PADAYATRA NEVER ENDS! by bhaktin Sarasvati
Hare Krishna. My name is Sarasvati and I am 13 years old. Padayatra is a wonderful festival and experience. Service on padayatra is unlimited – from difficult managing to sweeping. My primary service at padayatra is to dance Bharat natyam every evening during the program for visitors. I love this dance and I’ve been dancing it for 7 years.
This year’s padayatra was special because during the previous ones there were only about 3 or 4 children but this year we were sometimes even more kids than adults. All the kids were taken very seriously and our commander Adi Purusa – who not long ago was also one of us children – divided services so that each child would feel needed and important, which helped them to engage with even more enthusiasm in their duties.
Our oxen are from Hungary; they have been bought by Padayatra and they are now being taken care of at the Krisnuv dvur farm where they are doing very fine. Every year the oxen are driven to the spot where we start to walk and then driven back to the farm at the end. As we have our shoes, so do the oxen, but it is not easy to put them on every morning. Only our ox drivers have such strength to control our two young oxen Janmastami and Pavana while they put the shoes on. They always succeed.
Daily prasadam was wonderful; the cooks were alternating so the food was variegated.
Every year prasadam was mostly on time, but this year was exceptional – sometimes prasadam was so much delayed that I hardly managed to get myself ready for the evening performance, but it was really worth it!
Safety is very important, and this year it was emphasized even more.
Programs for the visitors were ecstatic and our experienced actors were replaced by enthusiasts and hopes of our program team, Adi Purusa and Vamsi Gopal.
My big respect and thanks goes to all those who were managing or helping with the whole padayatra. But my biggest thanks belong to my parents who have been taken me and my brother to padayatra since our childhood. Thanks to them I have built a very strong and loving relationship with padayatra. I also want to thank all the devotees who prayed for my father who had a serious accident during last year’s padayatra.
When padayatra physically ends I start getting ready for the following year.
That’s why I’m telling everybody, “You must go on Padayatra, it is great! Padayatra is real life!!!
LONG LIVE PADAYATRA ! by bhakta Sanatan
Hare Krishna dear devotees. My name is Sanatan and I am 10 years old. I would like to say a few words about this year’s Czech Padayatra, which was my 9th one. This year we celebrated 25 years of padayatra in our country; it lasted three weeks and we walked more than 110 kilometres. This year’s Padayatra was the best for me, because all the children were taken very seriously. And there were really many kids.
We had a wonderful commander, Adi Purusa, who is only 18 years old, so he understood better the needs of us children. I loved it especially because of our leader, Nrsimha Caitanya prabhu, who personally took care of me and the well-being of all the other devotees.
Our oxen for this year were Janmastami and Pavana. They live at the Czech farm Krisnuv dvur and I live not even 1 kilometer from them. Janmastami and Pavana are originally from our Hare Krishna Hungarian farm. Sometimes I go to pick apples with them and during padayatra I try to serve them. I even drove the Deity oxcart and I hurried the oxen at least 100 times. It’s also for this reason that I like padayatra very much. For this I thank Roman, the coach driver.
My heroes are padayatra veterans like Rajaram Prabhu, Alalanath prabhu, Munipriya prabhu and my father Loga Saranga prabhu. I also want to become one of them.
And how will padayatra be in 100 years? We can ask this several times. How will it be in 100 years? How will it be in 200 years? How many members will padayatra have then? What will the padayatra cart look like? Which oxen will we have and how rich the cultural program will be? We can ask all these questions. But seeing this year’s progress, we can only imagine it will be the best. Padayatra began as a simple seed, and now, after 25 years, we can see it is a beautiful small tree. So we can only imagine what a big tree it will be after 100 years.
I beg you for your blessings so that I can participate in padayatra throughout my whole life.
Padayatra ki jaya! Hare Krishna.
SUMMARYOF THE 25TH CZECH PADAYATRA by Nrsimha Caitanya das, Padayatra leader
This year’s padayatra lasted 20 days, and we walked approximately 120 km. Daily there was an average of 25-30 devotees on the road, and we held 15 evening programs. We distributed 1957 books, gave many plates of prasadam during the programs and threw lots of maha bananas from the cart. As Sarasvati and Sanatan already mentionned, this 25th padayatra belonged especially to the children.
If someone had told me before padayatra that we would organize a school trip, I would have laughed out loud and I would have told this person to go and pick raspberries in the forest. Nevertheless that was exactly what happened – out of 30 devotees who were on padayatra, at any moment more than half of them were kids!!! Kids are nothing new for us: devotees who serve on padayatra take their kids with them – Janaki, Sanatan, Sarasvati, Narayan – and sometimes they even bring along kids whose parents can’t come on padayatra and take care of them, like Nandini and Natabari. But this year there was an avalanche and these experienced padayatris were joined by Vamsi, Govinda, Gaurangi, Chandravali, Bhima, Vraja, Pada Kamala, Jay Nitai, Kamala, Ramanuja. Forgive me if I have forgotten anyone. Impressive list anyway, isn’t it?
My first time on padayatra was when I was not even 10 years old. I remember that as a child I recall mostly the family atmosphere caused by Rajaram prabhu, the founder of the Czech Padayatra. I remember he was always very friendly and natural towards me. When I was 14, it was the first time I participated in almost the whole Padayatra with my parents. I didn’t want to be on harinama and, in order to make me useful, Rajaram handed me the flag and sent me to the back of the cart to caution and slow down the coming cars. With a flag in my hand, I felt that my life had a direction, that I could meaningfully contribute to the functioning of the whole project and that the devotees didn’t take me as a burden or a teenage kid, but as a member of the team. My identity as a devotee was fixed. Rajaram gradually gave me more and more services and responsibilities, and 12 years later I am walking again with a flag in my hand by the padayatra cart, but this time as the organizer of the whole project. The only possible explanation of how a person like me could have been given such a wonderful service is the mercy of the devotees – Rajaram, my father and all who saw more in me than just a small child.
I’m trying to see all those kids who came for this year’s padayatra in a similar way. They are not kids, but potential leaders, organizers, book distributors, cooks, actors, singers… I am praying so that what devotees did for me when I was a child I can do for all the padayatra children – or at least for those in whose hearts padayatra will stay. I have many shortcomings, but I hope that by the mercy of the devotees I can do something good.
Safety during Padayatra
After last year’s accident it was clear that we would have to take more seriously the safety during harinama. I meditated on it a lot and from the beginning I knew there had to be two flag bearers, one at each end of the procession, and that one of them had to be me – who else would be more afraid than me that something bad would happen?. I worried who would be my partner, because it couldn’t have been any sleepwalking guy. Krishna, as usual, had already planned it and He sent bhakta Adam, Jahnavi Candrika and Kamala Manjari (the mother of Sanatana and Sarasvati) to help. They alternated holding the flag at the back of the cart, while I was in front of the parade. Adam and Jahnavi pleased me by being very responsible despite their age, and at the end of padayatra I was very grateful to Kamala Manjari who is older and more responsible. She helped me during a few hellish days when we walked on the main road and during the whole time we alternately stopped one traffic line while letting the other line go. Even though it may appear that a flag bearer has not much to do and can eventually chant his rounds at the same time, I gave that up very quickly, because I had to focus on the cars. When the procession reached our base, I was exhausted. Every morning before the departure of the parade I felt like a soldier being sent to the battlefield and I prayed intensely to Lord Nrsimhadev to protect us all.
Kamala Manjari and I noticed that even though we had to stop one traffic lane for a longer time while letting the other cars pass, the drivers gestured and nodded at us gratefully, appreciating our efforts to ensure safe and smooth traffic. It was a big contrast to the reactions we encountered on the roads during previous years, when people complained we were staggering and tottering under the wheels. I thought about how by our nature we are used to be under the authority of Krishna and how this tendency reflects even in our conditioned life – even though we want to be rulers and enjoyers, we naturally appreciate the position of authority, because we understand that order and systems are better for us than chaos.
