Lord Jagannatha, we could even make clothes for Him
Yamuna dasi: The very, very first clothing or decoration that was given to Lord Jagannatha was, of course, given by Srila Prabhupada. And that wasn't in June of 1968, but that was in December of 1967 when Srila Prabhupada returned from India after recuperation from his heart attack. Srila Prabhupada came off the plane with his danda, first time we'd seen Srila Prabhupada with his sannyasa rod, and hanging off of his sannyasa rod was a little saffron pouch. We thought how curious that was because we thought that the rod you held in front of you, but Srila Prabhupada had this rod over his shoulder and the little pouch was on the end. At any rate, we brought him to the Willard Street apartment. So when Srila Prabhupada sat down in the front room, he had his suitcases opened. He had brought gifts for all the ladies, every lady had a sari, and he had brought our temple the first gift of a coconut grater. But in the little bag, he opened it up, unwrapped it and unfolded it and inside were three silken malas, the kind that you get at a deity store. For the small deities, of course, these are very, very thin, maybe a quarter of an inch wide; but these malas that Srila Prabhupada brought were a good inch-and-a-half thick. But because they were in this little bag, they were all crunched up and actually quite unattractive-looking because they had been a little bit damaged. So naturally we had never seen anything like that, what was it. So Swamiji explained that these were decorations that we could offer to Lord Jagannatha and, in fact, Lord Jagannatha, we could even make clothes for Him. So what kind of clothes would you make? Doesn't He already have clothes on? Isn't that what the painting is that's on the deity? "No," he said, "that's one kind of painting. You'll find deities who will be sometimes painted, sometimes there will be carving on the deities that will show that it's jewelry or clothing but, no, you can make clothes." So what kind of clothes do you make for a deity like Jagannatha? So Prabhupada said, "Here's what you do." So he said, "He wears a turban, He wears a shawl, and They wear a little skirt." So then he asked for volunteers, who would sew.
So Harsharani and Yamuna decided, "Well, we will volunteer." So for this 1968 Rathayatra, we were working with the builders; and when they gave us the drawing, we had come up with this very, very handsome already made and pleated series of umbrellas, almost like umbrellas that went around these outpourings of these cupolas in this wonderful bright cloth of saffron and gold. Now, Jagannatha, Subhadra and Balarama were in red satin, and you can see the pictures of Them. We even managed to get some wonderful garlands of fragrant flowers for this, red turbans.
Reference: Following Srila Prabhupada-A Chronological Series by Yamuna Dasi
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