Devotees of all the three ISKCON temples of Mumbai, namely Sri Sri Radha Rasbihari, Sri Sri Radha Gopinath and Sri Sri Radha Giridhari united together in an unprecedented way to make the auspicious occasion of Janmashtami a wonderful opportunity to create awareness about the sorry plight of Sri Yamuna devi to all the devotees and pious people who flocked the three temples in thousands to catch a glimpse of Lord Krishna on his birthday.
Preparations were made hurriedly and all three temple authorities cooperated wonderfully and gave the most strategically prominent place for the Save Yamuna Campaign booths. The Bhaktivedanta Hospital Youth Foundation volunteers took the lead in printing petition letters with columns for signatures behind for all the three temples.
Banners were made with slogans such as “Bring Yamuna back to Braj”, “Change the National Anthem”, “Yamuna is not a Drain” etc. Huge flex banners with the map of Yamuna river bed and how it is getting polluted. The target was to get the maximum number of signatures and also email ids which would then be used for online petition on www.saveyamuna.org.
The day of Janmashtami dawned and in Radha Gopinath temple the Save Yamuna Stall was the largest and the most impressive stall. Devotees crowded for the darshan and sat through the various lectures in the morning session and as they were leaving the volunteers of Save Yamuna campaign requested them to give their signatures which they readily agreed so in this way almost 2000 signatures were taken in the morning session. In the evening the crowds started coming by about 5 pm and steadily increased to thousands.
The queue was passing right in front of the stall and saw the crowd control devotees were directing everyone to the Save Yamuna stall. The volunteers were requesting all the devotees to give one minute of their time to hear about the plight of Sri Yamuna devi and asking them to sign.
In this way volunteers worked continuosly from evening till midnight. Sri Sri Radha Gopinath temple collected a total of 10, 000 signatures. And the reports from Sri Sri Radha Rasbihari and Giridhari temple were also very encouraging. Juhu temple volunteers collected a record of 18,000 signatures and Mira Road temple got about 3000 signatures.
In the end, whoever participated in this service were completely enlivened and rejuvenated even after a tiring day with fasting. All who were there in the temple were feeling the mercy of Lord Krishna and everyone felt satisfied. We pray that we can get more and more service which is pleasing to Krishna.