An Indian Boy Growing up in America Encounters Ma Kali

During Durga Puja, one Indian mother handed us a story her 14-year-old boy wrote about his first trip to Kali Mandir.  It is well written and a truly inspiring story.  It’s tough to grow up in America when you have been born into an Indian family.  Kids grow up with American values yet their parents expect them to fully embrace Indian culture even though these kids had never lived in India and never experienced the holy land’s mystic glory.  The author of this story never mentions Ma, but it’s quite clear that he got darshan and a very special blessing from Sri Ma Dakshineswari Kali.

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Essay by Advaith Rai

“Do we have to go?”

Sitting in the back seat of the car was my 10-year-old self, shivering against the gentle chill inside.  It was October; the first signs of winter shone across the cloudy sky.  The house was only a few yards away, yet the biting cold outside made me reluctant to leave the little shred of warmth I had made for myself.

            “Come on, we’re already here, let’s go,” my mother said sternly from the seat in front of me.  I still wasn’t ready to move, but the look on her face stopped me from arguing any further.

            “Yeah, let’s go!” my little sister said impatiently, echoing her mother.  My sister loves to be like her mother.  Sometimes, exasperatingly so.

            “Alright, I’m coming,” I mumbled.  Freezing wind rushed into the car as I opened the door and stepped out.  It just looks like an ordinary house from the outside, its white frame and maroon tiles weathered from years of being close to the California coast.

            At first glance, it looks no different from the dozen or so other houses lining the rest of the block.  The more perceptive might hear the gentle sound of chimes emanating from inside the house – or notice the two brass murtis standing on either side of the door as if guarding the house from evil spirits.  No shoes are allowed in the temple.  I pulled off each shoe, placing them near a dozen or so shoes of various sizes and gingerly stood barefoot on the icy floor.

            We stepped past the doorway and into the warm glow inside.  The simplicity of the temple surprised me.  I was accustomed to the standard Hindu temple, large expanses of area with miniature stone idols of deities scattered throughout the building and a dozen bored-looking priests reciting mantras they’ve obviously said hundreds of times before.

            Instead, the temple appeared to have been built in an actual house.  If it weren’t for the small shrine on the far end of the room and the three white priests sitting next to it with a small group gathered around them, I might have thought this was just someone’s house.

            Wait…white priests?

            I looked again at the people near the shrine.  Sure enough, all of the priests seemed to be completely Caucasian.   I looked to my parents, and saw they were as astounded as I was.

            It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with this.  Religion is universal after all.  But, after so many years of going to temples and seeing only Indians, it was difficult to imagine that anyone else would take an interest in Hinduism.

            Yet there they were, singing, praying, laughing, blue eyes sparkling in the soft candle light.  When I looked back to my family, I saw that they were kneeling on the rug with the rest of the group.  I sat down beside them and looked to the people in front.

            One of them, a tall man in traditional clothing, started playing the tabla – a small drum with skins on each side.  He was completely bald except for a small tuft of long, brown hair in the back, Brahmin style.  Not the best fashion choice, but I admire his loyalty to the faith.  Another man, this one slightly muscular, with golden-brown dreadlocks, started singing.

            As the pooja progressed, I felt a change in the atmosphere.  It was almost as if someone had switched on a light in a dark room that I had been lost in my entire life.  I guess that’s why they call it “Enlightenment.”  I didn’t feel like a Hindu, an Indian, a human being or anything else I had previously used to distinguish myself from others.  I was only a single part of an expansive universe, a tiny droplet in an endless ocean working harmoniously with others to create a single wave.  Despite the impunity of my actual power, I didn’t feel my existence was small or unimportant.  I may be a single part, but I am an essential part like every other single piece without whom everything would have collapsed into a state of chaos.

            From the moment we are born, human beings spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out why we were born in the first place.  Most of us look at jobs and success and think that if we do these things well enough, we might finally accomplish our goal and be indefinitely content.  This is why so many people strive for wealth, fame and power as if racing to the end of a rainbow – each one wanting to be the first reach the pot of gold.  Yet, just like the rainbow, these are illusions.  The more you run towards it, the more you realize that the rainbow isn’t getting any closer, and the gold you were so desperately seeing had been with you the entire time in a small pocket you had never bothered to check properly.

            I felt a strange relaxing feeling come over me as if I had finally come home after a long time.  For the first time, I could say that I was completely happy.  I hadn’t gotten something expensive or had won anything, but I didn’t feel like I needed any of those things.  I simply felt glad to be alive and sitting there.

            They didn’t talk much about gods of myths.  Instead, they spoke about us human beings and the life we had.  For once, my religion was easy for me to understand.  Hinduism wasn’t about myth and magic as I had thought.  You didn’t need to believe in a God to be Hindu.  The essence of Hinduism is love.  Love is the most important force in the universe.  Without it, everything is meaningless.  You have to love everything, no matter how seemingly unimportant, as you might love God.  After all, if you believe everything was created by God, then shouldn’t everything and everyone have a little bit of God in them, too?

            It wasn’t what they had said that had particularly affected me.  Something about the room itself was different.  It was as if the entire room had suddenly become a giant magnet of positive energy. 

            My parents slowly got up and stood, and I knew that it’s time to leave.  I pulled myself together and forced my numb legs to stand.  I looked at my mother and, by the smile on her face, I could tell that she felt the same way I did.

            I took one last look at the temple and stepped outside.  The wind was still chilly when we left but, for some reason, the night air seemed warm to me as I walked back to the car.

Disaster Strikes Pilgrims in the Himalayas

Flash floods killed at least 1000 people in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand and stranded 90,000 people.  Many of the stranded and dead were on a pilgrimage known as Char Dham Yatra, which takes Hindus to four of the holiest shrines in Uttarakhand between May and November.  Worst affected is the Kedarnath temple and the Kedarnath valley with entire villages wiped out all the way down to Rudraprayag.  Here are two first-hand accounts by survivors taken from articles printed in the New York Times:

”Four of my friends, who are priests, are missing,” said Naresh Kukreti, a priest at the Kedarnath temple. “We don’t know whether they are alive or dead.”  After the ritual evening prayer on Sunday, June 16, he had been filled with unease. “I had a strange feeling something terrible was about to happen. Suddenly a deafening noise shook everything,” he said. “It felt like an earthquake.”

Kukreti and about 800 pilgrims sought refuge in Lord Shiva’s stone temple, which was built in the eighth century 11,759 feet above sea level.  “Within minutes, a river of black water and big stones followed us into the temple.”  The temple survived the assault, but when the water receded after a cold night of prayer, Kukreti found himself standing among piles of dead pilgrims. “Everywhere I looked I saw dead men, women and children,” he said.

Most of the buildings around the temple were destroyed, and the town of Kedarnath, which has grown around the temple, was submerged. After braving cold, hunger and grief for three days inside the temple, Kukreti and the other pilgrims hiked a few miles to an emergency landing pad, and rescue helicopters flew them to a relief camp.

On the morning of June 15, Arijit Shashwat, a 34-year-old software engineer from Patna in the northern state of Bihar, began a 14-kilometer trek from Guptkashi village in Uttarakhand to the Kedarnath temple.  He was part of an entourage of 15 people, including his 61-year-old father.

It was raining intensely as Shashwat and his family began the uphill trek at 10 a.m. Several laborers carried his elderly parents and uncles up the mountain in palanquins. Twelve hours later, Shashwat and his family reached the Kedarnath temple. The rain did not stop.  They found a guesthouse adjacent to the temple and checked in.  On the morning of June 16, Shashwat and family visited the shrine and offered their prayers. The rains continued. Local authorities forbade them from moving around. Even a downhill stroll in the pilgrim town of Kedarnath could be dangerous. They spent the day between the temple and their guesthouse. Shashwat and family returned to the Kedarnath shrine around 7:30 p.m. for the ritual prayers and got back to his room around 8.20 p.m.  He was jolted by the earsplitting noise of cloudburst and blinding lightening. “Within moments, I saw an enormous amount of water pouring into our guesthouse,” he said.

Shashwat and his family ran out of the guesthouse, toward the temple complex. Water tore down their guesthouse within minutes. The ancient rock temple seemed the only place of refuge.

Water poured into the shrine. Massive rocks tumbled inside and damaged the courtyard.  But the inner areas of the shrine remained intact, and they remained with many other pilgrims huddled in the shrine praying to Lord Shiva throughout the night. They had no food, no water and no news of several members of their entourage who had gone missing.  Furious torrents of water pushing enormous boulders charged toward the Kedarnath shrine and town.  “Inside the temple, the water levels began to rise. I held my son in arms at the waist level. The water rose further, I lifted him on my shoulders”.  The volume and velocity of the water carried away many pilgrims hiding in the temple. “When the water receded we saw the piles of dead bodies,” Shashwat said. “My aunt and uncle lay dead at the main entrance of the temple.”

The pilgrims moved the dead to a corner of the temple and spent another night consoling each other. They wanted to call their families and seek help, but their phones had stopped working.

“We ran out of phone batteries and the floods had destroyed the phone towers,” Shashwat recalled.

Three days later, on the morning of June 18, the rain stopped. Shashwat found a muddied packet of biscuits outside the temple and fed them to his son and nephew.  Around noon, a chopper surveyed the area and flew away.  A little later, a small helicopter tried hard to land but failed.  A man jumped out of the chopper and told the distressed pilgrims in the temple to walk uphill in a certain direction, where the rescue helicopters could collect them.

The only ones who could rescue the stranded pilgrims in these narrow mountainous valleys at these high altitudes was the Indian military.  They employed more than 40 helicopters to airlift thousands of people – a difficult task, indeed.  One of their rescue helicopters crashed trying to evacuate injured pilgrims trapped on a stretch of broken road in the Kedarnath valley.  Frustrations ran high as families throughout India were frantically trying to track down their missing relatives.

The devastating flood that claimed thousands of lives and obliterated entire villages destroyed two large ashramas of the Bharat Sevashram, one in Kedarnath and one in Gaurikund.  “We lost many monks and workers in the flood,” said Swami Purnatmananda, a senior monk of Bharat Sevashram Sangha West, Brea, California.  “They got swept away as they were saving lives of pilgrims.”

Please Help

For those who would like to support the victims of the Himalayan disaster, we recommend donating to the Ramakrishna Mission and the Bharat Sevashram Sangha. Perhaps the most respected spiritual organizations doing relief work, they serve afflicted people all over India without much publicity, worshiping God in the distressed. Both organizations have set up special funds to go to help those in Uttarakhand who have lost everything.  While most stranded pilgrims have been evacuated and are home safely, the locals and villagers of the afflicted areas are struggling to keep alive.  To learn how you can help, please click on the following links:

Ramakrishna Mission Uttarakhand Flood Relief>>

Bharat Sevashram Sanga Himalayan Flood Drive>>

Phalaharini Kali Puja

Phalaharini Kali Puja is an important festival at Kali Mandir for many reasons. During this puja, it is very auspicious to offer the fruits of one’s actions to Ma. The first Kali puja in Laguna Beach in 1993 was Phalaharini Kali Puja when the murti of Sri Ma Dakshineswari Kali was ritually awakened by Sri Haradhan Chakraborty, the late main pujari of the Dakshineswar Kali temple. During Phalaharini Kali puja in 1873, Sri Ramakrishna worshipped Sarada Devi as the Universal Mother Goddess.

On the eve of June 5, 1873, Sri Ramakrishna and his nephew Dinu made preparations for the worship of Kali in his room at the Dakshineswar Kali temple. It was a hot summer night, yet Sri Ramakrishna closed all the doors and shutters. He sat near the western door of his room, facing east. The deity sitting before him on a colorfully painted low stool was his young wife, Sarada Devi. She was in a deep spiritual mood and followed Sri Ramakrishna’s instructions as if in a trance.

Sri Ramakrishna sprinkled her several times with holy water and then addressed her with folded hands: “Oh Divine Mother Tripurasundari! Oh Eternal Virgin, possessor of all power and beauty, open the gate of perfection. Purify her body and mind and manifest Yourself through her for the welfare of all.”

Then Sri Ramakrishna performed the ceremony of nyasa – touching different parts of Sarada Devi’s body with mantras and mentally identifying them with the different parts of the Divine Mother. He worshipped Sarada Devi with 16 items as the veritable manifestation of the Mother Goddess. He applied alta, a red dye, to the soles of her feet and put a vermilion mark on her forehead. Sri Ramakrishna offered her a new sari and, using sandalwood paste, he wrote his name on bilwa leaves and offered them at her feet. After making a food offering to Sarada Devi, Sri Ramakrishna also ate. Both lost outer consciousness and went into samadhi.

A long time passed while Sri Ramakrishna and Sarada Devi remained in deep spiritual absorption. When Sri Ramakrishna slowly regained consciousness, he prostrated and, offering the fruit of his austerities and his rudraksha mala at Sarada Devi’s feet, he addressed her: “Oh Consort of Shiva, the most auspicious of all auspicious beings! Oh Doer of all actions! Oh Refuge of all! Oh three-eyed goddess of golden complexion! Oh Power of Narayana, I salute You again and again.”

During this night Sarada Devi became the Holy Mother, the Universal Mother of all. Years later, she was asked by her disciples whether she felt shy during the worship. Holy Mother replied, “Oh no, I saw the Master doing all this but I had no inclination to even utter a word.”

The marriage of Sri Ramakrishna and Holy Mother was a divine relationship and was not consummated in a worldly sense. One day Sarada Devi’s mother was lamenting that she will not see grandchildren. Sri Ramakrishna told her that Sarada Devi will be called “Ma” by so many children that her ears will burn. To this day, Holy Mother is most beloved by all of Sri Ramakrishna’s devotees.

See photo gallery from this years Phalaharini Kali Puja Festival>>

Hymalayan Yatra ~ A letter from Swami Ambikananda Saraswati

Greetings to everyone…by Mother’s grace, Guruji Swami Bhajanananda and I are in good health and are now in Delhi at the Ramakrishna Mission. We’ve returned here after having a wondrous adventure in the Himalayas!

After a pleasant morning train ride to Haridwar on the 22nd, we spent some days at the Kankhal Ashram. A day trip to Rishikesh was very nice (despite the massive development–hotels popping up like mushrooms)…complete with Ganga bath and even my favorite street-vendor fresh butter cookies!

A chance/pre-destined encounter with our friend Victoria was fortuitous. Among other things she introduced us to lemon ginger mint honey tea at a tiny makeshift cafe on the footpath on the swarg ashram side. We sipped tea with an eccentric westerner–not unlike our Russian friend Igor, except this fellow had an unplaceable accent…he’s been in Rishikesh since 1974, and has seen a lot…”The world needs more storytellers and shamans…there’s enough clever people in the world.”We returned to Haridwar. The next morning I inquired about a car to Ukhimath, not far from our beloved Kedarnath. Within ten minutes it was all arranged, and we had the best driver we’ve had in the Himalayas, a young, sweet devotee named Harish.We left Kankhal a little after 6:00am, and before 8:00am we were having hot alu parathas andchai for breakfast in the little village of Byasi….(which, you’d be surprised, boasts one of the cleanest public bathrooms I’ve seen—even in America!)

Shyama Kali Puja

We celebrated Shyama Kali Puja on the moonless night of November 13 in the auspicious month of Kartik.  With love and prayers, we invoked and worshipped the benign form of the dark Goddes. Shyama Kali Puja is performed every year on Divali, the Hindu Festival of Lights.  Garlands of red lights adorned the outside of Ma’s temple, and Her altar glowed with candles and festive oil lamps. This special night of Kali worship brought a record number of devotees to Kali Mandir.

Navaratri / Durga Puja

The Divine Mother Comes Home

A sweet Bengali legend holds that every autumn Mother Durga takes leave from Her husband, Lord Shiva.  She leaves Mount Kailash high in the Himalayas to visit Her ancestral home to spend time with Her family.  Ma gets a fervent welcome-home party with blowing conches, drum rolls, bells, chants and prayers.  Kolkata comes to a standstill for four days.  All of Kolkata pays homage to Ma Durga.  People dressed in their finest new clothes are out in the streets to receive the Goddess in their homes and in their hearts.  Ma has come to kill all the demons that lurk even in the darkest corners of our hearts.  The battle rages for nine days and nights (Navaratri).  On the tenth day, Ma Durga emerges victoriously.  All Her children are happy and lovingly exchange gifts and feed one another.

At Kali Mandir, we observed Devi Navaratri, with special homa fires & nightly talks on the Chandi, celebrating the Divine Power’s victory over the forces of darkness.  We worshipped Ma Durga with full hearts along with Lakshmi, Saraswati, Ganesha and Kartikeya.  A crowd of devotees attended this elaborate ritual which included Kumari Puja, in which the Goddess is worshiped in the form of young girls.

New Shyama Sangeet CD

We are excited to announce the release of Naren’s (our Kamalakanta) beautiful first CD of Shyama Sangeet.

The land of Bengal in eastern India can truly be called “Motherland.” It is here that for millennium, and unbroken tradition of worshiping God as the Divine Mother Kali has given strength and solace to its people. Over the centuries many great mystics took birth in Bengal, leaving a timeless legacy of wisdom-teachings, tear-soaked poetry, and ecstatic communion with the Mother. From this legacy a new form of sacred music was born, called Shyama Sangeet, “Music to the Dark Mother”, The most famous of these poet-saints were Ramprashad Sen and Kamalakanta Bhattacharya of the 18^th -19^th centuries. They cried directly to the Mother, often reprimanding their own restless minds or revealing esoteric experiences of yogic awakening. Soaring in unparalleled joy or crashing to earth in great despair, these songs reveal the often-winding road traveled by the devotee.

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa often sang Shyama Sangeet, weaving this sacred music into his teachings that sparked India’s spiritual renaissance. When his heart overflowed in a ecstatic moond at he Dakshineswar Kali temple, his songs enthralled those seated nearby. When his disciples, such as Swami Vivekananda, would sing, Ramakrishna often danced or wept before entering blissful Samadhi. Decades later, Paramahamsa Yogananda was born into this spiritual revival. He sang Shyama Sangeet as a child and continued to do so throughout his life in America where he adapted much of it into his English poems and songs for the West.

Eso Ma is the first recording by a westerner of India’s most enthralling love songs to Mother Kali. Naren K. Schreiner sings vocals and plays harmonium and is accompanied by Pankaj Mishra on sarangi and Adikeshava on khol mridanga. Proceeds from the sale of this CD go to support the worship of the Divine Mother at Kali Mandir.

When God Congregates

Establishing a deity in your household creates auspiciousness all around.  By keeping the altar clean, taking care of and worshiping the deity, you automatically reap the benefit of      establishing a deep relationship with God.  And when God comes, magic happens.   There is an Austrian proverb: “Where birds are, more birds flock!” meaning where there is wealth, more wealth accumulates.

In our case,  Kali Mandir may not be wealthy from a worldly perspective, but what we have is priceless.  It all started with the arrival of Sri Ma Dakshineswari Kali in June 1993.  Little did we know then that Ma would surprise us and bring Her whole family of gods and goddesses to Kali Mandir.

Soon after Ma was installed, a devotee named Shunmugan brought a beautiful wooden altar he had made himself containing three Kali murtis – a main large one and two smaller ones embodying the sun and the moon.  The next deity to appear was Lakshmi in the form of a giant ancient conch that came out of the earth in Ma’s garden.  Next to arrive were a beautiful shalagram and a black Shiva lingam from Benares.

One day, when Usha was feeling bad, Ma surprised her.  The mailman rang the bell and delivered five heavy parcels without a return address.  Since Usha wasn’t expecting any deliveries, she thought that someone may be playing a prank and opened the parcels outside the temple.  Wow, what joy! As Usha unpacked seven beautiful black Kali murtis, she thought, “Ma is here, who cares if things go wrong!”  We never found out who sent the murtis.  Swami Bhajanananda Saraswati once received a call from a man named Ramakrishna.  “Come and get Ma Kali!” How can you refuse when Ramakrishna is calling?  Swami went and brought back the beautiful Kali murti which resides in our library.

Soon after, a brass Durga murti arrived, a Narmada Shiva lingam and a large shalagram.  When forty-five shalagrams arrived, we distributed most of them to other temples and devotees.  The Shiva lingam under the holy tree did not entirely come by surprise.  Fulfilling a cherished dream, our beloved devotee Giri carved this Shiva lingam which was installed on the 4th of July in 2005 – a year before Giri left his body.

One really big surprise came in June 2007 when we received a call from an unknown person,  asking us if we wanted a 300-pound Hanuman statue.  “Yes, yes, yes!!!”  Hanumanji arrived in a truck the day before Guru Purnima.  We
commented on how much we liked the beautifully carved sandstone image.  “It took me six months to get the ‘guck’ off when I first got it,” said the person who had kept this murti for 30 years.  We understood that the ‘guck’ he referred to was sindhur and that this murti must have been worshiped before.  The moment the truck left, we started to apply sindhur.  There was no need to perform a special installation ceremony.  He was already alive.

Early in the year of 2009, a Sai Baba devotee offered to give us ashes of Neem Karoli Baba she had buried under a rose bush in her house in Valencia.  We arrived with shovels, dug up the soil, and brought the holy presence of Baba to Laguna Beach.  Baba is now established under the holy tree at Kali Mandir.

The same year during Spring navaratri, a devotee we hardly knew asked Prakash to help her unload a heavy crate containing a Narmada Shiva lingam that had been sitting unopened in her garage since its arrival from India.  Just as Prakash rolled the heavy crate on a dolly through Ma’s front gate, Kirit Patel arrived with two Swami Narayan sannyasis who had not been to Kali Mandir before.  Swami Bhajanananda and Prakash carefully pried open the crate and unpacked a giant black Narmada Shiva lingam while the two visiting Swamis chanted mantras.  After we performed abhishekham in the courtyard, the Swamis and devotees carried the heavy lingam – anywhere between 200 to 300 pounds – in a blanket inside Ma’s temple.  For the longest time, Shiva was lying on his side because we were afraid he would fall over.  We tried to procure a gauri peetam but were not successful.  When Pandit Venugopal Devdhar, head of the Sringeri Math of North America, visited Kali Mandir the following year, he asked us to put the lingam upright.  We took that as Shiva’s command, and Prakash quickly built a wooden box to support the lingam
standing upright.  We’re still anticipating the arrival of a granite gauri peetam to install Shiva properly.

It’s hard to tell this story in this small space – so many gods and goddesses have come to Kali Mandir over the years.  Lord Ganesha arrived hand-crafted by the artist Jan Stewart.  Commissioned by a South Indian devotee, she made this murti thirty years ago when there were no Hindu temples in San Diego.  After this devotee passed away, Ganeshji came back to Jan, and she requested us to keep and worship him at Kali Mandir.

One navaratri, a beautiful marble Durga with eighteen arms came to us, brought by a devotee from Cerritos.  Our gardener came one morning with a magnificent bronze murti of Mahishasura Mardini Durga.  “I found this among scrap metal in Santa Ana,” said Emilio.  “I think you like this statue.”  Just recently, Girish brought ten beautiful Narmada Shiva lingams, and we’re in the process of finding a place of honor for them in an already crowded temple.

We worship God in the form of murtis, and we worship God in the form of the devotees. May God be pleased with our worship, and by the grace of our Divine Mother Kali, may we continue to love and serve well.

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Living the Dream

When we are children, we dream of being grown up, of becoming a movie star, a fireman, a space traveler or perhaps even the president — and then we will be happy.  When we are teenagers, we rebel against our parents’ control and dream of being free to do all the mischief we want — and then we will be happy.  As adults, we dream of becoming rich and famous, living worry-free in luxury — and then we will be happy.  When we get old, we get depressed and dream of being young and desirable again because then, and only then, we will be happy.

All through life, we run breathlessly after our dreams never quite catching them, and if we actually do get what we want, we are not satisfied and start runnng after yet another dream.  This madness does not stop until we do. Sri Ramakrishna used to say, “People run after all sorts of things.  They are mad for money, husband, children, but they call me mad because I am mad for God.”

When we fall in love with God, life becomes sweet.  We may get what we desire from the world or we may not get it.  It does not matter when the heart is deeply happy within.  Go to the office, clean the house, stress over a test at school, work at an unpleasant job  — these activities comprise only the hard shell over the lava of love that flows underneath.
Sri Ramakrishna said that in this dark age of kali yuga the forms of God most awake are Ma Kali and Gopala Krishna.  If you earnestly pray to Ma Kali, to baby Krishna, you will get quick results.

One of the devotees here at Kali Mandir has a very special relationship with Ma Dakshineswari Kali.  Some time ago, he came every day in the afternoon and swept Ma’s courtyard.  When he stopped, we asked him about it.  “I promised Ma that I’ll sweep Her courtyard every day for a week if She gives me a job.”  Yes, he got the job he wanted.  Some time after, we saw him sweeping again.  “Did you lose your job?” we asked.  “No, but my friend needs a job.”  When we did not see him sweep again, we guessed that the friend also got a job.  This devotee has such a childlike dependence on Ma.  She cannot help but respond quickly to his needs.

Ma is here for all of us.  If we just call on Her with a longing heart, She showers Her love and blessings.  If we just exhibit a little bit of shraddha, She puts us on Her lap and takes care of every little detail in our life. What is preventing us from sitting on Her lap and living the dream?  The only thing that stands in our way to the highest bliss is our ego.  Let it go.

Sri Haradhan Chakraborty (April 1940 – December 2009)

The famous door to Haradhan Chakraborty’s room at the Dakshineswar Kali temple is closed now.  When Haradhanji was alive, it was always full of devotees who brought their troubles & burdens. Some came for an affectionate hug, blessings or just for a quick chat and a tiny clay cup of milk tea.

Haradhanji was always there for everybody who came to him.  He refused none.  For seventeen years, he travelled from Kolkata to Laguna Beach to perform the annual Kali Puja for us.  He gave us love, affection and awakened our Sri Ma Dakshineswari Kali for us.

Sri Haradhan Chakraborty in front of Ma Dakshineswari Kali, Laguna Beach

Moreover, he demonstrated how a mere mortal can have a truly  intimate relationship with the Divine Goddess Kali.  None of us who witnessed his pujas will ever forget the experience.  Haradhanji is with Ma & lives on in our hearts.

Sri Haradhan Chakraborty in front of Ma Bhavatarini Kali, Dakshineswar