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By Nandini Radha devi dasi<\/strong><\/p>\n Los Angeles ISKCON celebrated a very special festival during the weekend of August 20-22, 2011. The special occasion was the 40th<\/sup> installation anniversary celebrations of the presiding Deities of New Dvaraka, Sri Sri Rukmini -Dvarakadhisha. The most beautiful and merciful Deities were installed in Los Angeles exactly 40 years ago on Janamastami. The event was attended by a large number of devotees and servitors came in drives to serve their most worshippable and loving Deities. One of the highlights of the celebration was the offering of a stunning flower outfit to Sri Sri Rukmini-Dvarakadhisha. This outfit was offered to Them at 4.30p.m. on Janamastami day and was worn by Them until 11p.m. just before the midnight arati.<\/em><\/p>\n The making of this outfit is a marvelous feat in itself. The effort was headed by two ardent devotees who have been making flowers outfits for these Deities for the past 20 years. Harigana das from Mexico City and Isanah dasi of Los Angeles team up every single year to offer the choicest and most beautiful flower outfits to the Deities. However, this year was extra special since it was Their 40th<\/sup> installation celebration. While a teenager, Harigana was always devoted to serving the Deities by being involved in Deity decorations involving flowers and jewels. His interest and devotion grew deeper steadily with time and one day about 15 years ago on Radhastami, he, along with Isanah decided to offer a flower outfit to Rukmini devi, much to the surprise of the devotees who were captivated by the beauty of the simple yet gorgeous outfit. Since that year, it became a regular ritual to offer flower outfits to the Deities at New Dvaraka on certain festival days and Janamastami is one of them. Harigana learnt the art of dressing the Deities and developed his own style with the passage of time. Isanah dasi has been making exquisite flower and Tulasi garlands for Their lordships for more than 20 years and is an expert in creating very unique flower outfits as well.<\/p>\n For this very special and exotic outfit, Harigana das flew in from Mexico; a team of 12 devotees was assembled and it took almost 48 hours to finish the entire outfit comprising of Dvarakadhisha\u2019s dhoti<\/em>, chadar<\/em>, skirt, mukut<\/em> pieces and garlands as well as Rukmini devi\u2019s blouse, skirt, veil, head decoration and garlands. In addition, much effort was also put into designing and creating the amazing backdrops. The design of the outfit was conceived by Harigana who carefully contemplated on how to invoke memories of the late 60s and early 70s in the minds of devotees from that time. He conferred with expert designers in Mexico City and decided on bold colors such as shocking orange, dark brown and sea blue, reflecting the hippy-happy days of the sixties. The outfit fabric utilized silk, velvet and chiffon which were especially flown in from France. While Dvarakadhisha\u2019s outfit was blue with an orange trim, Rukmini devi\u2019s was brown with a blue trim. 20 different kinds of flowers were utilized to create this outfit and included two kinds of fresh orchids (purple and green) from Thailand, three types of fragrant roses from South America, sweet smelling mogra flowers from South India, bright yellow daisy poms, soft white gardenias and cool blue delphiniums. An astounding 2000 orchids, 800 delphiniums, 10 dozen roses, 4 bundles of poms, 1 box of gardenias and 2000 mogras were used to create this magical outfit with great love and devotion. In addition to flowers, the outfit was also emblazoned with several kinds of colorful jewels and crystals which were ordered from China, Austria and a special place called Morano in Italy. Harigana utilized computer graphics to create a bewitching design, purchased a special sewing machine and scissors to cut the different fabrics, stitched the fabric ahead of time and bought several kinds of crystals to make the jewelry which took him almost 6 months. The overall cost of the outfit was about $3000 with $1000 being spent on flowers and $300 on crystals. Besides creating a mind-dazzling outfit for Sri Sri Rukmini-Dvarakadhisha, identical replicas were also made for the small Deities Sri Sri Rukmini-Dvarakanatha Who looked extremely charming and endearing with cool sandalwood paste smeared on Their transcendental forms.<\/p>\n A high level of team effort was involved in the making of this dress. The team started work on the outfit at 9.30a.m. on August 20th<\/sup> and finished at 2.30p.m. on August 21st<\/sup>! Devotees were completely immersed in pleasing Their Lordships by engaging in the dress-making and going without sleep and food for almost 36 hours. While some devotees glued flowers on the cloth, others spent hours plucking out five different petals from the orchids and arranging them carefully in a specific format while others immaculately glued jewels and crystals on the cloth. The making of the flower and Tulasi garlands took almost 5 hours. The end result was truly divine and reflected the love the devotees have for Their Lordships. All glories to this wonderful offering made to the sweet Lord and His consort!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Los Angeles ISKCON celebrated a very special festival during the weekend of August 20-22, 2011. The special occasion was the 40th installation anniversary celebrations of the presiding Deities of New Dvaraka, Sri Sri Rukmini -Dvarakadhisha<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9842\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"http:\/\/dandavats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/SS-2011-08-27_23.39.43.jpg\"\/)
By Nandini Radha devi dasi<\/strong><\/p>\n