UTSAV '08

UTSAV KOLKATA, 08

“Love is seeing God in the person next to us. Meditation is seeing God within us." It taught to love yourself and to love others. Indeed the most appropriate line to describe the Utsav experience. Fourteen Hundred youth under one roof for a spiritual gathering, hats off to the idea. One vision, complete faith and hundred percent dedication, is all, that manifested in the form of UTSAV Kolkata, August 2008.
At one point of time Utsav seemed a fantasy, a possibility which certainly seemed impossible, but "addidas" puts it right, "impossible is nothing", and our two Yes+ teachers and a bunch of volunteers went all the way to prove it right. Managing, organizing, multi tasking, we did it all. Days which seemed really long in college classrooms, suddenly seemed to be running sort of hours. Sunset ignited panic every evening; it was a sign of one more precious day over. Time kept its pace which unfortunately registrations did not and at the end of July all we had was six hundred registrations. Offices we bunked, colleges we went but only for talks, ensuring the invisibility of the volunteer who was a student of that college and trust our parents if they say, they had no clue of where their children were the past twenty days, they actually didn’t.
The best was yet to come, an all India strike on the third day of Utsav. The dates had to be revised, those already registered had to be informed, the availability of Netaji Indoor Stadium (our venue for the course) had to be confirmed, and basically we were in a mess. We finally got dates frizzed which were 18th, 19th, 21st and 22nd of August, yes we had a break in between. And because of all this, the registrations suffered. Registrations did start coming but still the “Two Thousand” figure was far off and here came the icing on the cake, TRM scheduled on the last week before Utsav, talks had to be given, registrations had to come, id cards had to be distributed and out teachers had to leave, wow, couldn’t ask for more. Its now that the grace started working, conversions came from nowhere and everywhere, id cards were quite smoothly distributed and we finally crossed the four digit mark. Oh! What a sigh of relief.
Here came the D-day, and the two most amazing people landed in Kolkata, Bawa and Dinesh, they actually prove the point that opposite values is complementary, hats off to them. Just their mere sight made me realize that we were in for a treat. My realization was too small, treat was not the word, we had a blast. Fourteen hundred people together breathing to the rhythm of “SOHAM”, words cannot describe more. Vikram Bhayia was the cherry on the pie, without which the pie was certainly incomplete. The rock Satsang rocked every heart and soul present in the auditorium, and I can actually say, we couldn’t ask for more. The carefree confident smile which every participant was wearing on the last day paid off for all the hard work, it was eventually that what mattered.
Utsav, Kolkata was the most thrilling, exciting, learning and fun filled experience, unmatched. Nothing, simply nothing can ever come close to what Utsav experience was. Kolkata is rocking post Utsav, with known faces in every youth gathering, the seed has been sown and the harvest will indeed be beautiful, with Guriji’s grace.

Jai Gurudev