Rakshana usually leaves Houghton Street at around 1.30PM after emptying his cart of vegetarian food, but today he ended up staying on Houghton Street for much longer than he normally would. During our interview, numerous LSE students passed by asking if he was still giving out food, many of whom were his friends.
As you may already know, the free lunch that attracts the long queue everyday is distributed by a Hare Krishna charity, which is part of the Hindu religion known to Westerners. The food is donated by supermarket chains. It is clear to Rakshana that religion means more than faith: it is a duty to serve. While studying medicine at university, he had been looking for a way to serve the wider population, and this was how he discovered the religion. Throughout our conversation, Rakshana was very keen to convey the world view of Hare Krishna, which emphasizes the order of nature within which we must live. Religious scriptures have shaped Rakshana’s attitude to life. According to religious teaching, we must stay away from greed, lust and anger. Rakshana then told me the story of an educated man who treated women other than his wife like mothers.
So do you treat other women as you would your mother? ‘Ah, I am not married yet,’ he said, slightly embarrassed, ‘I am teaching myself and I have to teach myself.’ This was my favourite moment of our interview.
I must agree with him that humans have broken the rules of nature; ‘These technologies…’ said Rakshana, ‘will eventually damage the planet.’ Every entity has its own role to play in nature, and there are areas into which we should not have intruded. Our role is to serve, said Rakshana, and we should take care of the animals as if they are brothers and sisters. Can anyone make friends with any animal? Interestingly, the answer was no. Rakshana found it hard to explain this point, but we finally conclude, amidst laughter, that we should not approach animals which have long teeth. To show how co-operative animals can be if we treat them well, he told me that the cows at the Hare Krishna Temple’s farm in Watford (17 miles outside of London) actually queue up voluntarily as the farmer starts milking them! The cows were ‘respecting each other’, said Rakshana, and each of them even has a name which they respond to! I was absolutely fascinated.
The importance of role does not only apply to the interaction between man and nature, but is imminent in human society. According to scriptures originally written in Sanskrit (the ancient language of India), the earliest civilization had its population divided into four classes: the intellectuals; people who worked as the administrators and maintainers of the State, including the army; businessmen; and, finally, workmen. From a young age, people were assigned to different positions in society by the teachers (members of the first class). Should we follow this today?
‘Er,’ Rakshana hesitated, ‘we can’t change in one day.’ And so we can’t.
Health and happiness are the two qualities in life that matter to Rakshana. Serving the community makes him happy; that is why he enjoys distributing food to all. As people greet him at the queue, he feels energetic, too. Rakshana has a lot to say about health. He compares the body to a cart which holds the soul, and by keeping the body healthy, we will be able to serve. Practicing Wushu, a kind of traditional Chinese martial arts, is one of Rakshana’s way of staying fit. Being vegetarian is another. Vegetarian animals are less aggressive but more active, said Rakshana. He maintains that eating meat not only uses up more of our energy, but will increase our chance of developing cancer and heart disease. I started to think about all the harmful things I had consumed in this one day.
Does a Medicine student have to enter the profession? How many of us have perused the mind of a true healer? Next time when you reach the front of the Houghton queue, greet Rakshana and you’ll sense his energy for life!
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