By Damodarlila dasa, Maharashtra Padayatra leader
The Maharashtra Padayatra reached Latur on August 11, 2022, where a grand welcome was waiting for us. The Latur devotees offered garlands to Srila Prabhupada and all the padayatris. The next day was Balaram Jayanti. We celebrated the birth of Balaram with the Latur devotees and then only seven days remained until the Janmashtami festival, so we stayed back. There are beautiful deities of Jagannath, Baladev and Subhadra maiya in the Latur temple. We were blessed to have darshan of Them.
ISKCON Latur president Sundar Krishna dasa and his team had made great publicity of Sri Sri Nitai-Gaurasundar’s arrival and wherever we went we were welcomed with sankirtan and garlands. Throughout the next week we performed sankirtan and house programmes in various parts of the city. We also did book distribution and one Srimad-Bhagavatam set was presented to Mr Rajkumar Katteni’s family by Srila Prabhupada disciple Akhildhara dasa. We were invited to the Kattenis for a house programme and after sankirtan and small katha by Akhildhara, the family took the Srimad-Bhagavatam set.
August 18 was Janmashtami for outside people, so we again went for sankirtan in the evening and residents performed arati of Their Lordships and washed our oxen’s hooves – oxen are very much worshipped in Maharashtra – and the roads were lavishly decorated with rangolis to welcome Their Lordships.
The next day was Janmashtami mahotsava and we celebrated at the property in Latur where construction of a new temple has begun. A big pandal was put up and Sri Sri Nitai-Gaurasundar’s chariot was parked in the courtyard. We all fasted and performed sankirtan seva for the pleasure of Lord Sri Krishna on His birthday. All the devotees who came offered obeisances to Sri Sri Nitai-Gaurasundar. Our oxen attracted everyone’s attention with their majestic horns and the padayatris were invited to perform abhishek of Sri Sri Radha-Krishna. All devotees were blessed by the presence of Akhildhara. After katha we all honoured prasadam. More than 500 devotees attended the festival.
The next day was Srila Prabhupada’s appearance day. It was a great pleasure to hear and sing the glories of our spiritual grandfather and the assembled devotees presented their offerings to Prabhupada. The devotees also heard with dedication Akhildhara’s offering. Sundar Krishna said, “We are very fortunate to have Sri Sri Nitai-Gaurasundar, Akhildhara dasa and the padayatris with us for Janmashtami and Prabhupada’s appearance day.”
Srila Prabhupada, ki jai.
