Today is our second day in Winnipeg. We had planned this day as a day of "rest and relaxation" (R&R), while the buses would go to a mechanic to get some maintenance. So we asked our host, Mother Vrinda, for suggestions on the best park to drop everyone off at, with bathroom facilities and large open spaces to play sports. We decided on Assiniboine Park. The yellow greyhound bus went in for maintenance on the jake brake (engine retarder) that helps brake the bus on long downhill grades. The boys' school bus (Garuda 3) dropped everyone off at the park, where most of the youth played "ultimate frisbee," which is basically like playing American Football with a frisbee.
Around 5 p.m., after trying several mechanics, news that the big yellow bus could not be repaired in Winnipeg because the mechanics thought it might take them all weekend to tweak with the jake brakes. So we called ahead and reserved an appointment with some mechanics in Regina (the next city we were heading to after Winnipeg.) Jaya Radhe made sandwiches for everyone for dinner, with lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream, cheese, and some seet sandwiches with peanut butter and jam / jelly.
In the evening, two young Sikh gentlemen found us at the park and talked to us about doing some bhajans. They were very enthusiastic. We told them that we'd be happy to, and they then went home to get their drums and harmonium. When they returned, Bhaktimarga Swami and the bhajaneers on our tour engaged in an enthusiastic Hare Krishna bhajan in the park, with the two Sikh gentlemen playing harmonium and tablas respectively. Afterwards, they thanked us profusely and explained to us that they had little opportunity in Winniepeg to do bhajans like this, with so many young people, and that they had an awesome time. We exchanged contact information.
As we were about to leave, I noticed that the girls' bus septic tank had not been emptied in a while. So decided to empty it myself, into the park toilets. (We have a portable septic tank on each bus that can be rolled to a "dump station" or toilet to be emptied.) As I was about to disconnect the tank I noticed a small leak in one of the hoses. It seemed like the sewage hoses were under pressure. One problem led to another, and the short story is that soon I found myself covered in raw sewage, trying to unclog the bus septic system that was clogged with toilet paper. The sun was setting. The park was closing and we were under time constraints to pack the bus and get out before the gates closed. The Canadian mosquitoes were coming out and nibbling at me from all sides. And here I was, covered in sewage, trying to serve the Vaishnavis by repairing their septic tank. Jai. Haribol. Realizations about the gross-ness of material bodies came to mind. I told some of the boys who were helping me, "this is great service to get rid of your material desires. You'll never look at material bodies the same way again."
July 20, Friday - Regina, Saskatchewan
We drove through the night and arrived in Regina, Saskatchewan, by 5:30 a.m. We parked at a Husky truck stop, filled our bus shower water tanks, and woke up the youth in shifts to take turns in the on-board bus showers. We had spent lots of time and money prior to the bus tour to put in these showers, and today was another opportunity to use them. I asked our bus counselors to continue waking up the youth and getting them ready, and decided to walk to the Regina temple with Bhaktimarga Swami and Rasikananda Prabhu.
Bhaktimarga Swami has been traveling with us for a couple of weeks. He is the Swami who walks across Canada. He's on his third walk and has interrupted it to join our Canadian section of the festival bus tour. Needless to say, sometimes Bhaktimarga Swami feels a bit cramped on our bus and just feels the urge to take a long japa walk and let the buses catch up with him. Especially here in Canada where the "Trans Canada Highway" (TCH) is just one long road across the continent. So Rasikananda and I join him for a japa walk about 5 kilometers to the Regina temple.
We walk on the edge of the road that slants towards the ditch. I ask Maharaja how he deals with walking at an angle for long distances. He acknowledges that it is a problem for his posture and explains that he switches sides from time to time, so he will walk on the right shoulder of the highway, then switch to the left shoulder, back and forth a few times during the day. We chant some Maha-mantra japa (the holy names of Krishna) on our beads, our morning meditation. At some point, we come into the downtown and past a beautiful park that Maharaja says would be an excellent location for Harinama (kirtana) and for festivals.
The conversation turns to how to spread Krishna consciousness throughout Canada. That there are so few cities along this highway. That if we had vibrant, youth-led temples, so many people could benefit from our kirtana and prasadam distribution. Bhaktimarga Swami expresses concern about the old age of the current generation of devotees that lead these temples. Jagannatha Prabhu, the Regina temple president, is in his mid 60s, retired, and some of his children have moved away to more popular cities across the world. How can we inspire our younger generation to take up the missionary work of spreading Krishna consciousness? How can we inspire them to spend time in a place like Regina and develop the university preaching here? We talk about how it takes people of character to live in a place like this which gets extremely cold in the winter (for about 6 months of the year), but is quite pleasant in the summer.
Once all the youth arrive at our ISKCON Regina temple, we serve them breakfast, and then send them to laundromats. Today is laundry day, our weekly opportunity to wash dirty clothes and re-organize our bags. The girls walk to one laundromat, about 7 blocks away. The boys walk to another. Once again, the buses go in for maintenance at the local bus mechanics. Hopefully this time around, the mechanics can repair our jake brake (on the big yellow bus), and the transmission issue on the boys' bus (the school bus, Garuda 3).
While the youth are at the laundromats, the local matriarch, Mother Chintamani, prepares lunch for us in the temple kitchen. Her husband, the temple president, Jagannath Prabhu, meets with me about the details for this evening's hall performance. He is about to be interviewed by the local television news station about the performance. He leaves for his interview. I catch a few minutes of peace and quiet and honor a belated granola breakfast in the back yard. Finally a moment of quiet. I'm all by myself. A rare occasion on the festival tour.
Soon, the youth return from the laundromats and it is time for lunch. They are excited. There were televisions at the laundromat, and all of a sudden, while they were washing their laundry, the news came on and Jagannatha Prabhu was being interviewed. He told viewers that we were an international group of students who traveled across North America to perform Krishna Culture Festivals. That our performers came from places as far away as Venezuela, Poland, Australia, the Philippines, etc. That it would be a delightful cultural presentation with dance, drama, and live music. That everyone should come and that there were only a few tickets left.
After lunch, Bhaktimarga Swami engages us in a thorough run-through of the drama portions of our performance. He works with several of the actors to perfect their moods and expressions during certain scenes. He helps re-write the dialogue of the Jagannath scene to make it flow more naturally and give it more emotional appeal.
Around 4:30 p.m., we get ready to board our buses to head off to our upcoming hall performance, at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum Auditorium in downtown Regina. We get to the auditorium around 5:00 p.m., unload the props, costumes, lighting and sound equipment. While the actors and dancers and musicians get ready, Markendeya (lights) and Nitai Prana (sound) and I meet with the venue's sound and lighting technicians to go over the technical equipment needed for tonight's performance. They supply us with six wired microphones. We will use our own wireless headset mics. We set up our own spotlight to give more definition to the actor's faces during the performance.
The Royal Saskatchewan Museum Auditorium seats around 250 people. At around 6:30 p.m., the place starts to fill up. At this venue we are getting a lot of Indian families. Expats who have settled in the Regina area. Jagannatha Prabhu seems to have advertised to the congregation and they seem to have brought their friends. The show starts promptly at 7:00 p.m. Everything goes well during the first half, up until the intermission. I go upstairs to the enclosed technical booth at the back of the auditorium to congratulate the sound and lighting engineers on the good job they've been doing.
During the second half of our performance, however, things take a turn for the worse. The wireless headset mics are feeding back. Nitai is struggling with the gain levels. As the actors walk along the stage, they're hitting "hot spots" that cause instant feedback. During the critical Queen Kunti scene, when all four headset mics are being used at once by the actors, the sound disintegrates to a distorted rumble mixed with feedback squeals. Somehow we make our way through the second half of the performance alive. The forgiving audience gives us a standing ovation, an "A" for effort. I inquire as to why we had so many sound problems during the second half, and am told that apparently the wireless mics had reset themselves to frequencies that conflicted with one another. Live and learn.
As people exit the auditorium, they pass our book table. Some stop to look, and a few people buy some books. Our enthusiastic book distributing brahmachari, Yamuna Jivana Prabhu, strikes up a conversation with the curious onlookers standing around the book table to get their interest. I position myself with a video camera near the exit door to ask a few people to give us some video testimonials on how they liked our performance. Varshana Prabhu, one of our bus drivers, finds her way over to where I am standing. I ask her to help me ask people. She approaches a middle-aged couple, both caucasian (white) looking. She prods to find out what they thought about the content being all about devotional service to Krishna. The husband says that he is from Australia, and that the only reason he came tonight was because one of his friends is into Indian culture and brought him along to see our performance. That usually, this would not be his kind of thing. But, he adds, he enjoyed himself thoroughly. Although he is a skeptic when it comes to religion, he could see the love that these youth had put into this production. He enjoyed the music, the colors, the dancing. He mentions had never seen anything like this before.
July 21, Saturday - Calgary, Alberta - Ratha-yatra
We arrive in Calgary around 7:00 a.m. The two buses pull up at the Talisman Sports Center in downtown. Chaitanya Hari Prabhu, the local youth who helps coordinate the Ratha-yatra festival in this city, meets us in his car. He is paying for us to take nice, hot showers at this sports center. After showing the youth where to go for showers, I head to the back of the big yellow bus where we have a full kitchen set up... with commercial stove, oven, sink, etc. Today's breakfast is oatmeal. I fill one of our 6-gallon stainless steel pots half full with water, bring it to the boil, stir in about one kilo of powdered milk, add a pound of butter, a couple handfulls of salt, a handful of sugar, and then add about 2.5 kilos of rolled quick oats. I ponder the sticky substance, watching it get thicker and thicker as I stir away. The youth are going to be thirsty. We need some lemonade. Quickly I look for some concentrated lemon juice, a bucket, and begin filling it with water from our water filter on the bus' kitchen sink. A half a packet of sugar, some stirring with a large whisk.... and the lemonade is ready. I offer the breakfast... and just I finish offering, the first youth are coming back from the showers. We serve the breakfast next to the buses, in the parking lot.Calgary Ratha-yatra parade is following a different route this year. We are pulling Lord Jagannatha down the main shopping street, 8th Avenue, which is a pedestrian zone for about five blocks, and then turns into a normal avenue all the way to Millennium Park, where the Festival of India is set up. Our traveling festival tour youth have been asked to lead the kirtana (chanting) procession in front of Lord Jagannatha's chariot. The dancers take up position in front of the kirtana party. The chanters begin to lead an up-beat maha-mantra melody. The dancers swing their bodies back and forth in coordinated steps. Slowly, the auspicious procession moves down 8th Avenue, amidst chain store windows and gawking onlookers...
Calgary is known for its annual rodeo and stampede, and for being the beef capital of Canada. Today Lord Jagannatha is bestowing His sidelong glances on the people of Calgary, bestowing His special mercy. About 300 people are in the procession, pulling the ropes that are attached to Lord Jagannatha's chariot. They call out the Holy Names in call-and-response. The bus tour youth switch kirtana leaders several times, each chanting for about ten minutes. Jahnavi, Amal, Kumari, Kalindi and Rasikananda each lead a portion of the parade kirtana.
Back at the festival site, the "Free Feast" volunteers get ready to receive the crowd. You can hear the parade kirtana approaching in the distance. The organizers bring a local talent on stage to entertain the people who are starting to arrive. I am informed that we are running about a half hour late. By now, the parade is here and most people are lining up for the free feast. I walk around the festival site to gather our performers and ask them to get ready. I find a group of them behind one of the exhibits, in the shade, gobbling down some free food.
We perform the dance drama... DEVOTION. It's a little difficult to use our spotlight in the outdoors, in the middle of the hot afternoon. Markendeya tries his best to light up some of the cast member's faces with our 650-watt ARRI spotlight. (Some of the festival stage set-ups are definitely in need of improvement in regards to lighting.) The performance goes well.
That evening we take down the festival in about one and a half hours. Afterwards, we head to the Calgary temple, obtain darshan of Sri Sri Radha-Madhava, and celebrate Jaya Radhe's birthday (my wife, one of the tour organizers) with ice cream cake. We take rest on the bus bunk beds at around 10:30 p.m. At around 3:00 a.m. the bus drivers wake up and start driving the buses to our next destination.
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