Puri: Many rue lost opportunity to catch a glimpse of deities

BHUBANESWAR: It has been two years since Mohammad Alim, a resident of Puri, had caught a glimpse of Lord Jagannath atop the chariots during Rath Yatra owing to the ban on the gathering of devotees amid Covid. He may have to wait for another year to be able to take part in the state’s biggest festival.
As per the age-old tradition, Jagannath Temple in Puri allows access only to Hindus and those like Alim and others get once-in-a-year opportunity to catch a glimpse of the deities when they come out of the temple during Rath Yatra.
“We respect the tradition and the rules of the temple. Rath Yatra is the only occasion when we can have darshan of the deities on the chariots outside the temple. But we have been missing this moment for the last two years due to the ban on the participation of devotees,” Alim said.
Foreign devotees belonging to the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), too, are disappointed. Not less than 500 ISKCON devotees from different countries would visit Puri during Rath Yatra before the Covid outbreak.
“I had received several queries from some devotees in Russia and UK. They wanted to visit Puri. But I told them about the government’s ban on gathering of devotees during the festival,” said Harish Mohanty, a hotelier in Puri.
Many Hindu devotees, who found it difficult to visit the temple from remote places in Odisha during the pandemic, have also been left disheartened. “I could have visited the temple on normal days for darshan. But we stay in Malkangiri and it is far away from Puri. We were planning to visit during Rath, but the pandemic dashed out hopes,” said Sahadeb Pattnaik, a devotee.
Jayashree Mahapatra, a devotee from Kalahandi, said, “I had a smooth darshan of the deities in the temple in March. I was hoping that normalcy would return. But the pandemic played spoilsport and kept us away from the deities.”
The servitors, too, felt the absence of devotees. “When I was pulling the chariots, I was in tears as we missed the crowd, their chants of Jai Jagannath and the hustle and bustle on Grand Road,” said Ramachandra Dasmohapatra, a senior servitor.