Book distribution in Tiruvannamalai
Dear Devotees,
Please accept my humble obeisances.
All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
Some of you might heard about Tiruvannamalai, a place located at about 200 kms from Chennai in south west. It is famous for Lord Siva's temple as well as the hill associated with it. Every year there is a huge gathering of people for the festival of lightning a huge ghee lamp at the top of the hill. Lakhs of people circumambulate the hill (16 kms) on that day. Naturally that is a good spot for book distribution in mass.
Around 30 devotees including few neophytes, we started for Tiruvannamalai by Friday morning. By the time we reach there and setup table etc, it was evening. Since the main day was Saturday, devotees were relaxed (relatively) on Friday. Then later, from Saturday morning, we started to push the books, although initially it was tough, gradually books started to move. Crowd was there till Sunday morning 3 am. Total crowd was not less than 1.2 million people. People were just floating and devotees were just shouting "Bhagavad-gita!"
Undoubtedly it was big endeavour to stand and distribute books for more than 24 hours continuously and still many devotees did so and distributed lot of books. This is unique experience and not generally available for anyone.
Totally we distributed 1680 Maha big books (books more than 500 pages) on that day. Devotees were physically collapsed, but experienced the bliss of Krsna Consciousness undoubtedly.
It was not that ISKCON salem was the only temple, there were devotees from Chennai, Vellore, Pondichery and Srirangam – Everyone had book tables at various places around the hill and did good book distribution. Total books distributed on that day is more than 3500 Maha big books. This festival happens every year and I think this is the place in the whole world, where this many number of books are distributed in hand to hand method in a single day.
(I wanted to send this mail a week back, somehow got delayed. Although this news is late, still it is valid to send this).
Your Servant
Sri Giridhari Dasa
Now devotees are with full enthusiasm and book distribution is going in peak everyday.
