Photo Gallery and Kartika Project Donations - September 30th

Lake of Flowers - September News

Any feedback on the gallery and the latest news?

Thanks to Malati for helping me out a good deal typing in many of the image descriptions.

If you spot animals or plants you can identify, please let me know. Please also drop a note if something's wrong with a picture description, or if something's missing.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isnt Sri Ramchandra's birthday celebrated in April or thereabouts, and the utsav you're referring to may be Dussehra or Diwali?

I thought that the 'Deities' section of the gallery was EXCELLENT and I like it very much. If possible, do you think you'd be able to take some good shots of the deities in all the 6-Gosvamis temples while you're over there, and make some sort of showcase like "Gosvami deities" or whatever? There's Radha-Govinda, Radha-Damodara, Radha-Madanmohan, etc. It would be nice to have some good shots of each of the 'Gosvami' deities. I see you've already got a couple up there, but it would be nice to have more shots if possible and make a nice showcase.

Apart from that, your excitement is infectious and you're making me want to join you over there!

Ahhem, yes indeed, you're right! Partially, anyway. Diwali is actually later, Nov 1st. The panjika says, "Sri Ramachandra's disappearance day." Now, there's probably something missing there, and it's Ramachandra Kaviraja or something. But it was Navami.

Many temples unfortunately forbid photography. Let's see what I can do.

Thanks to last year's donors, our video gear is in good shape, and all we need is tapes in that realm. The Minolta D3 still camera is in a perfect working condition as well.

As for the audio production, we've finally buried the old and broken MiniDisc recorder, having received the following kind donations: Edirol R1 recorder and a 2GB CF card ($500 value) from Dharmachakra and a Reactive Sounds D1 Delta microphone and Rective MicPod stand ($95 value) from Braja. They should present a substantial increase in production quality, along with added convenience.

A single 2GB CF card can record up to 188 minutes of uncompressed audio. Yet, at times there'll be more than that in a day to record, given that a single, long kirtan can munch up the entire three hours, and then there are the lectures, the questions and answers sessions etc. we need to cover as well. Therefore a second 2GB CF card (local price 120e) will come in handy. The rechargeable batteries go into this device, as well as for camera use.

The 250GB hard drive (125e) has already been purchased from my own funds. My laptop has a meager 40GB drive, and the drives on my desktop are already pretty packed. One hour of raw DV footage takes 13GB of space. Given that we'll need to capture at least some of it on the spot, not to speak of storing all the uncompressed audio (one hour ca. 650 MB), an extra portable storage is badly needed.

On top of these, there's a whole bunch of miscellaneous running costs that need to be covered. I wouldn't mind just financing all of this myself, but I'm already stretching it with all the bhakti-projects I'm handling, all of which is off the time I can spend for work that brings in income. If anyone is interested in donating, I'd appreciate to at least get a note of it as soon as possible to know how to manage my finances before my departure early Wednesday morning.

Thank you.

I'd like to thank everyone who donated thus far. We've now covered 120e + 51e, or approximately half of the grand total. Thank you!

A quick update on what's going on on this fronteer.

I have six DV-tapes of parikram, festivals, kirtan and darshan collected thus far, along with some six hours of kirtan. I haven't really gotten around to photographing much anything yet.

I'll try and post samples as soon as possible, the upcoming few days I'll still be keeping pretty busy.

I'm actually down with a 38+ fever since a couple of days, I believe I caught some cold the other day. I've been holding on to my daily niyams for the Niyam Seva, headed by 2:30 AM and bath, and then an hour of kunja-bhanga kirtan and mangala-arotik at Gopinath Mandir. Needless to say, I haven't had too much extra energy for tending to other matters. Tonight it looks like it's going to be a long night, as I need to wrap up what's left of Madhurya Kadambini, as we're up against some pretty tight deadlines here, provided Rasaraj is to have any books with him to show Baba when he comes over November 5th.

When contacting me, please use e-mail and avoid PMs as far as possible, they are far more convenient for me to handle here, given that I can deal with them offline.

Jaya Sri Radhe Radhe!

I've now filmed some four hours of padavali kirtans taking place in the different mandirs during the daily kirtan parikrama at 5 PM after Babaji Maharaja's class on Radha-rasa-sudhanidhi. I also wish to film some arotis as well. Kirtan has been recorded whenever available.

. . .

I just had a glance at my budget. It is deep down on the dark side, not the least due to my being in the habit of priorizing devotional projects over work I'd get paid for. I am also still half short of even covering the material costs related with the gear purchased for the current Kartika project. (That didn't include the laptop which is pretty much 75% in use for something else than work.)

I would very much appreciate it if someone would still like to come forward and offer some assistance in the endeavors. I am doing both the production and the distribution at no cost in hopes that it will be useful for the world-wide community of devotees.

I currently have three things in my life I tend to; my bhajan, my devotional projects and my work. Work is something I must do if I wish to migrate to Vraja in the foreseeable future. Bhajan is something I must do no matter what. These two alone eat up a major portion of my day, and I am no longer willing to forego my bhajan as I have often done it the past in favor of devotional projects. It is not that I do not also love all the production and information work, but the time has come where fondness for bhajan and inner ananda has overcome the fondness for varieties of external devotional deeds -- with sincerest gratitude for the saints of Vraja for the inspiration.

This means I must somehow try to balance work and devotional projects to get something of both done, as the third facet, bhajan, has somewhat grown in size and developed from (occasionally) more optional to (constantly) more obligatory. It would be great if I could then at least get the material expenses for the work covered; it would help in gaining the inspiration for stretching in those extra hours and foregoing the little spare time left in favor of serving the devotees. It is a bit of an inconvenience to carry all the gear around and to sacrifice of my own absorption in the celebrations in favor of bringing bits of it to the rest of the world; an inconvenience I am willing to handle, but not at the cost of my overall bhajan.