The next anchor of Sri Govind Gau Gram Prachar Yatra was Perlavaripalem. It was their 50th village. It is a village about 4 kms away from the Bay of Bengal with lot of greenery all around. Most of the houses, about eighty percent, are made of mud and straw. There are around 200 houses in the village. Chirala congregation has purchased lands in the outskirts of the village; some construction has also been made here. HH Bhakti Raghava Maharaj, Minister, ISKCON Daiva Varnasrama Ministry-India, had also visited this site and desired it to be developed into a miniature Vraja Mandala. One advantage the village has is that they have few hundreds of acres of forest land adjoining the village. Everyday herds of buffalos, cows, sheep and goats go for grazing to the forest land. Apart from paddy as main crop they grow pulses, ground nuts, corn and spices. There are five churches and one temple in the vicinity of this small village.
On January 8, 2016, the Yatra bus reached the lively village around 4.30 pm, welcomed by excited children. They had been waiting for our arrival because they had been hearing announcements about the program from last two days and were thus aware of some program that was to take place there. Madhava and Gopi, two young men, had helped us meticulously organize the program in their village. A small team of devotees left for gram sankirtan through dusty streets while other devotees got involved in setting up the stage for the upcoming program at the village sarpanch office.
Gopuja was attended in a mood of complete reverence and also in good number. We were later told that it was for the first time that many of them had attended Go-puja. Good thing was that the children maintained discipline through-out the program. Different presentations were made by different speakers and were attentively heard. Documentary movies explaining the glories of the Holy Name and on cow left the villagers spell bound. While arati was going on, every one, young and old participated in chanting and dancing which went on for half an hour. Seeing the ovating response, unwilling we had to end the kirtan due to time constraints. After the program, young men showed interest in Krishi Go Raksha Sangha and Namahatta Sangha. Prasadam was distributed to more than 210 villagers, which was sponsored by Mr. Kalyan Kumar.
As we were leaving, sincere children who had stayed back till the end, heartfully requested us to conduct such programs regularly. Due to their simplicity we could see that the children were spontaneously attracted to sweet and sublime process of Krishna consciousness. Albert Einstein says “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.”
Srila Prabhupada ki Jai!
Sri Govind Gau Gram Prachar Yatra ki Jai!!
Reported by: Hari Kirtan Das from Hyderabad
