What are the Signs of the Steady-Minded One?
The one who sits in meditation? Tell me, Krishna.
How does the Steady-Minded One appear?
How does he sit? How does he walk?
I also remember looking at the non-Hindu students
in my class (two Muslims and one Christian) when
we were all reciting it. I couldn’t help wonder-
ing what they thought of the whole “Signs of the
Steady—Minded One” Hindu deal. It sounded a little
unrealistic, even to Hinduism-immersed me.
We Hindus not only chanted in chorus, we
danced in chorus, so to speak. Every year in the
month of October, for nine nights, everyone in the
state where I lived—Gujarat—would take to the
streets and dance in any open space available from
9 pm till 3 am. Men and women would form a ring
and dance the Garba—three steps forward and then
three backward, clapping their hands. Experts would
improvise, adding a twirl, or a jump, or a swinging
motion of the arms. Another version called Dandiya
Raas was played with sticks. There would be two
rings—an inner ring moving to the left and an out-
er ring moving to the right. Dancers would line up in
front of each other, hit each others’ sticks five times
in a certain pattern—Left, right, downward, left, right
—then move to the next person in the ring.
All this dancing was happening, of course,
to songs blaring from loudspeakers, most of them
in praise of Krishna. If you heard those songs, you
would have a hard time believing that the songs
were about the same Krishna who preached about
being Steady-Minded to Arjuna. The Krishna of the
garba dance was a player!—a guy who would spin
your heart around like a curveball. It made me won-
der whether Krishna’s girlfriends ever got the “Signs
of the Steady-Minded One” lecture.
Going to religious lectures was something
most grown-ups did. In addition, my mother and the
other ladies in our apartment complex would get
together and sing religious songs called bhajans.
One of the hymns they sang was called the “Subh-
ramanya Bhujangam.” I remember it because it
gave me a particularly bad case of “earworms”—the
stanzas would play in an endless loop in my brain
while I tossed back and forth in bed, trying to sleep.
I was in despair, because I didn’t know when this
would stop—my mother and the ladies met every
week and they invariably sang this thing!
It came to an end quite suddenly, though.
The organizer of the group had a bright idea: she
said the members of this group should no longer
greet each other with “Hey” or “Hello” etc.—they
had to say “Jai Lalitha!” (“Victory to the Mother God-
dess!”) and then the other person should respond
with “Lalitha Parameshvaree!” (“The Mother God-
dess is the Supreme Goddess!”) My mother thought
this was the dumbest thing ever, refused, and boom!
There were no more bhajan meetings. Oh boy—my
prayers were answered! “Jai Lalitha!” I whispered to
myself in glee, “Lalitha Parameshvaree!”
It probably wouldn’t surprise you if I told
you that my mother, with her rebellious streak,
wasn’t the lullaby-singing kind of mom. The person
who sang me to sleep with bhajans was my uncle.
“Bholanatha Umapathey, Shambo Shankara Pash-
upathey,” he sang. To this day, my eyelids get a little
heavier when I hear that song.
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