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Lost In New York, part 3


During the summer of '94, I worked for a research center about
40 miles away from New York City. What follows is a personal
account of my experiences this summer, mostly involving the
Hare Krishna temple in New York and its devotees. This is the 
third in what I hope will be a small series.

-Vivek

Lost in New York
----------------

Part 3: Racial strife, racial cooperation

When I originally got to New York, I was living in a university
dormitory. After some time, I was able to find a place of my own
a little farther North. One thing I noticed was an almost linear
progression of racial dis-integration as you moved further away
from New York City. I was well past the suburbs, in an area that
I heard called "ex-urbia". It was a place where many New Yorkers
fled to get away from the trappings of the city.

At one time, the place where I was staying had a very low population
density, was very rich, and was predominantly White. In recent
years, there had been a large influx of Hispanics and Blacks into 
nearby areas, and many of the residents weren't too happy about it. 
I didn't see any evidence of it where I worked, but talking to 
people on the street where I lived made it clear that some
of the people in the neighborhood didn't like the changes. Even
though we were at least 40 miles away from NYC, there was a new
"White flight" taking place, and the resulting sell-off, in 
conjunction with an inflated real estate market, had dropped housing 
prices by about 25%, or so it seemed.

Manhattan was very integrated, at least at first glance. On the 
streets, you saw people of all races, being as friendly to each
other as New Yorkers could be. OK, so they weren't wildly cooperative,
but at the same time, they weren't openly antagonistic. On my way
between where I lived and NYC, I had to pass through Yonkers, an area
that became (in)famous a few years back due to a lot of strife caused
by an attempt at integration. I don't recall all of the details,
but I seem to remember that the local residents had protests in the
streets, where many people held up watermelons and shouted slogans
to the effect of "Black people go home". It wasn't a pretty sight.

Being somewhat cautious myself, I only stopped in Yonkers once,
and that was in my initial attempt to find my hotel when I first
got to the area. I didn't know how the locals would act in the
presence of an Indian (regularly, I would assume, since I think that
most people are inherently good), but I didn't want to find out.
At the time, I had a friend of mine with me, who was a big White guy,
so I wasn't particularly worried. I told Jay that in case of trouble,
he was to tell everyone that I was his chauffeur, and I would call
him "Sir". Nobody beats up chauffeurs, do they?

The Hare Krishna Temple in New York City is located in Brooklyn, in
an area called Flatbush. I was accustomed to the racial mixture of
Manhattan, so I was surprised that just by crossing one bridge I went
from a racially mixed environment to one that was predominantly Black.
The Hare Krishna Temple in Houston has a predominantly Indian population, 
with a modest number of Whites and a small number of Blacks. I haven't
witnessed any racial disharmony there, and that's pleased me. At some
of the other temples I've been to, anybody who's not Indian is viewed
suspiciously, at least by some.

There was a (sadly) humorous incident that took place at another temple
in Houston. There is an interracial couple who is heavily involved with
the temple -- the husband is Indian, and the wife is White. Both are very
nice people, and I know them personally. They've been actively involved
with that temple since its founding, and the wife has been a Hindu since
they got married. The wife, I believe, is on the governing body of that
temple. For the purpose of identification, let's call her Jane.

Festival days are when everybody goes to the temples, and many people
will go to more than one temple on the same day. I was at this other
temple that day, and I ran into somebody I knew, but not well. Jane
was at the temple helping out with a book stand or something to that 
effect, and she was wearing a sari, as she always does when I see her
there. This Indian lady made a comment along the lines of "what does
she think _she's_ doing". I chuckled inside, and explained that Jane
had been active at this temple far longer than this woman had been
in Houston, and that if she attended more often, she would see that
Jane was there just about every weekend. I wholly expected to have
gotten a dirty look, but I was pleasantly surprised when the woman
was apologetic. I guess she realized that she was just being a racist.

The first time I went to the Hare Krishna temple in NYC, I didn't
know what to expect as far as the racial makeup went. I expected
that most of the congregation would be Indian, and I was almost
right. At first glance, it seemed 50/50. Just from personal experience,
I know that most Indians are generally tolerant/accepting of Whites. 
However, that changes when you talk about Blacks, and the reactions
run the gamut, but often they are negative, especially among the
older generation.

Since Flatbush was mostly Black, I didn't know what to expect as
far as the reactions of the Indians went. Boy, was I about to be
surprised. As the temple filled up, I noticed that many of the people
coming in were Black. Soon, I guess that there must have been at least
20 or 30 Black devotees. Most of the women were wearing saris, and 
many of the boys and men were wearing kurtas. 

At the start of the kirtan, two of the devotees were playing the 
mridangam drums, portable drums with two drums heads on the sides.
Gradually, as people came in, some of the teenage boys brought their
own mridangams and joined in. By the time it was in full swing, there
must have been about six people playing mridangams at any time, some
Black, some White, and some Indian. They were all singing, dancing, and
playing very joyously, all cooperating.

I looked around, and saw that many of the boys came with their parents,
and the parents were standing there, side by side with Indians, singing
together and dancing. It was quite a sight, and I was happy to see it. 
Especially among the ladies, the cooperation was most evident. Many of
the girls, of all different races, were holding hands and dancing
together. Race didn't matter to any of them. 

If anybody wanted to see a rainbow coalition, here it was.

The night before the Ratha-Yatra, I decided to go to the temple and
help out. There were a quite a few people there, of all age ranges
and races, all working feverishly to get everything in place for the
next day. There was a large truck that was to be filled with everything
that would be needed to set up the stage, etc. In addition, there was
a refrigerated truck where all of the prasadam was to be kept.

So, one of the first orders of business was to move all of the prasadam
from the kitchen (in the lower level) to the truck. Of course, we didn't
have a working elevator, so it was all manual labor. There were quite
a few young girls who were adamant that they were going to be involved
in this, so despite our inital protestations, we decided to let them
help if supervised. We had many crates of watermelons which needed to
be moved, so we let them carry the watermelons individually while we
worked on other things. I fully expected to climb the stairs to find
a Normal-Rockwellian scene of a large watermelon all over the floor and 
two young girls giggling over it. Luckily for me, it didn't happen.

While I was helping, one of the female initiated devotees came by and
told us to take a dinner break. I hadn't seen her before, and she 
introduced herself to me as Satya Devi Dasi. She seemed to be in
her early 20's, and she had a definitely Northeast accent. I told her my 
first name, and was quite surprised when she said "Oh - you're Vivek 
Pai", since I hadn't told her my last name. I was on a list of donors 
for the Ratha-Yatra, but I hadn't given a large sum at all, so it's not 
like my name stood out in any way.

I was curious how she had remembered my name, so I asked. The answer was
quite simpler than I had expected - I had given an out-of-town check,
so the devotees were wondering how they had gotten a check from Houston
for the Ratha-Yatra. 

I met some devotees that night that I had seen on previous Sundays. There
was a guy with dreadlocks who worked as a bicycle messenger, and there
was a really thin Russian devotee who looked like he'd gotten a fairly
good sunburn. They were all helping lift crates and box from the lower
floor to the ground floor.

I had gotten there early, and most of the (older) people helping at that 
time were single people who didn't have to go home first, etc. As the
night progressed, a lot more families started to show up, and a lot more
Indian men arrived. I think perhaps it's a streak somewhere in the race
that says that all Indian men want to be involved in an organizational
capacity, and I was a little worried. After all, we had lots and lots of
boxes that we still needed to load into the truck, and everybody wanting
to be chief wouldn't help.

Predictably, as soon as we started loading the truck, the issue arose of
making an accounting of what we were putting in the truck. There were
about 6 men standing around, each with a different idea of how this 
should be done. In the meantime, we were told to stop loading the truck,
and I sensed this was about to become a real mess. This went on for a
few minutes until Satya arrived. She was an white woman in her 20's, and
she was dealing with a group of Indian men ranging from late 30's to 
early 50's, but she took control of the situation and got everything
resolved.

I was impressed.

So, we all loaded up the trucks, sat around for a while, and then went to
the respective ashrams (mens, ladies, families) or went home for the
night. During the evening, a lot of guys had been showing up from out
of town and out of state. Everyone was planning on sleeping in the ashrams,
and had brought their own bedding, etc. I had completely neglected to
do so, but I had a towel that I was going to use as a pillow. The
ashram was quite packed by the end of the night, and I had to take
care to avoid stepping on someone who was asleep. It was past midnight 
when I went to sleep, so there was no way I was going to wake up at 4 AM
for the mangala arati.

I was going to be proven wrong, and a very eager young white devotee
took the effort to make sure that all of us would be attending 
mangala arati on such an important day.

So after the mangala arati the next morning, I was ready to go back
to sleep, when a funny thing happened. One of the devotees from Boston
had come down to build the main chariot of Lord Jagannatha. He said he
needed a few men to help him move the already built chariot from its
current location to the start of the festival. He said it would only
take an hour. I got roped in, literally.

Three hours later, I found myself acting as a brakeman on the chariot.
The devotee from Boston was in a van pulling the chariot, and there were
eight of us behind the chariot with ropes, acting as human brakes. I
looked around, and saw the usual multiracial assortment. There was
me, the Russian devotee, the guy with the dreadlocks, a few South American
guys who couldn't speak English but always nodded, and a few others.
Jesse Jackson would've been proud.

Oh - and I did get to explain bystanders what was going on. Every time
we stopped, someone asked us why we were tied behind this very large
domed cart that was being pulled by a van. I gave them as much information
as I could fit into a traffic light, and I invited them to join us for
the parade later on that day.

Earlier in the summer, a girl had asked me about the Jagannath shirt
I was wearing, since she had seen it at a Lollapalooza concert. It
kept coming back to me every time I explain the Ratha Yatra to a bystander.
Despite my mischievous desires, I never did explain it away by saying
"It's part of Lollapalooza, man".
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