“Srila Prabhupada first arranged and celebrated Rathayatra at the age of five on the streets of Kolkata with his neighbors and friends,” says organizer Ananga Mohan Das. “He always wanted the ISKCON Kolkata Rathayatra to be the second largest in the world after the one in Jagannath Puri. And since he established ISKCON in Kolkata in 1971, it has been growing, with an ever-increasing number of attendees.”
From months before this year’s event, Rathayatra fever gripped ISKCON Kolkata, bringing together everyone from congregation to youth to temple residents, as they all worked to put on the best festival they could.
They raised funds, fixed budgets, allotted services, secured government permissions, and invited many senior devotees and sannyasis to grace the occasion. They used billboards, visual media and social networking to promote the event, and enlisted award-winning animators to create special Rathayatra movie trailers.
Starting from Park Circus Maidan and traveling nearly five kilometers to the Gundica Mandir in the heart of the city, the parade itself was a grand affair.
More than two hundred thousand packets of sanctified food, or prasadam, were distributed along the parade route, and citizens from far and wide traveled to see and pay their respects to the “Lord of the Universe.”
Upon the parade’s conclusion in the evening, Chief Minister of West Bengal Srimati Mamata Banerjee visited the Gundica Mandir, where Their Lordships would stay for the next week, to offer Them Their first arati. Guests then enjoyed Odissi dance by the renowned Srimati Dona Ganguly.