Nitai Gaura Nataraj

Its a long while since i blogged, though there have been many things to write about, i have stayed away, partly because i was busy and also partly because i just did not feeling like opening my heart out through the blog. Just as the elephant has two sets of teeth, the tusks and the actual teeth, i have been blogging in my mind, storing away all the treasures and gifts in the abyss of my brain and have been putting up pictures and miscellaneous stuff on the virtual blog..But recently devotees have been pushing me to write and share my thoughts again and this was approved by Gurudeva. In a class on Harinam Cintamani given during the holy month of Kartik, a few years ago, Gurudev mentions that in Kartik, one must read and share their realizations or even whatever they have been reading with others, therefore this post..

GURU IS ALWAYS RIGHT. A devotee family aspiring for HH Janananda Swami Maharaja, brought home new Gaura Nitai deities...All the expert artists who paint deities were away, so i ended up with the seva of painting the deities. HH Janananda Maharaja had named them, but except for him and Subal prabhu, no one knew the names. We have nimai nitai, nitai nawadwipchandra, nitai nadiabihari, nitai gaurasundar, nitai gaurachandra, in our congregation, so we were wondering what the names of these deities are going to be. Wanting to get into the right frame of mind before i paint the deities i decided to ask subal prabhu for the names. Though i did not want to breach the pact between him and maharaja that the names would be shared on the day of the welcoming, i thought it would help me meditate on their beautiful forms corresponding to those names. I knew it had to be something to do with sankirtan, given Maharaja's zeal for Sankirtan. Subal prabhu let me in on their names, Nitai Gaura Nataraj,the deities arrived in the first week of kartik and that they chose to come home to get painted puzzled me..After several hours of effort, i thought i had achieved the desired effect. Now it was time to move on to the clothes, see if everything fit correctly. They had beautiful accessories and while talking to the devotee, whose deities They were, she mentioned that Maharaja had inspected each and every piece of attire and jewelry and had remarked that the crowns might be too big. The crows were not removed from their packaging...i saw them and thought Maharaja must've mentioned the height, the height seemed too big and so tried them on and sure enough the crowns looked like overturned buckets and were way too big height and circumference wise. The lesson that i learnt is that Guru is always right. I also learnt that the deities being Nitai Gaura Nataraj were in a dancing mood and crowns would hinder their dancing. Because i had desired to meditate on the mood while dressing and painting them, they also gave me the seva of making turbans which required another 2 hours of effort, but it  as well worth it...one of the new devotees who has no prior exposure to ISKCON, or Gaura Nitai, could not take her eyes off them, in fact some of the photos are taken from her album, because she just could not stop herself..looking at their garlands and the way they were dressed, she said "Oh, so they are dancing." The names  had not been revealed yet. This made me smile, happy that the Sri Murti of the lord had achieved the desired effect of rousing a glimmer of our eternal identity of being Krishna's eternal servants and captivating the mind of atleast one person.