Jeffrey Broadbent - India 2025
Visit to Lucknow and Radakrishna Math
October 20, 2025
On Saturday, Prof. Pradip Swarnakar's senior research associate Pritha and his driver took me to Lucknow, the capital city of the state of Uttar Pradesh. During the 2.5 hour drive, we discussed her research with Pradip on the problem of Just Transition for the coal workers when India begins closing its coal mines. Along the way, we stopped at one of multitude of tiny tea stalls that dot the roadside. They served us tea in small clay cups that would then be broken and recycled. In Lucknow, we drove past all the Western clothing brand stores like Arrow (very popular with Indians, and probably made in India) and went to the traditional Indian clothing shops with handloom cloth and vegetable dye colors. There we found some beautiful presents for my grandchildren. In the afternoon, we visited the Ramakrishna Math (meditation center).
Ramakrishna lived in the 19th century; through deep meditation he realized the unity of the Hindu Gods and persuaded the different sects to stop fighting each other. His teachings are practiced in centers across the world. The Math has its own herd of milk cows.
We met the friendly senior swami xxxx and I asked him about the Ramakrishna Way and how to meditate. He said that everyone wants to be happy and the way to become happy is to make others happy. Give them whatever you can that will make them happy and it will make you even happier. As for meditation, its purpose is to quiet the mind so you can live in the present. To practice, just sit quietly and silently repeat the name of your beloved or of your God for awhile, and then silently repeat OM. In the Bible, he pointed out, the first sentence says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." The sound of the Word, he explained, was and is OM. He said that US NASA had sent a spacecraft to the sun and it had recorded a sound coming from the sun which was the sound of OM.
Diwali Day in India
October 21, 2025
Diwali official celebration day--Oct 20. This evening my host Pradip took me to his home for a delicious dinner prepared by his multi-talented and amazingly present wife Paramita (her name is the word for the six perfect Buddhist virtues: generosity, morality, patience, diligence, meditation, and wisdom).
Then he took me to the IITK campus Diwali festival on a wide field. A thousand or more students and some elders gathered in their beautiful Diwali party garb- Khuta for men and Khuti for women.
They joyfully held up colored bags of thin translucent fabric, lit a little heat source under them, and when their inner air got hot enough, sent them flying into the night sky, to come down somewhere when their heat source got exhausted.
No centralized ceremony or speeches. As mentioned earlier, Diwali, the festival of light, celebrates Lord Ganesh and Goddess Lakshmi, who bring success and prosperity respectively. The festival also celebrates the Goddess Kali, the subject of my next email.
Ceremony of Blue Kali on Diwali in Kanpur, India
October 21, 2025
After the student Diwali gathering and dinner, my host Pradip took me to the ceremony or puja for Blue Kali on the IITK campus. During a previous meeting of our Compon research group in Helsinki, Pradip had told me about the Black Kali, whom the 19th c. Yogic saint Ramakrishna had worshipped. I was intrigued but also scared, because the little I knew about Black Kali portrayed her as the Goddess of Death. This evening, I met another of her incarnations, the Blue Kali, face to face.
We walked into the hall and found many older people and a saffron loin-clothed Hindu priest preparing for the puja starting at midnight. The statue of the Blue Kali was indeed terrifying.
Her red tongue sticks out, dripping with the blood of evil people, and she wears a necklace of their severed heads dripping blood. Her four hands are red with blood; one holds a bloodied sword. Her ferocity, though, is directed at slaying the demons of evil and negativity in order to nurture and protect those who love her. That is why Kali is worshipped throughout India. The black, blue, white and many other Kalis have different qualities but all emanate from the same divine universal source. The Blue Kali symbolizes an existence beyond the material world. The Black Kali, similarly terrifying and more potent, symbolizes transformation, time, and death, forces that destroy illusions and the ego, making way for renewal and rebirth. In this way, Kali guides the soul toward liberation and as the Divine Mother, fills the universe with divine consciousness. Through this kind of worship, so many of the Indian people in their daily lives and despite so much poverty, I'm beginning to suspect, keep aware of the divine, cosmic essence of their being.
More on Kali
October 21, 2025
The statue of the Blue Kali in the photo was made for that puja ceremony. It is made of dried clay (not ceramic) and after the puja, the statue will be submerged into a river or lake to dissolve and wash away, further symbolizing her message of impermanence and death. The blue (or black, etc.) paint used to be lead-based, but the huge number of Kali statues was polluting India's rivers, so they switched to non-lead paint. The clay itself is very symbolic. It contains dirt from a city's brothel neighborhood signifying that even the most stigmatized people are God's children. The clay also contains cow dung and urine, because the cow is revered as Mother Cow (gomata), the giver of milk and nurturance. The Black Kali, like a black hole, absorbs all negativity, hatred, and anger, purifying the world. The great 19th c. spiritual teacher Ramakrishna worshipped Black Kali because she embodied the power (shakti) of the living dynamic universe, destroying the illusion of the ego and giving enlightenment. The photo shows an early and typical depiction, with necklace of severed heads and skirt of severed arms, signifying the erasure of old karma, and trampling on her husband, Lord Shiva (empowering women).
