Om on the Grange

In 2001, Vedic City was founded by meditators four miles north of Fairfield; it now attracts several thousand curious travelers a year, according to Fairfield tourism officials. "City" is a bit of an overstatement: Organized around 10 circles, it's a scattering of New Age wooden buildings that extends across a bit more than a square mile. Rooms at the Raj, a health spa, and the Rukmapura Park Hotel have been set aside for meditation.

The town applies Vedic principles, traditions dating to ancient India that are designed to bring peace, prosperity and spiritual well-being to those who practice them. TM is one of the best known Vedic traditions. But it also pertains to a style of architecture in which the placement of a building and its rooms are oriented in relation to the sun's movement. All of Vedic City's 200 or so buildings, including office buildings and homes for its 200 to 300 residents, were built using those guidelines. Food growing, education and other aspects of life also have been aligned with the principles of Veda, the holy scripture of Hinduism.

To an outsider, TM seemed intangible and a bit cultish at first. After observing the group meditation session at MUM, I met on campus with Roth and Norman Zierold, another spokesman for the TM movement.

"[It's] not hard or complicated," Roth said. "It's a deep-breathing technique that helps relax the body and mind. When people really get engaged in it, many of them want to change other aspects of their lives, such as diet. But TM doesn't require that." It calls only for practitioners to meditate for 20 minutes twice a day, he explained. The training can be received from specialists in almost any American city and costs $2,500, including four days of lessons and follow-up consultations.

As I explored the area, the odd marriage of TM culture and folksy Midwestern mores made for some amusing scenes. In a breakfast stop at Revelations, a popular cafe in Fairfield, a couple of farmhands sipped black coffee and discussed plans to repair a broken tractor. At the next table, two women debated whether reiki therapy might deepen their meditation experience.

But the alluring aspects of this place eclipsed the quirkiness. Fairfield, whose low-rise buildings are concentrated around a sprawling green square, was easy enough to explore on foot. The town's galleries (there are more than two dozen) and boutiques drew me in and kept me occupied for hours.

The most accessible venue for viewing the gamut of visual art offered is 1st Fridays Arts Walk, an open-air display of paintings, live music and street theater staged around the town square every month. Even the brisk winters don't stop the show.

Unable to visit during that event, I picked up the flavor of it pretty easily during a hop through some of the galleries. The best: the Fairfield Arts Association, a gigantic space that regularly exhibits shows from the most accomplished painters and sculptors in the area; Americus Gallery, featuring Monet-like landscapes of France and Italy by the owner, Christopher Edward Kufner; and Icon Gallery, run by local art aficionado Bill Teeple, which hosts shows of big names from across the country and abroad.

Later, in a makeshift theater near downtown, I caught a performance of the Encore Players' "Musical of Musicals," which cleverly riffed "Oklahoma!," "Mame" and other well-known Broadway shows. Between the paintings and the show, the artistic talent here was impressive, high-spirited -- and a happy surprise.

* * *

To see Vedic City, which is ungated and open to the public, you can book a guided tour in Fairfield or pick up a map and do it yourself. When Roth offered to show me around, I jumped in his Jeep for a firsthand look.

It was a Sunday, so we stopped for the weekly brunch offered by Dean and Christine Goodale on the hilly lawn of their Vedic City organic farm. The all-you-can-eat gourmet spread, including stuffed crepes and house-made fruit tarts, is served, weather permitting, on picnic tables for $15 a head. There I met architect Jonathan Lipman, who moved from Washington and now designs buildings in Vedic style here and in other parts of the country. He walked me through the basic idea behind Sthapatya Ved, the Vedic components of building design.