When I was 17, I attended the University of Hawaii in Hilo; that spring, a flash flood hit the city and streets and highways closed while cars floated away. Wainaku River swelled to a furious rage of white water.
A day or two later, the sun emerged with a vengeance and the river beckoned my friend Kishori and me to go swimming. But the water still roiled beneath the glimmering surface.
***
In the laundromat, I wait for my clothes to finish drying amidst ten other whirring dryers. I feel like I’m IN a dryer - I feel woozy with the waves of heat. Only a couple blocks away, I know that Wainaku River is flowing cool and clean and fresh.
When at last I grab my basket of clean clothes and head out, I catch sight of my friend Kishori and call out, “Let’s go swim in the river!”
“Let’s!” she calls back. We don our swimsuits and head toward the river, singing, laughing, our hair swinging.
We jump in the crystal clear water with exhilarated shouts. Kishori crosses the river and I follow suit. Despite my strong stroke, the current sweeps me down the river with surprising strength. Panic flutters through my chest, but I quell it when my fingers find purchase on some rock. I climb up on a small island in the middle of the river. My hands tremble.
I glance upstream and see Kishori - she seems miles away. I should swim to the bank nearest to me, climb onto dry land, and stop the day’s swimming. The river is too wild.
Or I could swim my way up to Kishori by entering the wild side of the river.
Come on, what’s adventure without a little swimming on the wild side?
I set my jaw, resolved.
As soon as I slide in, the river clamps around me in a vice and my hands scramble for a hold. I never find it. I am facing upstream, looking at the distant figure of Kishori – then I look over my shoulder and realize I am being carried into the jaws of a frothing white rapid.
I am powerless. My scream for help is cut off when the river thrusts me into the raging chaos, shoving water into my ears, nose, and mouth. I tumble and tumble.
I struggle for air. The current pushes me through a narrow, violent canal of white water. When I gasp for air at last, sheer terror runs through me because I know what’s coming: I see only a void ahead. And I hear an even greater roar than the river.
The Waterfall.
In these moments, the experience courses through my mind and body: This is it. This is the end.
Suspended moments… falling… water pounds me from every side and I plunge 15 feet like a rag doll. The power from the falls shove me to the very bottom of the river floor – 15 feet or more – and my knees scrape the rocks.
The river keeps pulling me.
I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. Anything for air. I shoot for the surface, my lungs burning, my hair wrapped around my head.
I surface, choking.
But it’s not that when I reach the surface I can breathe. I’ve swallowed so much water all I can do is choke. I suck in only a sliver of air before the river pushes me under another side waterfall, which forces me under again, water in my mouth. I fight for the surface. I fight for air. Another waterfall ahead. This time I instinctively swim away from it, choking… can’t breathe…
The river loosens its chokehold and calms, still carrying me in overwhelming currents.
I spot the island that divides the river in two up ahead, and I weakly kick my way towards the massive, steep black rocks. If I don’t make it, I don’t know what will happen to me. I could be carried further down the river, down more waterfalls… into the ocean.
I grasp hold of the rocks.
I can’t climb out. I can’t think. I can’t respond to Kishori’s screams, “Bhakti! Bhakti!!”
I can only cling to the rocks with my weak grasp. And only one whisper comes out of my mouth, over and over and over again. I don’t know what I’m saying, I don’t know where it comes from, the name just comes: “Krishna. Krishna. Krishna.”
My religion is stripped away from me. I do not think of a blue boy with a flute, because that's how God is portrayed in my religion, that is Krishna. I do not think of festivals or temples or scriptures or holy people or holy places… nothing.
Even when the current picks up again and plasters me to the rocks, I can’t think, I can only hold on and say that name over and over again: “Krishna. Krishna. Krishna.”
Kishori is in a panic. She jumps into the river and swims to the island. I have climbed out by now and sit in the sun, eyes closed, and the heat of the black rocks warms my shivering skin.
When Kishori reaches me, I admit to her that I’m shaken, but I play it off. I refuse to be a wuss. Kishori warily accepts my cool demeanor. We warm in the sun on the rocks awhile longer until I realize I still have to go to work.
I insist to Kishori that I'll head back alone, so I shakily swim the short distance to the shore, climb out, and walk the rest of the way back. I head to a friend’s house, get dressed, and hop on my bike. Life goes on.
But life doesn’t go on. At work, I wash my face with water and realize I feel sick. I clock out. I lay down outside in the peaceful summer afternoon.
I begin to sob and sob. Scenes of water and rocks and feelings and no air flash through my mind and through my body. The fear washes through me in waves.
Why am I still alive? In one moment I could have hit my head, I could have swallowed too much water, I could have been carried further and further down the river, down more waterfalls, into the ocean... in one second, done. Just like that.
What unnerved me the most was that I was not thinking of God in the midst of all that chaos. Survival was my only instinct – just air. And yet if I had died in those moments, what would I have been thinking of? Where would my soul have flown?
That afternoon I had a crisis of faith that I have reflected upon for many years. I began to question my religion in every possible way and I sought answers, year after year. After many conversations and many years, I have come to a conclusion: I may have abandoned the holy name but the holy name never abandoned me.
Krishna is not Hindu or Christian or Muslim or Indian or from this religion or that religion… Krishna is God, and He came for me when my mind was shattered.
Someone once asked the saint Srila Prabhupad what he feels when he chants the holy name. Immediately he replied, “I feel no fear.”
I realize that at any moment death may come for me, even at a moment when I am least expecting it and cannot turn to God. Yet I have nothing to fear, for even if I am shattered and broken, the holy name shall carry me in His arms.
