Okay, so on Sunday we went to the Hare Krishna temple near Watford - you know - the Manor donated by George Harrison to Srila Prabupada - the head of the ISKCON movement.
Well there was a lot of traffic on the way to the temple - luckily, we managed to take a short cut and beat the queues - much to the annoyance of others who had gone the long way around!
Once we arrived there we were amazed by the number of people attending - the fields were full of cars - luckily volunteers managed to direct us to an available space. So, hold my grandma's hand, I went with my family to the temple - it took us about 10minutes to walk through the fields/carpark!
Once we arrived a the temple we reasiled that there we soo many people that we could barely move. Also, we noticed how the festival had become a lot more commercialised - there were stalls selling books, clothes, statues, mini mandirs and religious items everywhere!
After I had sat my Grandma down in the main tent where all the dramas and kirtans (religious songs) were happenoing - we decided to explore... we bought two books - both novel style retellings of the famous spiritual epics - the Mahbharata and the Ramayana - retold by Krishna Dharma - the author even signed our copies.
We then wandered around the stalls and went to watch how to make seero/halva and then how to offer the food to Krishna to purify the food so that it becomes Prasadam. We were also allowed to eat the deleicious Prasad after we had offered it. It was sweet and has raisins and apples in it. Hmm, maybe i'll write up the recipe later if anyone wants it...
Anyway, we then tried to actually go into the temple to take Darshan - where you can go and pray in front of the Radha-Krishna deities. We had tickets to enter at 9pm but when when found the queue would be 2hours long! - we decided to give it a miss and take Darshan outside the temple.
After this we lined up for Prasadam and had a delicious meal of more seero, potato curry rice, and another sweet dish.
By now it was getting late and it was time to go home...
On Monday, it was the actual day of Janmashtami - the Birth of Lord Krishna - on this day Hindus are meant to fast - or do farah (can't spell it but it meants you abstain from grains).
We were planning on going to the temple today aswell but my parents were too tired after a long day back at work.
I spent most of Monday reading the Mahabharat - its a great epic which revolves around the virtuous Panadava and there unrighteous cousins known as the Kauravas. I definitely think that everyone shhould read it - but since this version is over 800 pages long - it is not a light read - i've been reading constantly for two days and I have nearly reached 300 pages.
.jpg)
0 comments:
Post a Comment