Parikrama Path – Sands of a Time Past?
The parikrama path that haloes Vrindavan is being destroyed by a government’s misplaced project. Begun bluntly last year, the project not only caused many old ashrams along the path to have their boundaries suddenly and brutally invaded, but rare trees were cut down, and the path itself began to get wholesale covered by several layers of invasive, purpose defeating concrete.
It may be argued that parikrama, as a subjective concept, can never be destroyed – parikrama, pointedly, is an act of devotion. So, pointedly, that’s precisely the point: The concept of parikrama itself was marked for destruction by the state administration when the state decided to replace the actual concept by ordering the path be made into a tourist traffic route only (and unplanned tourism at that).
In the unique tradition of Vrindavan, parikrama always meant to walk around the sacred Vrindavan by foot, feeling the Braj raja, the soil of the Dham under one’s feet and meditating on its chintamani characteristic. And meditating also in the unique event taking place with each step; the meeting of this seemingly world of matter with the world of transcendence through the element of the natural environment. The trees then, the flowing Yamuna waters nearby, the birds, the pure air, the calm and quite, all would have its related transcendental meaning and its intrinsic connectedness. The Braja raj meant spiritual soil, and touching and honoring it meant spiritual achievement for the walker.
That has all been overridden by a claim to material progress. The decision was, obviously, made without consulting the due raj, the devoted spirit of Vrindavan through its traditional frequenters and keepers!
Since last year the portion of the parikrama road that has already been paved over is a speedway where mostly mindless rental drivers rush tensely through so to get to an equally mindless destination. For actual pilgrims, to walk that portion has become often a life risking undertaking.
Pilgrims’ concerns certainly was forced to switch from the much more fitting meditation on the sands under their feet, to surviving the absurdly loud honking and the near misses of the intense and dangerous traffic zipping by.
The portions of the path that are still under construction, then, ironically are a sort of soothing break for the pilgrims – here at least there is some peace and quiet, and freedom from the ever present cars. Soon however, these portions too will be turned into a wide road for heavy traffic. Here, the machines are now intensely at work digging deeply the Braj raj, turning it up in high mounds beyond the dreams of the most devoted holy dust collecting afficionados.
Indeed, if ever there was a time to save some dust from the parikrama path, for one’s altar, kavacha, or to gift loved ones, that time is now. Soon the path will be paved in its entirety – the sacred sands only a tale of the past.
I hadn’t walked the entire circuit since a while. Yesterday, ekadasi, I took the long walk, photographing along here and there. It is obvious that Vrindavan is changing from a slow paced madhurya enticing village to just unflattering outskirts of Mathura city. Or worse, changing from a spiritual destination like no other to a lousy shot at being like Agra.
The sweetness of the old Vrindavan is more and more conspicuous by its absence. At some point where some rare village flavor still lingers, with its piquet bamboo woven fence and a little patch of green beyond, and where lots of birds could be heard, I stopped and asked a bhakta passing by if he could hear the birds singing – did he know the name of that type of bird? He said, “This is what we call in Hindi ‘gauraiya’, but they are not in all Vrindavan anymore, only where there are trees, and the trees of course,” he added, “are all being cut down.”
Little prints of Radha’s name along the walls on the parikrama road are obviously there perilously. At the portion of the Parikrama road by the Tatia Sthan area, where paving has been completed for a while now, someone in charge obviously thought that “beautifying” the path required painting all the buildings, structures, and any existing physical fixture along the path in a Pepto Bismol sickening hue.
I saw wires, old vines, and even an old sari tied to a pipe on a wall, painted over pink. Any and all discrimination as to what is actually beautiful, or at least beautiful from the point of few of the spontaneous, organic expressions of the pilgrims treading this path since ever – their path – is being disrespected and gradually destroyed.
Someone recently commented in relation to the neglect of the sacred in India by the very Hindus, paraphrasing, ‘We used to complain about the encroaching of Islam’s values on what’s sacred to us. Now we need to start complaining about our own destruction of what’s sacred to us.’
These are changing times no doubt. And difficult times as well because the change inflicted on Vrindavan should not have happened here.
The virtual concretization of Vrindavan should have been prevented because it goes directly against the natural softness of it spiritual, fluid nature. To reverse these trends will require that we, lovers of Vrindavan, find that softness, perhaps for the first time, in our own in-village, in-the-family dealings. And then give it back to the environment and to the world soon. Very soon, hopefully.
http://www.news.vrindavantoday.org/2011/02/parikrama-path-sands-of-a-time-past/
Comments
feeling very sad, once when a local prince was riding the horse fast , a devotee felt deep anguish for the vrindavan soil when hooves of the horse stirred the soil. he stopped him boldly , the local prince seeing the devotion towards the soil fell at the devotee s feet and took him as a guru and he himself became a great devotee,i will refer some books to mention the name of the devotees
hare krishna