Indradyumna Swami, the compassionate organizer of the Laksmi-Nrsimha festival tour, gives a brief introduction to the great classic Bhagavad-gita, which was spoken by Lord Krishna and which summarizes the conclusions of the extensive Vedic knowledge of India, which can guide humanity to spiritual perfection. Gaurangi Dasi translates.

In the famous Indian classic the Ramayana, the cruel Ravana kidnaps godly Sita after she has left the protection of Laksmana, her brother-in-law. Later her husband, the divine incarnation Lord Ramachandra, rescues her.

Chandrasekhara sings lead into the mike (above) and lets boys sing response into mike (right), which they do with great delight.

The Ratha cart's size, beauty, and prominent position attracted people, especially the ladies, who were nicely dressed in their Indian saris, and who had their pictures taken standing in front of it.        The cart was built for the Woodstock festival where we had three Rathayatra parades. For the final two weeks of the summer tour we had no parades, but the cart added to the beauty of the festival. At night it was lit up and looked very impressive. (If you have a picture of the cart at night, please send it to me.) Some of the Booths I did not systematically take pictures of each of the several booths on the tour, but here are some: A new feature of this year's reincarnation booth was the staff, table, and sign. The sign (top right) was added at this year's Woodstock. It invites people to ask questions about Eastern philosophy and many did.       One time a lady in her 30's came by, with her mother and daughter. She said the idea of reincarnation made her feel uncomfortable. I replied that because it is not a widely accepted idea in this society it is understandable that it would make you feel uneasy, but it can explain many things. Then she asked what it could explain. I described how some people are born into a situation of great suffering, while others are not. If God is all powerful, all good, and equal to everyone, and this is our first life, everyone should get an equal start, yet some have to suffer from the very beginning of life. Knowing about reincarnation and the law of karma (action and reaction), we can understand the people must have done something wrong in a previous life to deserve the disadvantaged situation in this life. Otherwise, we may conclude, as many do, that there is no God or that God is unfair.       The lady ended up buying a book, and so did her mother. Here Tara Dasa, of the Mayapur school for boys, answers questions in the question and answers tent. There was almost always at least one person asking a question and often a crowd was listening. In the restaurant, there are many tasty treats like the traditional Indian sweets above.

Indradyumna Swami tells in his article of his surprise to see people bow down to our Deities, Sri Sri Gandharvika-Giridhari. I also witnessed the interest of the Polish people in the Deities. In my discussion of this year's Woodstock festival, I have a picture of people in the temple tent bowing down before them. Two year's ago at Woodstock, when we allowed people to pull the Deities on Their swing during our Janmastami festival on stage, hundreds volunteered, and I was amazed to see both their eagerness and devotion (see picture) as they patiently waited in line and pulled the Deities (see picture). I hope we can make pulling of Radha and Krishna on the swing a regular feature of our Woodstock festival. During summer tour, people took pictures of their relatives, along with the Deities.

I regularly saw people interested in Them when I came there to the book booth to get books to sell, chant my gayatri mantra, or honor the prasadam (food offered to Them), usually fruit, that the nice pujari lady would always give the visitors who came by.

People who were devotees of the festivals and who have attended many were commonplace. I think all of us who have been on the tour can tell of many people who say that they come to the festival every year. At Mrzezyno, Indradyumna Swami met a former security guard of his who became so attached to the festivals, that he brought he family on vacation to the Baltic coast just to see more of them. He said, "It may sound strange," he said, "but I never get tired of these festivals. There's something magical about them."

One of them, a sweet eleven-year-old girl from Mrzezyno, explained to me that this was her seventh time at our festival. Both she (left) and her older sister (below) took advantage of the opportunity to dress in classical Indian saris and be decorated with gopi dots and tilaka.

Her sister, age fourteen, seen here dancing with great delight to the devotional songs on stage, had been to four festivals herself.

Some girls like their gopi dots so much that when we see them the next day at the beach, they still have on their decorations from the night before.

This year, Ida, from Ustronie's Internet Cafe, wearing the neck beads and holding the book I gave her, brought her boyfriend, Peter, from nearby Kolobrzeg. The astrology tent behind them was very popular this year.

The small girl in the middle on stage with the blue hat is affectionately called Syama Dasi by Indradyumna Swami and the devotees. When our buses arrived in Zary for the Woodstock festival, she was there to greet us. She came to the Woodstock festival each day and had such a nice time that she asked her mother if she could come with us for the last two weeks of the summer tour on the Baltic coast, and her mother said, "Yes." And so she did. Indradyumna Swami told a nice story from the early part of this year's summer festival tour which I did not see in his diaries, so I shall share it with you now. He was giving a lecture on the stage and looking out at the audience periodically to see how they were taking it. One lady seemed to be very interested, nodding her head in agreement from time to time, more vigorously as time went on. After the lecture she came up to see Indradyumna Swami, and told how she had been an atheist her whole life, but after hearing his lecture, she was beginning to have some doubts, and she didn't know what to do. Indradyumna Swami answered that he was just trying to present the philosophy he heard from his spiritual teacher, and that the ideas were from Bhagavad-gita and she could get one from the book table if she wanted. Indradyumna Swami got absorbed in talking to other people and lamented that the lady had left before he had a chance to talk more with her. Later, however, she returned with Bhagavad-gita and asked him to sign her copy. She explained that her family had come to the festival the night before, and she had not planned to come tonight, but her son really wanted to come, so she had to bring him. She also said that her son did not want to eat his sausage for breakfast that morning, "because the man on the stage last night said, 'Do not kill.'" The Village of Peace band has a couple of songs in Polish, one of them being, "Nie Zabija!" ("Do Not Kill") which tells how all the great religious teachers in all traditions deride killing. The refrain which is repeated many times, both by the band, and by the audience is "Nie Zabija!" ("Do Not Kill"), and apparentally that boy took it very seriously.       It is wonderful to see the spiritual potency of these festivals which transforms atheists into theists and meat-eaters into vegetarians, even when they are children. These two boys liked the festival so much they wanted me to pose for a picture with them so they could remember it. Many attendees took such photos of the devotees on the tour.

Like many of the people described and pictured here and in Indradyumna Swami's diaries, I never tire of the festivals. All too often, I reflect that there are only two things I look forward to: going to next year's festival tour and going back to the spiritual world. Having been to the festivals, everything else is more or less boring in comparison. Here in America the harinamas (chanting parties) are shorter and less frequent. I have to organize extra just to dissipate the emptiness I feel. This is difficult for me as I can barely organize my simple life as a brahmacari. If you have never chanted spiritual songs with heart and soul or if you have never tried to encourage others to do so, you may not appreciate what I am saying, but there is a higher spiritual pleasure derived from engaging in spiritual activities and encouraging others to do the same. This is not some sectarian creed one is forced to believe in, but rather a practical experience that anyone can have if he or she only desires. "The sage feels transcendental pleasure in the gradual advancement of spiritual culture, whereas the man in materialistic activities, being asleep to self-realization, dreams of varieties of sense pleasure, feeling sometimes happy and sometimes distressed in his sleeping condition" (Bhagavad-gita 2.69, purport).

Each night at the end of five hours of transcendental entertainment, Village of Peace plays their final song, the crowd applauds, and there is the familiar "Dziekuje bardzo" (Thank you very much.). And then the beautiful evening of singing, dancing, drama, and spiritual discussion comes to an end, and I feel sad. The sound person plays a CD with a lady singing Srita Kamala, a very beautiful song with a very beautiful melody, and my friends and I either help take down the festival or head to our bus. That song always appearing like that at the end of the beautiful festival appears to me to be a song of separation from the ecstacy of sharing spiritual nectar with others. Twice since my visit to the tour I have heard that song, and it brings me back to those festivals and the experience of the feelings of the ecstacy of sharing spiritual nectar suddenly ceasing, and I remember the mixed feelings of being happy and sad. Happy that that I saw so many people participating in Lord Caitanya's pastime of distribution of spiritual culture in the forms of Krishna songs, dances, and drama, which truely is India's greatest gift to the world. And happy that I was allowed to be a part of it, however small. And I was sad, too. Sad that it always comes to an end. Each festival comes to an end, and each summer comes to an end. Each life also comes to an end. Perhaps when our lives come to an end we may be promoted to that place where Lord Caitanya's pastimes are always going on, by His unlimited mercy, and our unhappy endings will also come to an end.

Thank you, Indradyumna Swami, along with your team of hard working, self-sacrificing followers who give the people of Poland a higher taste of India's spiritual culture and wisdom through dozens of beautiful festivals every summer. May your festivals continue and increase every year.

(If you want to see and read some pictures and stories from the 2002 tour, please click here.)

[After returning to the U.S.A. from Poland, nothing came close to the singing and dancing I had been part of over ten hours a day for three days in our temple tent at Woodstock, which was just a small part of the Krishna's Village of Peace. Nothing even came close to the singing and dancing for three hours a day on the tour I just described with its five-hour cultural festival almost every evening. The Halloween harinama in Orlando provided a brief glimpse of the special taste. There too, many people watched and many danced with us, but that was a mere two and a half hours on one day and the people numbered in the hundreds and not the thousands like on the tour or the ten thousands like at Woodstock. And thus I sing and dance on the campus at University of Florida four hours at week and for one on the streets of Gainesville, waiting for next year's tour to start and provide a venue to spread the ecstacy of the soul in a bigger way.]

"In distributing love of Godhead, Caitanya Mahaprabhu and His associates did not consider who was a fit candidate and who was not, nor where such distribution should or should not take place. They made no conditions. Wherever they got the opportunity the members of the Panca-tattva distributed love of Godhead. . . . The flood of love of Godhead swelled in all directions, and thus young men, old men, women and children were all immersed in that inundation" (Sri Caitanya-caritamrita, Adi-lila 7.23,25).

All glories to Srila Prabhupada, founder-acarya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, by whose mercy many sacrifices to uplift suffering humanity up to the platform of spiritual bliss, such Indradyumna Swami's Laksmi Nrsimha tour, are going on all around the world. Thank you, O readers, for kindly listening to these remembrances and for entering into them. I am indebted to you for allowing me to serve you in this way. --Krishna-kripa das <krishnak@krishna.com>

I would like to thank the staff of Back to Godhead and Krishna.com for hosting my web site and providing a link to it so I can share with you some more memories and images of Indradyumna's Swami's Laksmi Nrsimha summer festival tour 2003 on Poland's Baltic coast.

Krishna-kripa Dasa, a disciple of His Holiness Satsvarupa Dasa Goswami (author of many books on spiritual life), serves at the Alachua, Florida, branch of the Bhaktivedanta Institute, the science division of the Hare Krishna movement. In his free time, he studies Bhagavad-gita As It Is, Srimad-Bhagavatam, Sri Caitanya-caritamrita, and Nectar of Devotion, organizes and participates in harinama (chanting) parties in northern Florida, and writes devotional poetry.