Shrimad Bhagavat flows to Melbourne, Australia
Melbourne was graced by the divine presence of Pujya Bhaishri and his fellow team members on the occasion of the first ever Katha to be held in Melbourne from Saturday, April 24 – Sunday, May 2, 2004. The experience for the entire Indian community has been truly enlightening and beyond words to describe.
Many devotees welcomed Pujya Bhaishri when he arrived from Mumbai via Perth on Friday, April 23, 2004. He stayed at the residence of Mr Nanu Laxman, the Katha convenor.
The venue for the Katha was Cretan Village, 90 Cathies Lane, Wantirna South , Melbourne, Victoria 3152, Australia.
It had chair seating for 600 people, and additional floor seating for over 100. A further small part of the venue was partitioned off to facilitate catering and serving of lunch on weekends.
The venue was centrally located in Melbourne’s outer Eastern suburb, approximately 25kms from the city centre. It is an area that has a large Indian population residing there. Public transport to the venue was convenient with a train station near by. In addition, the Katha organisers hired a mini-bus, which transported inter-state and overseas visitors to and from the venue free of charge. The venue also had car parking facilities for 300 cars.
The Katha was very well attended by the Indian community from Melbourne, along with many visitors from Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, New Zealand, Fiji and one family from Leicester, UK. The devotees were of all age groups – from little toddlers and youngsters to the elderly. Pujya Bhaishri spoke in Hindi and occasionally in Gujarati too.
The Katha itself was highly enlightening. Given that the Shrimad Bhagwat is a very detailed scripture and due to limited time, Pujya Bhaishri spoke in brief and succinctly touched on the key issues/values/teachings of the Shrimad Bhagwat. He started with the meaning and importance of the Shrimad Bhagwat, its place in Indian religious scriptures. He explained how King Parikshit got enlightenment by listening to the Shrimad Bhagwat from Shukdev ji Maharaj. In the Geeta saar he spoke of the eternal message that Lord Krishna gave to Arjun in the midst of the Kurukshetra battlefield. He explained karma, bhakti and yoga. Then followed the 24 incarnations of Lord Vishnu. The values and message of “mariyada purushottam” Lord Ram in Ram avtaar. The pranks of Bal Krishna and Krishna avtaar.
The prasang’s celebrated during the Katha were: Ram janma, Krishna janma, Govardhan utsav and Rukmini/Tulsi vivah.
On the last day, almost 1,000 people attended the Katha whose scheduled session was to be from 10am to 1pm with lunch served thereafter. In fact, the session went from 10am to 4.30pm, non-stop, with every body totally engrossed in the Divine words of Pujya Bhaishri. He rightly said on the last day that neither He wished to stop nor did the people wish to cease listening.
In addition, Pujya Bhaishri had personal meeting sessions for devotees at the residence of Nanu Laxman. These sessions were also regularly and well attended by 30 – 40 people each day where Pujya Bhaishri spoke and had interactive question and answer sessions. One such session was with youngsters too of 13 – 25 years of age.
