বাংলায় পড়ুন
The headquarter of ISKCON at Mayapur is busy preparing for the 21-day mega festivity set to begin on March 21 to commemorate the birth anniversary of Chaitanya. Ecstasy and frenetic activity has already taken over Mayapur, with visitors from at least 100 countries converging on the temple town, where the celebrations will begin with Maha Abhishek of Chaitanya and his five associates and end with Gaur Purnima or Holi, a ceremony held once in every five years.
Devotees have already started gathering, bearing gifts from their countries for the deities, collectively called Panchatattvas. While, people from Sweden, Russia, and Kazakstan have brought honey, those from the US have got carob, an alternative to chocolate for baking cakes. Devotees from Australia have brought shawls and chudders made of Australian wool, designer jewellery and Allery’s ghee’ almonds and dates from Middle Eastern countries, such as Oman, Qatar and Dubai, and silk from Japan and walnuts from US, and the list goes on. On this festive occasion, a cake weighing a tonne will be baked and dresses made out of silk and studded semi-precious stones would be tailored by 50 foreign women, under the guidance of Keshavi Devi and Rama Devi, a Japanese and a Scot devotee respectively.
