Market Street Harinam 1967

Rocking the Mantra

“What time is it?”

Hawk blinked.

“What time is it?”

“I’m not sure.” And Hawk wasn’t sure. The bonds of time had loosened for him. Hawk was thinking to himself. Perhaps the right question was not “What time is it?” but “What is time?”

St. Augustine of Hippo, when confronted with this very question admitted, “I know what time is, but if you ask me, I can’t explain it.” At the moment of death we can collapse 70 years into 7 seconds. A motorcycle stunt man flying through the air feels 7 seconds to be more like 70 years. In his famous debate with Einstein, Bergson argued that time is subjective as is all reality. Reality is fired by consciousness. Without consciousness, time does not exist. But what was the reality he was experiencing. Was he really stuck in 1967? Or was this all some weird altered state produced by the tryptamines given him by Dr. Van Jensen?

“Come on. We’re going on Harinam,” said Atmaram Das.

Ah yes. The Hare Krishnas. San Francisco. But what day was it? Hawk needed to see a newspaper. And what was Harinam? He followed Atmaram down the corridor past the office. He entered a large room where men where dressing, getting ready to go somewhere.

“Here,” said Atmaram, “We’ll show you how to tie a dhoti.”

“A dhoti?” said Hawk, perplexed, as Atmaram found a long white sheet of cloth.

“Yes. We’re going out on Sankirtan. Congregational chanting of the holy name. Schwartz Prabhu! Show this man how to tie a dhoti. I’ll meet you outside.” Atmaram hit the door.

Shwartz Prabhu was short and intense with thick glasses. “Lift up your arms,” he said, and began working like the Jewish tailor that he had been before falling into a life of drugs and alcohol and being saved by the Hare Krishna mission. He deftly wrapped the long cloth around the jeans that Hawk had been wearing since 2017 at the Paradise hotel in Tokyo, Japan. He had left his tweed jacket in the office.

“You’ll need to take off your shirt,” said Schartz Prabhu, producing a rough version of an Indian kurta. “Put this on.”

Hawk put on the kurta. He hadn’t looked in a mirror since the hotel with Nancy, which seemed to him to be in the past, but which was in the future. His scientific theories about quantum time leaps made no sense.

Schwartz Prabhu studied his work and made an adjustment to the fit of the dhoti.

“That’ll do,” he said, touching his glasses with the tip of his index finger. “Let’s go. We’ll be late.”

As a scientist, Hawk was too busy gathering data, studying the situation to question anything. He did as he was told and joined Schwartz. They went down the corridor by the office together, exited the back door by the garbage cans and found a small group of Krishna followers lining up outside. Atmaram was there with the double-headed tom-tom drum the devotees carried. It was smaller than a conga drum or a djembe. Atmaram wore it around his shoulder with a strap.

“Let me introduce you to the devotees,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Prabhus, this is Hawk. You know Schwartz Prabhu. Next to Atmaram was another drummer, tall, powerfully built, with massive hands black as coal. He wore a white dhoti and roman sandals. With a shaved head and strong chin, he might have been Othello carved out of ebony. “This is Bhakta Congo. He’s from Kinshasa.”

The last drummer was Jay Ram. He was a Cuban refugee who had fought at the Bay of Pigs. Disgusted with the Vietnam war he had become a follower of the Swami. Goodlooking as a Hollywood actor he had wanted to be a Catholic priest, but Castro had outlawed the church. He learned English reading the Bhagavad-Gita translation of the Swami. Now he wore saffron and marched with the Hare Krishnas.

Dave Krishna had been in the marines. Strung out on Vietnamese opium he had spent time in the streets of Haight Ashbury getting high on hash before he learned to get high on Krishna. His tattooed muscles told tourists and cops not to mess with the Krishnas.

Yashoda was there, a green-eyed brunette in a pink paisley sari. She was an artist and designed the posters for the Mantra Rock. She did paintings for the Swami’s books. He said her work was a window on the spiritual world. She was leading a shy Mexican girl dressed in a blue sari, named Esmeralda Devi.

Atmaram Das lined them up carefully.

“The others will join us later. Let’s get started.”

As Atmaram gave orders and explained the mission, Hawk, Schwartz Prabhu, Bhakta Congo, Jai Ram, Dave Krishna, Yashoda and Esmeralda began marching down the street towards Market Street. As they reached a populated area Atmaram began a simple beat on his murdanga hand drum.

Bhakta Congo picked up the beat with an African rumble and Jai Ram put a little Cuban mambo into it. Dave Krishna clashed the cymbals and Yashoda and Esmeralda raised their hands to the heavens and danced along, their saris swirling in the breeze coming in off Stinson Beach.

They danced up and down the hills of San Franciscos gay streets chanting the holy names of Krishna, Gauranga, Gopal and Govinda, past cable cars, hippies, sailors and tourists.

And there was Hawk, unstuck from time, loosed from the bonds of temporal reality, transported from the 21st century into this sublime past, high on the holy name, in a cloud of ecstasy, as Bhakta Congo of Kinshasa and Jai Ram of Havana were drumming away and chanting on Market Street in downtown San Francisco in the winter of 1967.

They stopped on a street corner and a crowd of onlookers gathered. Esmeralda handed out handbills invited all to the Mantra Rock event at the Avalon ball room. As promised other devotees arrived, their shaven heads gleaming in the afternoon California sun. With the clash of cymbals and the beating of drums they were dancing and sweating, pounding the pavement with their sandals, jumping up and down, chanting ever louder, challenging each other to see who could chant louder, who would dive deeper into the ecstasy of the moment.

The tourists were pleased. Finally there were photos to snap. Cameras pointed. They took the handbills to Mantra Rock and moved on. A few hippies joined the devotees in song.

They slapped tambourines to the rhythm of the kirtan. As a mist rolled in from the bay, angelic voices were raised in song:

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare

Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare

They appeared out of the fog.

We hadn't noticed the squad cars. The owner of the pawn shop behind us had called it in. Time collapsed. Before the swami’s men could scatter and run they were surrounded.

The cops were swift. Trained in riot control they were glad of a chance to flex their muscles. A police siren pierced Hawk’s eardrums. Six police men moved in on the chanting party as if they were taking action against the Viet Cong. They strong-armed Jai Ram and slapped him in cuffs. They arrested Atmaram and read him his rights. They confiscated the drums and threw them in the trunk as three gargantuan cops grabbed Bhakta Congo and wrestled his huge form into the back of a squad car and raced away, sirens droning. There were squad cars everywhere as if it were a military action against a terrorist event.

Schwartz Prabhu kept on chanting, but a pair of huge cops with beefy arms had him in a choke hold and dragged him away. They broke his glasses and took away his finger cymbals. One by one the Swami’s followers were carted off, handcuffed, and frog-marched into paddy-wagons.

The devotees tried to keep on chanting, but the cops broke it up as they shouted insults:

"Fuckin' Freaks! Join the Circus! Get a job. You're blocking traffic. Come on folks, the show's over."

"Hey You!" Hawk was cornered. "Get ovah heah!"

Hawk knew his rights. He said, "But, Officer, we're only practicing our constitutional right to free speech and free practice of religion as stated in the first amendment to the American constitution..."

"Whaddaya? a wise guy? Smart ass? Shaddup! You're obstructing traffic, section 105.9B of the municipal code of the great city of San Francisco. Take him away."

The finest police officers of the City of San Francisco ran the Hare Krishnas into jail, demonstrating their great respect for first ammendment rights. In a land where freedom of speech and religion are sacrosanct, the cops called Hawk and his friends all kinds of imaginative epithets including but not restricted to freaks, cult-members, sissy-boys, punks, hippies, stoners, rebels, noodniks, knuckleheads, and commie pinko fags.”

These great representatives of democracy did their best to encourage freedom of religion by taking away the drums, cymbals, sacred books and incense of the Krishna people who had troubled deaf heaven with their divine mantras. The police confiscated the posters for Mantra Rock and started an official federal investigation.

In this way, Hawk noted, the truth-seekers who intoned divine mantric incantations for world peace and spiritual liberation were duly processed by the law of the land. The Swami’s men and women were booked, finger-printed, mugged, and accused of disturbing the peace, disruption of public morals, obstructing traffic and justice, resisting arrest and assault on a peace officer.

The Swami’s followers were jailed in a clammy holding cell stinking of urine and alcohol with pot-smoking beatnik bohemians, junkie jazzmen, pimps, winos, transvetite prostitutes, runaway hippies, local criminals, rapists, murderers, dope dealers, muggers, buggers, thieves, drunken long-shoremen, syphilitic steeplejacks, bad-ass boilermakers, homoxexual gandy-dancers, beat wino rapscallions and joy-ride car thieves.

They weren't daunted. They told everyone about “Mantra Rock” and the power of the holy name. They passed out the few flyers they had left. Atmaram Das preached, "The Age of Darkness is upon us. Just see the power of the dogs of Kali! He has beaten you down with sinful activity. Drunken, wasted, and worn out you seek pleasure where there is only pain. Use this human body while you still have time! Time and tide wait for no man bide. Chant the name while you’re still alive.”

The fallen and imprisoned sinners listened to the message and their spirits were buoyed. The lowest of the low, prisoners of the iron age, their souls scarred with sin, took hope. Their eyes shined in the darkness of lockup. Bhakta Congo stood tall, his massive muscles gleaming with sweat as he taught them one and all the words to the Hare Krishna mantra:

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare

Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.

The prisoners laughed and gave it a try. Half-hearted at first, soon they were infected with the contagious enthusiasm of Schwartz Prabhu. Jai Ram began rapping out a beat against the bars.

Hippies, prisoners and beat down, beat out winos and desperate train-hopping hobos all began to chant as one. They kept the melody simple. When they were tired, Atmaram gave a nice speech echoing Winston Churchill:

“We will not be cowed down. They may take our drums, but they will not take our souls! They can take our books, but we carry the message of the Swami in our hearts. We carry the Hare Krishna mantra in our hearts!

Raise your voice in song, men. Chant the divine mantra for peace and holy salvation. We shall chant on the beaches, we shall chant in the streets, we shall not flag or fail: We shall chant Hare Krishna in Heaven or hell. We shall take the holy name in Jail!"

And so to the chagrin of the guards and cops all the prisoners took up the chant. They could understand this was defending the right to practice free religion in the United States of America. It was an invitation to join the struggle for life, liberty and the pursuit of divine love and transcendental bliss.

Now that the cops had taken away the drums, Bhakta Congo rapped against the bars. Schwartz Prabhu stomped on the floor. The junkie jazz musicians picked up the beat. Everyone clapped our hands and sang Hare Krishna.

The guards were furious: "Pipe down!" "Shut your pie hole!" they said. But after a while they gave it up as futile as all the prisoners chanting as one. So it was that the Swami’s followers converted the dank dirty hell of the San Francisco lockup a holy place of pilgrimage.

Hawk lost his sense of time. Time had collapsed again. Had they been in jail for days or merely hours? It had seemed like forever. Word had gotten out on the street about the arrest. This time it was Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, San Francisco’s most famous rock group that came to the rescue. His personal marijuana dealer had been swept up in a raid and had been busted with the Krishnas. A phone call later and he was out on the street. Their lawyer did his thing and after a few hours the Krishna were released with a warning, just in time for the mantra rock celebration. The police returned everything: the drums, the cymbals, the posters. It was all a misunderstanding, the desk sergeant said as he returned their stuff. They didn’t realize it was a freedom of religion thing.

A Volkswagen minibus showed up to collect them.

The devotees back at the temple had arranged quite a welcome. They had to eat well, after all they needed their strength for the big Mantra Rock program in the evening.

When Hawk arrived, he was amazed to see that the devotees at the temple had hung festive decorations, Mexican paper cutouts, banners and balloons. A sign said WELCOME HOME PRABHUS. Yashoda was in the door waiting for them along with Esmeralda.

Hawk felt that he had arrived home. Atmaram explained, that Krishna was welcoming everyone back after the big ordeal. It was like Krishna was throwing them a big birthday party. Meanwhile, the Swami was upstairs getting ready for the program.

Hawk was hungry after his ordeal in jail. They had offered ham sandwiches but no one had tried the jail food. Now he was happy that he hadn’t The feast was amazing:

There was basmati rice smothered in ghee butter. Brown rice, wild rice, saffron rice and kichari a rice and legumes plate. There were samosas, a kind of vegetarian savory pie eaten with the fingers. A tamarind sauce accompanied the samosas. There were chapatis, a kind of whole wheat tortilla eaten with the hands. There were sweet puris, a fluffy pastry-like tortilla covered with powdered sugar. And there were salty puries, dripping with butter, to be eaten with soup. There were varieties of soup: creamed carrot, cauliflower and potato and pots of vegetables and mung dāl. There were pakoras, a kind of deep-fried tempura vegetable with cauliflower, spinach, broccoli or potatoes.

There were different kinds of subjiis, mashed potatoes with butter, Gauranga potatoes with sour cream, squash, mānakacu and a salad made with pieces of ginger and various types of spinach. There was sukhta, bitter melon. Bitter and pungent sukhtas. Atmaram explained that this was exactly like the feat Advaita Acharya offered Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in Bengal, India. Among the various vegetables were newly grown leaves of nimba trees fried with eggplant. The fruit known as paṭola was fried with phulabaḍi, a kind of dāl preparation first mashed and then dried in the sun. There was also a preparation known as kuṣmāṇḍa-mānacāki. There were an opulence of sweets: sweet rice with saffron, nectar juice drinks, orange julius nectar, strawberry and banana smoothies, , roasted coconuts, coconut pulp mixed with curd and rock candy, Curried banana flowers and squash, gopi dust, syrupy indian cheese deserts called rasgullas, golubjamins, lugdus, iskcon bullets, ramananda’s midnight dream.

Hawk looked around. All the Swami’s followers were ecstatic after such a long ordeal. Bhakta Congo looked rejuvenated and grinned wide, his teeth showing ivory against the ebony visage of a proud Zulu warrior. Schwartz Prabhu had taped his glasses together with adhesive tape and was ready for another go after having been tested by fire. The Cuban ex-freedom fighter Jai Ram, confirmed in his faith in Krishna, filled his plate with more prasadam. They were all ready to go back out on Sankirtan, to do their part as the Hare Krishna chanters of Mantra Rock, to bang the drum and chant the holy name of God and purify all of San Francisco.

But first, they all needed a long siesta. It had been a long day and night. That evening would be the Mantra Rock festival. Many people would be there and everyone had to prepare for the real feast.