PREPARATION AND DEPARTURE FOR AMERICA

Srila Swami Maharaja spent considerable time in Delhi before he went to America. This is where he was printing and distributing his books. He had published three volumes of Srimad-Bhagavatam. Several times I went there to be with him and we stayed together in his rooms at the Chippiwada Radha-Krsna Temple. He preached vigorously in Delhi. Wherever he went he preached to the public. To everyone he met he spoke about Radha-Krsna and Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu's mission. He also engaged me along beside him. When he was in America, he wrote and encouraged me to continue preaching to the people he had cultivated there. (Appendix 9)

When Swamiji 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. He explained his route and his plans when he would arrive there. He had great faith and a careful preaching strategy. His goal was to set up a Vaisaava institute and dormitory there in the videshi (Western) countries. Showing such 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 Krsna consciousness. Several times he asked me to accompany him. I begged him that I could not go without the permission of my Gurudeva who had personally ordered me to manage the manha in Mathura.

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 Mayapur 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 we did. We wrote so many letters to each other in those next years. A few of these are printed in the pamphlet, "Srila Prabhupada's Letters from America". Unfortunately, most of his other letters to me were loaned and have not yet been returned. (Appendix 10)

Later he wrote to me to send him his books from his room in Mathura. So many of his thick volumes were stored in his almira. They were very dusty and for one entire day I cleaned and packed many boxes of his books. Then we shipped those books by boat to New York . When we visited his rooms in the Los Angeles temple I was touched to see many of those same books still there in his bookshelves. I tried faithfully to carry out all of the services he requested in his letters to me. (Appendix 11)