Prabhupada said it was like a dream come true.
Tosan Krishna das : The parade had already traveled about a mile from Central Park, and it was headed toward Washington Square Park at the end of Fifth Avenue. Srila Prabhupada stepped up onto the Subhadra cart at 34th Street, and the police who were overseeing the parade took note and they told me later, "That man was really special." And they ended up volunteering, the same group, every year for that duty because they actually took some thrill in the occasion. It was a voluntary task. Obviously there was some compensation, but they took interest and they looked forward to participating themselves in the Rathayatra.
Hari Sauri das : The Rathayatra parade was going down Fifth Avenue and we drove down parallel, maybe down Sixth Avenue. We crossed a couple of blocks and we saw on one cross street one of the rath carts, and then when we got down to the next cross street there was the other one. So it stretched a whole city block, and it looked really impressive from where we were. Then we cut across to the cross street where the Empire State Building is, and then we waited there for a few minutes for the rath cart and we were a little bit ahead. Then the rath carts came down and then they stopped just where we were, and then Prabhupada got out. I remember there was this tremendous scrimmage. It was all reporters from newspapers and TV and what have you, and they were all?literally one or two of them were fighting with each other to get in because everybody was so packed up, and the devotees were all around chanting and dancing like crazy when Prabhupada came out. Prabhupada just kind of glided through the whole thing. Prabhupada bumped his head on the decking, it was so low. We were a little paranoid that some crazy people might try to do something, so it was a security measure. We also sat with him under the decking, and there were about three or four devotees that sat on the corners and next to the vyasasana. And I found out later that they were all armed, they all had guns on them. I think the deprogramming stuff had just started up in America and there had been demonstrations in L.A. in early June, so they were a little bit afraid of that. So from our vantage point, we really didn't see very much. We were underneath the decking there. All we could see was lots and lots of people up and down the streets. Prabhupada really enjoyed it because it was exactly 10 years to the month when he had formed ISKCON in New York in that little tiny storefront with just a small group, 5 or 10 hippies, and now he's back in New York gliding down Fifth Avenue with these massive rath carts, hundreds and thousands of people watching. Prabhupada said it was like a dream come true.
Reference: Following Srila Prabhupada-A Chronological Series by Toshana Krishna Dasa
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