By Muralimohan Dasa
On July 8th devotees inaugurated a One Day Padayatra in Bangalore. Following in the footsteps of Ahmedabad, they will also conduct one every month.
On Sunday 8th morning after the Bhagavatam class, I briefed the Bangalore devotees on the importance of padayatra and how very easily everybody can take part in a One day Padayatra. All the devotees in the class confirmed they would join the walk by raising their hands. Afterwards we had a small meeting with the Bangalore leaders and made practical plans.
At 4.45 pm we started with an arati of Gaura-Nitai at Venkata prabhu’s house. All of a sudden it started raining very heavily at the end of arati. We thought that hardly any devotees would want to participate in the padayatra; others, in a more positive frame of mind, said that Indradev was blessing all of us for the inauguration of Padayatra in Bangalore. So we started our walk in the rain with about twenty devotees and put an umbrella over Gaura-Nitai to protect Them from the rain. Later on, when it stopped raining, little by little more devotees started joining the party.
We walked from Betal Nagar to Saibaba, Gangadhar, Gayatri, Puram road, Venkataramana Swami temple (KR. puram). There was a total of about 90 devotees who participated and 110 who honored the feast at the end of the day, around 9.30 pm. There was a variety of rice preparations, such as lemon rice, pulau, pulogre (tamarind rice), etc. We sold more than 200 small books and 14 big books within four hours. It was rather easy since most of our route was crowded and had many market places.
Among the groups who attended the padayatra and made it successful were twelve Bhakti-vrksha groups, led by Venu-Madhava Prabhu under the guidance of Venudhari Prabhu, disciple of Jayapataka Swami, who is connected with the Gandharvika Giridhari temple. Many devotees led kirtana along the way, with both Vaisnavas and Vaisnavis dancing and distributing books.
After reaching the destination Venudhari prabhu arranged for devotees to speak some realizations on their one day padayatra experience. Venu-Madhava prabhu said that devotees were very happy and they felt that padayatra was something different from the normal harinama sankirtana. We felt blessed that so many devotees came together and distributed many books of Srila Prabhupada.
