Janmashtmi Celebration
Went to a Janmashtmi celebration yesterday at Watford, Herts near London. Started from home around 7:40 and were at the venue at abt 9 PM. Then joined the long queue of people to visit the various scenes for the life of Krishna portrayed. But first let me describe the scene at the temple. We were basically led through a gateway into a huge field for parking the car. It is basically a huge farm and a house in middle of it which is infact the temple. Then this field also houses a cow shed to take care of the cows as we all know the close relation between the cows and Krishna. It was pretty amazing actually to have a manor in the hertforshire countryside just off M1.
OK so these scenes were put up in Audio Visual format and hence looked really nice. Then the queue was led through the shoe rack into the temple. The temple was a huge mansion. It definitely had a very positive energy around it. Something which i have found lacking in a lot of temples i have visited before. It definitely felt very calm, spiritual and relaxing to visit the temple and the queue was excellently managed so you never seem to notice that you are basically jostling for a Darshan with a thousand people in the crowd. You get enough time to pray in front of the deity and while you are doing that queue is stopped outside the mansion only to be allowed into the mansion when the set of devotees already in the mansion have left. So at any given point of time there werent a huge number of people in the mansion whcih meant a smoother Darshan leaving a pleasant feeling inside you which is seriously lacking in some of the popular temples in India where basically you get pushed around.
Left the place at around 11 after having a yummy prashad and very average Pizza. The roads at that time were practically empty and got to Blackwall tunnel(5-10 minutes from home) in 40 minutes. But there were lane closures in the tunnel leading to a mile long queue and took us 1.5 hours to get home so by the time we reached home it was past 11. Since we had just come from a very peaceful experience so we werent very purturbed, irritated or frustrated with the queue. In all had a very good experience.
OK so these scenes were put up in Audio Visual format and hence looked really nice. Then the queue was led through the shoe rack into the temple. The temple was a huge mansion. It definitely had a very positive energy around it. Something which i have found lacking in a lot of temples i have visited before. It definitely felt very calm, spiritual and relaxing to visit the temple and the queue was excellently managed so you never seem to notice that you are basically jostling for a Darshan with a thousand people in the crowd. You get enough time to pray in front of the deity and while you are doing that queue is stopped outside the mansion only to be allowed into the mansion when the set of devotees already in the mansion have left. So at any given point of time there werent a huge number of people in the mansion whcih meant a smoother Darshan leaving a pleasant feeling inside you which is seriously lacking in some of the popular temples in India where basically you get pushed around.
Left the place at around 11 after having a yummy prashad and very average Pizza. The roads at that time were practically empty and got to Blackwall tunnel(5-10 minutes from home) in 40 minutes. But there were lane closures in the tunnel leading to a mile long queue and took us 1.5 hours to get home so by the time we reached home it was past 11. Since we had just come from a very peaceful experience so we werent very purturbed, irritated or frustrated with the queue. In all had a very good experience.