By Acarya Dasa
On December 16th 2015, we reached Madanapalle, a city in the Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh. As usual when we entered the town we made announcements inviting the public to join us for sankirtana in the evening. Whilst we were making preparations for the evening program we were approached by a vaisnava pujari named Rishikesh Dasa. The town is home to Svayambhu Laksmi Nrsimhadev, ‘svayambhu’ refers to a self-manifested deity which means ‘one that has not been carved by a person’. Rishikesh Dasa invited us to take darsana and prasadam at the Laksmi Nrsimhadev Temple. He then shared with us the past time of how the Lord had manifested here.
In a village in Madanpalle, the cow herders had noticed that a black and white cow would go to a big anthill everyday and pour her milk on it. They went to the village elders and told them about what they had seen but no conclusion was reached as to why the cow was doing this. Some days later Rishikesh Dasa had a dream about the Lord –in the dream He said, “Remove me from the anthill, take me to Madanpalle and worship me.” He then went together with a few other villagers to the anthill and brought the Lord to Madanpalle. A temple was later constructed and the deity worship of Laksmi Nrsimhadev began.
Later that evening we went on sankirtana throughout the town. Rishikesh Dasa helped us organize loud speakers and later joined us on sankirtana. Afterwards we all went to take darsana of Laksmi Nrsimhadev. Rishikesh Dasa welcomed us lovingly into the temple. He even preformed arati for Sri Sri Nitai Gaurasundar and placed the mahaprasad cloth from Lord Nrsimhadev on the bulls and did arati for them too. He said that these are the most fortunate bulls on earth because they are carrying the Lord. “I am a vaisnava pujari but you all are Gaudiya vaisnavas doing great seva of the Lord. ISKCON has good standards of deity worship but I don’t have so much of knowledge. I am blessed to serve you all,” he said. Rishikesh Dasa also expressed his great appreciation for ISKCON and our founder acarya Srila Prabhupada. He encouraged us to continue spreading the Holy names saying that this would make Srila Prabhupada very happy and that we would receive many blessings from him.
