By Dhirnayak dasa, Utkala-Banga Padayatra leader
Bhubaneswar, the capital city of Odisha, is an important place. In 1975, Srila Prabhupada instructed Gour Govinda Swami to build a temple in Bhubaneswar. It is Prabhupada’s 108th and last temple project which was completed and inaugurated in 1991 on Lord Nityananda Prabhu’s appearance day. As instructed by Srila Prabhupada, Gour Govinda Swami installed the beautiful deities of Sri Sri Nitai-Gaurasundar, Krishna-Balaram, and Jagannath, Baladeva and Subhadra devi on three altars and named the temple Sri Krishna-Balaram. The temple also has Gour Govinda Maharaja’s samadhi mandir and Srila Prabhupada’s bhajan kutir.
The Bengal-Orissa Padayatra reached Bhubaneswar on Jan 10 and stayed for five days in the ISKCON temple. Devotees here are very cooperative and the congregation devotees also helped us a lot. Because of the coronavirus our movements were restricted, especially nagar sankirtan, but by the mercy of Srila Prabhupada we organized programmes at different locations and also visited nearby places of interest.
The most prominent landmark and one of the oldest temples in Bhubaneswar is the Lingaraja temple of Lord Shiva. The central deity of the temple, Lingaraja, is worshipped both as Shiva and Vishnu, emphasizing harmony between Shaivism and Vaishnavism. We padayatris visited the Lingaraja temple, along with the Vasudev and Kedarbhuri temples, and prayed for strength to serve Guru and Gauranga.
We request all devotees to please pray to Narshimha deva that serves Nitai-Gaurasundar, Srila Prabhupada and Srila Gurudev so nicely.
