SRI JAGANNATH AND GITA PANDA
Once, Arjun Mishra, a panda (पंडा) lived in Jagannath Puri. He spent most of his time reading Bhagavad Gita daily which made people call him Gita Panda.
Though he was very poor, he accepted all hardships as Prabhu’s prasadam.
@Shawshanko
Once, rains lashed Puri for an entire week and Gita Panda could not go out for begging. His family was forced to fast but Gita Panda was happy. He felt that now he would get more time to read Bhagavad Gita.
When his wife complained, he quoted a verse from Gita on having faith.
His wife was furious. She opened the book and scratched 3 lines through the verse.
Sometime later, Gita Panda went to sleep. His wife heard a knock on the door and found 2 beautiful boys- one fair and the other dark. They had a lot of foodstuff and gave all of that to her.
She was very happy and asked them to wait till she cooked so that they too could eat. The dark-skinned boy told her that they could not eat as his tongue had been cut in 3 places.
When they went away, she told the incident to Gita Panda who immediately understood everything.
The scratching of verse in the book had hurt Prabhu’s lotus mouth.
Realising that Prabhu always answers true devotion, she asked for forgiveness. Both, then, went to Puri Mandir with the prasadam
Sure enough, they saw Jagannath had 3 spots on his lips that day.
Narayan Hari🙏🏻