Guru maharaj: As far as I remember, it was Shukadev Goswami. Either Shukadev or Suta, I feel it is Shukadev. So Lord Shiva was so eager to come down that He thought His bull Nandi was going too slow. So He asked Lord Brahma if He could borrow his vahan, his vehicle. So He came on the swan of Lord Brahma, all the sages stood up. They thought Brahma had come and they were surprised to see Lord Shiva on Lord Brahma’s swan! The deity there is Hamsa vahan, Lord Shiva on the back of a swan. If you want to hear a pastime of Hamsa Vahan, I can tell you later. So it is a safari story. We are going on safari. Govindam Adi Purusham Tam aham Bhajami.. Ha! So we all took some milk or some Ganges water to be offered to Lord Shiva but somehow all of the water of the Ganges spilt. So what should we do? So they went ahead to Pushkar thirtha and filled our pots with the Pushkar water and then we went back to Hamsa Vahan. So once a year they have the deity come out and the villagers line up and they pour water over the head of Lord Shiva and they put a little flower on the head of the swan and if they ask for a benediction and if the Lord is pleased, He will give the benediction, the flower will pop up. And if there is no benediction then poom.. it will fall down. So the pujaris told us, wait wait! All the flowers are going down. Wait wait, you come. Then we went in. I only asked for pure bhakti and I don’t know what others asked. But Poof Haribol! The pujaris were very happy that the deity started giving benedictions again. So that is one pastime.

HH JAYAPATAKA SWAMI
13th March 2019
Sri Dham Mayapur, India