How I Became a Hindu

I first travelled to India in 1971 as a participant in the University of Wisconsin’s Junior Year in India program. A propeller plane trudged across the Atlantic Ocean, Europe and the Middle East on it’s way to the Subcontinent. My ultimate destination: Varanasi (then, Benares) in northern India, the holy city on the banks of the Ganges. Kashi, the ancient city of light. That memorable year began my deep dive into Indian culture—an immersion that ultimately led to my writing A Nest for Lalita

When I wasn’t studying, which was most of the time, I mingled with a good number of white sadhus, holy Westerners (or so they thought) seeking enlightenment through a combination of meditation, chanting, and drugs. As a student, I was somewhat different, rolling my pot in paper from old Sanskrit texts. But I, too, wore my hair down to my shoulders, donned a lungi (a wrap around my lower half), and a string of sacred rudraksha beads (of course, everything is sacred in India, even the profane). On a hazy day, I might have been mistaken for a banyan tree.

Like Shiva (and every Indian god) I had my consort—Amy, another student on the college program. Amy and I were friends with another couple who had gone native. Arjuna (né Harold) and his American girlfriend Tara lived deep in the bowels of the chaotic city. He spent his days drumming on his tabla and chanting the Vedas. She kept the flat clean, cooked dal, and made sure two large clay pots were filled with water.

One day Arjuna announced he and Tara were getting married—a strategy to get Tara’s visa extended. He asked if Amy and I would like to get married with them in a double wedding.

“No, thank you very much,” I answered, “we’re just friends. Platonic, that is.”

“Well then,” Arjuna continued, “if you don’t want to get married, how about becoming Hindus with us?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“If we’re going to get married, we’d like to have a Hindu wedding. Which, of course, means, becoming, well, Hindu.”

I gulped, then, without thinking, uttered, “Sure, why not.” What does a non-practicing Jew from Great Neck, Long Island, have to lose? Besides, it was 1971.

The next thing I knew, the four of us are seated around a sacred fire with half-naked Brahmin priests chanting Sanskrit verses and pouring ghee into flames, which soared up toward heaven, presumably taking the blessings to the gods.

When the ceremony was over, I asked the priest about my caste. Doesn’t every Hindu belong to a caste? (God forbid I should be cheated out of a caste!) He thought for a few seconds and then proudly declared I was a Brahmin, presumably because I was a student-scholar and not (I assumed) a warrior, tradesman, farmer, or one who cleans toilets. Gee, that was easy. (Of course, it had nothing to do with my white skin!)

Then I was asked what I’d like my Hindu name to be. I came up with Kalyan Chandra, auspicious moon, to identify with my favorite god, Shiva, the god of meditation who wears a crescent moon in his thickly matted hair piled on top of his head.

It’s not every day that a white college kid becomes a Hindu, even in the holiest of holy cities. Word spread like the flames of the sacred fire, and I was soon invited by the Arya Samaj—a 19^th century Hindu reform movement—to give a speech on why I became a Hindu. I agreed and found myself standing on a dais sermonizing to several hundred Hindus seated on the ground in an open field. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but for those who had come to hear me, it didn’t matter. It was enough to see an American who had chosen their beloved faith.

The next day my photo appeared on the front page of the local newspaper with quotes from my speech. Whoops! I was called into the office of the head of the college program and reprimanded. The director threatened to throw me out of the program by my ears if I tried anything like that again.I promised to be good (a good Brahmin!).

But somewhere, in a dusty office in some dingy municipal building in the holy city of Varanasi, not far from the burning ghats, it is recorded in a ledger (probably tied up with a red string) that Kenneth Langer, alias Kalyan Chandra, became a Hindu, Brahmin caste.

I still meditate, but have taken the moon out of my hair. Om namas shivaya!