By Jayabhadra devi dasi, IGF preacher
By the mercy of Sri Guru and Gauranga ISKCON Amravati held its fourth annual Vaishnavi padayatra, a most-awaited event by temple matajis and our ISKCON Girls’ Forum team. As the new year arrives, we all start planning for our padayatra – and as it’s a ladies’ festival it needs a lot of preparation. Every year it takes place on or around International Women’s Day. It’s like bringing the nari shakti together for a higher cause and thus we invited various self-help groups (mahila-mandal) to participate.
Our aim this year was to bring ladies from different social work groups and enlighten them with Krishna consciousness through the mode of padayatra. We all assembled in the Sati dhama temple in Amravati’s main market area. This year’s dress code was the gopi dress, and the gopis were very nicely dressed – even one of our chief guests arrived dressed as a gopi. Harinama sankirtan welcomed our prominent guests from the Sankalpa Sakhi group along with the headmaster of the kids’ Abacus group and several of Amravati’s prestigious ladies, all of whom addressed the assembled women. Ladies have now progressed in every field, so why stay back in spiritual life? This was the message we gave to the assembly. I personally talked about ISKCON’s existing padayatras and how the padayatris are doing so many austerities and spreading the Lord’s message everywhere as they distribute Srila Prabhupada’s books throughout the year. I specially mentioned that our padayatra was very small and our efforts practically worthless compared with their sacrifices and tapasya. Nonetheless ours was a small attempt to please Sri Guru and Gauranga. I felt our endeavours were less than the squirrel who tried to serve Lord Rama to build the bridge, but our motto was to serve Prabhupada and our spiritual master.
The inauguration of padayatra came next. We offered arati to Sri Sri Nitai-Gaurasundar and asked Them for blessings for padayatra and before we started a coconut was broken for auspiciousness. We then walked from the temple with our banner in front followed by a photo of Sri Sri Nitai-Gaurasundar and a banner displaying the Hare Krishna maha mantra. Behind the banners came the kirtan team and Vaishnavis singing and playing kartal and mridanga. It was purely Vaishnavis throughout. The guests also chanted the maha mantra and danced with us in sankirtan.
As we walked, we did announcements of padayatra at every square and whoever heard us we requested them to chant the holy name. We chanted the maha mantra loud enough so that all could hear. Because of the unique dress code, our padayatris looked very graceful. It became the talk of the town. Before and after news of the padayatra was published in the local newspaper. We also gave different messages like “Save Girl Child,” Stop Tuberculosis,” “Save Water” and “Women are a Form of Durga.” More than seventy ladies joined us dancing and singing as we walked towards our destination, the Ambadevi temple in the heart of Amravati where the temple ladies joined us and everyone danced to their hearts’ content. Prasadam was distributed to all and side by side we shared our realizations. As per tradition, our team took a pledge to do our best next year.
The yearly event is remarkable in our lives. As our spiritual master, Lokanath Maharaja, always says “utsava priya manva,” and from utsava comes utsaha – and we all had that realization. We all came together to make the event successful. We were filled with enthusiasm. We gave the opportunity to many of the ladies to address the assembly and they felt very confident. Yes, we can do it. It had become everyone’s event. The temple matajis supported us. Our spiritual master is our inspiration: whatever good we are doing is his causeless mercy and whatever bad we are doing is due to our conditioning. He has inspired so many padayatris and started so many padayatras as directed by Srila Prabhupada. He says padayatra is his heart, therefore it’s our duty as disciples to follow our spiritual father – like father like daughter.
Our team thanked the assembled ladies for joining us and the police department for helping us and giving us permission. After padayatra I personally went to the police station and gifted all of them Back to Godhead magazines. We also thank the temple authorities for supporting us for the event and for putting faith in us.
We all thank Sri Guru and Gauranga for blessing us and for organizing padayatra.
All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
All glories to Srila Gurudev.
