FinnTimes

Before this time, I had never been to the temple earlier. I had a rough idea of the location, but then in Helsinki, temples dont "look like" temples. It's a regular apartment in which ppl have established an ISKCON temple. There's nothing fancy or remotely religious about it. The architecture is not lavish as a temple's but as normal as a typical apartments'. There is absolutely no indication whatsoever, unlike the multiple inescapable ones in India, that a house in there, houses a temple. There're no prasad walas, no phool walas, no stalls to collect ones footwear, no street kids eyeing the prasad and of course absolutely NO crowd and NOT a sound. You look for it, the way you would look for any other apartment in Helsinki - by referring to an address and a map. You announce your arrival by ringing a door bell and talking on the intercom. I must add, while referring to a map in Helsinki or even other European countries, one needs to keep in mind the fact that odd numbers are on one side of the street and even ones are on another. A lot of ppl get confused about where the number in between disappeared. This is something many foreigners don't realise even after having stayed there for months. Of course in India, you rarely have any numbers or addresses for a temple. They are just known by word of mouth according to the devotion of the local population.

This temple has a special pooja on Sundays and a feast (langar) after that. This is enough for us desis in desperate search of Indian food. So on this particular weekend, I set out looking for the temple at Ruoholahdenkatu 24 D 3rd floor, Helsinki. I expected things to be quite different, but the only way to realise how different they are, is to actually experience them. As I entered the temple, I saw extremely fair, slim, blonde ppl dressed in orange robes. Now that is quite a contrast to a typical pundit we see at temples. If nothing else, at least the hair colour is different. Seeing blonde "bodis" around me really amused me. The next was the speech. They were of course talking in Finnish or English and whatever little Hindi was uttered, sounded like a foreign language. The bhajans were accompanied by music which either made them sound like a rock band performance or christian ballads! There were lots of female devotees too. They were wearing sarees! Though, they were clad in sarees their modern outlook was evident too. Almost all of them had worn a tanktop or a t-shirt instead of a blouse. The 1 or 2 who had worn an actual saree blouse, had chosen a total mismatch in colour probably because of the understandable dearth of blouses in their wardrobe. For a lot of them the petticoat was not just peeping out from under the saree, but also raising a full eyebrow! The quality of the sarees was nothing great. They certainly looked like they had been bought from a roadside shop in Janpath. Add to it trendy makeup, pierced eyebrows and navels, tatoos on the back or arm or anywhere else, and you have an idea of what the female devotees looked like. At least we didnt have any funny coloured hair ones. Even small little girls maybe 5-6 years in age, were dressed in similar "sarees". All the devotees had a tikka on their forehead which is pretty unlike a tikka I had ever seen earlier in India. This tikka doesnt stay on the middle of the forehead. Instead it looks like it slipped under and starts from just above the bridge of the nose and goes down till the middle of the nasal bone! But that's probably the way ISKCON devotees put a tikka. (Nothing Finnish about it). All the Finnish devotees had adopted Indian names like "Prasad", "Radha Swami" etc. which was again quite amusing.

The aarti started at 4pm and proceeded till 5:30pm, during which there was something similar to a "hi-tech pravachan". The priest used a laptop, projecting some pictures of temples or holy abodes in India. He also recorded the "pravachan" through an mp3 player. In all the sessions that I attended later, it was very interesting to hear about Lord Krishna from a foreigner point of view. One thing was clear. This was no serious spiritual talk or a do's/dont's list. It was more of a narration of fables which were somehow extremely spicy in nature rather than holy, probably because Lord Krishna is a "fun" god. He had all the naughtiness a child could possibly have. He flirted with the gopis. He enjoyed with this friends. He even stole butter. This probably lends a certain affability to the God rather than him appearing inaccessible, with a larger than life "please-me-if-you-can" image. At the end of the "pravachan" would be a lot of song and dance. All devotees would raise their arms up towards the sky and chant "Hare Rama Hare Krishna" and sway with the rhythm. The atmosphere gets really charged up. In the end one would put in some donation in the "daan paatra", obviously in foreign currency and get down to eating an Indian meal which tastes quite quite (this isnt a typo) different.

On Janmashtami, the temple organised a proper Pooja, with contributions from a lot of the Indian, Nepali and Finnish population. A proper "ranga rang karyakram" was arranged, where a skit with a baby Lord Krishna was enacted out. Only the baby looked a little African with that curly hair and Yashodha was blonde. After the usual pravachan, chant, dance, meal session, the devotees went out into the streets as a procession. They carried with them a couple of photos of Lord Krishna, and chanted the "Hare Rama, Hare Krishna" chant. I have never seen such a thing, even in India. Or maybe I wasn't looking. Irrespective of whether one finds it hohum or Soham, one certainly would agree with the way the priest there chants. "Glory be to Krishna".

It took me another couple of weeks, before I saw the moon out here. Again, the first time I saw it, I didn't realise what I was looking at. It seemed to merge with the bright street lights at first. Suddenly I realised that this light had a slightly different shape and colour than the regular streetlight. Now I know why they call it a pie in the sky. The moon is BIG and with just that crescent which makes it appear as if someone has hung it out there. I could see why fairy tales depict the sun and the moon in the same frame, as if they coexist! I saw that it is exactly that way here...the sunset doesn't exactly vanish into the black, inky darkness when the moon is already out with bright little stars. The whole sky seems to be divided into two - one having the aftereffects of a sunset, the other having a black night with a moonrise and twinkling stars.

The sun and the moon both, appear to follow slightly different paths than what we are used to (in India). The sun is never overhead. It cuts a low arc and is mostly near the horizon. Near the North pole, in fact, it is supposed to go around in a circle and never set actually (in the summers). Because of it being so close to the horizon, it's *really* dazzling, though we are quite used to (in India), the sun being a pinkish-orange ball when it's that close to the horizon. Again, the moon seems to oscillate up and down in the sky at least back home but not so here. It lies pretty low in the sky and never have I observed so far, the pronounced up and down oscillation (akin to a person nodding his head) in these parts of the world.

Another phenomenon quite common around the Arctic circle is the Aurora Borealis or the Northern lights. So far, I have not been lucky enough to get a glimpse, though I have been monitoring solar activity on and off. Hopefully I shall see something when I go to the Arctic circle soon.

With time, of course the days started getting shorter (technically after the midsummer eve). About a month or so back, they reached normalcy (according to what I have been used to in India). Though, I noticed that the days were receding *quite* fast. Each day, the sunrise is about 3 minutes later and sunset, 3 minutes earlier. That would mean that on an average we are losing 6 minutes per day. That means that in a month, we would be short by 3 hours! It's already quite weird to have a sunrise at 8:15am or so. Soon it would be as dark as night at 9am. *shudder*. I am used to seeing a bright moon in the sky at 5pm in the evening courtesy my stint in Japan, but am not used to it being dark in the mornings also. If one outstretches ones thumb and index finger to the maximum and takes them to be the length of the day and then joins them together gradually, it would depict the way the days are getting shorter and the nights are gaining in. Eventually, there would be no "day" left at the point where the thumb meets the index finger. Technically this would happen completely at the Arctic circle, not Helsinki. It seems there're a lot of seasonal depression related ailments that happen in Scandinavian countries due to the "no light" factor. I hope to be out before the thumb meets the index finger!

Someone said, 'Mostly, the quickest and often the best way to do it is yourself'. I sure believe it. Inevitably, it was I who made the bookings for all the ppl. I got two class A cabins booked. This link, though from another ship, shows exactly the same 360 degree views of not only the cabins but also the whole ship. The ship's departure was at 5:30pm from the Katajanokka terminal (See this google map*).
I had a whole lot of tasks lined up before that. One of them being purchasing a music system which was on sale only till that particular day. After finishing off everything on my to-do list, in record time, I reached the terminal at 5pm.

We all boarded the ship and as we got in, I suddenly felt as excited as a little girl, looking forward to one of life's experiences, never experienced before. At the same time I also saw myself detachedly as if from above, (blame it on visuals from the Titanic), entering the ship, realising with awe that it was a whole new world inside - an entire multistoried building complete with restaurants, pubs and discos, casinos and shops, floating on water. The sight of uniformed seamen, gleaming interiors, buzz of activity everywhere, made me truly feel as if I was part of a movie! I only hoped that it wouldn't have an ending like the movie.

Our cabins were on the 5th deck. After quickly dumping our bags in the cabin using the smartcards which were our tickets as well as our cabin keys, we all rushed to the 'sun' deck, where everyone was, to see the sight of the land moving past, our ship heading towards nothingness. On my visit to Soumenlinna island at the beginning of my sojourn in Finland, we had waved to the passengers going in such cruises. This time it was our turn to be waved at, as we sailed past that island. It gave us a very "sailor" feeling. After having seen the huge full moon during the fireworks display, I was eagerly awaiting nightfall so that I could see the moon again, from the middle of a water body, sans all artificial lights, with the moon beaming down in full glory over the water. Of course, there was a spectacular sunset over the horizon looked forward to, too. I had already checked the weather forecasts, which showed clear skies. We went all around the deck, trying to explore every corner of it. Unfortunately the bow of the ship was forbidden to passengers. But that wasn't the end of our desire to experience it the way "Rose" experienced it. Eventually we found one corner which was considerably in the front of the ship, though not exactly in the centre and not really on the top deck, but one deck lower. It was almost impossible to stand there since the wind was so strong. The sight of a vast sea, your vessel surging forward, with you at the very front is a very different and exhilerating feeling. For miles and miles around there was nothing but water and the sun gleaming on it. I felt very much close to nature.

Continued: Twilight in sunset and moonrise

The harbour looked beautiful, bathed in the full moon light. The water of the Baltic sea gleamed and the *huge* moon peered down. I had heard that the moon is supposed to be as big as a thaali in these parts of our planet compared to the katori in our parts, and I saw it too. Swarms of people crowded around, drinking beer and generally picnicking (something they do a lot, anytime, anywhere). In sometime, the population explosion was replaced by the fireworks explosion. The crowd gasped collectively. "Poor mites", I thought as I remembered the diwali crackers back home and concentrated more on the huge thaali sized full moon, not so readily available back home. After enjoying the fireworks display, we enjoyed the huge moon and the glistening ocean, by sitting atop a hill in Kaivopuisto Park, far away from streetlights. No photography can justify the beauty of that moment.

Getting back was an adventure in itself. After waiting for about half an hour for a tram which was already more than half an hour late, I decided to walk till the station from where I got my connecting bus at 12:45am, back to my apartment. Anything to get away from that place which reeked so much of beer that I felt giddy myself. I felt as if I had had two cans of beer by just inhaling the fumes all around. Walking ahead, I witnessed a traffic jam at midnight probably because the majority of the population was concentrated at the harbour. I made it to the station, just in time to catch the 12:45am bus. There was a long queue for the bus, full of people acting stupid and drunk. I stood a little distance away from the queue, also wondering how I would ever secure a seat for myself for a 45 minute journey when everyone seemed to be going in that very bus. The bus arrived shortly and for the second time that day, it stopped right where I was standing and the doors opened right infront of me. Amused to the core, I stepped in, before another jostling session would have pushed me in.

After I got home, I reflected back on the full moon glory. The beauty of that black and white moment - the dark water and the bright full moon would remain a memory for all times to come.

Thanks to the Swedish speaking population, Finland's connections to Sweden and other Nordic countries are close. Swedish TV and other programs in Swedish are broadcasted out here. Sweden has Finnish as its minority official language.

People like us are faced with the bilingual situation in Helsinki when it comes to street signs and advertisements. We did not know earlier that everything was written once in Finnish and then in Swedish. So what was really two names of the same thing, was thought by us to be a two word name of something. Leppavara Alberga wasn't really a long name of the district where my office is. Rather Leppavara is the Finnish name and Alberga, the Swedish one. At times the Swedish names seem to be quite similar to the Finnish ones, at least phonetically for eg. Espoo is Esbo in Swedish. Now that we know everything has two names of the same place, we might get confused easily when there are two words for a single thing.

Most products here in the convenience stores have markings in Finnish and Swedish. If not these two, then an additional one would be in German (or maybe any other Nordic language). If you are really in luck, you might find some products with ingredients/contents marked in English as well, but that's something very rare. Even products from India do not have their contents in English. It's my hunch that some words in Finnish are also derived from Hindi. For eg. Pineapple is ananas! and Moong dal is Mung/Moong! Or maybe these products were 'brought' from India to begin with and hence the names stuck. Some words in Finnish are quite easy intuitively but one can't always rely on the assumption that they mean what they seem to mean. For eg. maisi is maize, paprika is obviously pepper, kakku is cake. But porkanna is not pork but carrot! And appelsini is not apple but orange! (this is the most common assumption most desi's make - urs truly not included). Apple is instead omena. For survival, we have tried to learn the words for chicken, egg, pork, beef, ham, duck etc so that we can at least make out some contents.

Finnish (and other nordic languages) has more vowels than English. These are ä, ö and y (apart from a, e, i, o, u) which are counterparts of a, o, u. I have already mentioned the usage of 'j' in Finnish. 'y' is also not pronounced as 'y' as in year but rather with a 'u' sound. So Yksi (means one) is pronounced as 'ooksi' and not 'eeksi' or 'yikesi' (cutesie equivalents of eeks and yikes). Out here ppl say 'Yau' (Yes), which is somewhere in the middle of Ya (yes) and Yo ('cool' way of saying yes). There are (a lot of) words differing only in the length of a sound and incorrect length can easily confuse anyone here. Like the Japanese, Finnish are also quite sing-song when it comes to talking but less than the Japanese anyway. Voice modulation keeps changing a whole lot. The 'r's are rrrrrrolled off their tongue and the 't's are much much softer than normal 't'. It's more dental (sound is made by the tongue touching the teeth) rather than the usual 't'. The Japanese way of speaking is very squeaky and nasal. They like to mull over a word (and in that process stretch it a whole lot and make it sing song too) or say it very quickly (rapid fire). Either of the two can happen. The Finnish, don't stretch their words as long. When they get stuck (during translation to English that happens), they repeat the syllable again and again (the-the-the-the-the), whereas the Japanese, stretch it and make it sing song (thhhhhhhhhhhhhheeeeeee). The Finnish are also very fond of saying 'Aha-aa' and with modulation that could varyingly make it sound like a surprise, a realisation, a magic trick or whatever. 'Ok' is said with a whole lot of force into the 'kay'. It makes one feel as if one is watching theatre. They also say 'buh-bye' or 'bye-bye' instead of 'Bye'. It's not considered childish or anything. Everyone says it and so do I.

I think my English is going to be "t'ot'ally" distorted by the time I get back.