As the slamming of drums swells in volume, I try my best to push through the crowd. I make my way toward the stage, unsure of myself while an audience with a Woodstock-size fervor sways back and forth moaning a chant straight out of the psychedelic 60’s.
A Time for Celebration
I’m at Sri Sri Radha Kalachandji Mandir – Dallas’s only Hare Krishna temple and home to the restaurant Kalachandji’s since 1986. That this festival commemorates the birth of the faith’s main deity Krishna means little to me as I watch grown men blow conch shells while the rest of the group dances.
On the morning of March 26, I didn’t expect that I would be huddled between masses of grinning monks before supper. However I wasn’t surprised, pulling into Gurley Avenue – where the temple stands tall among a suburb of lower income homes – to find throngs of white people in traditional Indian saris making their way to Kalachandji’s with ear-to-ear grins on their faces, like they’d just seen every member of The Grateful Dead at the same time.
Against the warnings of my peers in the past few weeks, I step out of the car and into the temple. At this point, I’ve talked with Nityananda Chandra – the temple’s press contact – but I’m still foggy on the specifics because I couldn’t pronounce half the words on the temple’s website.
Abhishek
As I make my way to Chandra’s office in the back of the temple, I wonder if I’m going to be taken aside at any point and asked politely to drink the ceremonial Kool-Aid.
Seated at his desk clicking through Facebook, Chandra looks more like a vice principal than a monk. Who exactly was I expecting to find seated behind Chandra’s desk, Krishna himself? Seeing a deity would have been a bit too much for a Tuesday, even if it was the day of the Abhishek festival.