By Ritudvipa Gaurachandra dasa, Uttar Pradesh Padayatra leader
On April 29 padayatra was in the city of Aligarh about 130km southeast of New Delhi. The next day the advance party began searching for a “new home” because some people were discussing an impending lockdown in the district. As we moved ahead seeking shelter, we reached Bhartrim village where to our amazement we saw an institution named Hare Krishna College. There we met retired police officer and college owner K. S. Chavan. We spent a month at the college after India’s second Covid-19 lockdown came into force and the Chavan family provided assistance with whatever we required.
Padayatris need to walk and preach and the lockdown meant no sankirtan and no book distribution. We were holding a morning programme and reading Srila Prabhupada’s books but we always felt incomplete. Our oxen are also used to walking daily but were now sitting in one place and seemed sad not to be engaged in Their Lordships’ service. We often took them to an open space for exercise otherwise it would have been hard for them to pick up their routine.
After one month of lockdown, on June 1 we saw our chance to go back on the road. The restrictions were only partially lifted, with everything closed by 7pm and fully closed on Saturday and Sunday, but we were determined to try. Heading north from Aligarh the first place we came to was the small town of Gabhana where we stayed in a school. People were reluctant to join us in sankirtan, probably because of the coronavirus. Nevertheless, we performed sankirtan around the town, although book distribution was affected. At first, we were scared there would be another lockdown and padayatra would be curtailed again, but with the Lord’s mercy all went well as we made our way further north to the cities of Khurja, Bulandshahr and Meerut.
The best news is that seven new devotees have joined us and we have grown to nineteen in number. That makes the sankirtan powerful. Things are slowly becoming more favourable as people are now joining in the sankirtan and inviting us for house programmes. The temperature is hitting 45°C, but we are carrying on. We move out at 6:30am so we can cover most of our daily 12km walk before the sun is too high. At 9am we stop and have our prasadam and then walk again till we reach that day’s destination.
All glories to Sri Sri Nitai-Gaurasundar.
All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
