By Bhurijana dasa

Hare Krsna. Although previously sent, this photo of Nandagram at sunset is a favorite.

Srila Rupa Gosvami in Uddhava Sandesha sweetly describes Nandagram, the boyhood home of Krsna, to Uddhava, His dear friend and the best of the Yadavas:

“O best of advisers, Uddhava! You please go to Nandagram, the capitol of Nanda Maharaja, which is situated on a beautiful hill covered by wonderful creepers and the best of trees and surrounded by a wall made of priceless jewels….With banana trees shaken by agitating winds and full of fragrant ashoka flowers, that beautiful, wonderful transcendental abode of Nanda Maharaja will bring you unlimited bliss.”

“There, in Nandagram, you will see many calves that look like white crystals as they run around after freeing their tails from the hands of the cowherd boys. You will also see many calves frolicking after having smelled the tips of new grass.”

“Dear friend, in this world there are many holy places, places that are forms of My very self, places I have created to please devotees like yourself. Still, I vow to you again and again, and I do not lie to you, no other holy place pleases Me more than Vraja.”

After describing to Uddhava the pure and full love of the residents of Vrindaban, Srila Rupa Gosvami expresses the desire that caused his writing Uddhava Sandesha at the poem’s end:

“May this book make a great flood of bliss flow in the heart of Sri Krishna Caitanya, whose lotus feet are Sri Rupa Gosvami’s shelter, and who, His heart overcome with bliss by thinking of Lord Krishna’s pastimes in Vraja, with sincere ecstatic love again and again wildly danced in the famous circle of Vraja.”

and he concludes with a benediction:

“May merciful Lord Sri Krishna, who enjoys childhood pastimes with Sridama and other boy friends, who enjoys rasa-dance pastimes with the young gopis, and who contemptuously kills many wicked demons, carry you all to the dry land on the other side of the ocean of repeated birth and death.”

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