Iskcon chariot builder from US to create new raths for golden jubilee.
KOLKATA: Forty years ago, a young American engineer took a break from his work in the US, to come and stay in the city to build chariots for Lord Jagannath and his siblings. For the golden jubilee of the Kolkata rathyatra, Mayesvara Prabhu has been asked to create his magic once more.
He had learnt the art of making chariots (raths) from Jayananda Prabhu, one of Iskcon’s iconic monks and one whom Srila Prabhupada depended on.Jayananda had stunned Americans by building mammoth raths way back in 1967 and rolling them down the streets of San Francisco. Garry William Roberts, a young devotee, was chosen by Jayananda Prabhu as an apprentice to whom he transferred his knowledge. Since then, Roberts, now called Mayesvara Prabhu, has been building and maintaining Iskcon chariots across the world.
The raths that he built here have stayed unchanged for 40 years, but Mayesvara will soon be back to start designing a better engineering marvel for the golden jubilee celebrations.
Rath yatra in the US used to be a procession with the deities on trucks. Jayananda Das was an American youth with a deg ree in mechanical engineering from Ohio State University before he got initiated into Iskcon.He built the first mammoth San Francisco rath and then one in New York. Mayesvara apprenticed under Jayananda, and in 1976 on his first visit to Mayapur, one of the senior-most monks of the order Jaypataka Swami asked him to build similar raths for the Kolkata rathayatra. The Kolkata rathyatra was already some years old by then, but the order had small replicas of the Puri chariots. The idea was to build giant ones to take the festival to a new height. “It was one thing to build the chariots in the US because of the highly mechanized tools available and another to build one in Kolkata where you had to depend on carpenters with oldfashioned tools, but I did take up the challenge,” Mayesvara said over an e-mail chat. He sounded quite excited to again be in Kolkata to build chariots for the special spectacle of 2021. He is known for the collapsible canopy that he designed to negotiate overhead wires and had to replicate it across the world wherever he was been invited to build raths.
The first time in 1978, an axle of one of the raths that Mayesvara built collapsed after the chariots rolled half way and Kolkata Police arranged for a crane to drag the rath along.“But instead of letting the crane pull the chariot, people pulled at the crane and dragged the chariots to their destination.Mayesvara worked day and night for the next year and rebuilt the axles, which haven’t given way till date. In fact, the three chariots are so robust and scientifically built, that we did not feel the need to replace them. All we did was replace parts when they got rusted or damaged, following detailed engineering drawings that have remained with us,” said Radharaman Das, spokesperson of Iskcon in the city.
The golden jubilee rathyatra in Kolkata will be a stunning event, he promised. “Kolkata rath yatra is one of the city’s most loved festivals today . It is natural that people will expect something unique in the 50th year of the event and we are sure that Mayesvara Prabhu will be able to live up to those expectations,” he added.
Times of India: https://goo.gl/QazqP4