We arrived in India to masked faces – Mumbai was in the grip of a swine flu scare! After an endless medical screening process, involving trips back and forth between counters at opposite ends of a huge hall (welcome to India!), we traipsed out of the airport, bleary eyed, only to be garlanded with strings of fresh jasmine and roses! Two smiling faces greeted us, our driver, Daruka, and a saffron clothed monk – both from the Hare Krishna temple in Chowpatty. After ushering us into our car, we sped away through the mid-morning traffic. We’d all been to India many times before, apart from Acyuta, who gazed wide eyed at all the passing sights. Men and women bathed by the roadside using bright plastic buckets, and coconut trees grew amidst hundreds of handpainted Coca Cola signs adorning every corner.

After driving for an hour, we reached the city oasis of the Radha Gopinath Temple, where we’d be staying for the next two weeks. The temple is a beautifully designed masterpiece of sandstone and carved wood, set amidst inner city apartment blocks. The main shrine upstairs boasts an amazing floor inlaid with semi-precious stones, what to speak of the deities of Radha Gopinath, so lovingly cared for by the temple monks and congregation.

The main event of our stay was the book launch of ‘The Journey Home: Autobiography of a American Swami’ by His Holiness Radhanath Swami. This book tells the story of a young American man’s journey through 1970s Europe and India, striving to find spiritual truth, and above all, a guru. After some incredible, often hair-raising adventures, that man eventually became Radhanath Swami, the founder and spiritual guide of the Radha Gopinath Temple.

We spent many days rehearsing at the offices of Swati Piramal, the mastermind and artistic director of the book launch. She’d put in many weeks of meticulous planning and organising for the event,  and we all wanted to do our best to make the evening a success. In between rehearsals, we had several newspaper interviews and photoshoots (often having to dress a bit Bollywood to make the media happy!), and even had an appearance on Radio Mirchi, Mumbai’s most popular radio station. The charismatic DJ, known as Jeeturaj (though no one knows his real name) has a huge influence on the youth of Mumbai through his daily show – if he says something is hot, it’s hot. He was very eccentric, but a lot of fun too, and he was completely amazed to learn that all of the band members had been born of devotee parents. When he learned that all the girls knew how to put on saris and that we could all sing in Sanskrit, he almost fell off his chair, proclaiming us ‘totally cool yaar!’

The book launch was an exciting evening, and despite a few technical hitches like Gaura’s guitar breaking 10 minutes before the curtain went up, and the sound man falling asleep in the middle of the show – everything went smoothly. The children of the temple community school, ‘Gopal’s Garden’, performed a fantastic abridged musical of the book, and we followed with our portion – bhajans from the ‘Ten Million Moons’ album, intertwined with passages read from the book by Radhanath Swami. Many influential Mumbai residents attended, including Bollywood star, Juhi Chawla, who came up after the show to thank us profusely, especially for ‘Krishna Murari (Mama Mana Mandire)’.

Sadly, that night Acyuta, Ananta and Janaki had to leave to make it back to work in New York on Monday morning. Gaura and I still had one more week to go, and many more adventures to come…