Call Out Gauranga And Be Happy: A Manchester Real Estate Mystery

It's back. Just when you thought you had seen the last of Gauranga (or Gouranga) graffiti on Manchester real estate, it resurfaces. This time it has been sprayed on the hoardings of an empty sandwich bar at 140 Deansgate.

Earlier this year Gauranga manifested itself on one of the Berlin Wall-like structures the city council has abandoned in Manchester's Piccadilly Gardens. The February appearance was its second Piccadilly Gardens outing in five months, having debuted in September 2017 on one of the garden's smarter signs.

The earliest appearance Bisnow can recall was on the Hulme bridge over Princess Parkway in 1989. The bridge has since been demolished along with much of Old Manchester, but happily Gauranga graffiti lives on. Nobody knows who does it, whether it is the same person who has been doing it for 30 years, or exactly what they intend by it.

The phenomenon has its roots in the Hare Krishna movement, gauranga meaning peace or be happy, thus spawning the slogan "Call out Gauranga and be happy!" Although the graffiti has been seen nationwide, it seems to have a powerful Mancunian origin. Accounts differ but both Bisnow, and the writer of a great Manchester Gouranga memoir, remember a man of uncertain appearance outside Afflecks Palace, Oldham Street, who handed out cassette tapes called Gouranga Hey! in return for a voluntary donation.

In the late 1980s and early '90s Afflecks, and the shops around it, were the epicentre of the city's acid house scene, much of which focused on Eastern Bloc records, and this may be the connection.

“I used to work in Eastern Bloc in 1988 at the epicentre of acid house," Creative Concern Senior Content Strategist and leading Manchester property PR Richard Hector-Jones said. "Some of them took the acid house and ecstasy thing and applied it to more spiritual pursuits. They used to write it on bridges, on motorways, buildings and so on. I remember some of the Krishnas on Oldham Street. I could never work out if they were effectively acid casualties or genuine converts to Eastern mysticism. Possibly both.

"The fact that it’s lasted so long around here is quite remarkable."

At least something in fast-changing and increasingly respectable Manchester is staying wonderfully, unrespectably, the same.