Thoughts on Sri Rama Krishna (By Udit Kavinda)

Note from the author: this is a reflective essay on my relationship with the figure known as Sri Rama Krishna.

They say he wore no shoes. That even in the bitter months of the Calcutta rains, as the howling winds would force the Ganga to rise with sharp waves, he still insisted on walking barefoot. Perhaps he liked the feeling of the mud, the sensation of Kali’s body beneath him, yes, Kali, not the goddess abstracted, but Kali, the literal living breathing entity that Sri Ramakrishna claimed to have seen. He said she talked to him, that her tongue was red like fire and her hands, though adorned with weapons, embraced him with such compassion that he would often faint.

I know all of this because of a book I inherited. It had bite marks on the side, most likely from rats. It smelled of jasmine and mothballs. On the cover: “The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna,” and on the inside, a torn corner with faint blue pen markings that read: “To my son, always ask questions.”

I did.

I asked questions not just to her, but to Christ, to Allah, to the laughing Buddha. I think that is what Ramakrishna would’ve wanted. He was not Hindu, not in the conventional way. He was beyond such boundaries. He would chant the Quran one morning, and meditate with tears under a portrait of the Madonna the next. He believed religion was not the path, but the steps one took on the mountain. He never made it to the peak, and he didn’t want to. That wasn’t the point.

He said that to taste sugar, you must not become sugar. I don’t know what he meant by that. But when I read his words aloud in the dead of night, under a flickering lightbulb and a half cup of chai left untouched, I feel something quietly release inside me.

A presence, maybe.

A breeze.

Maybe that’s all he was.

I enjoy speaking of his name and tradition softly, just as one walks barefoot in the mud.