Every year around January 15th we help to organize the Makara Sankranti festival at Dayalu Baba’s ashram in Odisha. Dayalu Baba is a sadhu who has been living at the base of a sacred mountain on the edge of Odisha’s Simlipal forest range for many decades. This year we arranged to feed all the visitors for three days (14th, 15th and 16th of January) from morning till evening.
Among the tribal and rural population of Odisha, Makara Sankranti is perhaps the most important festival of the year. Everyone will dress in their best clothes, and then spend the day visiting temples and ashrams, participating in the pujas and nonstop kirtan that is held.
Dayalu Baba performing worship inside the cave altar.
Cooking is done by local ashram devotees using fire wood collected from the nearby forest. We prepared rice, dalma (a thick dahl with vegetables), tomato chutney, and fried papads, beginning the distribution in the morning and running till after sunset.
Below you can find some photos of the food distribution, which was done continuously in batches throughout the three days.
Below are a few more random photos from the festival showing Dayalu Baba and the visiting devotees. Next month the ashram will be celebrating Shiva Ratri, and we have told Baba that we would arrange for distribution of food then as well. It would be nice if we could eventually make a simple tin roof hall here for visitors to sit and eat, as we experienced slight rain on the first morning of the festival this year making it hard for people to eat.
24 hour Hare Krishna kirtan as is the custom in Odisha.
Nityananda Baba, a sadhu from a nearby village, showed up unexpectedly on Makara Sankranti.
Dayalu Baba observing a musical group perform kirtan.
Dayalu Baba resting by the fire in the evening after everyone has left.
Dayalu Baba personally preparing hot water for the visiting devotees to bathe.
Here is a short video about the cooking and distribution:
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Hare Krishna
All are blessed souls !
Wonderful . It’s nice that food distribution to people even now exists. Very nice video and makes us happy to see the people preparing food and distribute with so much devotion and care. I hope one day I will get the possibility to be with them.
Keep up the good work. I am already a sponsor, sending auto payments from PayPal each month. I was a Sadhu in Benares in a recent past life. Currently I practice transcendental meditation.
Namaste 🙏,
My sincere pramama for Baba,
We are blessed to have like this baba,prime minister Modiji & many more.
Baba is the motivation to all the Hindus.
Hence proud to be Hindu.
🙏 Jai shri ram
Absolutely beautiful, I wish I were there.
Very inspiring to see Dayalu Baba doing so much at that age…Great to see he is getting support
“””” Truly said by Sai Praveen” My feelings are the same.
Jai Shri Hari.. Thank you immensely for keeping us informed of your Good Bhagwan service. I truly get inspired by your posts. Thank you so so much for the Darshan of Dayalu Baba.. even though it was an electronic darshan I nevertheless felt his enormous presence.. Blessed are those by his feet. .. Om Namah Shivaya.