The Gokul I didn’t go looking for

“He is just manipulative.”

“Cunning.”

“It’s not a fair fight, na?”

These are the words I used for Krishna a few years ago, after reading a few versions of the Mahabharata.

It was a time when I felt that I understood the story.

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Finally, the car stopped in front of the temple in Gokul.

Instead of going to the temple, where they would narrate the stories of Lord Krishna, I walked past the little, curious streets of Gokul.

How did it happen , actually I wasn’t not interested to enter into temple also on that day. I am in that mindset ki, he fought the unfair war.

So , I skipped the temple ,sat in a hotel opposite to temple, drank tea.

I was bored waiting for people ,so I decided to take a walk.

I slowly started walking. First, I saw little vendors selling pooja items. There were small souvenir shops. There were small shops, and there were no proper roads. It was more like walking down a mud lane.

As you pass through, you can see a very huge crowd of people gathered around.

There is nothing much happening. But if you happen to look closely, you can see that they are all holding a matka in their hands and enjoying their kulfi with butter.

It’s not a fancy restaurant or a café. It’s a home-based small vendor who makes fresh kulfi. But in Gokul, who doesn’t know that place?

Must try, even if you don’t like butter or even kulfi.

As you stand there, sipping on your kulfi, you can observe the cows around you and smell the dung and herd of cows  nearby. Somehow, it makes you feel that you time travelled and then you remember that you are in present day Gokul.

It’s not supposed to be this way…it should be commercialized and with all those steel rods and ropes. It wasn’t that way. I wouldn’t had believed it until then.

After finishing your amazing kulfi, if your curiosity kicks in, keep walking past the lanes. You will enter a small lane that narrows down even further.

There will be a place where Lord Krishna grew up during his childhood—the same house where Krishna played, the kitchen, the veranda, and the place where Yashodamma prayed to Tulsi Matha.

There are three sections of the house for tourist’s convenience. One is the kitchen and the other attached rooms, and the kitchen shelf where he used to hide as a kid. There is also a little attached room.

There are no tiles or anything fancy. It’s just mud walls, basic amenities, and the place where they used to sit and cook.

The other part is a room which is now converted into a prayer room. There will be a line. People will be singing, and this is the place where they do seva for Krishna—the little Krishna.

At least as long as I was there, all I felt was that he was just little Krishna.

He will be on the swing.

People will do seva here, one after another. It takes time.

Have patience.

Just for a moment, for yourself, can you stop for a few seconds and appreciate the beauty of the prayer room—the vibrant colours and all the beauty around?

Once you are done with seva, you are directed straight into a small passage where a Krishna idol is kept. Get the blessing, and you will exit through a gate.

This is the centre of the house.

Observe it.

Look up at the sky.

Feel it. There is some unsaid kinda calmness , content in that space.

There is one more opening. It directs you to a room where they tie coconuts or some kind of prayer offering. It’s like a ritual, and there are rules for it—how to tie it and what all to follow. I don’t have proper knowledge of it.

It directs you to one more room, rectangular and small.

The first thing you will notice is the dhoop in and around the room, and there will be one person standing/sitting there asking for money—just give some 10 or 20 rupees. You will not be bothered at all.

There is an idol in a sleeping position, with its eyes open.

If you touch it and pray to it, there is this belief that all your parents’ sins will be nullified and their lives will be extended.

Finally, you will exit the house.

Look at it one more time before leaving.

You will not feel like leaving, but you have to.

Somewhere very close to that, maybe towards the right, if you can still explore, there will be a very, very narrow passage—maybe only two people can enter at a time.

It takes a sharp left turn, and then one more left turn, more like a U-shape.

It has an entry point and an exit point connecting two different places.

Why am I speaking so much about this small, almost invisible passage?

Because this is the place where little Kanhaiya used to hide after stealing the butter that Yashodamma made.

Probably a place where he played with the Gopika’s.

Why not?

It’s definitely a cute place to hide from the crowd

Me being me, let’s stop for a second. Isn’t this the very place where his first love story began?

So, it’s a connecting space.

He used to steal from the home and enter through the entry point, hide, or, if he heard her coming, move through the exit point, which took him to a different lane.

If you traced my steps back to the entry point.

You will be standing in front of Krishna’s house.

Walking past the lane, one can experience the paintings on those walls. It should remind you of some place if you have been there before.

If not…

wait for your time.

The passages get narrower a little more.

There will be one more Shiva temple in between those lanes which feels powerful.

If you keep walking, you can feel the smell of the dung, and somehow, the air itself feels different. Take a moment to look at those paintings, the sky and the door of those homes. I must say there are beautiful, more than that , it feels innocent, genuine.

At this point , I don’t know where I am going.

I don’t remember the route back. We will worry about returning later on.

I keep walking, and finally, there comes a junction.

I am a bit confused, but somewhere, a part of me wants to move forward.

So, I went ahead.

There are people around, busy moving.

I joined them at this point.

Slowly, and surprisingly, I ended up at a ghat.

I don’t remember the name of the ghat.

There are people and boats, and the vibrancy of those boats is beyond beautiful.

There is a small temple there, but there is no Krishna idol.

For the people of Gokul, he is not a supreme power.

To them…

he is their family member.

The more I spoke to people, the more I felt it.

They respect him.

They worship him.

To them, he will always be “Hamara Kanhayya.”

This particular place holds significant importance in history, I mean the temple on the ghat. Everything has history but right now we are talking about this beautiful , cute temple on the banks of ghat.

This is one place where little Krishna used to come and sit, and also one of the prominent places among the 84 places associated with Lord Krishna.

It has more importance, but I couldn’t catch the people’s accent properly.

One thing is clear: little Krishna used to sit there, and when he achieved his full powers and became powerful. Then, this was the first place where he came.

This is considered sacred, and they believe they can speak here openly.

This doesn’t feel like a temple.

It’s more like a mud home.

Where you enter, talk, and leave.

If you exit and come back to the ghat, you can see the calmness on people’s faces.

The ghat itself is beautiful, with beautiful arches and vibrant colours.

Sit.

Relax. Close your eyes, feel the breeze.

The air itself is something else there.

You can come to the main point asking for the temple.

This place is important—actually, more important in terms of Krishna’s life—because even with this amount of modernisation, this place still feels like it exists in the 1960s.

They have basic amenities, but they are not too upgraded.

And maybe if they were, we would have lost that connection.

It is kept the way it is.

Maybe, who knows, that Kanha still walks through those places even today.

Walking in those lanes, back to the car, there were two primary things I felt.

First, I needed more time to understand this place.

Second, I really wanted to skip other places or things to do, just to feel it.

I didn’t have the time.

But if you happen to go, remember to spare proper time for this place.

Exploring little Krishna’s life is one thing.

But tracing my steps back, I didn’t felt happy or sad, there is unspoken calmness.

It felt to me that he also lived a life as normal as a kid.

Walked through these very streets.

Played with friends and cows.

Teased his mother.

“Isn’t it humanly?”

Right now, standing here today, from a place of modernisation, he is the Supreme God in the place I am living.

But he was also born and brought up and raised like other kids.

He acquired power—or perhaps he naturally had it.

So does people acquire knowledge and skills.

From someone who steals butter and teases his mom, how tough must life have been to make him take the decision of “wiping out his relatives or an entire dynasty in the war?”

Somewhere in his life, he had his own challenges , much tougher one’s that one can see or understand it.

That was the first time I cried while walking away from a place.

Not a temple.

Not death.

Just a place.

Remembering my own life experiences, it felt that maybe situations made him

“Cunning” as required.

“Manipulative” as needed.

“Strategist” as a leader.

Understanding this took me 33 years of my life,

It took me one major life turn to take up an post grad course and then naturally I was guided there, by force..

Given a choice I would never wanted to visit there.

It took a whole different chapter in my life to understand that he is also a person(with emotions).

Destiny played a role and this post grad served it’s purpose.

Somewhere in those lanes, I lost my ego.

I never spoke about this particular place with anyone until today.

This is one time when I felt that skipping a famous temple made me more content.

I would have enjoyed the temple and its architecture, but I would have not seen what I am supposed to see it.

I wouldn’t have understood Gokul like this.

Finally, I feel like penning it down.

It took a lot out of me to write this particular piece—almost with tears, bundled up with emotions.

Maybe some are born with something the world can never quite explain.Maybe it reveals itself, slowly, through the life you live.