Pandav Tala

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
9 February 2017, Sri Ekachakra Dham
Translated from Bengali

We are very fortunate to have made Sri Ekachakra Dham parikrama. During this parikrama we went to the Jagannath mandir—one time, Hadai Pandit wanted to have the darshan of Lord Jagannath, and Sriman Nityananda Prabhu said to him, "You do not have to go to Puri to have the darshan of Lord Jagannath, I will bring Jagannath here!" This is how this temple appeared.

There is also Pandav tala near our temple. When the Pandavs were exiled from their kingdom, they started travelling to many different places, and when a few years passed, they came here to Ekachakra. Before, there was a forest here and in the forest there was a house of an old brahman. The five Pandavs (Yudhisthir, Arjun, Bhima, Nakul, and Sahadev) with Kunti stayed at his house.

In this area there was also a demon called Baka who would go house to house destroying everything and killing people every day. Eventually, the villagers came to the demon and offered to send a cart full of food and one person from the village every day. The demon agreed. So, one day, it was the turn of that brahman's house where the Pandavs were staying—they had to send one person to the demon for his food. The brahman had a wife and a son.

"I will go," said the son to his parents.

"No, we cannot allow this. We are old now, we will not live long, one of us will go."

"I will go," said the father.

"No, no, I will go," said the mother.

"No, mother and father. You will not go, I cannot allow this," said the child.

The mother began to cry and Kunti Devi, the mother of Pandavs, saw her crying.

"What has happened? Why are you crying?" she asked the wife of the brahman.

"No, no, it is nothing..." she replied thinking that the Pandavs and their mother were guests at their house so they should not tell anything to them.

"No, no, tell me what is the problem?" insisted Kunti. "My son Bhima is very strong, he can help."

"You are our guests, we cannot trouble you. A guest in the house is Narayan—we must always serve the guests..."

Eventually, they found out what the matter was and Bhima said, "Who is this Baka demon? Where does he live? I will finish him!" What did he do then? There was prepared a bullock cart loaded with food and Bhima took the cart and started off to the raksasa's place. As he was walking, he became very hungry and started eating the food in the cart. By the time he reached the demon's place, it had gotten very late and the cart was empty. The demon was impatient and angry, "Who is coming today? Will they come or not?!" When he saw Bhima and the empty cart, he became very angry, "You are not only late, but you have eaten all my food!"" They started fighting and Bhima killed the demon.

So, this Pandav tala is the place where the Pandavs stayed, Vyasadev also came here...

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