Bhubaneswar: The sleepy village of Patiyagarh woke up to chants and clonks as thousands of devotees thronged the Jagannath temple to have a glimpse of the Lords.

King Ramachandra Dev and his son Raghunath Dev built the Patia temple in 1227, reads a plaque. The festival, which had been stopped for 78 years, resumed in 2010. On this year, residents pooled in funds and decided to resume celebration of the festival. The temple fund is now more than a crore.

Kailash Chandra Sahu, president of the Patia Jagannath Mandir Temple trust, said: “This year we observed Nabakalebar according to the rituals followed in Puri Jagannath temple and with the guidance and instruction of Mukti Mandap.”

Chariots at the Iskcon, however, attracted the maximum crowd. The overbridge built last year was an added advantage as many devotees preferred to view the event from the top of the bridge. The chariots rolled through the road in a procession to the Unit-VIII Gundicha Temple. The chariot of goddess Subhadra was pulled by only women. Since the chariots had to move through the national highways, police had diverted the traffic at different places for smooth movement of the chariots.

Radhakanta Das, spokesperson of Iskcon, said that over 80,000 devotees were present during the chariot pulling today. The police had made elaborate arrangements to control the traffic on major roads and NH-16 and NH-203.

“Besides setting up six control rooms across the city, patrolling vehicles have been put in place for smooth traffic flow during chariot pulling. This apart ambulance facilities were in place to control any mishap or untoward incidents,” said assistant commissioner of police (traffic) Jatin Panda.

Chariots were also pulled in Old Town and Tamando. Over 300 children of Old town city organised an all-children rath yatra that drew a huge crowd.

“My mother and I wanted to go to Puri, but were scared of the crowd. But we have no regrets. The joy in pulling the chariot here is as pure as it would have been there,”said Pragyan, a young devotee.

Chariots were also pulled in different schools, including the Shrivani Khetra of Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS). 
More than 30,000 devotees gathered here to pull the three chariots.

The Jagannath temple on Regional College of Management campus also witnessed a huge crowd.

Text by Priya Abraham, Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee