WALK THAT ROAD
by Bimbadhara dasa (from the Aug. 1978 Issue of B.S.)
Everyone in New Vrindaban knows that when a brahmacari speaks of “walking that road” he means the one from BaÂhulaban to the Vrindaban brahmacari ashrama. Now it looks just like a plain old dusty dirt road with a stream runÂning next to it that crosses over in a few places. Trees cover it over so that it is actually more like a tube, or lotus flowÂer stem, permeated with the maha-mantra. Sri Sri Radha-Vrndavana Candra guard it at one end and Sri Sri Radha Vrndavana Natha guard the other. By means of this road twenty or so brahma-caris’ make the daily transition from the urgency of Bahulaban to the cool spirÂitual solitude of Vrindaban, which is a place of pilgrimage even for the Brijabasis.
Ever since taking the lotus feet of Srila Prabhupada on its head, the VrinÂdaban road has served faithfully, transÂporting cows, devotees and pilgrims on foot, Deity bhoga on ox carts and MahaÂraja and special guests in his jeep. Every year Mother Earth tries to absorb the form of the road back into its tangle of forest and streams and every year the road is built up again out of Vrindaban tilaka.
We were walking up one afternoon with Atmabhu, the temple president of Vrindaban. He told me, “This road is far out. I’ve seen some people completely lose it, just fall down in the mud and cry. Most of the time you aren’t conÂfronted with total surrender, but every step in this mud forces you to surrender to Krsna right now.”
The road is sometimes so rough that there is only a little path in the middle which -is walk able and sometimes there is no path whatsoever, only Krsna’s merÂcy.
No one complains much. The most commonly heard words on the road are Hare Krsna Hare Krsna Krsna Krsna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare. You can chant about eight rounds, depending on condition, while making the walk. Jalakolahali says some of his best and loudest rounds were chanted when he hurried through the dark silence to get up top in time for mahgala aratrika. (He was working the night shift down at Bahulaban for acouple of months.) In the dark it’s hard to tell people who look like trees from the trees that look like people.
Once Tapanacarya cooked a preparaÂtion for Radha-Vrndavana Candra which had to be down to Bahutaban in time for Their Lordships morning offering. It was a dark moon summer night. The sky was cloudy and you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. The road felt familiar under his feet until it started to rain. The path became slippery and he fell off the path into the bushes. He began crawling around on his hands and knees, trying to find the road, but all he could feel was tree trunks.
Eventually he came across the stream and decided to follow that. Somehow or other he went the wrong way and finally he had no idea where he was. So he just sat down tight and waited for the sun to come up.
Finally, two and a half hours after he’d left, he came splashing into BahulaÂban with the offering still in his hands. How fortunate it is to get to the end of the road with something nice to offer to Radha and Krsna.
I remember it being called the “Aghasura Road” in the mid 70’s