Of temple cooks

*My motivation to create this blog was a conversation with a temple cook during my recent visit to the New Vrindaban temple in Wheeling, WV over spring break. Madan is in his late 30s and has been working at the temple for 6 yrs now, having spent 10 yrs before that at a temple in Mumbai*

I am not a deeply religious person. I believe in the existence of a greater being than myself, and my religious practices/beliefs towards that superpower conform to Hinduism. Wanting to get away from my monotonous existence in Pittsburgh, the temple in WV offers itself up as the perfect getaway. Nestled in the Appalachians, there would be hills, peace, interesting people to speak with and a supply of vegetarian food. I pack my bags for 2 days.

My guess is that Madan rarely finds anyone to speak with freely in the temple. So when he sees me, an outsider, volunteering around in the kitchen, I become his perfect companion to talk with. He tells me about his kids back in Delhi. "Their school has 3000 students, you know. And about 200 teachers. It's a good school", he pronounces proudly. He doesn't know which Class/Grade they're in. He hasn't seen them for 3 yrs and his voice tells me he isn't really longing for them. Nor do his eyes belie this emotion. As someone who grew up seeing my parents around me all the time, I find this strange. Maybe this is one of those things I've taken for granted in life, only to realize its true worth when I see the opposite.

He tells me about his childhood growing up in a village in Uttaranchal, in the foothills of the Himalayas. "My house was on a hill-top that stretched from down here to there", he gestures towards the base of the floor and then the ceiling. That's his way of describing something tall and massive. He tells me about tigers that came every now and then to pick away sheep and the massive power they yielded. "One flick with its powerful paws, and the sheep would go flying overhead from here to there". It all seems to me like a leaf out of one of Ruskin Bond's novellas.

"What are you studying?", he asks me. I describe what a Masters program is to him. "That's a lot of studying!". His expression turns to laughter when I go on to describe a Ph.D to him. "If half of someone's life goes in studying, what's left to do anything else then ?", he reasons. The topic of academics stirs his memory from school. "I never understood anything much in school. But there was an intelligent fellow called Yadav in my class. He rarely studied and still came out top. We used to wonder what magic was up his sleeve...", he tails away as his eyes wander off into a distant memory. "I met him the last time I went back to my village", he returns. "He's a taxi driver these days ferrying tourists around and envies me in a friendly way for being in the US. We laughed about what use came of all his top scores in school."

My thoughts wander away into how many such talents are hidden away in India driving taxis ferrying tourists. What happenstance that I was brought up in a city and had more opportunities.

We chit-chat a bit more until the aroma of his recipes fill the kitchen and his work for the day is done. "There. My passtimes in the kitchen for today are over", he grins with a twinkle in his eyes. A humorous reference to the "passtimes of Krishna" that are everyday talk in the sanctum of the temple.

I wish him goodbye, promising to be back in the kitchen the next day. Although I could just as well have been a taxi driver showing tourists around.