Hare Krishna!
Back after a long break – with a bang! For the past one month, Sundar Gopal Prabhu has been practically alone at the farm-temple. Dynamic that he is, a lot of interesting developments took place. The kitchen was extended and tiled flooring was laid down for the same. A new big stove added to the charm. So now, cooking for big festivals will be no problem as was evinced during the Govardhan Puja. We’ll come to this festival after a while.
Other developments include gorgeous tiling of the temple room and the altar. The temple room looks classy now! All the guest rooms were furnished with double-decker cots and mattresses.
Apart from the building, all the thick long grass that was spread out at the back of the farm was uprooted using a bull-dozer. Farming will commence soon. We are planning to farm a variety of vegetables there.
All that culminated in a very successful Govardhan Puja on the 7th of Nov, 2010. We organized two vans to ferry about 30 devotees from Singapore. It was a two-day one-night package tour for the devotees. So there was a total attendance of more than 50 devotees for the festival. Quite a number for a remote farm! This was the first time in the history of Sri Krishna Mandir that we did go-puja (cow puja) with our very own cows! That’s a remarkable achievement! Since Lord Krishna is the well wisher of the cows and brahmanas, we are sure that He is most pleased with this endeavor.
At about 11:00 am, we had the go-puja done and from 12:15pm to 1pm, we had Govardhan puja following which all the devotees had sumptuous prasadam. At 3pm, the Singaporean devotees left for Singapore in the two vans.
The real intention of the tour was that we wanted to give the Singaporeans a chance to get out of their urban lifestyle at least for 2 days and most importantly attend the full morning program which includes Mangala-arati at 5am, chanting japa along with the devotees, Darsana-Arati, Srimad Bhagavatam class and breakfast Prasadam.
This solid program keeps one above the three modes of material nature, namely goodness, passion and ignorance. Then one can appreciate real transcendental life. Once one gets a taste for serious Krishna consciousness, one will be able to give up one’s affinity for deep-rooted materialistic life.
We feel very encouraged to hear from the people who participated when they appreciate the experience of a devotee lifestyle. The importance of the Malaya Giri Dham project is becoming more evident day by day.
So we would like to take this opportunity to extend special thanks to Sundar Gopal Prabhu who worked single-handedly and relentlessly on this project despite many inconveniences. We would like to also extend our thanks to Raghupati Prabhu for arranging the devotees’ transportation from Singapore to the farm and back. Our special thanks to all the Matajis headed by Candralatika Mataji and Gandhini Mataji for the nectarean Prasadam.
Thank you!
Hare Krishna!
