Chandan-Yatra 2010

"Madhavendra Puri, tomar laagi Gopinath kheer koilo churi." This is what happened when Madhavendra Puri set out to bring chandan for his BEloved Shrinathji, whom he called Gopalji.

For us too, Chandan-yatra was a gala celebration . i had spent the entire Saturday making chandan paste, till my hands ached. Dh too took the trouble to go to the main flower bazaar at night, after work, to bring the flowers. Because only here you get the original fragrant ones. Then we spent all morning making garlands for our Sweethearts.

We had invited the premis of our colony. We got together and had tumultuos Naam-sankirtan led by my dear Shuk. To our surprise we discovered that one of hte matajis could sing Panchatattva very nicely as well as Mahamantra set to a number of tunes.

i narrated the glory and history of Chandan-Yatra, and again to our delight, the devotees chanted "Chandan Yatra ki Jay"every two minutes. We were very much elated. as usual, and expected the matajis and even the pitajis made a huge fuss over Neelu - especially when one of them noticed that he ws in his birthday-suit. The programme ended with passing around the chandan -all cool cool. Afterwards we attended the Akshay tritiya function at my Uncle's place.

Even at late night we were not willing to go to sleep, we were fondly gazing at Them. Even they were not feeling like going to sleep, i guess, since it is not everyday that they get to put chandan. We felt so happy - it is really wonderful to serve your Deities with your own hands, you know. This is real seva-bhaav. It is so ecstatic. One who has not served in this intimate manner will never understand.


(N.B. :- Please click on apicture to enlarge it and get better view.)