By Acarya Dasa – All India Padayatra leader
On September 9th we reached Dindrud, a village in Majalgaon taluka (the subdivision of a district) in the Beed district of the Maharashtra state. By the Lord’s arrangement this day was the Pola festival and all villagers were busy with the preparations.
Pola is a festival of farmers where they respect and worship their oxen who are working hard on their farms by plowing fields, hauling things and also for occasional transport. This festival occurs after the monsoon sowing and the field work, in late August or early September. Oxen are an essential part of the procession where farmers celebrate the crop season during a traditional village festival. On this day no farmer let his oxen work. First of all, all farmers give a thorough bath to their animals and decorate them with ornaments and shawls. Then they nicely paint their horns and adorn their necks with flower garlands. They also offer prayers to the oxen and give them special food to eat like fresh green grass and fruits. During this unique festival in Maharashtra the animals are the focus. In the evening the farmers take their decorated oxen to a large field, accompanied by music and dancing.
As we entered the village, the villagers were amazed to see us and our majestic oxen pulling the deity cart and they happily had darsana of Sri Sri Nitai Gaurasundara. Many of them came and offered obeisance’s to our oxen first and then to Their Lordships. I explained to them that these deities are Lord Caitanya and Nityananda who are none other than Krishna and Balarama. A senior man among them patted the back of one of our oxen and said in Marathi with lot of love and compassion, “Dhanya ahe tumhi, Dev anale amchyasathi”- “I thank both of you, you are very special. On this Pola day, you have brought the Lord to our village.” The villagers arranged our stay at a Hanuman temple.
After taking some rest we started preparing for the evening kirtana. I heard some sound of bells and men discussing: the villagers were bringing their oxen to where we were staying. I asked them, “What’s the matter?” One of them replied, “Please let your oxen join our pola procession; their presence will make everything auspicious.” I stated, “Yes. Yes. Why not? But we will also perform kirtana.” They all happily agreed. We decorated our six oxen Nandakishor, Krishna, Kaliya, Jay, Panduranga and Vitthala with colored powders, balloons and flowers. Then the Pola procession started. Our oxen were in the front, and the padayatris followed with the small Sri Sri Nitai Gaurasundara deities and the kirtana party. Then the villagers followed us with their own oxen. It was a wonderful event, for it seems that our oxen were preaching to the villagers’ oxen, taking them for sankirtana and giving them the holy names. Coming forward the women washed the hooves of the oxen, performed their arati and fed them puran poli, a special sweet roti made in Maharashtra on the day of a festival. This reminded us of the Jharkhand lila of Gauranga Mahaprabhu. Then we performed arati and all the villagers danced with us to the sound of the maha mantra. One of us gave a small talk on the glories of the holy names and wished all of them a happy pola and then distributed prasadam to everyone. Almost the whole village had assembled for the program. Sankirtana was the soul of the program. We also distributed 261 books.
While we were leaving few villagers came forward and shared their realizations. One of them said, “Oxen help us throughout our farming life but yesterday your oxen gave us the best gift. They carried the Lord to our village. We will never forget our debt to them, we are very fortunate.” They patted on their backs with tears of love in their eyes.
Thanking them for their wonderful hospitality, we moved towards our next destination.
By the Lord’s arrangement we happened to walk in Maharashtra during this Pola festival and many villagers got the opportunity to honor and worship our padayatra oxen. The day when kirtana will be performed during all festival will be the best day on Earth.
