Karthiga deepam a festival celebrated in honor of Lord Shiva attracted more than 12 lakh of people at Thiruvanamalai, South India this year. This festival has been attracting millions of pilgrims to this tiny town of for hundreds of years now.  

For two days and two nights the lane adjacent to the famous mountain at Thiruvanamalai was filled with people. One can’t imagine how densely populated these rather wide lanes could get. All one could see was people, more people and more people.

In the midst of all this there was one thing that caught a lot of attention, the Bhagavat Gita As it is. 

It seemed like the greatest of all the Vaishnavas, all-powerful Lord Shiva invited the soldiers of Lord Gauranga to his abode, with open hands. Lord Shiva gave devotees from various ISKCON centers across South India to distribute Srila Prabhupada’s books. 

Devotees from ISKCON Chennai (which includes Injambakkam Temple and Perambur centre) distributed 3,340 Bhagavat-gitas and Krishna Books in a span of a little over 24 hours.

Amarendra Gaura Das the head of Sankirtan at ISKCON Chennai and who lead the effort this year said, “it was with the help of our 70 volunteers that we were able to more than double the books distribution scores this year at Thiruvanamalai. It was blissful, we sincerely hope that Srila Prabhupada is pleased.” 

The effort was clearly for the simple reason that the devotees wanted to please Srila Prabhupada by distributing his mercy. Jai Gopinath Das who leads the ISKCON Perambur centre at Chennai said, “as devotees we need to be in the lookout for the best and most effective way to reach out to people. I think that way this festival at Thiruvanamalai is a golden opportunity which we never fail to miss.”  

ISKCON Chennai had five stalls at the festival. There were few other ISKCON stalls as well from Bangalore Narshima temple, Salem and Madurai. With all the ISKCON stalls put together at least 6,000 books were distributed in one single day.