By Shyam Pandey
Every saturday we have beautiful Swan Boat Festival at the temple along with nice fireworks. The Lord is taken on the Swan Boat from the temple and placed on his celestial boat equipped with small Minn Kota motor to run the boat powered by 12 V Dc car battery and decorated nicely with nice flashy christmas lights powered by a Honda generator. See the image above.
The Swan Boat is navigated & run by Tattva Darshana Das ( a community member and good friend from Trinidad) and his copilot is myself that is Shyam Pandey.
We have done few of the Swan Boat rides and everything went fine except for some minor troubles here and there but this ride on Saturday, 5th of August 2006 was one amazing one which reminds us that when things go really out of control, all we can do is pray to Krishna.
We took off from the boat house as usual and right after we were to make turn to right, Tattva noticed that there is some trouble with the motor of the Swan Boat but thought that it may be a minor glitch and thus we carried on. After we reached the actual spot where the show is done where people come together and chant and dance for the Lord to arrive, the boat started shwing the sign of some trouble. Tattva immediately shouted ·Shyam whats wrong? why is the motor not working?· He came towards the motor to examine while I got to the point where he navigates and saw that we were merely few meters away from crashing into the bank of the lake where there are 2 beautiful gazebo setup. We had lost the control and the boat was going straight towards the Gazebo. I pulled out my hand and tried to push the Gazebo from my hand so that the boat keeps away form it anf does not crash into it. Finally the boat changed its direction and started going the otherway. Mean while I started to panic more and called out for help form the people sitting and chanting on the banks of the lake to give a puch so that boat doses not get stuck.
People who generally come to the temple are visitors and they didnt understand that somethign was wrong as they thought that this was part of the show and thus very few approached for help.
Finally I got a help support from Rasa Chaitnya Prabhu who was around and came forward to ask what was wrong and I gave him a metal rod, which we keep in the boat (I dont know for what reason) and he managed to keep the boat away from the bank.I started to pray that oh Krishna what will happen now and how are we going to get out of this.On the otherside Tattva was getting things done and he managed to figure out that there was a loose contact with the battery which made the motor to malfunction.
Soon things were sorted out and we were able to make a final spin and we went to the boat house back fearing that something more worst could happen if we stay too long.
So this experience shows that when things go totally out of control, you should do following:
1. Pray to Lord Krishna to save you.
2. Dont Panic ! by doing that you make others loose hope and make them feel the same as you do.
3. Finally call for help from people who are competent to help you!
So I guess this is more than enough to let you all know what happened·isnt it?
While I was telling this story to Madhva Ghosh prabhu today morning, he told me that there was a similar instance which happened way back in the old Vrindaban days when the Swan boat was operated by remote control and the boat stopped functioning due to some minor trouble. There was a devotee called Bhima Das (MG dosent remebers his name well), tied a rope on the neck of Swan and other end to his waist and swam across the lake to tow the boat form one end of the lake to another ! Amazing ! All glories to the devotees of New Vrindaban.