In honour of ISKCONS 50th anniversary, the devotees of Ahmedabad pledged to do one five-day padayatra and five one-day padayatras this year. The first five-day padayatra was held in January with Lokanath Swami attending. During the course of the year, they also completed the 4 one-day padayatras they had pledged. On December 18th, they successfully held the fifth one-day padayatra thus completing their vow. They are now planning to do these padayatras every year for the pleasure of all the vainavas and Srila Prabhupada.
By Muralimohan Dasa
Receiving blessings
On December 18th we held our last one-day padayatra. We planned the following route: we would start at the ISKCON Ahmedabad temple and travel to Ramdev Nagar, then to Prahalad Nagar, next to Railway Crossing followed by the village of Markarba, then to SG. Highway and lastly to Sarkhej Ujala Chowkdi ending the padayatra at the Bhavani temple in the village of Sarkhej. It was a 10 kilometre walk and we would reach our destination at 1:00 pm that day.
Before leaving we had kirtana in the temple premises from around 8.00 am. Jashomatinandan Dasa, who was in his room at the time, heard the kirtana and came out to meet us. Upon seeing him we garlanded him and asked for his blessings. He smiled happily and with a loud voice said, “Hari bol!” raising his left hand in the air (his right hand was on his chanting beads). We were blessed.
Ecstatic kirtana in Sarkhej Ujala Chowdi
We left the temple at 8.30 am. There were more than 90 devotees joining us with 25 to 30 of those devotees actively distributing books along the way. The rest of us conducted sankirtana while following the bullock cart carrying the deities of Sri Sri Nimai-Nitai and Srila Prabhupada. At 9.30 am we stopped and served breakfast prasadam to all the padayatris before resuming our journey. We would stop walking after every four streets so we could have ecstatic roaring kirtanas, lead by various devotees. We had an especially blissful kirtana when we reached Sarkhej Ujala Chowdi. It went on for half an hour as we delighted in chanting the ‘Hare Krishna’ maha mantra. Sarkhej Ujala Chowdi is a predominantly Muslim area and when they saw us the public began to gather, even shop owners came out of their shops to watch us. When we saw that such a nice crowd was gathering we adjusted the deities to face everyone so they could take darsana. We also distributed many books, which we sold at a discounted price in this particular area.
Maha-padayatra book scores
On this padayatra, we distributed 408 Bhagavad-gitas and 447 small books in just four and a half hours, which made this one-day padayatra seem like a maha-padayatra.By 1.00pm we reached our destination, the Bhavani temple in the village of Sarkhej. Afterwards, all the padayatris had a lunch feast and we also distributed khichadi prasadam to all the villagers. When Naradamuni Dasa reported our successful padayatra to Jashomatinandan Dasa he was very pleased and he bestowed more blessings upon us to do more padayatras.
Prasadam power
When I look back on all of the five one-day padayatras we held, I strongly believe that we were able to maintain the spirits of all the many devotees who joined us, through the sumptuous prasadam cooked. For this, we have all these wonderful, selfless serving, devotees to thank: Madhavmohini Dasi, Harimurari Dasa, Padmaradha Dasi, Sachidhuli Dasi and Bhakta Bhavesh. Other devotees who deserve special recognition for their services on padayatra are:
- BhaktaRajesh Shah and his wife Bhaktin Jaishree
- Harimurari Dasa and Padmaradha Dasi
- Antaratma Dasa
- Vamsibihari Dasa and Sadanandi Dasi
- BhaktaSunil and his wife Bhaktin Rama
- Bhakta Sonu Singh
- Bhakta Ramchandra Kannan
- Bhakta Bhavesh Joshi
- Naradamuni Dasa
- Madhavmohini Dasi and Rukamani for the deities sringar
Our team of devotees has also pledged to distribute five to six thousand Bhagavad-gitas for this year’s book marathon.
