The New York brahmachary bunkhouse at 61 Second Avenue was right behind the temple room’s altar. They really were bunks, in an austere style, made of plywood and 2x4s by Nara Narayan. In that little space on the second floor (the first floor was a Chinese laundry), Gargamuni sat on his plywood platform, dipping joss sticks into essential oils, starting the Spiritual Sky incense business that would help support so many Iskcon centers for years.
I had my bunk there too. It was January, 1969 – the first time I’d lived in the temple.
After chanting with Srila Prabhupad and his disciples at Tompkins Square Park in October of 1966, I attended classes and kirtans regularly. I waited six months to get initiated, which I’d read somewhere was the classic practice. But I lived seven blocks away with my then wife, Michele. Through 1967 and 1968 our marriage fell apart. I moved into the temple.
I’d been serving as the art director of Back to Godhead, and continued doing so until the spring of 1969. At that time, Srila Prabhupad drastically simplified the production of the magazine, declaring that our time would be better spent out on the streets doing sankirtan. I became the co-leader of the New York sankirtan party along with Subal, who had also been on the BTG staff.
Spring turned into summer. Prabhupad wanted us to open more temples. Brahmananda asked me where I’d like to go. I had some beatnik fascination with Denver, but I knew that Washington DC would be a logical next location. Brahmananda presented the two options to Prabhupad, who wrote him a letter with his instruction.
In the bunkhouse, Brahmananda read me the letter. The nation’s capital was my assignment.
Madhusudan, who’d been initiated along with me two years earlier, was also instructed to go to DC. He’d been saving his earnings. I didn’t have much in the bank. With our pooled finances, we got on a plane in August and landed at DC’s National Airport.
We didn’t have a letter of introduction to anyone. But Michele, who was very active politically, got in touch with a friend whose anti-war group was working out of a big house on P Street between 20th and 21st Streets, a block or so from Dupont Circle. He told her we could crash there for a while. So Madhusudan and I took a bus to Dupont Circle and sat on a bench in the park just to take in our surroundings.
As we talked to each other, we realized we were speaking at an unnecessarily high volume. Despite all the traffic going around the Circle, the place was so much quieter than New York. We lowered our voices. Washington was going to be a more genteel locale. We’d have to tone down the intensity of the Manhattan style.
In the house on P Street – it’s not there any more – I found Michele’s friend. At that time, the Hare Krishnas were considered part of the overall social-political change phenomenon. We were radically opposed to materialism. We had a “Love Feast” every Sunday with free food. We got high off mantra chanting. That was sufficient to earn us a place in “The Movement.” So the anti-war people welcomed the two monkish guys with shaved heads and sikhas.
Fortunately they didn’t ask us to join in their political activities. They knew we were there to get a Hare Krishna center going, and let us do our business.
Our search for a house rental was centered on Dupont Circle. Students and seekers were in the area, among the wealthier government workers. We hoped to find a place nearby that was modest but pleasant. It didn’t take long. The address was 2154 Newport Place. A narrow two-story building at the end of a row of similar structures, it had one side exposed to an alley. We thought that would be good. We’d only have one neighbor to complain to us about our kirtans!
The phone number on the For Rent sign was answered by the landlord, a friendly 30-ish Virginian by the name of Virgil. He came over to meet us. Needless to say, he was uncertain. We didn’t lie to him about what we wanted to do. Of course, we didn’t announce that we wanted to “inundate the city with waves of bhakti bliss and transform the demonic elements of the government into emissaries for Lord Chaitanya’s movement of devotional service to Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead,” as we might have put it among ourselves. For Virgil, we stated our intention, as Prabhupad would say, “palatably.”
Virgil was willing to give us a try. We signed the papers, handed over the money, and moved in.
There we were. In the Washington DC Iskcon center – New Hastinapur! A humble beginning.
However, for the first couple of months, we were still very much an extension of the New York temple. Madhusudan went back there, got married, and returned with his enthusiastic wife, Kanchanbala. I was often on the phone with Brahmananda to get advice on business matters.
The first order of business was to incorporate in the District of Columbia as the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Then we established a schedule of public kirtans and classes, and “hit the streets” with our sankirtan. We placed ads in an alternative newspaper and made posters to distribute around Northwest DC and Georgetown. Gargamuni had moved to Los Angeles to partner with Tamal Krishna in developing Spiritual Sky, and we made our initial order.
Prabhupad had his spiritual eye on us. He gave us a big boost by sending us an attractive devotee couple, Dinesh and Krishna Devi, along with their little girl, Vishnurata. They really made our sankirtan a big hit – people warmed up to the family scene of Mom, Dad and daughter chanting Hare Krishna. Dinesh was the original media man of Iskcon, with expertise beyond the technical limits of my eight millimeter silent films. He was gathering the disorganized tapes of Srila Prabhupad’s lectures, kirtans and bhajans.
Washingtonians started coming to the house for kirtans and prasadam. We were really lucky to have accomplished cooks – everybody but me! Another very fortunate aspect of our location was that down the block was an apartment building occupied by many Indian families connected to the Indian Embassy. Needless to say, all of them came over out of curiosity, and some continued coming, impressed by the correctness and purity of Srila Prabhupad’s teachings. Foremost among them were two families – the Malhotras and the Dhyanis. They helped the center grow in many ways, and became our dear friends.
While Madhusudan was back in New York, Tosan Krishna and Vrindaban Chandra dropped in on their way to North Carolina, fresh from the epic Woodstock Festival with enthusiastic tales of book distribution and kirtans. Then in November a large group of devotees from other temples squeezed in to be in DC for the anti-war March on Washington. Day and night distribution of books and BTGs ensued among the clouds of tear gas. Dupont Circle was “occupied” by protesters, who set fire to trash cans to mark the perimeter. Two devotees were arrested and held overnight along with hundreds of others. When they were released, I inquired what the police officer had charged them with. They answered, “We asked the cop and he said, ‘Just being.’” Crazy times – and excellent times for recruiting devotees.
The six of us were experiencing such happiness, knowing that in the capital city of the US, the Hare Krishna mantra, Prabhupad’s books, and Back to Godhead were being distributed at an increasing rate. Early Saturday evening we’d leave the temple, walk across Rock Creek Park and through the residential streets of Georgetown, to arrive at the packed sidewalks of Wisconsin Avenue. Our melodious kirtan – now augmented by an imported clay mridanga – drew crowds of listeners, who stayed to hear our explanations of what we were doing, and bought our literature.
Still, there were some people who weren’t happy about our musical offerings – the police. At both our favorite fixed locations – Connecticut Avenue and L Street and Wisconsin and M, they gave us a hard time. We had no permit. We were making a lot of noise. We had to move along.
In Georgetown one officer in particular, a rotund fellow we’d nicknamed Porky Pig, just wouldn’t stop threatening us. Finally, he arrested me for disturbing the peace and led me into a cell in the station house. I didn’t have to sit there very long, however. We had a good friend, an elegant Southern guy always dressed to the nines. He happened to be waiting for the devotees to return to the temple, heard about my incarceration, and came to bail me out.
One young woman, Denise, was a regular visitor to our temple functions. Soon she moved in – the first addition to our crew! When Prabhupad invited me to go to Los Angeles to experience the high level of sankirtan and deity worship being practiced there, I brought Denise along, thinking (correctly) that seeing and hearing His Divine Grace and taking part in Vishnujan’s Hollywood Boulevard sankirtan would motivate her to want to become Prabhupad’s disciple. Soon she was initiated as Dwijapatni.
In Los Angeles I informed Prabhupad about our very limited finances. Gargamuni was in the room. Prabhupad looked at him and said Gargamuni would help out – “Garga-money!” he declared, laughing.
Since Dinesh and I both had some technical background, perhaps it’s not surprising that an accomplished techie would gravitate to the center. He was Howard, who was doing computer coding for a company in Michigan. He worked in his apartment, sending his code to the firm through a telephone receiver cradled on a modem connected to his computer. This was in 1969 or 1970, mind you, and I was fascinated. As for Howard, he was fascinated by Vaishnava philosophy. His attachment to Krishna grew quickly. He let us use his car – we didn’t have any vehicle of our own. When I got into a fender-bender at Logan Circle, he wasn’t at all angry – showing true detachment from material possessions. He and Dinesh cooperated on the audio tape project, which he later took over at the Brooklyn temple, as the first producer of cassette tape versions of Srila Prabhupad’s transcendental sound vibrations. He was initiated there as Pratyatosa.
Chris Murray and Kim Waters, Washingtonians who were married at that time, were among the first visitors to our little temple. They became regulars. Physically stunning, well spoken, well educated, well traveled, cultured, creative people, Chris and Kim by their presence encouraged us to think we must be presenting Srila Prabhupad’s teachings properly. Actually, Kim has since said she wasn’t so impressed by us. Soon enough, however, she met Prabhupad – perhaps in New York – and that was what convinced her to dedicate herself and her artistic talent to the glorification of Lord Krishna. Over the next few years, with Chris handling the production and finances of publishing, Kim turned out exquisite renderings of Krishna’s pastimes in her books Illuminations from the Bhagavad-Gita and The Butter Thief, and in her fold-out piece The Vrindavan Activity Set. Then as one half of the duo Rasa, Kim sang Vaishnava bhajans on their CDs. In 1975 Chris went on to open Georgetown’s popular art space, the Govinda Gallery. He’s still actively curating exhibits – I get his blog updates.
Our Sunday Feasts were drawing enough people to fill up our living/dining room temple area. One big draw was our dramatic performances, enacting the pastimes of Lord Krishna and Lord Chaitanya. A college drama teacher brought his classes. He told us our humble “folk art” was so powerful because we weren’t just putting on a show. We actually believed in the reality of what we were portraying!
By the spring of 1970 it was plain we had to get a bigger building. We wanted to stay in the same area of town. We kept our eyes open for possibilities. And one looked very good. It was a town house on Q Street between Connecticut Avenue and 21st Street. A half block away was the Indian Embassy. It was for sale. But – this prestigious location – was it just a fantasy to think we could afford it?
We decided that if Krishna desired us to have it, somehow it would happen. I enquired about the sale price. It was way beyond anything we could come up with, and we didn’t even attempt to get a bank loan. My only recourse was to talk directly with the owner, Elliott Diamond.
What he did was extraordinary. We were convinced that Krishna was using him to advance Prabhupad’s movement. He agreed to set up an arrangement that if we paid him a set monthly amount, when that added up to the sale price, the place would be ours. As I signed the papers, in my mind I pictured Krishna as the actual landlord, and I was making a deal to serve Him the best I could in return for His giving us this wonderful temple.
Our little band of seven devotees moved in, with friends helping. So many rooms! We hardly knew what to do with the main floor, and made a temple area on the second floor next to the kitchen. With a redesign in mind, I started to gut out part of the basement. But I hadn’t consulted the others about it. Dinesh was justifiably upset about that. My ego-impulse to do things on my own still lands me in the hot seat!
It was Dinesh who got us that essential property of a Hare Krishna temple – a van. He prevailed upon his parents to help us out. That Dodge van became Krishna’s chariot.
New devotees joined up, all their initiations being done by Srila Prabhupad by mail. I’d send a letter to him recommending them. Getting a letter back from Prabhupad with the new initiates’ spiritual names was always a joyous occasion.
Robbie had been at the Sikh ashram. “Oh, there goes my beautiful blond hair,” he joked as he got shaved up. Well, he still had a beautiful blond sikha. He became Shrutadev. His brother joined up – Pancharatna. An energetic German guy came – Ashtarath. From New York came a married couple, Steve and Carol – Saptarath and Himalata. He was a sculptor and carpenter, and began reshaping the town house into a proper temple. He remains a good friend. Mahamaya Dasi started in DC and was initiated by Srila Prabhupad in Brooklyn. I was there when the devotees gasped at her name. Prabhupad said, “Mahamaya is not all bad. She is another feature of Radharani.”
We weathered the agonizing philosophical storm at the New Vrindaban celebration of Janmashtami that summer of 1970. Some were claiming, based on a sentence in the Nectar of Devotion, that Srila Prabhupad was God. Rupanuga cleared the air. Prabhupad was a representative of God, as good as God, and should be worshiped as much as God. But he was not God. His Divine Grace confirmed that by telephone.
Back in DC, we applied ourselves with greater effort, and more devotees came. One was Dasarath, who chanted his japa with such determination. I asked him why he never finished his sixteen rounds in the allotted time. He said when he found his mind wandering, he’d start that round over again. I suggested he be more forgiving of his transgressions and just proceed with the round, confident that the Holy Name would purify him. It must have worked – he’s been running the Sedona, Arizona center for years now.
Then came Bhagyavati. And you all know Anuttama. Vrindaban was a cool guy, but I had to ask him to do his intense breathing exercises somewhere other than the temple room. Daniel (Maziarz) came with his wife and son. They left after a while, but later were initiated as Dharmadhyaksha and Rasangi – I can’t remember the boy’s name. Dharma and I were good friends and roommates later on in LA. Rasangi is a Facebook friend.
Mamata (another Facebook friend) got her name in Brooklyn, but started in DC with her brother Dharmapada. The three brahmacharinis Vilasi, Ranbhavati, and Mankumari were pals and stellar book distributors.
Tosan Krishna came from New York to help with the college lecturing program. When he went on to another assignment, Shubhananda came to take over. Later he would write and publish extensively about Vaishnava philosophy.
I was still legally married to Michele. It’d been about four years since we’d separated. Now she wanted to remarry. So with her parents’ help she started divorce proceedings, which I didn’t contest. Through those years I’d always considered myself a householder. So it was time for me to remarry too. Arranged marriages – without the traditional astrological calculations – were the norm in Iskcon, so I called Bhavananda in LA. He suggested Mriganetri. I agreed. It all went quickly. I picked her up, sight unseen, at the airport. In a couple days we all packed into the van to distribute books at a rock festival in New York State. On the way we stopped at the Philadelphia temple. In a ceremony there, Rabindraswarup married Mriganetri and me. Since I wasn’t yet divorced, we couldn’t have a legal marriage, but now we’d tied the transcendental knot. Mriganetri, whose name was also Michelle, but with two l’s, became the brahmacharini house mother. After my divorce with the first Michele was finalized, we had a basic civil ceremony in Rockville.
Mriganetri gave birth to a lovely daughter, Gulab. Her name was chosen by Srila Prabhupad. He’d just declared he wasn’t going to be naming babies any more. But I called Rupanuga, who was with Prabhupad in Los Angeles, to ask if our beloved Gurudev would do it one more time. Rupanuga called back. He said Prabhupad had been holding a yellow rose, and looking at it, said, “Her name is Gulab.” Gulab is Rose in Sanskrit (and Bengali and Hindi).
In late 1971 we were having financial difficulty. We’d missed two payments to the landlord, and were about to miss a third. He was forgiving initially. But now he had to draw the line. Our delinquencies were hurting him. He told us that if we didn’t come up with three months’ worth of payments on the new due date, we’d have to move out that day. We asked for extra donations from friends, but by the night before the deadline we were still about a thousand dollars short. I gathered the devotees together to discuss what we’d do. It looked like we’d be out on the street. We hadn’t planned for getting another place. It was our darkest hour. Nevertheless, we knew that despite what seemed like a disaster, somehow Krishna would make it right.
Then Rot spoke up. Rot was from Thailand, one of the nicest guys you ever knew. He wasn’t initiated. “I have a thousand dollars,” he said. He explained that he’d been saving his money from his job to send to his family back home. But he would give it to the temple instead.
It was one of those times when the ordinary world opens up and something beyond is revealed. We were all stunned. But I held back any jubilation and asked Rot if he was sure he wanted to do it. I didn’t want him to regret it later and have a bad feeling about Krishna Consciousness. He was firm. He’d been thinking about it for days, he said, and had made his decision.
“I’ll go to the bank tomorrow and take out the money,” he said. And he did. And we were saved. A few days later, Rot was gone. We never saw him again. Did Krishna send him to us just for this purpose? You may supply your own interpretation of this extraordinary event.
From that time on, everything just kept getting better. More devotees joined up. Hasyakari and Bhaktavatsala, happy guys. Gentle Bhaktilila. Rathangapani, whose Facebook profile photo shows him with a big white beard as he regularly quotes from the Bhagavatam.
Varuthapa came to us from Baltimore along with a dozen more who moved in when that temple folded. It wasn’t possible to house everyone at 2105 Q Street. We rented a house around the corner on 21st Street. A year later we’d rent out another one a couple of doors away. My family and I moved into the first one, then the other, and finally into an apartment a few blocks south on 21st. Iskcon DC was growing rapidly.
I was able to augment our sankirtan income by selling Spiritual Sky products to stores in Washington and all around Maryland and Virginia. Mriganetri would bake me a date-and-nut bread loaf to keep me well nourished, and off I’d go in the van on early morning to late night trips to Richmond, Virginia Beach, Roanoke, Baltimore, Ocean City, and points between.
Ocean City – what a great place! We rented a little space there and fixed it up as our summer annex, staffed by dedicated devotees. The kirtans on the beach were the best yet. Thousands of vacationers got to enjoy the sound of the Hare Krishna mantra, many of them singing along.
On a more serious note, I visited members of Congress in their offices, telling them (when I could) about Srila Prabhupad’s plan for a God-centered civilization. Later I ran for Congress in DC – for a few months, until Prabhupad decided his In God We Trust Party had better take a back seat to increased book distribution.
More sincere souls came to help Srila Prabhupad disseminate love of God. Lakshmivan was soon followed by Aindra. Aindra, with his ever-blissful countenance, who took to Krishna Consciousness like a fish to water. Who went on to fame as the controversial force behind the 24-hour kirtans in Krishna’s birthplace, Vrindaban, with an energetic crew of his own.
Padmamalini and Jagara were next. He was an accomplished carpenter. He and Varuthapa managed to figure out how to expand the first floor into a large temple room by the daring method of taking out a load-bearing partition and replacing it with three huge beams. I confess my heart was in my throat while that was going on. Had they failed, the building would have collapsed, perhaps even affecting the adjacent row houses. But they did it. Another concern was that we never applied for a permit, and certainly would have been fined had the District found out about our mad scheme.
Or had they found out about our other redesigns, such as relocating the entrance door to the basement, boarding over the then-unusable first floor door with an Iskcon sign, ripping out the furnace and heating ducts and fireplaces and putting in electric heating, putting in a full kitchen on the basement/entrance level, removing the staircase to the second floor and replacing it with metal spiral stairs going up to a now-enlarged prasadam room, and wallboarding and plastering and painting where necessary.
We now had a temple worthy of the name. And in the spring of 1973, we made our final payment to Mr. Diamond. The building at Lot 0093, Square 0080, now belonged to the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, as confirmed by the Recorder of Deeds in the District of Columbia. (The deed was held in a trust to which we still made payments.)
But we didn’t have Radha-Krishna deities.
Well, we almost did. Starting with Srila Prabhupad’s approval, we went through a very long process of communicating with Yamuna in India and waiting interminably for the murti wallas to cast and ship the worshipable forms. Finally the deities arrived at the Port of Baltimore. I drove up to get them. To inspect the shipment, the crate had been opened. Inside I saw the brass deities, in perfect shape. The warehouse workers had seen them too. They remarked to me how beautiful they were. I thought, how wonderful that Krishna came to them in this way to open up their hearts to Him.
To get ready for more elaborate temple worship, we had constructed a large marble altar. It was immensely heavy. The floor underneath was braced up by a walk-in refrigerator we’d gotten at no cost from a farmer who’d advertised it in the newspaper.
Presiding over the temple on the altar were Gour-Nitai and Jagannath deities. But we weren’t ready to have the demanding schedule of worship that Radha-Krishna deities required. So they were carefully stored in a closet. For several months.
Then, in Brooklyn, as I sat in Prabhupad’s room, His Divine Grace told me that Kirtanananda, who was there too, smiling, wanted to have the murtis for his traveling road show sankirtan party. I sank into the floor. Prabhupad waited. Kirtanananda smiled. I surrendered.
“Well, Prabhupad,” I said, “They aren’t being served now. They’re meant to be served. So, yes, Kirtanananda can have them.”
Then my transcendental guru did the most wonderful thing. He indicated the black marble Krisnna murti in his room. That murti had been given to him in 1966 by a Mr. Sharma, who ran an import business in New York. We had put the murti on a table at 26 Second Avenue, and called him Govindaji. He moved with us to 61 Second Avenue, occupying a glass-door wall display case previously used for showing off P Blechman and Sons formal wear. Now he was in Brooklyn.
“You can have that Krishna,” Prabhupad said. “And I will draw for you how Radharani should look. She will be dancing Radharani.”
I mailed the drawing to Yamuna. This time it didn’t take as long. Dancing Radharani arrived, in her brilliant silvery bell-metal form. Shortly we set up a schedule of deity worship for Their Lordships, assisted by a pujari borrowed from another temple, and They were officially installed as Radha Madan Mohan.
I must admit I can’t remember many details of our deity worship, or of those who served as pujaris. Mriganetri and others took care of those duties as I busied myself with book distribution and finances. Book distribution, propelled along by Tripurari’s taped motivation lectures, had taken center stage. The new initiates were enthusiastic chanters and book distributors. Achyuta and Shyama Devi came, then Hari Priya and Garuda – Garuda, who has gone on to write books of his own on Vaishnavism, published by university presses.
In the last months of my service in Washington, Jagadish Pandit, Shankara Pandit, Tamal Kartika, Mardaraj, Gajapati, and Raghunanda were initiated. In all I was honored to recommend 35 souls to Srila Prabhupad. He accepted them as his disciples.
Administrative work was a necessity. I did it because Prabhupad asked me to. But I knew it didn’t fit me like a glove. I wanted to devote more time to teaching and writing. So Rupanuga, who was our GBC representative, accepted my resignation as temple president. Not long after, Mriganetri, Gulab and I moved to New Dwaraka in Los Angeles, and I started writing for BTG.
Devotees are still advancing Srila Prabhupad’s movement in our nation’s capital.
