Throwback: Ratha Yatra

October 6, 2022

Throwback Thursday: Here I am at the Ratha Yatra Festival in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on July 19, 2008.

Ratha Yatra originated about 5,000 years ago in India on the East Coast state of Orrisa in a city called Jagannatha Puri. During the summer every year, these festivals in honor of the Hindu god Jagannath, a representation of Lord Krishna (God) who lived in India five thousand years ago, are celebrated in small villages up to large cities all over the world.

My religion is Gaudiya Vaishnavism (Hare Krishna), a sect of Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism). I was raised in Roman Catholicism in the 1960s and 1970s, but I consciously but unofficially converted in the early 1980s, when I was in my early 20s. I sometimes go by my Hare Krishna name: Bhakta Bill dasa. I did not become a monk, so I was not obligated to legally change my name.

Here are two of the many photos that my wife Debbie took of myself at the festival.

In the first photo, you can see me help pull one of three colorful chariots for a few miles through the streets of the city. One of these chariots, which are about 45 feet high and 35 feet in length and width, can be seen in the background. The "tents" on the chariots had to be lowered and then raised again whenever the chariots passed under traffic lights.

In the second photo, I am holding a plastic bag of halva in my right hand that was given to me at the festival. While my shirt has a Hindu prayer printed on it in the Sanskrit language, it does not represent the official garb of the Hare Krishnas. The cloth bag hanging from my neck, which has a Hindu prayer printed on it in Sanskrit and IS carried by the Hare Krishnas, contains mala (prayer beads). My necklace holds a golden, colorful pendant of the Hindu god Jagannath.

After the chariots arrived at the shoreline, Debbie and I were to take a ferry to the islands near Toronto for further celebration, which included music and vegetarian food. As I went to pay for the ferry tickets at an outdoor ticket booth surrounded by hundreds of people, I drifted into a slow-motion spiral to the ground. We never arrived on the islands or on the ferry. I was taken to a nearby hospital by ambulance with heat exhaustion. 

After all of these years, I continue to thank my wonderful wife for accompanying me on my spiritual pilgrimage. Actually, our timing was perfect because I was accompanying my wife Debbie and my mother-in-law Lorna (R.I.P.) on a vacation to visit friends and family members in and around Toronto.