In cities and metropolises, despite millions of inhabitants sharing one place, sometimes each of them experiences solitude. This city solitude can be very intense, and it clutches at your soul despite you doing all the things you have come to do in such a city. A melancholy seeps into your bones like a chill.
The St. Martins building on Charing Cross Road was home to the fine art studios. This is the heart of London, Soho—the edge of this area is Piccadilly Circus, and you might know London by photos of the big advertising screens here, even if you have not set foot in it.
It was one of those über-gray London winter days with relentless drizzle that makes you not even notice it, merging time and space into one seeming endlessness. I was on the 8th floor of the building, in my little glass nest studio, working away on my wall as ever. Fay and Henrik, with whom I shared the studio, were not around; their absence seemed woven into the endless grayness, so I had spent hours, days alone. The never properly mourned loss of my father crept into my loneliness, and I felt alone to tears.
I became so upset that I could not stop the tears or the profound sorrow that overtook me. The studio was made of two walls of windows and a corner of wall where we hung our artworks. Suddenly, drumming started to vibrate through the glass—happy, exotic drumming that was unexpected, making me unsure for a moment if I was imagining it. But the drumming continued.
I felt an urge to abandon the art-making that was going nowhere and run all the way down the staircase to the street to hunt down the sound. The sound disappeared once I got to the street, making me question myself and feel foolish. Then it reemerged in pieces, as if teasing me. A rhythm of something exotic, something alive, warm, and inviting, led me to follow the sound like Alice follows the rabbit, through the gush of multinational strangers pouring out of tube stations, seeping from buses, osmosing through the street, and taking photos of the Londonness.
When I finally arrived at the sound on Oxford Street, I recognized Hare Krishnas. I had seen them in Split and Birmingham and was a bit freaked out about their wearing socks out in the middle of winter everywhere. But this time I decided to follow them wherever they might go. I wanted to hear more of their music. The tears had dried up by now. The sun broke through the clouds at the end of Oxford Street. The music stopped, and the group of Hare Krishnas started walking around the corner. I kept on following them to an unusually decorated door off Soho Square. They all somehow dispersed, leaving me confused about what to do, so I went in.
I was just curious and lost, but as it happens, the man at the door was from Split. He gave me some unusually tasting sweets called "Prashad" and talked to me, with no expectations whatsoever, without any kind of religious sales talk. His name was Tripad. The most unusual thing for me was finding out he was a Croati and Hare Krishna. Tripad told me I could come anytime again.
The Radha Krishna Temple on Soho Square is just around the corner from my college, so I started to visit. At times, I came often. Most of all, I enjoyed the mantra in the afternoon, which started as chants of the Hare Krishna mantra and then, depending on who was guiding the prayer, turned into a dance with its own rules of movement to the rhythm of the words and very simple repetitive steps. The mantra that would start off as slow-paced would speed up and sometimes become euphoric, then be brought back down to slowness and calm before ending. In this mantra, I would become out of breath, dance, and become happy. It was a language of prayer that included dance and music, which suited my personality and needs better than somberly sitting in a church on a wooden bench and enduring a service my mind would drift away from in boredom. In the Hare Krishna mantra, I was engaged.
All my life, I had fought with my own mother because I hated eating red meat since I was born. My entire teenage life, I had been vegetarian during each Lent period because that was the only time my mother accepted to stop fighting me to eat meat.
Hare Krishnas did not eat meat. And so there, once again, I stopped too. I bought a book of recipes and stopped eating meat altogether. I went to a few Sanskrit lessons. The Bhagavad Gita I found inaccessible to understand, although I had read all the other little books around it. One by one, I took my college friends to this temple to show them this hidden gem so close that most people never see it, because I was delighted by it. The always welcoming, familiar warmth of the temple had its doors open to me, and my solitude loosened its hold.
One particular time in the Temple Radha Krishna, I arrived and underwent the usual preparation. I greeted my friend at the temple reception, went up the stairs, removed my shoes, entered the temple, bowed to the sculpture of the guru God and mother goddess, poured a little of the sweetened blessed yogurt onto my palms, drank it, and then took my mat and sat down on the right side of the temple room where the females sit. The music began with the harmonium, and as devotees entered, they picked the instruments they wanted—drums, cymbals.
The music at first was sacred and deep, but as time went by, it developed, and the mantra, guided, changed harmony and tempo. The music soon became so full of energy that mats were removed and dancing ensued. There are very specific steps that are danced in rhythm to the Hare Rama mantra, but when these steps are speeded up in great joy, the whole body is involved. The tempo sped up, the instruments now a percussion orchestra played to incredible inspiration and jamming of energy, and a sort of happiness and euphoria could be felt in the room. Standing on my feet and dancing, I suddenly felt myself floating above the room, above myself and the other people still dancing, and as if I was rising above, I saw the roof of the temple, the London roofs of the buildings around us, Soho Square, and Oxford Street, and up higher I went. I saw Britain, and the planet Earth below me, as if I was watching from space, myself in the vast dark space. I had enough time to feel and see all well, and yet soon I whooshed back into my own body, which was still dancing to the set steps.
No comments:
Post a Comment