Preparation and Departure for America

Śrīla Swāmī Mahārāja spent considerable time in Delhi before he went to America, because this is where he was printing and distributing his books. He published three volumes of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam there. I went there several times to be with him, and we stayed together in his rooms at the Chippiwada Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa Temple.

He preached vigorously in Delhi; wherever he went, he preached to the public. He spoke about Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa and Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s mission to everyone he met, and he also engaged me beside him. Then, when he was in America, he wrote and encouraged me to continue preaching to the people he had cultivated there.

When Śrīla Swāmī Mahārāja was leaving to go to America, he described everything to me about his travel plans. He told me how, in Bombay, he had been given a ticket to travel across the Atlantic Ocean to Boston by freighter, and he described his route and his arrival there. He had great faith and a careful preaching strategy. His goal was to set up Vaiṣṇava institutes and dormitories there. Showing great confidence in the holy name, he said that even if at first the new students felt that they must take meat or wine, he would do what was necessary to begin their bhakti. He asked me to accompany him, and I begged him that I could not go without the permission of my gurudeva, who had ordered me to manage the māṭha in Mathurā.

One day he announced to me, “Now the time has come and I am going.” He was leaving for the Port of Calcutta and was to visit Māyāpura also. I came and said good-bye, and I took his footdust and put it on my head. Before he left he requested me to keep a regular correspondence with him, which I did, and we wrote many letters to each other in those next years. A few of these letters are printed in the pamphlet Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Letters from America. Unfortunately, most of his other letters to me were loaned (to those in charge of publishing Śrīla Swāmī Mahārāja’s biography on behalf of ISKCON) and have not yet been returned.

Later he wrote me to send him his books from his room in Mathurā, where many of his thick volumes were stored in his cabinet . His books were very dusty, and I cleaned and packed many boxes of them for an entire day. I then shipped those books by boat to New York. When we visited his rooms at the Los Angeles Temple in 1996, I was touched to see several of those same books still there in his bookshelves. I tried faithfully to perform all the services he requested.