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Annual
Preaching and Bhoga Collection Programmes Malini Devi Dasi from Malta gains some insight to what goes on behind the scenes leading up to the celebration of Sri Gaura Purnima festival, and shares the experience of travelling through Bengali villages on such preaching and collection programmes. Pg
01 Background
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Pg 02 Jaymulla | Pg
03 Beraberi |
Pg 04 Bajumelia We are armed with a mrdanga, karatals, a stack of yellow invitations to the Nabadwip Parikrama with a picture of Lord Chaitanya on the front, and several white preaching pamphlets, their Bengali script looking pretty to my Western eyes. We also have a media-projector and a few old sacks. Sri Gaura Purnima is the next large festival due at Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math. This festival will draw around 4,000 people world-wide to its Nabadwip headquarters. Although it will be almost two months before the festival culminates on the 21st March this year, on the full moon of the month of Phalguna, preparations are already under way.
This intensive bhoga collection is indispensable to cater for the huge amount of prasadam distribution during the week of the Nabadwip Parikrama leading up to Gaura Purnima. Apart from leading his own team, Sripad Acharyya Maharaj directs another preaching and collection party, with Visvarup Prabhu and Jadu Gopal Prabhu, which travels through other areas of West Bengal.
As the bus speeds along the bumpy roads, Sripad Acharyya Maharaj explains that since we move steadily from house to house, we hold small-scale house-programmes, unlike the recent event held in Uluberia on 05-06 January. These programmes are intended mainly for bhoga and pranami collection, but also to distribute invitations to people to visit our temple in Nabadwip, and especially to join the parikrama and Gaura Purnima celebrations.
Asked how he goes about planning his tour, Sripad Acharyya Maharaj explains that years back he began by visiting initiated devotees, but soon invitations began to be extended to visit their married sons' and daughters' families or their friends. Soon, the number of devotees and the network of contacts began to steadily increase. Year after year they are very happy to serve the temple by donating some kilos of rice grown in their own fields.
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