Melody is a means to bhakti or complete devotion. In Vrindavan, you witness it in ways like you can never imagine it anywhere else, says Ritu Pandey
Radhe Radhe! With that name on your lips, you set foot in Vrindavan. Braj Bhoomi may well be lord Krishna’s territory but Vrindavan is strictly his beloved’s realm. You can’t enter the hallowed grounds without Radha Rani’s permission, it is said. Which necessitates her name to be your first greeting and the essence of all the memories you make during your stay here. Because with every wall, every door, home, shop, colony, enterprise bearing “Radhe Radhe”, she happens to become the single-most overwhelming identification of the town. She is also the magic keyword for seekers here. The devout seek her to find the ultimate. For she, they believe, is the melody that flows through the Blue God’s other love, the flute. What could be better than being in Vrindavan on Radhashtami, the birth anniversary of Radha. Since the day also coincides with Swami Haridas Sangeet Samaroh, it automatically throws itself up as an opportunity to explore the musical side of town.
Now having never been to the town before, I have always imagined Vrindavan as a lush forest on the banks of the Yamuna where lord Krishna and his rustic friends had a good time. You can then understand my shock when I left the Delhi-Agra Expressway to ramble into what appeared like a rapidly urbanising expanse — colourful hoardings stood in the middle of green fields announcing upcoming colonies with pious names like Brajbhoomi Enclave, Radheshyam Apartments, Haripriya Vihar. Its proximity and connectivity to Delhi and towns such as Agra has turned Vrindavan into a real estate hotspot, reducing the green cover to a few small pockets. But that hardly seems to bother anyone here. People come to Vrindavan looking for Krishna and Radha and accept them whole-heartedly in every form they feel the couple exists here — in new and old temples, in overflowing drains, on river banks, amid stray bovines on crowded roads, on realty hoardings, even in fancy shopping arcades and restaurants. You can credit a lot of this to the Blue God himself, whose presence in the Hindu mythology is such a departure from convention that the ordinariness of his life not just makes him very relatable but also lends an easy adaptability to his sacred space, allowing Vrindavan to become a kitschy mish mash of the urbane and the rustic, the spiritual and the material.
TO EACH HIS OWN
The first signs of it are evident in the local trains running between Delhi and Mathura out of which flow loud strains of bhajans to some superbly rhythmic dholak, jhanjh and manjeera. Regular passengers put their two hours of commute to good use like this. And it’s quite an experience to hear these rail minstrels if you’re driving on the road parallel to the slow-moving train. But then music has always been a way of life in Vrindavan. If 5,000 years ago it was Krishna’s melodic flute that kept everyone from his wandering cattle to the gopis rapt in attention, centuries later, it was the mystique of Swami Haridas’ classical notes that compelled the deity to make a reappearance here as Banke Bihari. Melody, here, is seen as a means to achieve Bhakti Yog or complete devotion. And in this bustling town, you witness it in ways like you can never imagine it anywhere else.
Step out any time of the day and you’re likely to come across groups of people matching their vocal chords to devotional melodies with orchestral interludes of the manjeera or some such other instrument while on the go. Parikrama is a Vrindavan tradition in which a spiritual walk is undertaken by devotees around the town, feeling the Braj raj (soil) under their feet and meditating. While many do this in solitude, for groups the meditation is all music and rhythmic dancing in trance. There is no fixed start or finish to the parikrama but one is expected to end it where they start from. The tradition may have its roots in Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, who discovered the legends of this land in 1515, wandering its dusty bylanes singing and dancing. The essence of Vrindavan is said to have been lost till then. In Nandgaon and Barsana — the villages of Krishna and Radha traced by the Bengali mystic — Raas lila (in which episodes from Krishna and Radha’s love story are played out musically) is a living tradition rather than a stage performance. Around Radhashtami, the entire community gets together to be a part of Raas episodes like Daan lila and Maan lila — the traditional face-offs between the two villages at Sankari Khor. A smaller form of this was played out at the Sri Radha Vallabh temple where devotees sprayed scented, coloured water on each other during their friendly clash and then climaxed the celebration with some superb raag seva or worship through classical music. Raag seva, that entails elaborate singing of the extremely tough Dhrupad, is part of the daily routine at some temples in Vrindavan, including the Radha Raman temple. The tradition is said to have been started by Swami Haridas, a mystic and classical musician, who set up what came to be known as the Haridasi school of mysticism that combined classical music with Bhakti Yog, one devoted to Radha. Swamiji was the teacher of Mian Tansen and Baiju Bawra, two of the greatest classical singers India has had and is credited with a huge body of Dhrupad compositions. Emperor Akbar, it is said, came to Vrindavan all the way from Delhi just to hear Swamiji sing after the latter turned down his invitation. Today, when Dhrupad is almost a dying art, it is these temples that are keeping it alive in the right spirit.
TRADITION VS MODERNITY
Vibrant marketplaces around temples often lead you to groups of two or three men or women whose sincere chants of Hare Rama Hare Krishna to dhak, iktara and manjeera blend in well with the noise around them. Samaj gaayan or congregational singing is how ordinary folks go about their spiritual pursuits. At the iskcon temple, though, this takes a rapturous form several times a day when hundreds congregate and launch into breathless chanting orchestrated to loud mridangam beats, manjeeras and jhanjh.
On Radhashtami, the mood was jovial. So devotees jumped about and danced in euphoric trance in the courtyard decorated with colourful buntings and flowers, even as many sat just taking in the spiritually charged atmosphere. Founded in 1966 by Swami Prabhupad, iskcon is the outfit that has made Krishna cool internationally. Though its dhoti-clad, choti and tilak-sporting foreign seekers of spiritual bliss have a presence the world over, in a small town like Vrindavan you’re astounded by their sheer numbers. You can’t cross a street without spotting at least two Indianised foreigners with some signage of Krishna consciousness with them.
But I had to leave these spiritual grounds for some classical stuff in the evening when the Swami Haridas Sangeet Samaroh opened with a kathak performance set to the Mukti Mantra, Om Namo Bhagwate Vasudevay, asking for complete surrender to Krishna. Bangalore-based Nirupama and Rajendra and their troupe devoted their entire repertoire to Krishna-Radha and their love exploits. While their performance was a tad modernised with colourful costumes, digitised orchestra to suit cosmopolitan viewers, Pandit Arjun Mishra’s troupe from lucknow seemed rooted to the classical style. Ustad Wasifuddin Dagar paid a rich Dhrupad tribute to Swami Haridas, as did Shubhendu and Saskia-de Haas through their jugalbandi on the sitar and the cello. Ghazal maestros Ustad Ahmed and Mohammed Hussain brought the festival to a well-deserved finale with some amazing bhajan compositions.
In its 152nd year now, the music festival is organised by the Goswamis, descendants of Swami Haridas and has seen stalwarts like Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Pt Jasraj, Ustad Bismillah Khan, Pt Hariprasad Chaurasia and Pt Ravi Shankar on its platform, solely for the high quality of its listeners. Artistes still attest to its devotional element. To now witness such a revered event amid loud speakers, fog machines and dancing lights is a bit disconcerting. You can only pray the organisers wake up before it loses its spiritual focus completely.