Below are some pictures from the deepotsava festival at our temple in Chennai. For 30 days, for the month of Kartika, devotees would offer lamps to Lord Damodara and Panchamukha Hanuman every evening, accompanied by kirtan.
Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the departure of one of our devotees, Radhakanta Das. He was a very hard worker for the ashram, and helped watch over most of the project work for the last 15 years. He would sit with the construction workers for hours each day in the hot sun and oversee every minor aspect of the work to make sure every thing was done properly with no waste.
On January 28th, as per the local custom, special puja and annadanam was conducted by villagers for the departure of Chaitanya Baba. Below are a few pictures and a video from the puja.
A mahatma named Chaitanya Baba who lived in the forests of Odisha entered maha samadhi recently just after Makara Sankranti. This short video shows the placing of his body in the ground and burial. For many years he had been staying in the forests of Ratna Giri mountain.
Last year we mentioned our desire to build rooms for elderly sadhus who had been staying for decades in the forests around the Bhola Giri mountain range in Odisha. We would like to give you an update on this project. With your assistance we have been able to help elderly sadhus staying at three ashrams in the jungles around this sacred mountain.
Last month a new bull calf was born at our ashram’s goshala in Orissa. Since he was completely white and born one day after Balarama Jayanti, we named him as Baladeva. This video has some clips of the first 20 days of his life.
For thousands of years India has had an ancient connection with all gemstones. We see this evident in the traditional name for the Indian Ocean – Ratnakara “the mine of gems”. But did you know that up until the early 18th Century the entire world’s supply of diamonds came exclusively from India?
Chinnapuram village is located around 10 kms from Vizianagaram town. It is a small village on the state highway between Bhubaneswar and Visakhapatnam. Most of the residents of Chinnapuram are not having stable employment or regular incomes. So for the children of the village, our foodrelief programme is always welcome.
This year for Pongal celebrations (called as Makara Sankranti in north India) we distributed 2,000 sugarcane sticks to visitors at our ashram in Chennai. Makara Sankranti is one of the most auspicious days of the year in the Hindu calendar. In South India it is a harvest festival, and traditionally the first rice of the season is boiled and offered to the Sun god in the form of Sakarai Pongal (sweetened rice). It also marks the beginning of Uttarayana, the six month northward movement of the Sun.
On January 9th we celebrated Hanuman Jayanti at our ashram in Chennai, where the presiding deity is of Sri Panchamukha Hanuman. From morning till evening around 5,000 devotees visited for darshana of Lord Hanuman. Bhajans were sung by devotees, and prasadam was distributed to all of the guests throughout the day.