By Kasya Dasa
Hare Krsna. All Glories to Srila Prabhupada and whoever tries to do a little service for him.
This is general information from organizers of Czech famous prasadam distribution. I will briefly describe basic facts about prasadam distribution on Czech Lion – Czech Movie & Television Academy Awards, which is continuing 8th year.
It started all in 2000. That time due to the influence of Dharma Suta Prabhu on prominent person a founder and leader of Czech Lion Film Academy Awards Mr. Peter Vachler who became a vegetarian and closely involved and helping Prabhupada mission. That year he invited ISKCON devotees to participate in food catering for guests of evening party after TV shows of giving Film Prizes, the Czech Lions a handy glass statues of a lions. Prasadam became success amongst guests. After two years Peter Vachler as main organizer and owner of the events made these evening parties purely vegetarian! It is so untill today year 2008. Sometimes you can hear envious talks and attacks from meat eaters and media. But the fact is these evenening vegetarian parties are getting more popular each year. First years there were 3 caterings each year, Czech Lion Press Conference (70 guests), Czech Lion Nominations (600 guest), Czech Lion Main 1,600 guests. Except the press conference these parties goes throught the night, so every guest eats up to 2 or 3 meals or more. From 2004 there are 4 caterings each year, Czech Lion TV Documentary Awards added. That is one more party for some 800-900 guests. This year there were 1,800 guests on main evening party. Usually there are always some famous foreign guests, like the hollywood actors who just shoot in Prague or what I know I think Mr. Dilton first James Bond actor or Pink Panther actor. All the credit goes to Srila Prabhupada and most of the devotees of Czech Yatra who have got involved in all those years. I include some photos of the prasadam parties. This prasadam distribution is fully paid by Czech Lion sponsoring companies.
Something about Peter Vachler. By now he is full fledge vegetarian. His next wish is to be alcohol abstinent too. Besides these he made up some nice preaching activities. He employs few devotees in his VAC-Vachler Art Company. This is film company. He mostly shoots advertisments, but he made one, first in Czech history, vegetarian movie and succesfull too. It is “Doblba”, It means something like “Foolishing”. The devotees participate it this movie with the scenes of harinam and other scenes too. The main role is Hare Krsna devotee trying to escape from materialistic pseudo religious meat eating background. All in all Peter Vachler as script and director attacks Christian hypocritic attitude especially with their animal killing. The concept is comedy. On the premiere of this film another prasadam catering was arranged for not less then 1,000 spectators. It remainds me of another vegetarian parody movie made in Czech “Skritek” The Goblin. It openly and picturely criticizes slaughtering and eating animals with a little flavour of KC philosophy. But this is creation of some other director.
The other very important thing Peter Vachler made was he produced and managed to propagate a BBT picture of that man with cow head chopping cow with the man’s head. He made big posters and mega board posters hang all over Czech country for two consecutive years. This really made Czech people wonder what is happening. It costed him hundreed of thousands $US of his own pocket. He arranged to make a TV Hare Krsna cooking course too, which run on national TV all over the country twice.
Besides that he is very active vegetarian preacher, at the same time not fanatic, but rather kind and makes people laugh and think deeper. He goes to TV’s, papers and magazines and criticizes meateaters very philosophically. His usual statement is, “Do not make grave yard from your stomach” or, “Now we are going to have party. We will have fun and we will party. Why we should make somebody sad by killing him, even it’s animal.” And much more.
Something about organizers from ISKCON side. As I mentioned earlier the credit goes to all the devotees who engaged somehow for this prasadam distribution, and they are many to mention. Mostly Prague Balarama restaurant, 2 other Govinda restaurants, Prague Temple, Hare Krishna Farm Krisnuv Dvur and Nitai Bakery were involved. In person Kasya Dasa and Lomancita Dasa, Balarama restaurant managers, stands from the beginning of these happenings as conductors of the Czech Lion prasadam distribution. Balarama is small grhastha operation with around 150 guest each day. Plus we do some other caerings as weddings, offices and shops prasadam delivery service and some other prasadam distribution.
I wrote all this as an inspiration for other devotees and for us too? Propably something could be done out of this if somebody wishes to.
If any questions or requests arises contact me please
dasa anudas Kasya Dasa kasya@balarama.cz
To see some photos from happenings: http://www.balarama.cz/aktivity.htm