Janmastami

8/19/06

Haribol, so here’s my version of the Janmastami celebrations here in Vrindavan. The first crazy thing that happened was the greeting of the deities, which took place at about 7:30 in the morning. Then entire front of the temple room was jam packed, and the courtyard and the back were pretty full. If you haven’t been to a deity greeting at Krishna-Balaram Mandir, the way it usually works is they open one altar at a time, starting with Gaura Nitai, then Krishna Balaram, and finally Radhe Shyam. I happened to be standing by Gaura Nitai, and got the darshan immediately, as they opened the curtain. Then, when they started to prepare to open Krishna Balaram, the sea of people started moving, and I just kind of drifted over there. I had no choice really, and I got there darshan as well. Then this happened again for Radhe Shyam, but twice as much. So after deity greeting, I had moved all the way across the temple room, by just kind of floating in the sea of people. The rest of the day went nice as well. I had the good opportunity to sit right next to Aindra Prabhu for a good part of the 10:30 – 1:30 AM kirtan (he would of kept going, but the temple management politely told him that they had to clean up…..we have it on video tape…). The temple room was pretty packed, but in talking to people the next day, I heard normally that there are 2 or 3 times as many people (which is somewhat hard to imagine), but after they heard what happened in Manipur, they severely restricted the amount of people who could come in. After eating, I headed over to Bunkibihari with Daksh, Kushal, Daksh’s parents, and Sarva-Jay Gauranga for mangala aroti there. The streets weren’t as crazy as last time, but the temple room was just mad. I went in front, and we made a chain. Then I ploughed through the crowd, and we got right to the front again. It was really a pretting intense crowd, and it was cool that we got that close.

Prabhupada’s Vyasa puja the next day was pretty cool as well. It was nice to hear so many of Srila Prabhupada’s disciples glorify him, and at 1 PM there was a huge feast in a pandal which they had built in the parking lot just for the occasion.

Chaitanya