Deepti Sharma and her friends who run a cultural group in Melbourne’s West told SBS Hindi, "Every year we hire a big community function hall and celebrate Janmashtami on a grand scale with family and friends. Generally, we start preparing weeks before the festival.”
Highlights:
* Temples arrange pooja and celebrations via digital platforms
* Devotees participate via Zoom, Facebook and WhatsApp
"But this year because of stage 4 lockdown in Melbourne, residents cannot gather or step outside to celebrate [the festival].
“After a lot of thought, our team came up with the idea to do the exact same things that we do together and on the stage of the function hall, online. The only difference was we had to record and broadcast the activities.”
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Her colleague, Pooja Miglani was given the responsibility to coordinate with all the participants.
“The whole process was so good that I didn’t realise that we were not together in a hall to celebrate our annual Janmashtami function,” she says.
Kids and ladies performed their dance routines but the enthusiastic participation of our senior (elderly) members took the cake, Ms Miglani said.
"Editing more than 200 video clips and arranging them with music was not an easy job," she says.
Group's social media enthusiast Vikram Chopra helped them out and made it look like a professional job.
“Frankly speaking, I just did the technical part and I had a lot of help from other people,” he says.
“It is very fulfilling to be able to celebrate Janmashtami digitally but I miss the mithai (Indian Sweets).”
Ramesh Rao, the coordinator of Sri Krishna Brundavana Temple in Melbourne told SBS Hindi, “Because of restrictions we planned earlier and informed all devotees that they can join the pooja and extended Janmashtami function via an online application from their homes.”
Source: Ramesh Rao
"Every year the event is celebrated as a community gathering with hundreds of devotees congregating at the temple throughout the day, participating in rituals and breaking the fast together at midnight to celebrate the occasion of Krishna’s birth.
"However, this year all the rituals conducted at the temple were live-streamed due to COVID restrictions.
“This has opened up a new avenue for the temple to reach members of the community in the future.
"Technological advances have enabled the temple to offer similar services to the devotees across the globe. SVKB intends to live telecast all future events and celebrations in the future through social media channels for community engagement,'' said Mr Rao.
