A DAY IN THE LIFE

Written in 2003

I have been writing a diary for over 30 years—a page a day—may be it is some kind of record?!  So writing today’s diary is something I am habituated to do but with the added incentive that it will perhaps be read by many people and for generations to come!  Today I got up at around 7am and after brushing my teeth and having a shower I stepped out in my garden. It is a fairly big garden with many trees and flowers. I do ‘breathing Yoga’—while walking up and down the garden. This Yoga is called, ‘Anulom-Vilom’. You close your right nostril and breathe in deeply with the left. You then close the left nostril and breathe out with the right. You then breathe in with right and breathe out with the left.  According to the Yoga bible—getting Oxygen to various parts of your body is essential to keep healthy. And this breathing exercise does that. After the breathing exercise I came in the lounge room for some more Yoga-this time the various Yoga postures which help to keep parts of your body healthy.  Yoga is amazing and it is one of the great gifts of India to the world. Before I have breakfast I feed the birds, pigeons and squirrels that come to our garden. It will be one thing in the day that I will do for others and it gives me great satisfaction. It is an act of building your good Karma! While we have the opportunity to do good we should not miss it as we may never get this opportunity again. For breakfast I had two slices of bread with vegan butter. I have always been a vegetarian but became a vegan about 5 years ago. I am very concerned about cruelty to animals and the amount of ecological and environmental damage meat production is doing to our planet. After that I wore a ‘Dhoti’ the type Hare Krishna people wear –this is for the prayers I do. Prayers are very important to me and I ask God to give all living beings happiness –humans and animals and grant people their wishes as long as they are good wishes! I am a Jain but I am also very influenced by the message of Lord Krishna as laid out in the ‘Bhagvad Gita’-the holy book of Hindus. After that I left for work—my wife gave me some fruit for lunch—I avoid heavy lunches- she stays at home—which is of great help to my parents who are both in their eighties.  My parents were born in India in the state of Gujarat and they migrated to Kenya in the late 30’s.  I was born in Kenya in a town called Kisumu.  I have two daughters who were born in Croydon—one has just graduated in English from Bristol University and the other has just started a degree in Law at King’s in London.  I have a motor parts business which I run with my brother and two staff. We see all the many nationalities now living in Croydon and we are fairly good at speaking in various accents –from West Indian to Irish as well as Queen’s English!  We pride in providing quality service to our customers and sourcing the most unobtainable parts as quickly as possible.

By sheer coincidence I have been invited today to a reception in honour of David Cameron the leader of the Conservative party—the hosts are the Hindu Forum and the Hare Krishna Society. The event is being held at the Hare Krishna temple in Aldenham Hertfordshire. The temple has acres of land is set in a beautiful rural setting. This place was given as a gift by George Harrison who was very attracted to the movement. The Hare Krishna devotees are a familiar site with their chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra around Oxford Street everyday. I left the shop at 3pm and came home to change. I left at 4pm for the event in my small Daihatsu which is very economical! I arrived at 6pm after fighting through the horrendous London traffic. I first went into to the temple to pray to Shri Shri Radha Krishna and Sita, Ram, Laxman and Hanuman—this place has been and still is a spiritual home to thousands. David Cameron also came into the temple and paid his respects.

David praised the Hindu community’s achievements and its ability to assimilate in the main stream of British life while at the same time maintaining its rich culture. Hindus do not seem to receive the recognition they deserve because they get on with their lives and are achieving great success in all fields of life. This country and its people have given us every opportunity to succeed and we have grabbed this opportunity with both hands!  Hindus do not like to be referred as, ‘Asians’ and would like to be called Hindus or Indians. When David came to my table to greet us I asked him if he would go vegetarian as part of his green agenda! He replied he was vegetarian for today having just had such delicious vegetarian food! The Hare Krishna people call this food, ‘prasad ’—vegetarian food that is first offered to Lord Krishna.  By the time I got back it was nearly 12am. Before I went to sleep I  wrote my personal diary and finally said some prayers before dozing off!

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