Dear friends and devotees,
This week the city of Chennai was hit with severe flooding which resulted in most of the city being inaccessible. Our ashram is located in the south of Chennai at Tharamani, which was also heavily affected by the floods. For the last 5 days there has been no electricity, and food and drinking water were hard to come by.
With the end of Kartika month approaching, the last five days, known as Bhishma Panchaka, are considered very auspicious for worshipping Lord Krishna. As such, our Jagannatha temple in Bhadrak always sees a large increase in the attendance by devotees for the evening arati during these last five days, culminating in Kartika Purnima.
Vamana, Vasu and Yamuna eating cauliflower leaves together.
We first began our goshala in 2013 when Vamana the bull was donated to our temple in Orissa, by a local villager. He had been coming to our temple every day for two years prior to that and we had been feeding him every day. After some time he didn’t want to go home and was spending all his time at our ashram. Seeing this, the owner agreed to donate him to the temple, and that was the beginning of our goshala.
We would like to share with you some pictures of the yearly rice harvest at Dayalu Baba’s ashram. This is the second year that we have helped this ashram to produce rice and vegetables so that they can move towards being self-sufficient.
The following pictures are of Lord Jagannatha in Hati Vesha on Snana Purnima at Bhaktivedanta Ashram’s Jagannatha temple in Bhadrak, Orissa.
Last month devotees from the Bhaktivedanta Ashram organized the annual Makara Sankranti festival at Dayalu Baba’s Ashram. This is the fourth year that we have helped to organize the festival. This year, for the three days of the festival, we fed over 5,000 devotees who came from all the nearby villages. For all three days there was nonstop cooking and distribution of spiritual food from 9 am till 9 pm.
The following pictures are from last months celebrations of Hanuman Jayanti at our ashram in Chennai. In South India Hanuman Jayanti usually occurs in the month of December, whereas North India celebrates it around the month of April. On the auspicious occasion, thousands of people came to our temple for darshana of Lord Panchamukha Hanuman.
It has been 5 years since we started the foodrelief program in Andhra Pradesh (September 2009 to December 2014). In these five years a total of 435,000 plates of spiritual food have been distributed in Andhra Pradesh by devotees of the Bhaktivedanta Ashram, mostly in the Vizianagaram district.
Below are some pictures of a recent food distribution at the “Urban Deprived Residential Hostel” in Vizianagaram, as well as at a high school in the city. We had been requested by the staff of the hostel and the high school to distribute food for their students.
Below are some pictures and a short video of food distribution in Tadivada village, which is located in Vizianagaram district of Andhra Pradesh.