Vrindavan Today

My life is up the creek
and I am seemingly indifferent.
I am in Vrindavan, today's Vrindavan today.
and only a few moments away
stares a trip to the West that I do not want.

I am in Vrindavan, today's Vrindavan today.
And it is a mess.
It seems the minute I got off the train
I was invited to a meeting.

One Gosai in his forties reminisced
about bathing in the clear Yamuna and the silky soft feel of the raj
on the Parikrama Marg on an early summer morning.

It is gone! And it can't be brought back!
Are some finally beginning to realize what it is that they have lost?

The closest we can imagine it now
is maybe in some Atlantic City, promenade fashion,
that will amuse German tourists who will wear Hawaiian shirts
and Tilley hats and sandals and smile
at the widows and emaciated sadhus on their way
to the Hotel Nidhivan, AC rooms. So many star hotel.

And for the less worldly, less sophisticated, the believer crowd,
there will be another, grotesque Disney vision of Krishnaworld,
with mechanical Bakasuras swallowing mechanical cowherd boys.
That is the kind of creative thinking
your great government thinks will bring in
the dough and the development.

The Green Temple Initiative wants you to put solar panels on the roof;
it wants you to conserve water and electricity, to plant trees.
Just look at what they are doing in Puri, Shrirangam, Bangaluru,
in Shirdi, in the Punjab! We too can have solar panels!
Oh glory day!

My dear young lady, you have not seen what Kali Yuga
has done to Vrindavan. You are fighting a herd of elephants
with a peacock feather.