18-Oct-2009, Monday
The 3rd Final day, we woke up early and somehow made it to Mangala Arati. Surprisingly the trend had reversed. My parents were the first ones to leave for temple as I was still getting ready.
I locked the door and ran to temple hoping to be there on time for standing at the front line for darshans of Krishna Balarama. When I reached, Samsara prayers were almost over and hare krishna kirtan was going on at Samadhi Mandir. I paid obeisances and ran inside. Sounds childish, huh? Guru Maharaja Passed by on his way to altar. Had never seen him like this before. He had a shawl all wrapped around his head and shoulders. We were supposed to leave back for our rooms as we were to Join Guru Maharaja for Goverdhan Parikrama. However as I learnt that Maharaja will not leave before 5:30, I tried my luck and extended untill the announcements ended. I was in for some strong words from my father whom I had kept waiting.
We parked our car near Kusum Sarovar. One big group of devotees had come there led by I guess Dina Bandhu Prabhu. But Guru Maharaja had already left with the group of devotees from delhi. We hired a rickshaw to escort us till we find our group. As we proceeded to Manasi Ganga, we found out that Maharaja was ahead of Dan Ghati and then even further passed ISKCON temple. We kept on sitting on the rickshaw slowly moving towards Maharaja. There we saw across a big patch of thorny forest between the main road and the inner sandy way a person in red cardigan and a red muffler. It could undoubtedly be none other than our dear Guru Maharaja. We stopped the cart and paced across the big arid field to join devotees. I joined but my parents left behind. And somewhere they lost track. After a whole lot of ruckus, we decided that lets rendezvous at the next intersection. I joined Maharaja at Govind Kunda , where he sat to speak about glories of that place. After honoring nice kheer prasadam which the local babaji lovingly offered us, we set back on the journey.
On reaching the ashrama, I realised I didnt have the keys. Maybe I dropped it somewhere in temple. Parents were furious. I ran back to Krishna Balarama Mandir to enquire. Just as I reached I saw Maharaja's shining white car taking a turn and GM rolling down the window to talk to some devotee. There goes our plan to catch him. My search went in futile. I returned to ashram, finding that my dad had broken the lock. We packed our stuff back in car and zoomed to Goverdhan.
Chakravarti pr was there. I walked slowly chanting japa. Radha charan Pr bestowed his mercy by giving me his sweet Gaura Nitai on my head. I carried them for a while. After a long walk, I saw mom and dad paying obeisances from far to Guru Maharaja and then joining us. Then we kept on walking, reached Mansi Ganga - went to Chakaleswara Mahadeva.
Proceeding to the Radha Kunda - Shyama Kunda area, we first visited ISKCON centre there, which also houses Samadhi of HH Bhakti Swarup Damodar Sripad Maharaja, the scientist disciple of Srila Prabhupada. Thwn proceeding to Raghunath Das Goswami's Samadhi, we came to banks of Radha Kunda. As is practice Maharaja sat there to chant his Gayatri, while devotees chanted there Japa. After a long time, we stood up again and started moving.
