The Indian community in New Jersey is preparing a bright welcome for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s long-awaited visit to the United States. A group of Modi supporters has convened at the Ved Mandir, the area’s oldest Hindu temple, to construct a 20-foot-long floral garland. The organisation chose the Tricolour as the subject for the garland in anticipation of welcome Prime Minister Modi to the United Nations. Chairman of the Federation of Indian Association, a diaspora organization, Ankur Vaidya, said: “As you heard from the ladies and the gentlemen that you see beside me working hard to put the mala together, they had gone to extended lengths to procure these organic flowers. The typical Indian mala flowers are not easy to get. So, we placed an effort and it’s a very humbling realization that the community is turning out in numbers, most of them US citizens who have been here for a couple of decades, showing their affection and love towards our motherland, towards the leader of our motherland by presenting this unique gesture of creating a handmade garland that will take hours to compile and put together through different volunteers.”
He said volunteers involved in preparing the garland include children and adults of all age groups.
“So it’s a very impressive, very divine, very auspicious environment in which the mala is being made as you can hear the mantras going in the background. It enables us and encourages us to do more of such things and it’s in a small way giving a big impact to prayers and blessings for the PM’s well-being, safety and may he continue to serve the motherland and continue to prosper the motherland,” Vaidya said.
Freshly picked flowers from nearby farms were sourced by the community. Each flower was then handpicked, trimmed and set in the garland.
Community member Smita Mikki Patel said: “We are trying to make this beautiful garland with the Tricolor theme to welcome our Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. We wanted to make this garland so big and so unique that we collected so many different kinds of flowers. We tried different places to get the flowers and finally, we found them in one of the organic. We got these flowers from the organic farm.”
Patel added: “We also have a Mission of Life theme in our organization. So, we just felt that we should go for the more organic product here to help the farmers as well.”
The priests of the temple even chanted mantras and prayed for the PM for a successful trip.
Ved Mandir Priest said the organization’s efforts will only be successful if PM Modi accepts the mala.
Children were seen making the Indian flag to greet PM Modi, and women from the Indian diaspora danced and trained in Richmond in preparation for their performance during the PM’s visit.
Meanwhile, the Indian diaspora in the United States expressed delight in the fact that yoga is now accepted on a global scale.
From June 20 to 24, Prime Minister Modi will visit the United States at the request of President Joe Biden.
During his formal state visit to the United States, Prime Minister Modi will lead the 9th edition of International Yoga Day on June 21 at the United Nations headquarters in New York. “We have been living in the US for 15 years. It is very good. PM Modi, during his tenure, has put India on the world map and has also made ‘yoga’ famous,” Ashish Bhatia said at Times Square.
Anu Bhatia, another Indian-origin lady said that the world has started to know about ‘yoga’ ever since PM Modi promoted it to the world stage.
“We follow yoga very deeply. Especially, after Modi ji became the Prime Minister of India, people in the US also started knowing about yoga. We wish that ‘Modi Sarkar’ comes every time,” she said.