iMonk | August 2005

Saint Petersburg, Russia — Sunday, August 21st

Vaishnava Festival

On Wednesday we held the Indian Independence Day Festival in a large theatre in downtown Saint Petersburg. The Guest of Honor, the Indian Consulate General, expressed his appreciation for EthnoLife's efforts to propagate Indian culture in Russia, particularly in Saint Petersburg and Moscow.

Over seven hundred guests attended the evening program, and Sripad Avadhut Maharaj and Goswami Maharaj gave speeches stressing the close relationship that has always existed between India and Russia. The rest of the evening was filled with presentations of different Indian cultural events — dance, music, drama, yoga — and the program ended with a huge kirtan with all the participants on stage.

On Thursday, we began the ten-day annual Vaishnava Festival at our beautiful Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math temple in Lakhta, on the banks of the Baltic Sea. Srila Gurudeva was unable to attend this year, but Sripad Avadhut Maharaj, Goswami Maharaj, Bharati Maharaj, Siddhanti Maharaj and I are here to meet and talk to the devotees from all over Russia, the Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe.

It's a wonderful opportunity to associate with the devotees, to attend the many seminars and presentations on Vaishnava philosophy and etiquette, hear lectures by the senior devotees, and just meet old friends and acquaintances.

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