Venue: Chinmaya Dham, Melbourne
Date: 29thOct 2011

It was a beautiful Saturday morning and we as a family, all woke up looking forward to the Diwali celebrations in the evening at Chinmaya Dham. My Son, Ashwin had the opportunity to take part in an exciting play of Mahishasuramardhini on account of the Deepavali celebrations in Chinmaya Dham. He was playing the role of Lord.Brahma in that play. Ashwin was very excited to be part of it. My wife Vasu, after discussing with the Balvihar teacher, Aparna, both came up with the idea of preparing the 4 faces of Brahma - by printing and cutting out an Ashwin's portraits and pasting it in a card board and lo, the 4 faced Brahma (including one real face) was ready.

That evening just before the start of the event at the Dham, we could see so many wonderful characters coming to life getting ready for the grand play. We all assembled inside the main hall of the Chinmaya dham and the program for Deepavali celebrations started with a short pooja from Br.Gautamji followed by Bhajans. Then the Lynbrook Balvihar group sang the complete Madhurashtakam song beautifully. A talk from Br.Gautamji about the love of a mother and how much patience she shows towards her child, and also it carried very good message about the divinity of Goddess Lakshmi. This talk contained the real reason why we worship Goddess Lakshmi and the real meaning of Sampathi (wealth) which we seek from her- there are actually 6 types of inner wealth - control of our mind, control of our senses, ability to withdraw, titiksha-to endure or forbearance, Shraddha- to have faith and trust and Samadhanam-peace. If one is blessed with these 6 types of inner wealth then he/she is considered wealthy and we worship Goddess Lakshmi only for this wealth. Also he narrated story from the scriptures about endurance - famous story of Sant Eknath. On the Diwali day we tune ourselves to richness if we workship Goddess Lakshmi for this inner wealth instead of outer wealth. Inner wealth never reduces in value and grows by giving it to others. Also the meaning of Deepavali - row of lights - entire Ayodhya was lit with lamps to usher back Ramchandraji into Ayodhya after 14 years of exile.

The play of Mahishasuramardhini began, performed by Mount Waverley Balvihar. It started with the Asura-Mahisha praying to Lord Brahma who appears before him and grants him the boon of strength and invincibility that he cannot be killed even by the Gods, he then becomes very headstrong and starts creating havoc in all 3 worlds and even torturing the sages. Three Gods and Godesses, Brahma-Saraswathi, Shiva-Parvathi, Vishnu-Lakshmi assembled with the devas and discussed about how to vanquish this Mashisha the indestructible, then they decided to make a powerful form consisting of the combined energy of all 3 Gods and Godesses and devas, put together to form the all-powerful Mahisuramardhini (Durga). The hall reverberated when the Aiygiri-Nandhini song was played and danced by the participants. Finally Asura-Mahisha was destroyed by Durga. It was wonderful to see the participation of the young children well synchronised and enacting the play so beautifully.

After the Mangala Aarthi, finally the much awaited burning of the Asura Ravan (Ravan Dhahan ignited by arrow from Lord Ram’s bow) started followed by Firechackers. It was very pleasing to see Chyks taking the safety precutions and taking so much care to ensure young children could enjoy the firecrackers safely.

As parents we felt very happy and the whole experience of taking part in the Diwali celebrations at Chinmaya Dham was really enriching and enjoyable for the whole family, not to forget that we learnt so much on this day of Deepavali celebrations at the Dham.