It was mid January when we met Radhika Vekaria at the Kali Mandir, a small ashram nestled on a quiet residential street near Laguna Beach, California.
The little yellow ashram has a small meditation garden, a Hindu seminary and a residential monastery. At the center is a large shrine devoted to the Hindu goddess Kali.
"[The Kali Mandir] has been such a refuge, a place of a reset, everything that you would feel that your home should be — nourishing, safe, re-grounding — all these things and just full of love and encouragement," Vekaria said.
Vekaria is nominated for her first ever Grammy award, for her album Warriors of Light. She's up for best album in the new age, ambient or chant category.
Born in London and with Indian and East African roots, Vekaria has been surrounded by music since she was a baby. Her father was a singer and, according to Vekaria, "music has been around longer than oxygen for me."
"When I was in the womb, my parents were having music parties in their homes … my parents' friends all were, you know, just musicians, not even professionals, but just amateur musicians," she said. "And they would come and bring their instruments out to dinner … and several times a week we'd just have all these random people in our house just playing music."
For Vekaria, reciting mantras and devotional chanting even helped her overcome a speech impediment she had developed as a child.
The Kali Mandir has a serene energy — dogs can be heard barking in the distance, chimes ring in the Southern California winds. These are the same winds that just a few days earlier had fanned wildfires and spread chaos and destruction across the Los Angeles region.
On the morning of our visit, we had spent time covering the aftermath of the fires and the heartbreak they left behind. And yet we found upon entering the ashram, much of the stress and heartbreak we had internalized melted away as the peaceful energy of the temple took over.
For Vekaria, spending time in this part of Southern California has been transformative, especially her time at the Kali Mandir, taking in its healing and peaceful energy.
"It was coming to a place like this that really anchored me. And the music and the devotion just gave me incredible strength," she said. "And I realized that there was something very potent and concentrated in this space and in that kind of music that I needed to embark on a journey of expression that I basically began to share and sing."
That energy and healing has inspired much of the work on her album, Warriors of Light.
As we left the ashram, Vekaria and the staff at the Kali Mandir sent us out the door with a tray of hot tea and snacks, leaving us the lingering sense of peace and generosity Vekaria had experienced there herself.
Ailsa Chang and Christopher Intagliata contributed to this story.
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