by Karen Jonson
Kids played a big part in all the celebrations at Barsana Dham. There were always roles for children in the dances and performances, which depicted stories from the Hindu scriptures related to whatever holiday was being celebrated, such as Krishna’s birth on Janmashtami or Krishna’s lifting of Govardhan Hill at Divali.
In general, I kept my distance from the kids. Sometimes they would play in a large field outside my bedroom after evening satsang. When I could not take their screaming any longer, I would go out in my pajamas and tell them it was time for bed. Naturally, their parents did not appreciate me shushing their kids. I developed a reputation as a curmudgeon and, for the most part, the kids stayed clear of me.
One of the girls lived in The Girls’ House with her mother across the hall from me. Shyama and I had made bad first impressions on each other during one of my visits. One day, I was instructed to clean the kitchen pantry. Nancy told me that Shyama was supposed to help me. “She’ll try to get out of it, but make sure she does her share.”
I went to the prasad room and started cleaning. Within ten minutes, a young girl with thick, long, brown hair walked in.
“Are you Shyama?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, looking at me with suspicion.
“Oh, good. Can you start sweeping over in that corner?”
She shot me a disgusted look, turned around, and walked out.
Years later I learned from her that her first impression of me was equally negative. During a particularly busy visit, when I could not get enough sleep in the makeshift girls’ dormitory, which was just a temporarily walled off section of the dining hall, my head was pounding from a lack of sleep. There was one actual room off the dining hall where about six female devotees lived. They were all at work one afternoon, so after lunch I retreated to the relatively quiet space, closed all the blinds, climbed on one of the empty top bunks, and began to fall asleep. Just as I was finally nodding off, the door opened letting in all the light and noise.
I bolted up from the pillow to see who was intruding on my peace and quiet. It was Shyama. “Can you please be quiet? I’m trying to sleep,” I grumbled at her.
Years later, she told me she had thought I was mean. We laughed at our first impressions of each other.
Many devotees believed the children living in the ashram were special, because they got the chance to worship Swamiji from such a young age—something most adults wished for themselves. Some of the parents, especially the women, used their children as conduits for proximity to the guru. Several of them assumed their kids were going to become preachers and so instructed them to do seva for the guru and his preachers. In the end, only one of the children ever became a preacher, but not a good one and only for a short time. Other than that, only one other child went on to became an adult devotee to my knowledge.
To my surprise, I eventually warmed up to some of the children. One little boy was particularly charming. I had originally thought that he a spoiled brat and had avoided direct contact. Then one day I noticed he was alone in the dining hall eating one of the spicy dishes. Most Indians enjoy hot food, and when they cooked in our kitchen they often prepared one or two hot items. Today, it was fiery hot pakoras (deep fried breaded vegetables). JR was popping them into his mouth like M&Ms. I went up to him and said, “Aren’t those a little hot for you?”
He looked up at me with big blue eyes and round, chubby cheeks, and said sweetly, “Not so far.” I actually felt a rush of tenderness toward him. It was one of the first times I ever felt anything close to a motherly concern for a child.
In that moment, my opinion of him as a precocious brat changed. I started talking to him more often and found him delightful. He was just starved for attention and affection. So one day I took him with me to a bookstore. As we sat on a bench perusing books, he leaned into my back and we read quietly together in the middle of the bookstore.
I also became close to the oldest girl in the ashram, Kate. In fact, she and I became good friends and started talking and sharing our frustrations about ashram life. We began going out together for lunches, coffee, hiking, and swimming. Despite a twenty-year age difference, we shared surprisingly similar views and opinions on the various personalities that existed inside the ashram gates. Needless to say, I thought her quite levelheaded and mature for her age.
Little did I know then the impact our friendship would have on our lives years later.
31
The Birthday Cake Miracle
Saving the Day
ONE AFTERNOON, SONDRA, the kitchen control freak, called me in a panic.
“Can you bake a cake?” she asked me, frantically.
“No,” I replied, truthfully.
She ignored my answer. “We need a cake tonight. There’s no one else around. It’s Swamiji’s birthday today.” I could feel her distress rising. I was miffed she had even called me, because even though I worked from home, I was still working. Plus, I was no baker. When I was in high school I made boxed cakes and brownies. But every time I tried to bake anything from scratch, I failed stupendously. No matter how hard I tried, or how carefully I measured and mixed, the result was usually the same: something completely inedible. I was like Ellie May Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies when it came to baking.
I once made peanut butter cookies that tasted like sawdust. “There’s something wrong with these cookies,” my youngest brother said about the round discs I’d thrown on the table in disgust. Then there were the biscuits, which even the ducks in the local pond wouldn’t eat. There was also the blueberry pie with the partially cooked dough and runny berries that my boyfriend pretended was delicious.
Now I was being cornered into certain failure, because everything in the ashram was made from scratch.
“You’re the only one I could find,” Sondra insisted. “Adolph and I have to run an errand for Swamiji. Everyone else is busy or at work.”
I remained silent with dread.
“Ellen usually bakes his birthday cakes, but she’s at work.”
I realized she wasn’t going to give up. Maybe I could save the day I thought and relented. “Okay, I’ll bake the cake.”
“Great,” said Sondra.
When I arrived in the kitchen, she was all business. “We have a recipe book,” she said, leading me to the cabinet. “There’s one for chocolate, vanilla, and zucchini. Pick what you want.”
I wasn’t a fan of chocolate, and vanilla seemed boring. So I opted for the zucchini cake.
“Okay,” Sondra said, “but make sure you cut back on the cinnamon. Swamiji doesn’t like it.”
Swamiji had a long list of particular likes and dislikes, which, to be honest, was a little annoying. For example, he always wanted (and always got) only the middle part of a watermelon—the sweetest portion without seeds. Or the tender center leaves of lettuce.
The thought leaving the cinnamon out of a spice cake was too much. So, I accidently use the correct amount.
In the ashram, baking a cake (or anything else for that matter) was not like baking in the normal world. For one thing, everything was oversized. After all, in the ashram we typically cooked meals for forty to fifty people. Everything was built or purchased to accommodate cooking large quantities of food, from the number of stove tops (six), to the size of the bowls and pots (huge), to the quantity of supplies (abundant).
I surveyed the large kitchen, which felt titanic with no one else there but me, and I began to panic. But there was no backing out now. A cake had to be baked, and I had to make it. I studied the recipe. There were three lists of ingredients for the zucchini cake based on quantity: forty, seventy-five, and 110 people. Sondra had told me to make a medium-sized cake for seventy-five.
I started carefully measuring out ingredients: twenty-two cups of flour, sixteen cups of sugar, and four cups of grated zucchini, for starters. But it was difficult to maintain my focus, because it seemed like every few minutes a curious devotee would come into the kitchen to get a cup of tea, a cheese sandwich
, or whatever.
“What are you making?” each one asked, and got excited at the prospect of a cake since we didn’t have dessert very often.
The interruptions with the same question made me more tense. “Please. I have to concentrate,” I told everyone who stopped to ogle.
I was so anxious I had to check and recheck the directions several times, so it took me twice as long to make the cake as it should have taken. Finally, I poured the oversized bowl of batter in the 24-inch by 36-inch deep dish baking pan, and heaved it into the oven. While it baked, I made the cream cheese icing.
I couldn’t wait to taste my creation—I needed to make sure it was edible. I cut off a small piece on the edge, and blew on it until the steam disappeared. I popped it into my mouth. The spicy richness flooded my taste buds. It was delicious, with just the right balance of spice and sweetness. It was even light and moist. It was my greatest baking experience ever. That night everyone agreed it was an exceptionally delicious cake.
That day, I became the official baker of Swamiji’s birthday cakes for the next fifteen years.
32
Cooking Halva
Trial By Fire
PRASAD IS FOOD THAT has been blessed by God or a guru.
In Hinduism, it is believed when devotees consume this food, they gain spiritual benefits. All devotees in Barsana Dham eagerly ate the guru’s leftovers, both from his plate or cooking vessels. We also enthusiastically ate any food he tossed to us. Also, if Swamiji walked through the kitchen and touched anything, say a banana or a slice of bread, a devotee would grab the item and quickly devour it. Once Swamiji picked up a loaf of bread I had just purchased, looked at it, and put it back. I ate that loaf over the next several days with special delight, simply because he had touched it.
Serving food to God is a Hindu ritual during prayer services. After it is offered, it becomes prasad. Then it is passed out among the parishioners and consumed. At Barsana Dham, the typical prasad served in the prayer hall consisted of nuts, raisins, and chopped fruit. Two bowls of food were placed on the altar at the start of each service. After prayers were over, two women would approach the altar, pick up the bowls, and hold them up to the deities. After that they were then offered to Swamiji if he was in residence or to a framed photograph of him if he was not. Then, the food would be passed out among the devotees.
When we offered the prasad bowls to Swamiji for his blessing, he typically just laid one finger on the side of each bowl for a second or two. Occasionally, he would be more playful, picking up an almond or grape and putting it into someone’s mouth. On other occasions, he’d pick out several pieces and toss them to his preachers. From time to time, he would take the entire bowl and throw handfuls of the contents out into the prayer hall among the devotees. Fruit would roll over the carpet, with devotees diving for pieces, snatching up as many as they could, squealing with laughter the whole time.
Thanks to my daily prasad seva, I received a few nanoseconds of one-on-one interaction with Swamiji each day when I offered him one of the prasad bowls. Sometimes he would drop one of the many fresh flowers placed on his couch into the bowl. I always retrieved the flowers and saved them in glass jars. After fifteen years, I had five jars filled with flowers, which, for me, became a visual symbol of the grace my guru was showering on me.
On Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, a sweet was added to the prasad offering, such as small cookies or a piece of cake. On these occassions, the prasad was distributed in small paper bowls. Before the temple was built, Swamiji decreed that halva would be the Saturday night sweet at Barsana Dham. Halva is a traditional Indian sweet that can be made several ways. In the ashram it was made from semolina (cream of wheat) and chana flour (chickpea) cooked in butter to a roux-type consistency, then mixed with a boiled milk, water, and sugar mixture. When finished, it has the texture of extra thick hot cracked wheat cereal. However, it is much sweeter than cereal. In fact, halva means “sweetness” in many languages.
Although there are only a handful of ingredients in halva, it is difficult to make. It requires special instruction from an experienced halva maker to learn the exacting steps. Lois, the person in charge of prasad at Barsana Dham had learned how to make halva to Swamiji’s liking from Vishi. As Lois’s assistant in prasad prep, I had watched her make it a couple of times, but was never officially taught how to do it.
One day, Lois left for a business trip. Neither she nor I had thought about the halva preparation in advance. On Saturday, I realized someone had to make it. I assumed Vishi would do it, but wanted to make sure she had planned it into her busy schedule of taking care of Swamiji. I knew she was probably with Swamiji in his bedroom, but was too timid to go upstairs and ask her myself. As I was fretting over my predicament, Brenda walked into the kitchen.
“Lois is gone,” I said, “and I don’t know who’s going to make halva tonight. Will you please go up and ask Vishi if she can make it?”
Brenda seemed to have no fear of Swamiji. Either that or she relished having a legitimate excuse to go up to his bedroom to see him.
She returned with a mischievous grin on her face.
“Is Vishi going to make it?”
“No. You have to make it yourself,” she stated bluntly. “I asked her and she asked Swamiji. He said, ‘Tell her to make it. There’s a first time for everything.’”
I was horrified. “I don’t know how to make it.”
“Well, it’s always trial by fire around here,” she said blithely. She laughed as she exited the room. “Good luck!” she called out from the breezeway.
I walked into the kitchen and found the ashram recipe book. There was a partial recipe for halva, but it only listed the ingredients. There were no cooking instructions whatsoever. All I had to go on was my memory of watching Lois make it a couple of times. But I had no choice except to figure it out. I started gathering the six ingredients. I got out a large, shallow saucepan from the pot room, placed it on the stove, and dropped in ten butter sticks. As the butter melted, I stirred the milk, water, and sugar in a saucepan and turned up the heat.
From watching Lois, I remembered that she continually stirred the cracked wheat as it cooked. She added the flour at the halfway point, then cooked both until they turned deep golden brown. At that point, she added the boiling sugary milk mixture. When the liquid was added to the dry ingredients, it would bubble and sputter like molten lava. Then it was done. It was a slow, tedious process.
I poured the cracked wheat into the butter and started stirring, wondering when to add the flour. Just then, Don, the ashram accountant, walked into the kitchen. “What are you cooking?” he asked.
“Halva. Do you know how to make it?”
“No.” He stared into the pot. “I just know you have to cook it until it gets really, really brown.”
“Thanks.”
At that point, I would take whatever extra information I could get. I cooked and stirred, cooked and stirred, and watched it turn from a yellow tan to a slightly darker yellow tan, but not to the deep brown hue I knew it needed to be.
Suddenly, Prabhakari entered the kitchen from one of the back doors. “Have you ever made halva?” I asked, hopeful. “Swamiji said I have to make it tonight and I don’t know how.”
She walked over and glanced into the pot. “Not really. But that looks like too much butter.”
I stared into the pot. The sooji was swimming in butter. I grabbed the recipe book to check the ingredients. The recipe said five sticks of butter and I had put in five cups, which was double the correct amount. I felt queasy. What was I going to do now? My panicked brain raced for a solution. Either I had to start over or find some way to drain the excess butter from the large pot. I carried it over to the large metal sink and began scooping out the puddle of butter. When most of the excess butter was gone, I placed the pot back on the stove.
Without all the extra butter, the sooji browned quickly. Almost immediately it began to turn a light brown color. I sifted in the f
lour and stirred. Finally, the mixture reached a deep shade of brown.
I put on two large cloth mitts, picked up the saucepan, and poured the syrupy sweet liquid into the pot. Steam shot up into the air like Old Faithful. I felt moist heat sting my face as the gooey mass sputtered, spit, and boiled. I turned off the heat and stirred the mixture. It was thick and sticky. The consistency seemed perfect. Of course, now I had to taste it to make sure it had turned out right.
Just as I was getting a spoon, another devotee barreled into the kitchen. “Swamiji wants to know if the halva is done. He said to bring him some.”
My stomach clenched and my nerve endings buzzed.
“Right now,” Dan barked. “He’s sitting in the breezeway.”
I knew better than to keep Swamiji waiting. I grabbed a metal bowl, ladled an ice cream scoop-size portion into the bowl, and carried it into the breezeway, my hand shaking. I felt heavy with dread.
Swamiji looked up at me as I walked toward him.
“Is it ready?” he asked. The devotees sitting around him glanced up at me, no doubt wondering what he was talking about.
“I just finished it, Swamiji. I was just going to taste it.”
“I’ll taste it.”
I placed the bowl on his small wooden dining table with a trembling hand. Then I sat on the floor a few feet away, struggling to breath. Swamiji glanced at the halva.
“It looks like it’s cooked correctly.”
I relaxed a tiny bit.
He picked it up and took a whiff. “It smells right.”
I breathed again, but I was still nervous. I just needed him to taste it and get it over with. But he set the bowl on the corner of his table and leaned back onto his pillows. I sat stiffly, ramrod straight. I could have dropped through the floor as I waited for his verdict. A few minutes later Vishi brought his meal. He started eating his food in his typical ritualistic manner. I thought he would never finish.
