By Damodarlila dasa, Maharashtra Padayatra leader
We celebrated Ramnavami mohatsava on April 10, 2022, at Hadgaon, a town in Nanded District that has twenty initiated devotees, all disciples of Radhanath Maharaja. Devotees from Mumbai Chowpatty’s Sri Sri Radha-Gopinath temple come to Hadgaon for preaching on a regular basis, along with other places – we also met them when we were at Manwath and they joined us in sankirtan.
Sri Ramchandra’s appearance day was approaching and we were thinking where to celebrate and were about to go back to Pathri, a town we visited a few days ago, and hold the festival there. But the same day devotees from Hadgaon came as they got news of us and joined in our sankirtan. They insisted we visit their town and celebrate Ramnavami with them.
As we reached Hadgaon the devotees welcomed us at the outskirts and all of us did sankirtan covering the whole town. We announced in the sankirtan about the Ramnavami celebration, abhisheka, katha and prasadam, inviting everyone to attend.
On Ramnavami morning after japa we put up a large pandal and then made preparations for bhoga and abhisheka. We began the programme at 11am with sankirtan and the devotees and guests joined us. We then performed abhisheka of our deities, Sri Sri Nitai-Gaurasundar, inviting the Hadgaon residents and congregation devotees to participate. We offered more than fifty-six bhogas to Their Lordships and the congregation devotees also brought bhogas they had prepared at their homes. Then there was katha glorifying Lord Ram. The festivities concluded with full-plate prasadam distributed to the assembled devotees and residents.
Ramnavami maha mohatsava, ki jai.
