19820810 Ratha-yātrā Festival

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The following is a lecture on the Ratha-yātrā Festival given by His Holiness Jayapatākā Swami Mahārāja on August 10, 1982 – in New Orleans, USA.

One’s hands, the blackbirds, they fly away from a tree. You should try that experiment. I do it, Mari Sevik. Sometimes I see some trees and blackbirds fall in the tree, and I walk up. I don’t have to get very close and clap my hands once or twice, and all the blackbirds leave the tree. It actually works. You can try that. So that’s what happens by chanting the holy name. In the assembly of devotees, especially, we’re very fortunate to be blessed with so many great Vaishnava guests, and we should take advantage of their association to humble ourselves and to hear from their lotus mouth some transcendental sound vibration and take it to heart. And then, by that purification, we can speak something. So by hearing.

So in this assembly of devotees, all kinds of differences or ideas that have any kind of separate motive, all these things are lost in the festival atmosphere. That’s what these festivals are for, a festival of purification as well as glorification. And for the public, this is a very big event. We have a very good chance of thousands of people seeing Lord Jagannath just glimpsing Lord Jagannath, or just following with Lord Jagannath, taking some prashantim from Lord Jagannath. This is very important. These public festivals and this rathiatra should be one of the biggest rathiatras in America. Theres no reason why not. Theres so many people come here. Its all assembled devotees should get in the spirit now and with some words of encouragement and inspiration from assembled vaishnavas.

And tomorrow we can make this a very important festival occasion so that people won’t forget this Rathiatra next year. They will be waiting for. It’s like they wait for some nonsense thing like Mardi Gras. They should wait for Rathiatra. What is this Mardi gras? When I first heard Mardi Gras, I couldn’t pronounce Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras. How’s he pronounced? Why can’t they say Rathiatra with the same enthusiasm? What is this Mardi gras? So let this Rathayatra supersede and transcend this body ground by our enthusiasm.

New Orleans Radiatra. Kim, Hare Kṛṣṇa. So, didn’t know whether to talk about what happened in South America or Jagannath Rathyatra. But I guess let’s talk about Rathiatra. I think it’s time for both. And no one’s given me any help. They couldn’t get my hint.

Yeah, and then maybe you can tell us first, major.

So maybe what I will do, I will speak last and you can talk about those festivals, you talk about the Mexican, you should talk about Calcutta Rathiatra, I will speak last.

So. So this year we had our 6th Rathi Yātrā in Guadalajara with three cars. Now, history of these cars. The first year, the devotees developed these cars, very nice cars, but when were starting to move them for the parade festival to the parade site, see, the first year were experimenting, so we built the cars with car hubs instead of truck hubs. So anyone who knows anything about building Rathi yātrā cars knows that’s a mistake. So as we took the three cars to the site, all the wheels fell off, all three of them. So it was getting to be very late. About a half hour before the parade was scheduled to begin, we had no cars functioning. So somehow or other, one devotee got an arc welder.

And right at the parade site, before were starting to be going to start, he scaled up a high tension pole and hooked the arc welder into the wire and started to weld right on the street. So he got the car finished and then we had the Rathiatra with one car. That was the first year and it was successful. The car made it through the whole parade. So that was on. That was on a Saturday and we had a. Streets were pretty full, but when we got to the park was moderately full, but not so much. So then the second year we decided that because, no, the first year we had it on Sunday, the park was full, but there was nobody in the street.

So the second year we decided that we better do it on Saturday because the streets will be packed on Saturday. So we scheduled the Rattyatra for Saturday. I think it was that year that I was questioning Madan Manohar and other persons whether the cars were strong this year, after the disaster we had with the year before. And he said, yes, there’s no problem with the cars this year, they’re very strong. So only problem was that the devotee had forgot to go to the transit department to get the parade route confirmed. But anyway, still, they gave us an alternate parade route and we started out and we hadn’t gone more than 100ft before we heard this noise. Clack, clack, blam. First wheel fell off the first part.

Wasn’t I that rough?

What? So at that point, the crowd got together and they lifted, they got about 30 persons and they lifted the car onto their shoulders and began carrying in one cardinal on their shoulders. So we continued for another about third to a half a mile, and all of a sudden, clack, clack, bam. The second car, another wheel, fell off a different car. So again, that crowd got together, and they put the car on their shoulders, which was diminishing from the parade a little bit. But again, they lifted the car up on their shoulders, and we continued with two cars running on three wheels and one car running on four wheels. So we continued a little further, and then all of a sudden, clack, clack, wham. By this time, the person who had built the car, he disappeared. He couldn’t be found.

So that third noise was the sound of a second wheel falling off the same car. Because what we did is we had the steering procedure down very nicely with truck hubs, but they didn’t use truck hubs behind trying to save money or something like that, and they didn’t make the system so perfectly. So now two wheels were falling off the car, the two rear wheels, and again, the crowd got together, and this time they were literally carrying the car on their shoulders with two wheels off. The third car was wobbling, but it made it through the whole parade route. So that was the second year, but we had it on Saturday. Turns out there were a lot of people in the street that day, but nobody in the park. Hardly a few people in the park, but not so many.

The devotees ate all the prashadim, but still, it wasn’t exactly what we wanted. So that was the second year. Now the third year, that was the year. That year were blessed by the presence of Śrīla Jayapatākā, Swamiya Charyapd, and Śrīla Ritayananda, Mahārāja Charia Dev. They both came and we got. This time we had a two day festival Saturday and Sunday. Saturday we got the best imaginable parade route right through the center of the city on Avenido Juarez in Guadalajara. In fact, it was so good that it caught the carmi’s completely off by surprise. They didn’t imagine nobody ever got that street. Even the Catholics. They don’t get that street. Nobody gets that main street.

So somehow or other, somebody made a mistake and gave it to us, which the fourth year didn’t happen because the governor personally interceded so that we wouldn’t get that street. But the third year we had the main street. That street was packed with literally maybe 1015 thousand people right in the street. Looked like Fifth Avenue on New York. Just people hanging from the balconies, trying to get the prashadim that was being thrown out of the cars. It was by yourself and by the charity. That parade was very nice and we had a two day schedule. So next, the following. The following day, on Sunday, the park was packed. We gave out thousands of plates of Prashadim. Now, our strategy that year was that they were going to have the festivals of October, which is a big Carmi festival, the following week.

So they had all these booths ranged in the park. So we scheduled our festival for one week before their festival and we used all their boosts and everything, which made the festival very nice and very professional. Nice arrangement. So the fourth year, we repeated the same arrangement. On the third year, we had a new weld system, so no wheels fell off the car. Very successful. So the fourth year, they refused to give us the parade route. The same parade route, they scheduled us down a more insignificant parade route. We retaliated a little bit by tearing down at least three of their height of their electrical wires with our cars. But at any rate, that ratiotra was also successful.

And we used the same system of holding our Rathi yātrā before the one week before their October festival, which gave us the use of their facilities, which also brought waves of protest from all the merchants and everything who were going to use that parade route. I mean, those stands. So the fifth year, we also did the two day program, but this time, due to the inefficiency which is normal in Mexico, Carmi’s didn’t have the site ready in time because they were about. They took a siesta. They were about two or three weeks behind in their construction. So they canceled our festival at the last minute in that area and gave us a more insignificant park and a more insignificant parade route.

Incidentally, each of these four years, the first four years, we had Bahodaq come down and we gave out each year about, say, ten to 15,000 plates of prasad. And people were dancing, they were jumping up and down and shouting, ultra, ultra, which means another one, another song. So he was just chanting mahā mantra the whole time. But the fifth year, due to the late construction, we couldn’t get to the park. We couldn’t get the park. We had a more insignificant parade route and they put us in some small park. Anyway, that year the Jayava Takamaraj was present and the Christians, they tried.

They present for three years in a row. That was the third year.

Third time the Christians, they tried to break up our festival that day. On Sunday they came, some american Christianity fanatics, evangelists and also some mexican Christians. They were handing out leaflets blaspheming against the deities, etcetera. So I told the devotees that year, get rid of these guys. I don’t care how you get rid of them, but just get rid of them.

Turn off the tape recorder.

At that point, due to the frustration of not having a nice sight, the devotees began to take out the evangelist. One by one. They sent a few of our black belt devotees in there to take, teach them to turn the other cheek. So at that point at Chariapod, he was watching. He was a little startled by this, but then he said, as we began to mop up on the christians, that his whole right side of his body began to shake, which is an auspicious sign indicating that Lord Jagannath was pleased. And the devotees continued by eating all the prashad that was for the festival, along with some guests and children were coming off the street. They were taking big heaping plates of prashad. But somehow that year we didn’t have bajaldaq.

Somehow or other, we still, even though there was a little satisfaction in ridding Jagannath of these bothersome christians, still were not completely satisfied with the bra. The yātrā festival, although no wheels came.

A couple thousand people came.

Yeah, a couple thousand.

A lot of plays. You had dramas. Yeah.

There was one drama put on by the gurukul of.

Remember how I got everybody to bow down until that?

I don’t remember that.

We had everybody line up and come down and offer flowers.

Everybody offered flowers to Lord Jaganna, bowed down. We had the whole. Everyone who was there. Couple, couple thousand people. Yeah. They came and offered flowers to Lord Chagana. So then they. Guru kul put on a plate play. That was that play the story of Rick Asura, Lord Shiva and Lord Shiva. Yes. So in that play, our Gurukul teacher, who’s about real skinny, in about six foot two, he played Lord Vishnu disguised as a small brahmacharye. He came out in a. In what looked like a tiger skin or something wrapped around his waist. He was very convincing as Lord Vishnu wearing a pair of tennis shoes. Anyway, that was the fifth year. It was kind of an off year for us. But the 6th year. The 6th year, this was the 6th year of lord. Incidentally, I am putting in the this way.

But actually each year the program was very nicely received. So the 6th year we scheduled, we got a completely different parade route, very first class parade route and also a very nice park Saturday and Sunday again. So the parade was very nice. Thousands of people saw the Rothiatra and Sunday in the park was packed. And now we have our new farm project. So were selling hot corn from the farm and everything like this. Bahadak was playing, everyone was dancing at the program. We got everyone dancing to the mahā mantra, and devotees were all dancing. And we did. On Sunday, we did a fire sacrifice right at the Rathiatra. The place was full of people. We held initiations and married off five couples in fire sacrifice and second initiations and everything. So people were always asking us about initiations and our philosophy, etcetera.

So right in the middle of the Rathiatra, about two in the afternoon, about, say, 1502 thousand people present, we did a big fire sacrifice, and they were throwing grains at people. And actually, that was very nice. And I gave about a 45 minutes lecture to the people, and they stayed for the lecture. We’re giving out Prashantam all day long. We had booths of free Prashantim going out. Nice preparations. So, this year was actually the 6th Rathiatra. And so many people there looking forward to these Rathiatras every year, I consider the most dynamic festival that we can put on, because on these rathi yātrā days, actually, so many people who don’t have contact with us because of inertia, they won’t even go to our temple, or they don’t know anything.

They become caught up in the festival as soon as they see that they’re singing and dancing. Biggest parade cars. So many people become attracted. I consider these festivals are very significant preaching programs for attracting people. Just like I saw, even our neighbors, they would come out, people who wouldn’t even come to our live right next door to us, and wouldn’t even come to the temple. They came out when they see the movement on Rathihatra. Anyway, the 6th year was, like I said, this is the 6th year of Rathiatra. And each year, we’re finding that the parade is becoming more and more established in the city, that people are coming.

People are actually looking more and more favorably to the movement, because these actual festivals, they convince the people that, just like what Prabhupāda was talking, we give them philosophy, we give them singing, we give them dancing, we give them. And this way, so many people begin to understand that there’s a difference between Kṛṣṇa consciousness and simply so many other cheating movements which are on the market nowadays. So, practically speaking, I remember Prabhupāda would say that just like the christian preacher, he. He went to one town and he was trying to frighten the people, and he was telling them. He went to a coal mining town, and he was telling the people that the conditions of hell, trying to scare them.

So he told them that in hell it’s always hot, there’s so much billowing smoke, there’s fire going, the air is very nasty, full of gas and smells. So they said, well, those conditions are also down in the mines. We work in those conditions. So he was describing hell in this way, in so many different ways, that it’s always dark, there’s never any light shining, there’s never any heat from the sun. They said, this is the same as in the mines. So finally, the preacher, christian preacher, he couldn’t think of any more conditions. So he told them that in hell there’s no newspapers. So the people said, no newspapers. That sounds like a terrible place. See, because this is the only sense gratification that they knew. They’re working in the minds, but they’re attached to their sense gratification.

So when he told them there’s no newspapers, they became upset. So actually, people, the thing that when people are, their sense gratification is really the thing that attracts them the most. Material life is based on sense gratification. Actually, anyone with a little bit of intelligence, he can understand that the material world is a very hellish place. Unfortunately, we see that people, after years of getting so many religious philosophies where they don’t even offer them a decent meal, they don’t become very much attracted. I know in many churches, etcetera, their standard is maybe offering people a glass cup of coffee or something like that. But this Kṛṣṇa conscious movement, we’re offering them very nice prasadam, singing, dancing all day long. A festival, actually, when Kṛṣṇa consciousness is presented properly, it becomes like a continual festival.

One’s actually, this should be the mood of a devotee, a very festive mood. This is what attracts the condition soul when they. Not just the philosophy, because anybody can just simply repeat parrot like philosophy. But when they can actually see that the person who’s speaking, he is in a very transcendental position. He’s actually different. He’s not attached, he’s enjoying. Then people become attracted. So the Kṛṣṇa consciousness is meant to be a very festive occasion. And we’re finding these festivals purify the whole atmosphere, and people begin to pick up on the festive mood of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. I consider that each year there’s a lot of expense on Rathiatra. It means a lot of money being spent, a lot of sacrifice on the part of the devotees. Sankritan men have to sometimes even give up some hours from Sanghatan to become engaged in Rathiatra. Etcetera.

But I consider the results. The results that we reap in the form of Lord Jagannath’s mercy are so many thousands of times greater, unimaginably, any amount of times greater than what we can think of with our material calculations. The sacrifices is incredible. Just like this is Lord Caitanya mus movement as the only sacrifice for the age of Kali Yuga and Lord Jagannath. Rathayatra ceremony is an integral part of Lord Caitanyas festival and Sangatan movement, because Lord Caitanya himself was celebrating Rathiatra every year in Jagannath purī. So the results of Lord Jagannath mercy, when the mercy showers down on the heads of the people, everybody reaps the benefit of having their consciousness enlightened, thinking more favorably about Kṛṣṇa consciousness, and beginning to understand something of Prabhupāda’s philosophy. Anyway, this was another year in Rathayatra, 6th year.

And we are dedicated to holding Rathihatra every single year in the city of Guadalajara. Which is new. Which is new. Nilachula. Nilachula.

Mundir nunilacho la ki mexico ladia, turkey. Jagannath mercy key tidanipad. Key haribo. Someone give the mic to Susanthida jagjeevam. Swami.

Hare Kṛṣṇa. First, I like to thank Śrīman Bhikkodar Prabhupu for inviting me here. This is the first Rathiatra I have been to in nine years. No one ever invited me. Pancha Rivera. So he never invited me.

We want to thank bricodard for inviting you, too.

So, anyway, by his mercy, I am able to keep in the fire. So just to explain a little bit of some of the festivals we had. Now, Śrīla Charyapad came down, first of all, when he came to Lima, literally hundreds and hundreds of people, they rent these big buses, the devotees and all the friends of the devotees and all the devotees, they crowd onto these big buses to meet him at the airport. And also about 500 people are there, amassed at the airport. And we rent these limousines. We rented one of these limousines, these old, big cadillac limousines, you know, like these ancient black Cadillac limousines you don’t see anymore, but in Peru, they have them.

So we rented one of these for a chariot, and then he gave a lot of very nice lectures, both in the temple and national library and other places, art academies, very nice lectures. But then went to Arequipa, which is another city in Peru, and we got off the plane. There were hundreds and hundreds of people with banners welcome at Chariot. Amazing thing. And they whisked us through and went to the vip lounge. They interviewed him from the tv and the radio and they went outside and the Doritos had a bus there and a big, huge bus and they had a limousine. And then we started going to the limousine and they had the police with the motorcycle escorts in front, sirens and everything, up to the temple and cutting off the traffic. Cutting off the traffic as went, just to facilitate. Nice.

And then I guess in Latin America you can do these things. I am giving you some ideas in the future. And so everyone is very ecstatic by this. We gave some lectures and the police, he gave a lecture to a group of 50 to 100 policemen in an auditorium about kshetriya principles. Very, very nice lecture. And then at the municipal theater, the city theater has one big auditorium. Several nights gave lectures there. Then it topped off with a big festival in the park in Arequiba. This like, it’s like a, what do you call it, amphitheater type of thing.

In the park, amphitheatro.

So there we had a, I guess sort of, you have that at the end of the Rathiatra festival type of thing and initiations. We had a big fire sacrifice. The two, six, seven foot high fire sacrifice. Jaripa was chanting the mantras and I was throwing the ghee.

It went up to 12ft.

12Ft, was it?

He wasn’t sitting down, he was standing.

Back, standing like this. I had to stand up. It was so big.

I was up on the stage and he was in the front and the flame was going way over my head.

I got the art when you threw the gee on the fire that the fire immediately went out like that. There was an art. That’s what I mean. So many people. Then what Acharya does, he has this thing where he gives people Prashadam. They come up to him and he just cans them Prashanta. And first he has the friends of Kṛṣṇa. We have this group called Friends of Kṛṣṇa, amigos of Kṛṣṇa. They come up first and they take. And they offer their obeisances after they take. So all the people are watching this, you know. So all the Karmis are coming up.

The friends of Kṛṣṇa are dressed in ordinary clothes.

They’re not as dresses devotees. So they’re coming out, they’re offering their obeisances after they received the Prashantim first time. Yeah. So all the Carmi’s that were receiving prasham, they were also paying their bases and coming off so that went way into the night, and we distributed a lot of prashadim to many people. It was the first festival in a park like that. We have actually had big festival, and we hope to do Rathiatra one day, trying to get it together, following in footsteps of Panchaville this morning. And then went to Santiago, where we also had many a lecture back every night at a big place. First, we had a big auditorium with about 1000 students between the ages of 17 and 22. There was a gymnasium filled with students, and Shah gave a lecture there, and I translated.

It wasn’t so good, but it was very successful. It seems that the directors of these institutions are completely frustrated that they can’t help these students because they’re so. They’re becoming so degraded. They can’t. No way they can help them. So they were very relieved that Acharya pod was giving us, trying to help them this way, getting them off drugs. So then we had a festival in the park at another amphitheater. It was like. What do you call that? Like a greek type?

Yeah. Circle in the round.

Circle in the round.

Colosseum.

Yeah. Coliseum type of thing. That was also very nice. We had a. Oh, and the other one, we had a theater where we see there’s a little pond there in the middle of this thing. And we did this. This theater, this sketch where someone is drowning, the husband is drowning, and the guy goes in, and, you know, so it was in a. Someone was fishing in the pond. The devotee was fishing in the pond, and he falls in the water with his coat on. And then someone’s jogging right there. Just passes by Jaina, like joggers in the park, and the woman is there, oh, no. And he I will save him. And he runs in the water and jumps. He gets his coat out, and I got him. I saved him. And so that was very realistic. Dumbling people.

Anyway, so with this other many times.

This play is done just like in the dry land, but there’s an actual lake there. And there was a guy with a boat. So they rented the boat, and the person was actually fishing, and the woman was there. And people didn’t really know at first that it was a drama. I mean, it was exactly, you know, it was real life. And then he actually fell in the water, and he was drowning, and the guy actually fell out. And then when he grabbed his coat, the guy went down and he swam under and, you know, and had it all planned and came out behind the boat, so everyone thought he drowned. And he came out with, it’s very realistic.

Realistic that your body really coming swim.

So then at this festival in this other park in Chile, it was also a very similar thing with a similar huge fire. It was so were running out of wood that devotees had to go to the park and pick up wood from all over the place because we had to throwing these big logs on the fire. That was very successful. And it topped it off at the end. There’s this, I think it was there, this one nun who was visiting, coming every day to Acharya’s lecture, she would come every day to the bhāgavatam class. Even before char came dressed in her nun’s habit, she came up with tea lock on and offered her dundabhats, prostrated obeisances in front of a chariot, but took some prashada. How do you like that one? That’s better than what Panchajabira did. This is a positive alternative.

He’s been a nun for 26 years.

26 years, none from Columbia. And she’s going to help us get a lot of things done. Anyway, it was very successful. These people were dancing around the fire. Many people were dancing with us in a big kuritan, around the fire sacrifice. They just followed the votes. Thousands of people came to that one also. Thousands. And the other one in Peru, it was very successful. Anything, I forget something about it.

The tv show. National television.

National television, grand tarde, the great evening.

It’s called the Grand Tardy.

It was in lot live. It so happens that this one announcer who was chanting, Joppa, friend of Kṛṣṇa. And he allowed us on a show, just a small spot. He talked to Acharya a little bit and it was translated. Acharya pod gave him a garland on behalf of the movement, to him as a representative of the chilean people, he said on the television and gave him the garland. Very beautiful.

And we had a live audience of 2000.

They’re all cheering, 2000 cheering. And then we had, with our bhajan band, we did a little bengali bombers.

3 million viewers of that show goes.

All over Chile, very big.

Swami, he led this beautiful kīrtana. He had tablas, tamboras, drums. The whole thing had about twelve devotees and two little group, four year old devotees with bells. They liked it so much that they said he’d only going to give him three minutes. But they played for six minutes on the television, the kīrtana, and afterwards, then the announcer, for two minutes, he just glorified, very successful.

So this is the mercy of the opportunity of having these festivals to be able to reach many people, just like Lord Jagannath, Lord Kṛṣṇa, he is in the temple, but Lord Jagannath, he’s very merciful. He actually goes outside to get the people to be kid conscious. That’s why Prabhupāda said, Lord Jagan, he’s very merciful. He’s very merciful. He actually is going out and he’s engaging all these people in his service. They’re pulling the cart, they’re seeing the cart like this. They’re honoring even they may be just awed by seeing the great cart, and the devotees are awed, but actually they’re getting great benefit by serving in this way. Lord Jagannath, seeing the deity, seeing the devotees, they’re making great spiritual advancements. So he’s very merciful. Kṛṣṇa is so merciful in this way as Lord Jagannathi is going out.

And that is why also Lord Caitanya Mahbubhu specifically encouraged this Rathi yātrā festival. And also we have here with us the greatest modern day proponents of that festival in Latin America, the only Rathiatra festival in Latin America, Panchavira, Swami, and the great Rathiatra festivals india and Calcutta, which Acharya will explain. So we have not started yet. We are planning it. Maybe now I will get a little fired up by being here. See ya. Get your mercy, hare Kṛṣṇa.

Well, we had our, the 81st Rathyatra since Prabhupāda 1901, when he had the first Rathyatra in Calcutta. Of course, for us, it’s Iskan’s 12th, but the 84th year anniversary of Prabhupāda’s. Rathya. Yeah. 911. Twelve. We started in 1971 or 1972. 102. Prabhupāda wanted us to make Calcutta Rathya the biggest in the world. Of course, we have Aratia every year at the same time, same day that they have it in Jagannath Purī, which is just 500 miles down the road. So a little bit of transcendental competition, trying to see who can serve juggernaut the most. Just to backtrack just for a second, because some of the things Jaggi Bhanselmi doesn’t really know happened behind the scene when I went to South America that I could reveal. I don’t think it’s too scandalous.

When I got off the airplane in Peru, there was actually nobody there to meet me at the airplane. Of course, it’s not very easy always to go out to the airplane. That’s only some countries you can do that, or some places. But when I got in and I was heading towards the customs enclosure, towards the immigration, then all of a sudden, you know, with their uniforms and their pistols and everything, I was surrounded by police. And they looked at me, and I looked at them, and then two of them walked away. And then one said, are you yaya pataka? That’s me. Then he walked away, and I was wondering what was going on. And then they came with more police. This time, there was a whole platoon there, practically, and they toyed the name. This is you. And it had my name. Jayapatākā.

Swami Chadiyapat. Yes. Said, no, I am in for it. They said, please come with us. So I said, well, not much to say. So I just went along with them. And then they took me in this little room. And then when I went to the door of the little room, suddenly there was flashing lights, and there was a dozen photographers, and national television, Channel five and seven were there, you know, and the radio. And they said that, you know, one of the leaders of the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement is here. And so they said, now, what is your message for the people? This, that. And then they had a whole interview for 1 hour. Little suspense there. But when you were there, it was a little, pretty spicy. If I go money, I go.

Every day.

Close it.

(Side B of the Cassette)

You if I thought Amijam, Amiyah, Ami, Aporakiya, sadanda, dulasam. They never saw devotees before in their life. But just from that one program, they became completely convinced that Kṛṣṇa consciousness was the only hope, and they came in and surrendered and became devotees. It’s kind of like Lord Caitanya planting his mango seeds came right up in the tree, and the fruit, everything. At one time there, I’d see the preachings sometimes just blossoms like that. Of course, he’s not saying why I didn’t go to Bolivia and why I went to Arequipa instead, because Bolivia just changed their whole government again, so he couldn’t even go there. So it’s very difficult preaching. At the same time, people are very pious, friendly people.

So anyway, in Calcutta, we’re dealing with another strange mixture of situations in that, although as India, Calcutta right now is governed by the Communist Party of India, Marxist Leninist, so it’s not that at every corner you get the best helping hand from the government. The government’s official policy is atheism, but at the same time they keep their fingers. You mean they haven’t, they’re not persecuting or anything like that directly. Anyway, I don’t want to get into the political discussion, but I mean, you can’t always expect the utmost cooperation from them in terms of preaching God consciousness, to say the least. At the same time, under the circumstances, it was amazing to see how Jagannath’s mercy and Prabhupāda’s mercy was coming down.

That although we have been having this rathyatra for twelve years, more or less 1112 years, in the past six, seven years on the same route. Of course, last year I already explained that last year, Rathiatos, there’s no use of going through the year by year, blow by blow commentary. But they always keep us to the last minute before they give us permission for the parade route, even though we don’t wait for to give permission, all over the town, we have 20 huge full size billboards with the parade route and everything already on it. I mean, if they don’t get permission, it’s like a showdown anyway, so doesn’t mean we’re not going to go on that route, but, you know, just to avoid confrontation, we try to get the permissions.

So the chief of police, he wrote us a letter that we can’t give you the parade room, and Saradani Swami, the regional secretary there, and temple president and a few other devotees, they went, and the police chief said that you should. There’s only three, four roads that go. We go right from the south central part of Calcutta to the far north. Eight mile long route. It takes. Well, this year we left it. We started the ceremonies at 01:00 and we finally took Jagannath off the Rath yātrā at eleven at night. So, and it goes through the route we wanted was all the main arteries through the center of town, Kyunessanjoe, Gandhi, Kamek Street, Park Street, Chaurangi Central Avenue, Vivekananda. These are all the main streets of Calcutta. This is the main street, kind of just right through the center.

So he said, well, you should go on another street. There’s one other street near where there’s a. They built the first flyover in Calcutta. The second flyover, it’s called the Shelda. Shelda. What do you call that? The Shelda flyover. Fly over means that the road goes over. Overpass. Yeah, overpass. Fly over pass. Because there’s so many people walking there that they took it over so the people can walk under the road and that way. So then they’re asking us to go there. And we said, you want us to take the rath yātrā over the flyover, the 20 ton cart up, up the hill with the people in front, and then over. What are you going to do when it goes up? And then over?

And then the police chief was just thinking, you know, he looked at his lieutenant and the lieutenant went, and the police chief. So, all right, forget that one like this. They were trying to give different alternatives. We said, then they wanted us to go on some other. There’s the tram lines, low lines, card goes up. It was kind of like sign language. So finally they said, all right, there’s a special exception, you know, especially. We have been doing it for six years. But, I mean, the government’s getting a little uptight. So anyway, so then finally they got the permission. Now, went to the chief minister, the communist leader. He wouldn’t sweep the road in front of Jagannath. I don’t know why. Anyway, we tried. We went to the governor and asked him if he would come inaugurate the rat yātrā.

But he was busy because of some. They never tell you, but he was busy. So then went to the third powerfulest person, the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the state, and we requested if he. He would come inaugurate to Rathiatra. And he agreed. But he said that day, although all the government offices were closed, that they hadn’t closed the courts. Actually, the government, the previous two years before, they hadn’t given any holiday. And so the people, right in the middle of work, they all just walked off and went to the Rath yātrā. So it was such an embarrassment for the government that the next year, they gave them a half a day off. But the half a day off meant that everyone just came, punched in and went anyway.

So they were paying him for a half a day and they weren’t getting any work. So then this year, they made it a full holiday for radiation. But for some reason, the courts weren’t closed. So he picked him up. Of course, he had his own car. We came there to escort him, and we took our car in front, and he came right off of the bench of the high court, put on his robes and everything, and then came to inaugurate the rathyatra. And I think it just came out in this kind of worldview how he took a golden broom and he swept the road in front of Jagannath, even though he was in such a big. And he spoke a few words, and he pulled the rath yatrakat with a golden cord. No, he put on a dodi and a kurta for that.

But we put tilak on them. Of course, that was coming close to Bhakti. Do you know the bhakti, Siddhānta’s dream when the high court judges have tilak on, if not on the bench, at least off. So then after that, the whole road. This year, this year, the day before, it rained and everything, but this year, were just praying it wouldn’t rain. I mean, the temple president, I think he was fasting for, you know, just, you know, just praying that it wouldn’t rain. Every year it rains on Jagannath Rathiatra a little bit, but this year, it just came and sprinkled just before the Rathiatra. Just like to wash the roads a little bit. And then the rest of the day, the skies were clear. Even though this is in the month of June, July, it’s always rainy season then.

So the people, they came out in full force, completely. I mean, as far as you could, just packed people. I mean, every year is packed. Every year is unbelievable. But this year, like, in the end, last half of the ratio is always packed. And in the beginning is always packed. But just on the very high class area, chemic and parks, it usually is a little sparse. Like, maybe only half the road is filled, but this year, even that part was 85% completely to 90% completely packed. And the last half was 150% packed. It was so crowded the people. They were just like this. There was hardly room for the rath to get through them. In fact, the police and volunteers had to push the people out of the way to get the rathyatra through them.

There were so many people from one building to the next, just packed with people. So when we started off the rath yātrā, we tried to get the people to move aside and we had a little police escort. We’re there also because of the high court judge. So then we do all the ceremony when we take Jagannath out to put him on the cart. First we go and we sprinkle Ganges water all over the cars and purify them, singing the purusha shukta and other vedic mantras. And then we take Jagannath down. We have the devotees go in lines just like in Jagannath Purī. But first the devotees go with gongs, as many gongs as you can dig up. In Jagannath Purī. They have about 100 gong players and they line up together and they all play in unison. Pom, pom, pom pom.

And they go like this, rocking. And you can hear that for 5 miles, that gong playing, it’s so intense. It’s just boom, boom. And then they have another 200 chamara fanners lined up. You see Jagannath coming and they line up in front and they’re furiously fanning. And while they’re fanning, boom, boom. And they’re fanning. And then they take Jagannath and they have a big twelve foot fan behind his head, which they move. And Jagannath is so big that they tie silken ropes around his waist and his lotus feet and they pull his waist forward and then they pull his feet forward. So he kind of walks and as he’s walking, the fans are going behind him just like he’s walking. You can see the fan from the top of rooftops. You can see the fan moving and jugging, coming.

You can see the top of his headdress and then he’s coming like that and they’re boom, boom and fanning. And as he’s going down step by step in the big Purī temple, then when he hits, they have pillows under each step so when he comes down, he won’t hurt himself, hits the pillow and you see poof. The cotton flies up like 20ft in the air from the pillows that he goes. You can hear it, you can hear the pillow go crackhead. Just like, you know, you pop a paper bag, he goes. So, of course, in our own little way, we line up ten devotees with the gongs and ten devotees with the chamaras and boom, boom, boom. We take Jagannath down with the kīrtana party and the thing and then bring him up to his cart. Yeah.

Well, now we have one cart for Jagannath, Subhadan Balaram. It goes 50ft high. It’s a big cartae. We don’t have. Only Calcutta only has 30 devotees, 25, 30 devotees. It’s the medium temple. And from Iapur they don’t. They usually send a lot of the devotees down, but they just come for the parade. But in front of the cart, you see, it’s a whole procession that goes almost a half a mile long because we have another cart where we have big 14 foot deities of Nitāi Gore, and we have another cart where we have little deities of ntaigordinal, and then we have a book distribution bus and we have also a Prashad distribution bus.

So were having trouble last year with the Prashad distribution that the people were running underneath the wheels of Jagannath Rathiatra to get Prashad and that, you know how last year we had so much trouble when the people would pull in the Holland, in Calcutta, they pulled their rathiatric art. As soon as we have a whole system there, because Calcutta has got narrow streets, you got to go around corners and you have this huge, big car, so you have to sometimes stop. We have air brakes and we have in the back two people with emergency railway, 25 ton brakes. And still on top of that, when you tell the people to stop, they don’t. You know, when you brake, that’s not enough. They keep pulling. And this year they pulled so hard, you know, that we wanted to brake.

Someone fell down in front of the wheel. We. Everything brake, air brake, stopped. And the people get pulling so much that just the wheels are grinding into the road. Big gouges, six inches in the road and one of the ropes snapped. Big three inch thick ropes snapped. We had to tie them together. I mean, it’s so we have a. There’s no question of devotees pulling the cart. If you’re lucky if you can touch a rope. I was in the Boston ratio. Bhavan, Maharaj and myself are pulling the cart up the hill, up over that commons, that hill, you know, the Brahmacharies would chant, get back here and pull there. You can’t get near the cart. So all the people. There’s so many people because, of course, they have a tradition in Calcutta of going to purī and pulling the car.

So this is a big thing for them, that now they have a big rathyatra in their own city. I am sure that in the future, Americans, once they get into the mood, as Rupanuga Prabhu has inspired us, that here in New Orleans, if they can get that Mardi gras mood with the Rathiatra, they will be out there pulling. Maybe some of our friends from Bourbon Studio will come out, which we will see tonight, pretty soon, a few minutes. So then where was I? So, in the rath yātrā, back in Kyautara, we have the ropes going out. So we have this system. We put up a red flag and a blue flag and a green flag. I imagine you could understand what the red and what the green stand for. Green means gold, red means stop. And in this way, we have people.

We have a whole list of responsibilities. There’s the tow commander, who’s in charge of the. Of the total. Well, there’s the tow overall. There’s the admiral. I am the admiral in chief. Then there’s the. There’s the fleet commander, the fleet admiral, who’s in charge of all the different coordinates. Then they have the tow commander, who’s in charge there and right in the front. And he is the one that has to control the whole thing. He’s the one who puts up red or green or watches the fleet. The commander, the admiral in chief, if he puts up the red flag because someone fell down or whatever. And then in each rope, they have people and they have people guarding the wheels. And, like, that’s the whole thing. So. Because.

So the people pulled so much this year, we did is we tied a huge truck behind the rath yātrā as a dead weight, just to add another ten tons, filled it up with ballast and prasadam. And this was an army surplus truck that was donated to us. It was used in the Pakistan war as a frontline vehicle because it’s got this thick, three eight inch thick steel. It can sustain hand grenade and mortar shell blasts. And then on our windows, it’s got these bars. So we use that for distributing prashant for the protection of the devotees giving the prashadam out, there’s special shoot on each side. Even Bhavan Amarj didn’t see this car yet. We heard about it. He was flabbergasted, but he can appreciate the need.

On each side, there’s special chutes where you put your hand in the chute, and then they drop the prasad down any other way. Because if I told you the story about Panihat, you know how if you go in the crowd trying to give out to Prasad, pretty soon it’s like piranhas, you know, don’t stand a chance. So this year, they combined the prasad truck as also a type of ballast that actually slowed them down a little bit. Slight something, enough to make it a little more manageable. So then they took off, and he pulled and pulled, and went down the road, and all of a sudden, in the middle of the road, there was a car parked and the driver was nowhere to be seen. Now, the police, this year, after they gave us permission, they actually did a wonderful thing for us.

They put an ad by. This is the Calcutta police government of West Bengal. Calcutta. Official police notice in every paper. In every paper in Calcutta, English, Hindi and Bengali, about twelve different papers. It must have cost them at least rs25,000. They put a big 8th page ad, or quote, about so big an ad, took at least 8th or more of the page and each paper. Official notice for Rathiatra, the road. This is the route of the ISKCON Rathiatra parade on this and this date. And they give the whole parade route and said, any cardinal on this route during these times will be towed away or confiscated. And the police have absolute authority to direct you and tell you what, you know, anything they want regarding this parade.

They made, like, a whole notice so that they would have the authority to do whatever they wanted, just to keep the road clear for the Rath yātrā. So in this way, even the police were giving us free advertisement in all the papers. It was very nice. They had to. They paid for it themselves. But. So this one car apparently doesn’t read the newspaper or something. So the car was there. So the police just told the crowd, move it, and just, like, kind of, like, punch it. The car. The crowd just picked up the car. There’s so many people. They just picked it up and put it. And they threw it. They threw the car in the park. Yeah, I mean, they took it over by the rose. You know, that park. Right. Brian, there’s the broken wall.

They just threw it on top of the wall. I don’t know how the guy got it off the wall. Then the Rathiatra continued and continued. Unfortunately, about halfway along the way, police didn’t continue. I think they got odd overcrowded and, well, it was a mistake on their part. We had to go through so many different police precincts. And then they were going to change at each police precinct, but the police and the next precinct couldn’t get through the crowd. So the other, when they were there, precinct was over, they just left. So in this way, things are going forward until it got to be dark. And, you know, Calcutta, they have electrical load shedding where the lights all go off. So we put a generator inside the Rathyatra top and put a big light in there.

So at night when the lights go off, the rath yātrā is so beautiful because it’s the only thing you can see in the whole street is this big glowing Raf yadra card and the people pulling. But because there was no police and we just had a few volunteers that we could only move forward six to seven to 10ft at a time. The people, by the time it got to be dark, they became so frantic and the crowds were so thick. People were waiting in the street from two in the afternoon in some places. And we reached there at 8910 o’clock at night, still at 10:00 at night, the road was still completely packed with people. Some people waited there 5 hours and then gave up and went. But other people came and replaced them.

So where the roads were so packed when the people were pulling, that the rope could only hold so many people that they were just hanging, kind of like just, you know, not only on the ground, but over, just like hanging. I don’t know what else is like that flies on flypaper or something, hanging all over the. Yeah, like that. Just completely hanging on it. And so when they pull, and then they were so, they just became so, just excited when they pulled. They closed their eyes and put their heads down and grab on, even the one on the rope or on somebody’s arm that had the rope and they’d all pull and then somebody in the whole thing would trip event this trip. And you’d see the whole people in a big ball and the Roth would be racing forward right to him.

Break, red, stop. Break to a stop. And they’d pick up the whole mess again and straighten it out. And then again, green juggernaut and the same thing, the other side fall. And then it would be going. So he could only go like 10ft, 10ft. Go. Stop. Ghost and juggernaut Washington. So that way it took a couple extra hours, to say the least. Finally, when we got down to the final thing, I don’t know who, someone had an idea to move this whole rath yātrā right over the curb through this gate. They broke down the wall in this park, they just broke it down. That’s an in Calcutta, we get permission to break the wall. They say, all right, you can break it down, just build it again. Break the wall down. Then after the Rathiatra is over, they just build it again.

I don’t know if they allow you to do that in New Orleans. Break down the wall into park and then build it up again later. So. But what they didn’t. The person who was steering after, you know, 8 hours of intense driving, he somehow jammed a wheel so far to the right that the wheels jammed and this, the car, the wheels are completely jammed. So then hundreds of people that time it was 1030 at night. The trade was. The people just went and they start pushing the car back and forth. And then finally they were able to straighten the wheel out again. And we already took juggernaut off by that time. That was. Anyway, I can do. There was time to go on the Naga Kīrtana operation, right? Yeah. So then there was a big. I think it’s written also.

I just saw it today in ISKcON World review with a big festival at the Desha Bandhu park. There’s a special ladies park which is completely walled in. It’s a yde about 1000ft by 1000ft. So they gave us or maybe 1500ft by 1500ft they gave us a whole walled in section. So we took the whole section over and put a big boots up and a big panel was 250ft by 300ft. Was completely packed. Every night on Sunday night there were so many people coming there outside. We kept the same prashantha vehicle outside. I remember that Jagadeesh Pradesh, my disciple, my servant. Come with me. It’s a pin that was in the flower.

So he was mentioning how here you saw like in different places they’re distributing the prasadam and how, you know, you request that people take the prasad and they come up and take the prashad. And all the respect people coming, taking prashad. But then in Calcutta you give Prashad out to keep all the ruffian people out of the area and you sell prashad for the good people because they don’t want to wait in line with the regular. It’s just like completely the opposite outside the people. Of course, good people also wait in line for the free prashad. But it’s almost like a semi riotous position sometimes there were distribut 15 tons of Prashad just nonstop. The people lining up, coming up and getting from the truck.

We kept the truck out in the street, and they’d line up for about a half a mile, waiting to get Prashant. And there’s across the road, and on this side of the road, there were hundreds of people selling popcorn and whistles and balloons and just. It was like the state fair Orlando. Everyone was out there selling their puris and pakuras and papadams, and you name it. And so many people were coming in and out, you couldn’t move. One big member of parliament came there to speak. It was his constituency. He wanted to take advantage of it. So we agreed that he could speak one night just as an inaugurating thing, because he gave help just to get permission for that part. He couldn’t get in the door even. He had four or five policemen that he could get in the door.

So many people were coming in and out. He was just standing. They couldn’t get in. He was flabbergasted. He admitted that he had never even seen such a big crowd, even for the prime minister, you know, of people coming there spontaneously, you know, with, you know, not, you know, like, organized, no big. It was all Jagannath’s, Prabhupāda’s mercy. And after every rath yātrā, Jagannath always gives us some very special mercy. We always fear. We don’t. We just try very hard. And through the whole time, we’re in complete anxiety whether or not we can please Jagannath properly. But somehow, after the great Yagya, if somehow, throughout the thing, we’re able to at least avoid most of the major offenses, we see that how somehow he always helps us to increase the preaching in different ways, of course.

And what was really amazing was this year, after the Rathiatra was over, we noticed in the newspapers, they published that the Southeastern Railway, which puts extra bogies, extra trains, four, five, six extra whole trains to every day ahead of the Rathiatra in Purī to take the pilgrims down from Calcutta to Purī. That this year, for the first time, the trains went empty and they lost 80,000 seats. And everyone knew why Prabhupda ki Subhakswami went down to Jagannath Purī. He said all the brahmins of the Jagannath Purī were talking about was the Kalkara Ratha Yātrā festival. So take care of how they had four persons. Oh, yes, many more persons. And Jagannath Purī, 55,000. You don’t know you’re talking about the Giganta newspaper printed two and a half million. So they printed I don’t know how to estimate how many. It’s beyond.

It’s just, you know, an ocean of people. 55,000. Be one of our panel programs. Yeah. At any portion, right in front of the car. But the car is going on 8 miles like that. So there was many times more people at the Calcutta Rathiat this year than at the Purī Rathiyatu. So this year, the Purī, the recent government, started publishing things in a newspaper, old pictures of Dinath and Banu Swami doing kīrtana, saying that our Rathiatra is international here in Purī. In the beginning, we used to go there sometime trying to attract, thinking that the people would be attracted if they gave pictures of IsKCON devotees at the Purī Rath yātrā. They’re getting desperate. This is Prabhupda’s plan. He’s. Pretty soon, they’re going to have to surrender to Prabhupda’s movement and allow us to do some more intimate service for Jagannath there, too.

Yeah, were there. No, now they let you out. You just have to pay him rs100. No, they said they would. He said we should build a temple in Jagannath Purī, the same size as the present Jagannath Purī temple. And they go out in front of the Jagannath Purī temple, do Kīrtana Jagannath will come out and go into our temple, go walk over to the other temple. Well, of course, Jagannath is the same everywhere. They had the vision that only Jagannath and Purī. So I think Jagannath is showing him he is the lord of the universe. Of course, we have all the respect in the world for Jagannath Dev and Orissa and his holy dham of Śrī Ketra. And, of course, we dont want to take any devotees away from him, but we feel we’re not taking away from any.

He’s also expanded himself in Calcutta and here also in New Orleans and Atlanta. And so that’s just juggernaut’s opulence is already expanding. So I just wanted to tell. I just want to tell a little story about Lord Caitanya. When he went, when he was in Jagannath Purī, and all the devotees from Bengal came down to meet him. Then, at that time, you know, Lord Nitinanda and Shivananda Sena and Advaita and everyone, they all came down, Mukunda from Bengal, to take part in the rathyatra, just kind of. We also have a similar thing coming down from the north, like in Atlanta and Tennessee, coming down here to New Orleans. Hare Kṛṣṇa, of course, Jagannath also coming down.

The devotees, they were coming down, and you could imagine their happiness when, as they were coming into Jagannath Purihe, there they saw a procession taking the Madanmohan deity. That’s the madanmohan. They called it the Madanmohan deity of Jagannath, the small deity of Jagannath to the, what do you call that? Narendra sarobar. And just behind there was lord caitanya with his whole sankirtan party. And then the devotees from Bengal saw the hari rao. Hari bhagauridhehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe they just shouted out, go ri. And then lord chaitanya looked at them and smiled, and they all hit the deck. Dandavat fell down like sticks offering from a great distance, their obeisances to jagannath and lord caitanya. And then lord caitanya and his followers, they all came over to meet the devotees from bengal who got up.

And then again they came closer and fell down again at lord caitanya’s lowest feet. And then he just spontaneously, jagannath’s servitors, because jagadath is in their heart, he came out, they all came with flower garlands and started giving garlands to lord caitanya’s devotees. And then lord caitanya, he personally took the chandan from their hands and started putting the Chandan on the devotees and embracing Nithyananda and embracing a deuta. And in this way, Lord Caitanya, as the devotees were embracing and he was putting garlands on them, and there was this exchange of Chandan, sandalwood pulp and garlands, and even Lord Caitanya, he was overwhelmed when his devotees bowed down to him in showing humility. Although he’s the lord of everyone and he was a sannyāsī, still, he even offered obeisances to them. It was so amazing.

And when they were embracing, they were crying, just crying torrents of tears or coming out of their eyes. And the wives also would come from Bengal behind. They were standing and they were embracing Lord Caitanya in their heart, and they were watching. And they were also on the same transcendental platform of pure spiritual appreciation. They were also standing there crying in full ecstasy of love for God. You see, everyone, the man and the women present, they were all on the same transcendental platform. Although the women stayed behind and they were watching, they were also participating deep in their heart, they’re relishing that transcendental devotion for Lord Caitanya. And then this way, Lord Caitanya took all of the devotees and they started a huge sankirta and chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare, Hare Ram, Hare Ramo, Ramo, Hare, Hare harai.

Nama kishno jalavaya, Namo Gopāla, Gobinda Ram Śrī Madhusudan. In this way, they did a big kīrtana. And all the people of they were just fascinated to see Jagannath’s procession in the kīrtana. This Chandan yātrā, this pastime in the lake of Narendra just happened just before the rath yātrā, maybe a couple of weeks, I think. And then afterwards, naturally, all the devotees were tired after long kīrtana. Then Lord Caitanya suddenly said, all right, end of the kīrtana. They bowed down, he jumped up and he ran and dived into the Narendrapur lake. And then all the devotees, they all came and dived in the lake, and they started just splashing each other. And just like the little cowherd boys used to play in Vrindavan, they were all playing and they were splashing each other.

And just at that time, everyone was in the mood of the Brajavasis, the eternal associates of Lord Jagannath, Lord Kṛṣṇa in Vrindavan, and all type of, you see, any type of material thing was completely not at all present there. It wasn’t material frivolousness. It was all completely a pure ecstatic, loving and wonderful display of affection and simplicity, beauty. So this is the movement of Lord Caitanya, exchanging love, exchanging deep sentiments between devotees, at the same time, having in the pure mode of absolute goodness, wonderful associations, and even the relaxation like bathing in the Narendra lake, is also fully transcendental, filled with chanting the holy names of the Lord and remembering the pastimes of the Lord. In this way, everything is perfect.

So in the upadesh Hamrita purport, Śrīla Prabhupāda nicely tells us, when Lord RPgoswami describes the six exchanges of love, that this Kṛṣṇa conscious movement, he has made it, he has formed it just so that the devotees would be able to exchange transcendental loving exchanges on the spiritual platform with each other. Therefore, we’re very thankful for his great Rūpa Nugra Prabhu and Virikodar Prabhu and the other leaders of the zone here, who worked so hard to put on this festival, Gokul Ranjana Prabhu and others for giving us this opportunity to come together and to remember the pastimes of Lord Caitanya and to serve Jagannath and to be able to exchange these wonderful, eternal feelings of reciprocation between all of the devotees. Thank you very much. Glorious. To Jagannath. Jagannathamiki glory sushila prabhupāda ki. Hare ki. Yes. Announcements.