‘Well, you’ll just have to pay the fine, then,’ the young officer told her, opening his pocketbook.
‘That is just fuckin’ stupid,’ the woman said. Her son and daughter drew close together to protect themselves from the oncoming war of words. ‘This is fuckin’ stupid is what it is! I tried to buy tickets but there was no one there! I have no fuckin’ money to pay a fuckin’ fine!’
On and on the altercation went. The mother would not give an inch and neither would the inspectors, the argument spilling onto the platform at Ferntree Gully, where Madhav quickly slunk away, his heart beating rapidly at the narrow escape he’d had from paying a $120 fine.
Abishekam was an essential part of Hindu priests’ daily rites. Each deity in the shrine had to be bathed in a concoction of milk and ghee and finally washed with rosewater while Reverend Shastri and Madhav chanted mantras in the early hours of the morning.
‘Om Sri Ganapathis Ram . . . Om Sri Ram . . . Om Sri Ram . . .’ Madhav muttered as he handed the kalahasas of milk to the chief pundit. His stomach rumbled quite loudly. Normally the abishekam would have long been completed. But not today.
Cold bitter winds and rain had lashed Melbourne the night before. For hours the wind and rain had howled through the Dandenongs, the surrounding ghost gums creaking and cracking and shedding their limbs. Madhav and the chief pundit had spent the night huddled in the part of the rectory furthest away from any large trees, but at around midnight an almighty crash was heard from just beyond.
‘Lord Ganapathi save us!’ the chief pundit had cried, running to see what had happened.
It was a large gum tree and it had fallen in between the rectory and the temple proper, damaging nothing of importance but creating quite a hindrance. Had it not been for the Rebels in the shack in the adjoining paddock, Madhav and Reverend Shastri would have been trapped.
‘M’name is Clint,’ the chief Rebel had drawled, walking in with a chainsaw just after dawn. ‘Guess you’ll be wanting that tree removed, huh?’ he’d said, stating the obvious, before setting to work with six other similarly tattooed men. As much as Madhav had wanted to send the man packing, he couldn’t. He really needed the tree removed. He needed the temple set to rights because he’d received a very important call a few days ago.
‘Yes, this is the Reverend Madhav Patel at the Ferntree Gully Sri Ganapathi Vinayaka temple,’ he’d answered.
‘Hi, my name is Kylie, and I’m calling from the Australia Today program on Channel 6. We’ve had reports that miracles are happening in Ferntree Gully and we’d like to send a reporter out to talk with you.’
‘I don’t know about miracles, but we are devout Hindus here,’ Madhav had told Kylie pompously. ‘What exactly have you heard?’
‘We’ve got reports of three women falling pregnant after visiting your temple. Two of these women had been through multiple rounds of IVF and failed.’
‘They were lucky,’ Madhav said. ‘These things happen.’
‘Then there was a child who had glaucoma and it has disappeared. Can you explain that?’
‘Did the child have treatment at a hospital?’
‘I assume so.’
‘That is most likely the cause of the cure, then.’
‘I’d still like to come out and speak to you anyway,’ Kylie had pleaded. ‘Either way, it will be good publicity for your temple, and the work you are doing in the local community.’
‘I will have to consult with the board of trustees before I allow a camera crew onto the temple grounds,’ Madhav said. He was very excited at the thought of being on TV but didn’t want the woman to know it.
‘Oh, think of it,’ Mrs Vasundaram had cried excitedly. ‘We’ll be the leading Hindu temple in all of Australia soon! Wait till I tell my mother back home in India!’
‘Do you need a trustee to be there on Thursday? I can take the day off,’ Ananda had offered.
‘No . . . I think I will be able to manage,’ Madhav had replied.
So now Madhav was desperately trying to finish the abishekam and get ready before the people from Channel 6 arrived. The falling tree had been inconvenient, but the bikies had sorted it out and now he could get on with preparations for the filming. He was expecting Kumar and Gohar to arrive any moment to help him set up.
That was when the phone rang out in the rectory. Madhav dashed out to answer it, wondering if it might be the television crew calling. ‘It’s me, Kumar,’ a rusty voice sounded down the line. ‘Look, Gohar and I can’t come today. Our car was crushed by a tree.’
‘But . . .’
‘But nothing, mate,’ Kumar said sullenly. ‘I just had that car resprayed. I’m completely gutted!’
Madhav hung up on him and started to panic. He could finish off the preparations for the camera crew on his own, but what was he going to do about Nila Mendis? He didn’t want that crackpot about when he made his TV debut and had been depending on Kumar and Gohar to keep her out of the way!
Steeling himself, Madhav changed into a lungi and an elaborate sarong. Once it warmed up in the shrine room, he would strip down to his sarong and Brahmin thread, but not yet. He wanted the Australian audiences to see a proper Brahmin priest as he should be seen.
‘So, do you need the firewood, or should we take it away?’ Clint asked as Madhav came out of the rectory.
‘I thought you’d left!’ Madhav cried.
‘Nah . . . just went out for morning tea. Had some scones and jam from the bakery.’
‘Don’t worry about it. We’ve got a TV crew coming in about ten minutes, so I will arrange to have the wood cleared up later.’
‘It’s all right, mate. We can take care of it now – won’t be long. It’s the least we can do,’ Clint assured him, as the other Rebels got to work stacking the wood.
Madhav could not exactly demand they leave after they had been so helpful, so he left them to it and rushed to front of the temple just as two large vehicles bearing the Channel 6 insignia came driving up.
‘Just as well we had the four-wheel drives,’ a blond woman called as she jumped out of the first car. ‘Fallen trees everywhere! I’m Kylie – are you Madhav Patel? I hope you are, because we want to get this story filmed today and air it tomorrow!’
‘Yes, I am Madhav Patel,’ he replied, feeling ill. From the corner of one eye he could see the Rebels coming around the side of the temple with their chainsaw, and from the other, the rusty car belonging to Nila Mendis’s nephew. He closed his eyes in horror and opened them again, only to see the little white boy from the train walk into the compound.
‘I thought I’d find you here!’ the boy called out, seeing Madhav.
Madhav watched the report with the chief pundit on the television in the rectory.
‘. . . and now to the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne, where miracles are taking place,’ said the presenter. ‘Infertile women have fallen pregnant. The long-term unemployed have found jobs. A child with glaucoma has been cured, and even a cat who’d been missing for two years has been found safe and sound. More from “Weird and Wonderful” reporter Kylie McLean in Boronia,’ she finished.
The chief pundit did not look impressed.
‘Sri Ganapathi Vinayaka temple was always just another Hindu temple among the handful of Hindu temples here in the cosmopolitan heart of Melbourne,’ Kylie opened, walking towards the camera. ‘But earlier this year everything changed when a British-born holy man or sadhu took over the running of the temple.’
‘Meet Madhav Patel. He was born in the UK and had been offered a place studying medicine at Oxford when he ran away from home to join a Hindu seminary.’
‘It isn’t easy to join a Hindu seminary,’ Madhav explained on camera. ‘You have to sit exams testing your understanding of Sanskrit and Hindi. These were especially difficult since I had been entirely educated in the UK.’
‘Madhav says he first heard the gods speak to him in his mother’s womb,’ Kylie’s voice continued, as viewers were shown a montage of Madhav wal
king around the temple grounds and praying.
‘Since arriving in Melbourne, direct from the seminary in Mumbai, Reverend Madhav has been credited with bringing about miracles.’
‘We have been trying for fifteen years to have a baby,’ a middle-aged Indian woman explained on camera. ‘The doctors had given up. But we went to the Mahalakshmi Vrata Pooja and four weeks later we received the amazing news!’
‘My son Srinath is a qualified engineer. Graduated top of his batch at university. Worked for a few years but lost his job. Could not find one for another six years. So I made a vow at the Mahalakshmi Vrata Pooja and two days later he got called for an interview and now he is employed at the Met driving trains,’ another parent said gleefully.
‘The doctors wanted us to consent to laser surgery. They found glaucoma in our daughter’s eyes,’ a father said tearfully as his child played with her puppy in the foreground. ‘But we went to the Mahalakshmi Vrata Pooja and made a vow. Two days later she had another scan and there were no traces of the glaucoma.’
‘So how do you do it?’ Kylie asked Madhav. ‘How do you bring about these miracles?’
‘I don’t bring about miracles. It is God who brings about miracles,’ Madhav told her.
‘Which god? I see so many gods here that I don’t know which one to choose.’ The camera panned around the temple, showing the hundreds of statuettes.
‘Hinduism has over 330 million gods. You choose the god who is right for what you need.’
‘So which god would I go to if I wanted a new car?’
‘It does not work like that. You have to have true belief in your heart when you approach God. What you give out is what you get.’
‘Is that like karma?’ Kylie asked.
The camera cut to a heavyset biker covered with tattoos, having a chat on a stump with his mates. ‘Isn’t karma like when you kill a fly and get reborn as a dog?’ he asked.
‘The laws of karma are a lot more complex than that,’ Madhav said. ‘Karma is about intent. It is determined by all of one’s thoughts and acts, not odd acts of thoughtlessness or cruelty,’ Madhav’s voice chimed in.
‘Are you saying that killing a person is permissible then, as long as you don’t do it often?’
‘No, killing is never permissible. All Hindus should practice ahimsa – non-violence.’
‘You don’t eat meat?’
‘Never.’
The following scene showed the glamorous Kylie in the shrine room proper, perambulating and bowing to the various gods.
‘So every day of the week, you’ll find this young holy man beseeching God on your behalf. All it requires is that you come here with twenty-five dollars and a plate of fruit, and all your wishes will come true,’ the voice over read as the camera showed Madhav smearing Kylie’s forehead with vermilion.
‘Can the gods taste the fruit?’ Kylie asked.
‘Of course not.’
‘Then why offer it? Isn’t it a bit wasteful?’
‘It is about giving something to receive something in return.’
‘So why come to a temple to do an offering? Why not do it at home?’
‘Of course you can do your offerings at home. That is completely up to you. But here at a temple you have people – pundits – who pray to God all the time. God is more likely to visit a temple than your house.’
‘So, it’s like going to a party. You know the gods are more likely to be here, so you’ll get a chance to talk to them.’
‘Yes,’ Madhav had replied, distracted, not realising what he had just agreed to. Brendan had come rushing in carrying one of the mock swords from the Mahalaksmi pooja. Madhav was very relieved when he spotted Nila swiftly take the little sword from the boy.
‘Will there be another grand party soon, when the gods will preside again?’
‘There are no parties here!’ Madhav huffed. ‘We have poojas. That is when we commune with God!’
‘So when is the next major pooja?’
‘At Navaratri, when we worship the triple goddess, Durga-Amman, the great mother, Mahalaksmi, the goddess of abundance, and Saraswati, the goddess of wisdom.’
‘So there you have it folks, come to Ferntree Gully Sri Ganapathi Vinayaka during Navaratri and all your dreams will come true!’
The chief pundit was horrified. It took six weeks for Madhav to recover from watching the report, and several months before he could be persuaded that the television itself was not an inherently evil invention.
‘The Navaratri pooja will be big this year. We have to start planning now. It is September now and November will be upon us before we know it!’ Ananda, the chair of the board of trustees, declared.
No longer were committee meetings poorly attended and barely listened to. It was serious business now. The temple now had three full-time staff on top of Madhav and the chief pundit. Kumar and Gohar were now priests in training and receiving a youth allowance.
After the Australia Today story, people were flying in from as far away as Brisbane and Sydney to visit the temple, in numbers worthy of a smallish pilgrimage site in India. A few entrepreneurs had even set up shop on the little grass knoll near the temple, selling hot chips, drinks and cheap fruit.
‘We’ll need a budget for the Navaratri festivities this year,’ Mrs Vasundaram said, looking at her notes. ‘I think five thousand dollars should cover it all?’
‘Five thousand won’t cover the basic necessities,’ Madhav countered. ‘We’ll need to have at least 200 litres of milk for the abishekam over nine days and two truckloads of fruit. Not to mention at least twenty cartons of camphor, as well as vermilion paste, turmeric paste, rose water and vibuthi!’
‘Don’t you just take ash from a burnt tree for vibuthi?’ a new trustee asked. His name was Narayan and he had only recently come to Australia.
‘It is actually cow dung incinerated with sandalwood,’ Madhav explained.
‘And you smear it all over your forehead?’ the young man asked in horror.
‘Madhav is right – we’ll need more supplies,’ said Ananda. ‘I just heard from the Hare Krishnas. They will be coming in force during Navaratri.’
‘That’ll be a thousand extra pilgrims!’ Reverend Shastri gasped.
‘No, an extra two thousand at least. Their movement is quite large here in Victoria.’
‘Oh my God! How are we to accommodate such a number?’
‘I have already contacted the seminary in India and they are sending extra pundits out to help us,’ Madhav said. ‘It is the Navaratri pageant I am worried about,’ he continued.
‘We usually don’t have a pageant,’ Ananda said.
‘We will have over three thousand people attending. What do you suppose we do with them? Have a Bollywood dance-off on the lawns? We need a pageant!’
‘On the last night, like in India!’ Reverend Shastri seconded.
‘With large floats on trucks. We’ll bring out the statues of the Durga-Amman, Mahalaksmi and Saraswati Devi dressed like the queens of the heavens!’ Madhav insisted.
‘But . . . a pageant? It’ll cost money, and we’ll need to get the council’s permission,’ Mrs Vasundaram said. Some of the other trustees nodded.
‘Mrs Vasundaram, isn’t your daughter sitting her final exams for university entrance this year? Didn’t you just buy a new business, Mr Ananda? And you, Mr Govinda, you’ve not been in Australia a year. Aren’t you thinking of buying a house? You all want the gods to hear your prayers and answer them, to give you their blessings, but you must also give to the gods in return!’ Madhav said. Even the most miserly trustees were moved by his speech.
‘It will be my pleasure to donate the saree for the Durga-Amman statue,’ Mrs Vasundaram declared. ‘I saw a beautiful saree in Clow Street in Dandenong on the weekend. My daughter is studying for the VCE this year, and by the grace of Durga-Amman, she will be a doctor!’
‘My wife and I will donate a thousand dollars for a saree for Mahalaksmi,’ Ananda said. ‘We’ve just opene
d a restaurant in Surrey Hills, and by her benevolence, it will be successful.’
Madhav waited for someone to take up the cause for Saraswati, but there was silence. ‘Is no one going to take up the goddess Saraswati’s cause? No one?’ he asked.
‘We really don’t have the money,’ Narayan confessed shamefacedly. ‘My wife and I have only been here a year and we are desperately trying to save money for a deposit for a house.’ The other trustees nodded; their situations were similar.
‘It is traditional that the sarees are donated by the trustees of the temple,’ Reverend Shastri chided. ‘It is a great honour and a privilege to do so.’
‘Perhaps the saree can be donated by the visitors to the temple?’ Madhav suggested. ‘I’ll go into Dandenong and find a saree, and then we’ll place a donation box in the shrine room and get people to chip in for it. That way everyone will have a hand in the blessing.’
There were ways and means of persuasion open to a priest not available to most. Especially so in the case of Madhav, as he was the person everyone came to see. Had the Reverend Shastri been at all an egotistical man, he would have thrown a tantrum worthy of a toddler, but he was quite happy to be relegated to a junior role as Madhav took on more and more of the services. Some people even walked rudely away from the older priest if he dared to touch their offering plate. ‘We came here to see the miracle maker,’ they would mutter, and not too softly, either. Madhav barely had time to catch his breath from when he started in the morning until he fell asleep.
But the young pundit’s passion for the gods could not be doubted. He had placed a large donation box in the temple with a sign on it that read: ‘Target $50,000 for Saraswati’s saree’.
What? Who’d pay $50,000 for a saree?
Of course the trustees had raised merry hell about it. ‘What? Fifty thousand dollars? That’s enough to put a deposit on a four-bedroom house!’ Govinda had protested.
‘They are robbing you blind!’ Mrs Vasundaram had cried. ‘Take me to the people trying to sell you this saree at once and I will have words with them! Trying to rip off a Hindu priest and a nice young man like you! Imagine that!’
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