My family has been within All World Gayatri Pariwar for three generations.
My grandparents personally knew Pandit Shriram Sharma Acharya, Vedmurthi, Taponisht, or as he is called by his disciples, Gurudev, back when Shantikunj was still a construction project.
My grandfather would often say his proudest achievement was Gurudev knowing his name.
Both he and my father continued the organization’s proud tradition of taking white-collar professionals and training them to moonlight as free pandits, and guess who was voluntold to be their assistant.
Both served as mandir trustees, nothing quite like commuting from Eastern PA to Piscataway to pray.
I briefly continued the legacy in my 20s and served on the board of a regional chapter.
I myself have had close and personal relationships with both Dr. Pranav Pandya and Dr. Chinmay Pandya. At one point in time, the latter and I were having monthly one-on-ones, and for years, the former was getting weekly email updates from me.
A large portion of the time I didn’t spend in school or work over my teenage and early career years were spent in Haridwar at Shantikunj where I would practice my sadhana between there and Rishikesh. With occasional trips to Mathura and Anwalkheda.
Nowadays there’s the new NRI building, Lopa Mudra by the new canteen and the EMD. But back in the old days, we used to stay at Gargi Bhavan, a short walk from the yagya shala and Prakhar Pragya Sajal Shraddha and within a tight block of the senior Karyakarta.
I will say, it was a nice rhythm. Wake up before sunrise, fill up your allocated one warm bucket of water, and put on your dhoti. Then meander over to the yagya shala, and hope you are early enough to be the first batch at the morning yagya to catch up with the older Karyakarta. Then offer Abhisheka at the Shiva Mandir. Follow up with the Gayatri Mandir. Finish up with the Akhand Deepak. And then head to the canteen to get a cup of pragyapay.
From 6 to 6:15pm, it, Dev Sanskriti Vishwavidyalaya and Brahmavarchas would pause and hear the naadyog. First the sound of the shank. Then the opening by Mataji, followed by a short drone before the flute starts. Then around the 6 minute mark, the tabla enters. The same alarm I kept in my apartments.
Evenings. Those moments sitting in the Himalaya Mandir over by Mataji’s bhojnalaya. A dimly lit room with a murthi of the mountain range to harken to the wisdom of the Rishis. Pin-drop silence. With a sense of serenity that I have yet to replicate.
Dinner. Her bhojnalaya is an even more unique place. Much like Langar at a Gurudwara. Regardless of rich or poor, everyone gets served a meal to their stomach’s content. But also, it doesn’t matter how much or how little money you have, you are washing the metal plate you ate on.
And yet, not a single donation plate or box other than at the Akhand Deepak and in the proximity of Prakhar Pragya Sajal Shraddha. You never see sweepers or someone picking up trash. Still the ashram is spotless.
Prakhar Pragya Sajal Shraddha. The place I tattooed to my leg with a backdrop of the Himalayas so I could carry it with me everywhere I walked.
But to this day, anytime my folks visit and they do their daily yagya, my brain instinctively fills in the mantras; if I hear any of their bhajans, my fingers start tapping out the tabla taals for keherwa, roopak, or dadra.
oṃ bhūr bhuvaḥ svaḥ tat savitur vareṇyaṃ bhargo devasya dhīmahi dhiyo yo naḥ pracodayāt – Ṛgveda 03.062.10
“May we fix our focus upon that Divine Energy, we beseech that Divinity to illuminate our minds” - this irate Indian
The Good
Culture
Three of my most cherished possessions are two full sets of books and one book: The Complete Works Of Swami Vivekananda, The Complete Works Of Sri Aurobindo , and the Gospel Of Sri Ramakrishna.
Why do I value some dead trees so much?
Anyone who has been in or is currently in AWGP can attest that the organization is a chaotic mess that somehow continues to function and hit above its weight when it needs to. Even if Dr. Pranav Pandya or Jiji herself issues a command, there’s no guarantee it even makes it outside the room. But in that chaos, Gurudev encouraged taking some ownership and solving the problems you see around you.
I forget when exactly, but during one of my trips to Shantikunj shortly after undergrad, I was rereading part one of the biography of Gurudev that Dr. Pranav Pandya wrote, Odyssey of the Enlightened. And in the 6th chapter, he details about the supposed past lives of Gurudev in a scene many of us have seen illustrated of Dada-Guru appearing to him from the diya he did his jap in front of it. Here he instructed Gurudev on what sadhana to perform, that he should join the freedom movement, and showed him his past lives. One of the claimed names was Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.
To provide some background, I can identify the Devanagari consonants and vowels, but I struggle to read Hindi. So even though Gurudev wrote at a level that was accessible to colonized India with a low literacy rate, it was still not accessible to me.
As a fun irony. Before the mandir was built down a street and a turn from the Rutgers campus. Before the books were digitized and available online. In Bumblefuck, PA, my folks’ basement was the central storage and distribution hub for any parijan or otherwise interested peoples to get the organization’s literature.
The breadth and depth of his knowledge was written down and printed on paper just two doors and a couple steps away. It was unavailable to me.
But back to reading. I’d heard the stories of the alleged past lives before, but for some reason, that time stuck with me. And so I started looking into writings by or about Ramakrishna and the downstream lineages of Vivekananda and Aurobindo. And lucky for me, they have a wealth of written and available texts in English.
And so I opened wh@t5@pp and called my partner-in-crime when it came to scrambling to keep the annual youth camps planned and running smoothly.
Luckily he was also down to read the literature, and so we pulled together a band of similar weirdos. Our opening calls were usually the largest, 8-10 people showing up, but most of the time it was just 3-4 of us. But still, over the course of enough time to get a degree, we went through every lecture that Vivekananda delivered. We slowly learned how to decipher what Aurobindo referred to as English. And read the stories of the disciples of Ramakrishna.
Before starting I’d already read the Gita multiple times, condensed translations of the Mahabharata, a handful of Upanishads, and some selections from the Vedas. I started playing tabla when I entered middle school. I knew how to perform the rituals.
But those couple years are really what cemented my pride in the deep and rich culture that my ancestors came from. The fact that these figures both preserved the essence of a tradition going back at least four thousand years, and extended it in the era of the British Raj.
This is a particularly ironic selection from Vivekananda’s The Religion Of Love lecture in London on November 16, 1895 given what I am choosing to write “It is good to be born in a [mandir], but bad to die in one”.
Photos
I don’t use either my full frame or micro 4/3 nearly enough. But I genuinely love taking pictures. Moments are fleeting and there is a magic in saving them. I wish I was good with film. But I’ll settle for 1s and 0s.
Without recapping my entire failed pre-med piece, in middle school I started operating the camera for the youth camps and other events. If there was a sermon, especially if one of the Dr. Pandyas was delivering it, I was there following them around to record and take pictures.
Unfortunately these camps loved things I didn’t: talent shows, garbas, and picnics. Luckily I could give my daan and capture the moments for everyone else.
When we travelled, I was able to help with the cataloging part of networking every Hindu mandir across the diaspora together.
More importantly, I learned how to observe. How to stand at the edges and look inwards to see what folks might miss being caught up in the thick of it.
And it is honestly still flattering to know that my photos are printed and framed in the Abroad Cell office in Shantikunj, right across from the building where on one side, the line forms to see the Akhand Deepak, and on the other, one forms to do the darshan of Dr. Pranav Pandya and/or Jiji.
Techniques
The knowledge isn’t proprietary to the organization, but it is where I learned how to practice many contemplative techniques.
Aatmabodh, treating every morning like it is a new life.
Pragya Yog, a simplified form of Surya Namaskar.
Pranayam, or as the techbros call its commoditized form, breathwork.
Jap, the repetition of a mantra.
Dhyan, intense contemplation.
Darpan, being brutally honest in your own reflection. Always loved practicing in the mirrors by the Saptarishi murthis.
Tratak, staring a candle to refine your focus.
Tattvabodh, treating each night like the end of that day’s life.
These are all tools that Gurudev took from the knowledge of the Rishis and made them accessible. The organization allowed me to learn all of them before I was even an adult.
And repetition plus practice over the years has trained my mind to think deeply about root causes, priorities, and constraints.
The Bad
Youth
I am not a social person but I am okay at socializing as far as software developers go.
So it’s great that I spent most of my childhood being dragged by my parents to yagyas, pujas, youth camps, and other religious functions.
At most events I was usually one of the only kids my own age there. And they were usually short staffed, so I slotted in wherever a volunteer was needed.
Besides, Gurudev said that he values a donation of time more than a donation of wealth. So even if I didn’t want to be there, I was doing my daan.
When we weren’t at the big events, we were effectively doing house calls for Dharmic rituals. Honestly, it’s kinda wild how many people will let complete strangers in a yellow kurta or sari come in their home, perform the yagya or puja they asked for, and then feed them.
I’d be willing to bet that specific to 2nd generation Desi-Americans who fall between the millennial and gen Z demographic, I have almost definitely been at more yagyas than any of y’all.
I even finished all the years of Balavihar and did my graduation project on the “Science of Yagya”.
While I’m on the topic, let me drill into it. Literally translating, yagya can mean sacrifice. But a more accurate translation is the general word for a Dharmic ritual where the ground is “purified”, offerings are made to a fire, forgiveness is asked for any mistakes made, and a resolution is taken at the end to take one of your unhealthy habits, and replace it with a healthy one.
Fortunately and unfortunately, my grand-uncles made the sacrifice of hard labor at a young age to put their youngest brother through school. Even before dada was exposed to Gurudev through that book, yagya was a concept that is engrained in our family’s DNA.
Not gonna explain the details, but my sibling couldn’t sleep alone as a child. What was the duty of the older one if not to sacrifice?
So till the day I went to college, if I had to count the percentage of the number of days I slept on a pathari compared to a bed, the pathari would grade as an A. Every guest who’s stayed at my folks’ home has left great reviews about my mattress, unfortunately I haven’t done much product testing.
Who needs weekends when seva needed done.
Before the mandir we’d drive around the Northeast setting up bookstalls at events. After the building was acquired, we’d commute every weekend, sometimes both days, because our family had taken a personal stake in taking it from a run down industrial building into a temple of Ma Gayatri; luckily I learned how to sleep and study in the minivan.
There was even a routine during the week, my mother would get us ready for school, drive to the state I hold no love for after the bus left, and then head back in the afternoon to be back home after school.
As I got older, I began to represent the organization at the Hindu Mandir Executive Conference. At the 2012 one in San Jose, I was the youngest person there. And I continued to represent the organization up until 2019 in New Jersey when the majority of the usual attendees opted to go to the Howdy Mody event in Houston. Not surprising anyone, but my family was heavily involved in the organizing of the conference, so guess who got to a give a lot more daan in the attempt to invite every mandir across the United States and Canada. And as the 2018 World Hindu Congress approached, my father and I made a trip to both Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago to invite every mandir we could connect with across both countries.
When I mean ingrained, it’s the little things too.
In 2021, Dr. Chinmay Pandya recorded a series of lectures on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, which were then posted to the ShantikunjVideo channel. One of his colleagues in Europe reached out and asked if it was possible to get them as a podcast. His office didn’t know how to do it, so they called my partner-in-crime. Between the two of us, he’s the polite one and I’m the technical one. So he then called me.
Within 24hrs, I learned about their version of hosting platforms, how to link the RSS feeds, and had it up. I stopped everything I had going on because I believed he personally needed something done.
Swaha, Idam Aham Idam Na Mama
Time
Ugadipati Mahakala Ki Jai
We shout the clarion call of the Mahakal.
We’re gonna start with birthdays and end with Yamaraja.
Without inviting y’all to psychoanalyze me. My folks didn’t celebrate my birthday. I remember one as a kid where they had brought Swami Tadatmananda to give a lecture in their home. I remember one towards the end of elementary school when we moved to Pennsylvania. I remember my 17th, not because I celebrated it, but because I was in Yosemite with Dr. Pranav Pandya for it. And I remember my 18th because I merged it with a graduation party, then cleaned the entire basement and organized it. Honestly, a lot of transferable skills to my career.
So why didn’t we celebrate it?
Well because Gurupurnima would usually fall around my birthday. So we were either at that event or one of the annual youth camps, regional and national.
Keeping the transferable skills through-line, I learned how to dig ditches when we needed trenches around the tents. I learned how to serve food to the prasad lines. Learned how to serve water, take out the trash, clean the floors, manage the parking lots. How to deescalate uncles and aunties who would benefit from time with a professional therapist. Once they put me on stage to play tabla for a couple hours because they didn’t have anyone that day. Ohh and I got to help build the outdoor stage.
Sounds fun doesn’t it? ABCD with the “silver spoon” of being born here instead of their homeland who got to learn that good ol’ American work ethic. Besides, lots of kids don’t get parties or cakes.
It’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the landing.
You start to notice it when your peers get excited about a specific day, yet you feel confused.
Every year like clockwork, I didn’t even ask to celebrate, I just didn’t want to go to the mandir. But apparently that was selfish, I’ll have a lot of birthdays but this event was once in a lifetime, Besides, I should be grateful, every birthday a sant performed a personal puja for me.
We call Gurudev the Mahakala, the master of time.
And here I am a grown-ass man who is devoid of the ability to feel its texture.
Workdays, weekends, holidays. They feel the same where all that separates one day from the rest is sleep.
Final Thoughts
Despite it all, I cannot truly hate this organization.
It gave my grandparents and parents a sense of purpose and community to hold onto when they were quite literally strangers in a strange land.
I agree that Vedic culture has a rich and deep history. I cannot say that I disagree with all of Gurudev’s teachings. I fully support the disassembly of rigid caste, empowering women and children, building independent and self sufficient villages, and taking care of the environment.
But there was a real human cost to this. I was raised in a world where I was told what to think, and questioning the “truths” and the substance of their claims was seen as “rude behavior”. I was robbed of my experience to be a child or young adult, instead being fed a constant pressure to perform the part.
I cannot say I would do it again.