Prabhupada's Disappearance...and then Jaipur

10/29/06

After a very nice Prabhupada's disappearance day festival here in
Vrindavan, and the craziness that went along with it, I was off to
Jaipur for a few days for Darshan of Srila Rupa Goswami's respectable
deity, Govindaji. There are a few things here in India that have lived
up to what I had heard about them before experiencing them. One which
comes to mind immediately is Bahulastami at Radha-Kund, which is
everything someone could possibly expect, and on top of that more....its
really crazy. The other thing is The Govindaji temple in Jaipur. Before
going there, I had heard about the love of Govindaji by the people of
Jaipur, and how thousands of people go there daily, but until you are in
mangal aroti there, you cannot fully appreciate how amazing it is.
Thousands of people go to mangal aroti, and are singing in different
groups to Govindaji from their hearts.....its really quite a site to
see. I was fortunate enough to have two more darshans of Govindaji
before leaving Jaipur, both of them were at 8:30 in the morning, and
both were crazy as well. When you do parikrama around Govindaji, any
item on the wall is a sanctified object for the people there (locks,
paintspecks, marble, scratches..you name it...). Finally, people are
handing out mahaprasad right and left after acquiring it. It is
impossible to leave the temple without some sort of prasad, chandan, or
oil smeared on your forehead (that happened to several of us). In
Jaipur, we also visited Radha Damodar, Radha Vinod (Deities which were
worshipped by Lokanath Goswami), and Gopinath (found by Madhu Pandit).
I'll try and get pics up asap...haribol..

Chaitanya