The Bhagavad-Gita, or The Song of God, is one of the oldest and most poetic scriptures in the world. Like other holy books, it is filled with the knowledge society needs in order to live a God conscious and moral life. There are 700 slokas, or verses, describing everything from the nature of this material world to what the ultimate goal of life is: developing pure love for God (Krsna). Every December, devotees of Krishna across the globe celebrate Gita Jayanti, the day the Lord spoke the Bhagavad-Gita to His disciple and dear most friend, Arjuna.

This year, Bhaktivedanta Gurukula and International School of Vrindavan, India, celebrated this holy day in a unique and as one guest observed, “Most novel!” way. Three weeks before the day, the students and staff hand wrote each of the 700 verses of the Bhagavad-Gita onto 6X6 inch colourful pieces of fabric. Each square was then sown together to make a beautiful quilt measuring 12 X 20 feet! At 12 noon, the quilt was unfurled with great ceremony before the Samadhi memorial of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder Acarya of the International Society for Krsna Consciousness. The seventh grade students chanted the seventh chapter and then performed an 18 mrdanga drum recital, each drum representing one chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita.

One guest commented that the quilt “looked like a giant prayer flag blowing in the breeze sending its spiritual message out into the winds to be blown across the world.” Bhaktivedanta Gurukula and International School prays that each person can take some message, one square of the quilt, into their hearts. To quote from the Bhagavad-Gita: “One should meditate upon the Supreme Person as the one who knows everything, as He who is the oldest, who is the controller, who is smaller than the smallest, who is the maintainer of everything, who is beyond all material conception, who is inconceivable, and who is always a person. He is luminous like the sun, and He is transcendental, beyond this material nature.”