhatt Goswami in the 15^th century, and that we should join them. Feeling as if someone had taken some small mercy on me, we followed along in the ever-pressing darkness.

                Through medieval streets that twisted and turned, again and again, we followed the group of boys wearing long white clothes that shimmered in the shadows. Finally, they pushed open an ancient wooden door, and we found ourselves entering into the inner part of Radha Ramans temple. The room was lit in lamp and torchlight that flickered and wavered. Standing only a foot tall, the deity gazed out on the crowd with white, upturned eyes made of shell. His black stone form stood alone though the clothes of his closest consort Radha sat next to him. The devotees in the temple were putting on a south Indian Bharatanatyam performance and singing songs in Carnatic or South Indian style. I could not help but smile, I had been so disappointed that I would not see the south on this trip, but Krishna reproduced it for me here in the north.  

                We sat for a long time, clapping and dancing in front of that incredibly merciful form of the lord. Slowly the devotees left for the night, and a flute player came to put Radha Raman to rest for the evening. Arjit and I made our way back out onto the now fully dark streets lit only by moonlight. Arjit generally knew where we were, and so we moved out of the tiny street we were on into a more extensive road that ran along the Yamuna river. The city was oddly quiet, but we could see a group of young men walking behind us and could hear them whispering to each other. Arjit pulled me off the main road, and we began tracing our way through the twisting streets in the pitch black. We could hear the monkeys scrambling above us at the tops of walls and houses as Arjit turned to me wide-eyed, "They are talking about us. I can't hear exactly what they are saying, but we shouldn't stick around to find out what they want." While not running, we walked briskly through the maze of tiny alleyways and side streets, and still, we could hear the group's muffled voices getting closer.  

                We ducked into a darkened courtyard and pushed ourselves up against the edge of one wall, trying to become one with the dappled shadows. The group of men passed through the little alleyway within just a few feet of us and moved on, seemingly having lost our trail. I looked at Arjit, "Where do we go now? I have no idea where we are." It felt like moving onward in this maze of streets at night would make us even more lost and ever likely to bump again into that group of men who had been following us. The creak of an old door filled the courtyard as a woman carrying a bright oil lamp came out onto the courtyard. With long black hair and a crimson sari, she pointed us out and beckoned us to her.

                "Welcome to the mother's temple," she said without the hint of the accent typical for this area of the country. "Come inside and see," she said with a huge smile across her face. I looked at Arjit and shrugged; it was better than aimlessly walking the streets in the dark. As we passed through the threshold, I noticed that the courtyard, having now been illuminated, was painted a bright red with a white marble floor, a Tulasi plant placed in the center of the open space. The woman glided in front of us as we followed her into a well-lit marble room. "I am the mother who cares for this temple." A wooden altar with a beautiful Krishna in black stone stood in the center with two female consorts to each side was placed at the end of the room. The charismatic woman beckoned us to the altar while one ancient-looking priest sat inside, making the last offerings of the night. "You get to see him in his nightclothes before he sleeps. We had closed the temple, but I knew you needed help, and so we invited you in." The priest came and gave us several sweets that had been offered earlier in the day. He closed the curtains on the altar, having put the deities to sleep for the evening. The woman turned to us again and said matter-of-factly that we needed to go out the door on the opposite side of the room. "You'll come out onto the main road just a few blocks from your hotel. Don't worry; you will be safe."

                She guided us to the large medieval-looking door and pulled on the ancient door ring to let us out. Opening the temple door, the quiet of the place was suddenly invaded by the main road's busy sounds, even at this time of night. Almost pushing us out of the temple, she pointed up the road and shut the door behind us. I looked at Arjit; it all happened so fast I was unsure of what had just transpired. We walked up the road together, not speaking. Our hotel was only a block up from the ancient door that the woman had pushed us through, and we slept well from our evening's adventures. I made a promise to myself that I would go back to that ancient door and revisit the woman in the morning to thank her and the temple for caring for us. I drifted off quickly, and my dreams of Krishna's pastimes with his Gopi girlfriends filled my mind.  


                I awoke and showered quickly in the morning, eager to visit as much as I could before I had to leave and to see and thank those who had cared for us last night. We checked out of our little hotel room and quickly headed down the nearby hill toward the temple we had visited yesterday evening. Vrindavan echoed with the sounds and sights of the morning; devotees walked with hands in bead bags chanting their morning prayers, food stalls, and flower stalls filled the edges of the road. The closer we got to where we thought the old door had been, the least it looked like it should. Last night the area had been filled with tightly fit buildings on ancient streets, and now, while several old houses lined the road, the majority of the area we thought the door should have been having been replaced with a neglected construction site. "This cannot be right. We only walked a block at most to our hotel last night." I looked at Arjit in confusion. He shrugged his shoulders, and we walked further down the road as we must have mismeasured the amount we walked. 


                We walked through by streets and across the main road and never found that temple or woman again. We had to leave to catch my flight to Kolkata, so I left my friend and the mystery of the missing temple. I felt like I had been shown grace and had a memorable experience I could not explain. Years later, while watching a documentary on the seven main temples of Vrindavan, I saw an ancient courtyard painted in bright red; my attention having been caught, I stared in amazement as the documentary showed the deity of Krishna in black stone with a wooden altar and two consorts on each side. The narrator for the documentary explained that this was Gopinath, the third most important temple in Vrindavan. Radha sat to his right side and Ananga Manjari, her younger sister, on the left side, I discovered. Many hundreds of years ago, Mother Jhanava, the wife of the great Gaudiya saint Nityananda Prabhu had a dream where Radha had asked her to replace the deity of Radha. After a lot of discussion with the priests, they decided to keep the older deity of Radha along with the deity given by Mother Jhanava. Upon her disappearance, Mother Jhanava came to this temple and merged with the deities, disappearing from our existence on the altar.

                I sat stunned, unable to process everything I had learned at one time. The Gopinath temple's location was very far from our hotel room, yet somehow, I was sure this is the temple we had visited. Even today, it is hard for me to believe that this ever happened, and I still try to piece it together in my mind to make some sense. Either way, I believe I was so blessed and received direct mercy from Sri Sri Radha Gopinath in Vrindavan. I have not been able to visit Vrindavan since the incident, but the second I can return, I will see Gopinath and give thanks for his kindness.