Vyasa Puja Offerings 2026: Hamsini Devi Dasi

The following is the Vyasa Puja offering of Hamsini Devi Dasi.

Dear Srila Prabhupada,

As I spend more time in the association of devotees, I realise more and more how little feeling I have for you. For this reason, I feel completely unqualified to speak anything about your glories, but I will try. And I hope that you can accept this insignificant offering.

In the year 1965, you boarded the Jaladutta ship, en route to America. Due to your pastime of being an elderly man, this decision had shocked your associates, them fearing that you would not survive the trip. There was nothing to your name, but a few rupees, some cereal and your translation and commentary of the Srimad Bhagavatam. But with so little belongings, and after even displaying the transcendental pastime of suffering a heart attack, you went on to change the face of the world. Aboard this ship, you famously wrote the prayer to Krishna as an excerpt follows: ‘O Lord, I am just like a puppet in Your hands. So if You have brought me here to dance, then make me dance, make me dance, O Lord, make me dance as You like.’

You disembarked from the Jaladuta, onto a pier in Boston, Massachusetts, then heading to Brooklyn, New York, where you would stay for one year, in temporary accommodation. But after this you established ISKCON, and soon enough it wasn’t just you dancing, but people all over the globe. In only 10 short years you opened 108 temples all across the world and induced the living entities to give up their illicit activities, of which around 10,000 of them even made a vow to never take up these activities again. This is a feat which is simply impossible for an ordinary man.

And now 48 years after your departure, you are still initiating thousands of souls with the knowledge given so magnanimously in your books.

I am sorry to beg from you, but please give me the strength, intelligence and guidance to continue on the path of Krishna consciousness.