By Padmanabha Dasa
Invitation
Kishore Badal, chairman of the Hindu Coordinating Council (HCC) of Gauteng , South Africa, forwarded an invitation to ISKCON to participate in their 26th Shivratri Walk. Various temples in Johannesburg were also invited to participate in the walk with various floats to honor Lord Shiva, the topmost Vaishnava. The organizers had also asked the ISKCON devotees to provide the lunch for the public and all the walkers. Caitanya Dasa, temple president of ISKCON Lenasia, welcomed the invitation and immediately gave approval and funding.
Preparations
Right away devotees in the ISKCON camp engaged in frantic preparations to make this event successful. Syama Rupa Dasa and Padmavati Dasi provided over 300 packets of prasadam caramel nuts, all packed by Bhaktin Narishka. Nareshwar Prabhu volunteered to cook 3 containers of biryani and 1 of dahl. Adhar Mataji collected BTGs and books to be distributed free of charge to the public, and Manoj Prabhu coordinated the Kirtan team.
The event
On Sunday February 11th 2018 25 devotees assembled at the Jayas temple in Falcon street, in the South of Lenasia to join the HCC and 8 other temples with their floats honoring Lord Shiva,
Ratheem Krishna Prabhu started Kirtan with the pranam mantras and continued the whole time with the maha mantra. Our sankirtana party danced and chanted enthusiastically along the way. Many people came out of their homes to take an audio darsana of the holy name; most of them had never heard it before. On either side of the road teams of devotees were distributing prasadam and Srila Prabhupada’s books. The Johannesburg Police Department and some volunteer marshals escorted the walkers during the procession. We stopped at nine different temples where arati was performed to the Lord Shiva Deities on the floats.
It took us 5 hrs to complete the walk. It was awesome to distribute the holy names, prasadam
and books to people. I am sure Srila Prabhupada and Lord Caitanya were pleased with the efforts put by their grand disciples – especially because it was the auspicious day of Vijaya
Ekadashi. The procession stopped at the Sai temple in Kingfisher Street where devotees sang the Nrsimhadeva prayers to conclude the walk. Nareshwar Prabhu and his team were very busy distributing biryani and dhal to the public. We then danced and walked another 500 meters to Syama Govinda’s house, where we honored a delicious Ekadashi prasadam.
