Diwali 2006

Blogger was down for several hours yesterday, so I couldn't write up my Diwali report but anyway here it is! I actually had a bit of a late night before Diwali and so I got up rather late. As it is our custom to do the family puja in the evening, we figured that it would be nice to take a trip to the temple and take darshan of the deities. The only trouble was that I hadn't eaten anything at all since waking up and I was getting rather annoyed at that. It surprised me that when I am able to exercise self-control during Ekadashi fasting, why is just a couple of hours of starvationbothering me? This reinforces my theory that adequate mental preparation is necessary to do such things, to get oneself in the right state of mind.

So anyway I was feeling rather despondent because we arrived at the temple after the 4.20pm arati, and I was sure that the curtains would be closed. But of course, I had forgotten that on festival days it is procedure to allow longer darshan times! So we managed to get a nice darshan aftaer all, and how beautifully They were dressed!!!! Lots of nice candles everywhere. The battery on my camera ran out so I didn't take as many shots as I would have liked, but here are some of them anyway. Beautiful!

And by the way, I guess Krishna and Rama were so supremely merciful that They gave me a nice Diwali present. Since I had been starving and the arati was over, I happened to get a small plate of maha-prasad. Wow! The first thing I had to eat all day was maha-prasad, how fantastic was that?!







































And the temple has this really cute diorama Damodara for Kartik month, I think it's adorable!