On Polish Tour with His Holiness Indradyumna Swami.
Yamuna Devi: “The first evening program we attended was just amazing. There was a little sankirtan in the town center when we got there which was wonderful and when the program started, Dina and I sat in the audience so that we could realize the visuals of it. They put up some flags and festoons from Puri, then a kirtan began with all the devotees on the stage sitting swaying back and forth in rhythm to the male singers. Two back-up singers, a man and woman, danced and sang with microphones and two gorgeous young girls danced in beautiful unison with the devotees in the background.
There was an astonishing situation in front of where Dina and I were sitting where a young of about 12 with Down’s syndrome sat with his father or grandfather in his late 60s, and as the evening went on the boy started clapping, then he started raising his hands in the air, waving them back and forth. And then to no avail the father tried to hold him down by his trousers, but the boy began to jump up and down in his chair. Finally a devotee girl from the stage picked him up onto the stage and danced back and forth with him. Everyone was so touched by that, it literally brought tears to our eyes. After the kirtan, they immediately launched into a Ramayana play with wonderful costumes which was narrated in Polish. Then after a lecture on the Holy Name by Indradyumna Swami—so Krishna Conscious, inviting, easy, and simple—an enthusiastic kirtan followed that pulled everyone into it. The audience comprised people from ages seven to ninety-seven there; literally the whole village turned out to come for this festival.”
- Excerpted from “Yamuna Devi: A Life of Unalloyed Devotion”