By Sridevi Dasi
Sitala devi dasi, a resident of Mayapur Dham, had been ordering deities for ISKCON since 1975. Many temples around the world have used her services to obtain their deities. In the 1990’s the devotees of New Raman Reti asked her to order deities in India for our Temple. “It took a while for consensus to be reached among devotees here as to who should be the Lords of New Raman Reti,” she says. “Once the decision was made, Radha Shyamasundar manifested pretty quickly - about a year from order.” Sitala prabhu’s main service was to place the order with the murti wallah and ensure that the carving was in accordance with the desires of the Temple community. The Pandeys of Jaipur were Yamuna devi dasi’s choice for deity sculptors. She had ordered ISKCON’s first deities herself from them.