The priest looked at my phone. “Put that away,” he said. “The Lord doesn’t need updates.” I put it away. Best decision of my trip.
Puri during Rath Yatra is chaos. Millions of people. Sights. Sounds. Sweat. Faith.
Before I left, I read “odisha news today”. It told me:
Stampede risk
Heatwave warning
Traffic nightmare
Political controversy over rituals
I packed my bag thinking I was going into a war zone.
The priest’s news filter
The priest’s name was Gopinath. He has been serving at the Jagannath Temple for 40 years.
I asked: “Aren’t you worried about the stampede risk? The heatwave? The politics?”
He said: “I have seen 40 Rath Yatras. Every year, news says the same things. Every year, the Rath moves. Every year, people go home happy.”
“The news creates fear. The Lord creates faith. Choose faith.”
What I actually saw
No stampede. The crowd was huge but disciplined. Police managed well. No heatwave. It was hot. But people drank water. Rested. Survived. No traffic nightmare. I walked. So did millions. No political controversy on the ground. Only on TV.
What I saw:
A 90-year-old woman who walked 10 km to see the Rath. She was crying with joy.
A young boy who sold flags. He paid for his school fees with that money.
A family from a village who saved for 2 years to come. They were smiling.
A foreign tourist who was crying. Not from fear. From beauty.
This is Odisha. Not the Odisha in “odisha news today”.
What the priest taught me
I asked Gopinath: “Do you read ‘odisha news today’?”
He laughed. “I read the Bhagavad Gita. That is enough news for a lifetime.”
“The Gita tells me: you can only control your actions. Not the outcomes. Not what others do. Not what news says.”
“So I control my actions. I do my rituals. I serve the Lord. I go home. News does not come to my home.”
The one Odisha story that matters
I spent a week in Odisha after the Rath Yatra. I traveled to Bhubaneswar. To Konark. To Chilika Lake.
Here’s what I found that no headline mentioned:
A village near Chilika where women run a cooperative that sells dried fish. They have lifted their families out of poverty.
A young man in Bhubaneswar who started a free coding class for slum children. 20 of them now have jobs.
A temple in Konark that has stood for 800 years. No headline has ever kept it standing. The people have.
A fisherman who taught me how to read the wind. He doesn’t read news. He reads the sky.
The difference between fear and faith