A chariot in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Thousands of people turned out on the streets of the capital to pull the chariots of Lords Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra.Rath yatras were organised at 35 places in the city, but the one organised by Iskcon drew maximum crowd. Yatras at Patia and Tamando were also crowd pullers.

At Iskcon, the rituals began in the morning. After pahandi, the pulling of chariots commenced around 3.30pm. This is the only place in the city where three separate chariots are made for the three deities. “We had arranged everything properly and the pulling went on smoothly,” said Atmaram Prabhu, director of Iskcon.

Devotees from Nayapalli, Nilakantha nagar, Baramunda, Shastri Nagar and adjoining areas thronged the Iskcon temple and took part in the car festival. As the temple is located just beside the national highway, vehicular traffic had to be blocked from one side. It was diverted through the Ekamra Park Road to Jayadev Vihar.

People turned out in large numbers to pull the chariots to the Mausi Maa temple near DAV school at Unit-VIII. The chariot of Subhadra was pulled by women devotees here. “I could not make it to Puri, but I participated in the Iskcon rath yatra,” said Sulochana Mishra, a resident of Nilakantha Nagar.

Proceedings at Patia rath yatra, which had resumed last year after 78 years, went on smoothly with all the rituals being conducted. “As the Patia king died in January, his son the Fourth Dibyasingh Dev performed the ccherrapahnara. Then the chariots were pulled with the yatra culminating at Mausi Maa temple 500 metres away from the Jagannath temple,” said Abhav Badajena, a member of the temple trust.