By Srinath dasa
For the 18th year, Lord Jaganath blessed Paris city on July 6th, 2008 with His Grandiose Ratha Yatra festival. Luckily this year it was a very sunny day, although the day before and after the festival were rainy days. Since a few years, the administrative application for the festival had become much more difficult than before due to more traffic and social regulations and our application forms had to go in no less than 10 different offices before ending up in the central Préfecture de Police de Paris. The places of departure and arrival, for instance had been subject to changes in the two previous years at the last minute from the Paris Préfecture de Police for no good reasons.
So, this year we did not want to take any chance and went to see personally a few of the Mairies (town halls) and Police officers concerned with the final permission 6 months before the event. The personal contact with them was warm and encouraging. We got nice letters from different officers to join in our application and finally got exactly the spots we wanted. Even better, some representatives from two Mairies came to the inauguration ceremony and spoke very nicely after His Excellency Mr Ranjan Methai, Indian ambassador in France, as well as Mr Prakash Hinduja, from Geneva, and Param Gati Swami, GBC for France.
The place of departure for the parade was a very nice square, by a canal called Canal de la Vilette, which was forbidden to us last year for the reason that the Rath Cart was too heavy. So, from His cart which was filled with the scents of fresh Jasmin from India, Lord Jaganath could see the clear waters of the canal and think of the sea in Puri. The chanting party was particularly attractive and powerful this year with no less than 5 drumers, including 3 special zacumbas from Brazil.
Passing through the ‘Little India of Paris’ – La Chapelle, the cart had to stop often because of special offerings made to the Deities by the shopkeepers. The arrival of the 4 hour parade was finally in the best spot we could imagine right in the center of Paris, Forum des Halles. There a Krishna village had been erected from early morning until late in the night with 20 stalls, ongoing stage program alternating dance, bhajans and spiritual talks. Since its opening, already many thousand curious visitors had been going through the Krishna village, but when Jaganath arrived riding His majestic cart , the crowd was very dense. A huge prasad distribution started, and in a few hours, 50 servants served 5000 plates of prasad in a very organized way. Already during the parade 15000 laddhus had been distributed , along with hundreds of fruits and cold drinks. Mrs Azria, General Secretary of Le Maire du 1er Arrondissement de Paris, said: “I am very happy to have come here,and feel shy to receive so much honor. This festival is great . You can rely on me to have this arrival spot as much as you need for the years to come”
– Srinath dasa