Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda,
Please accept our humble obeisances. All glories to your lotus feet.
This year we celebrated the fifty-first anniversary of the grand opening of the Śrī Śrī Krishna-Balaram Mandir in Vrindavan. You struggled tirelessly to establish this temple while you were also creating ISKCON temples worldwide. We are so grateful that Śrī Śrī Rukmiṇī-Dvārakādhīśa told you to open a temple in India that would be a hundred times better than any other temple you had established. We want to thank you for encouraging us by your enthusiastic determination to glorify Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu and the saṅkīrtana of the holy names at Krishna-Balaram Mandir, and also for allowing us to render some service to you and the guru-paramparā and to be part of Lord Caitanya’s saṅkīrtana mission.
The Krishna-Balaram Mandir Live high-definition broadcasting is followed by devotees all over the world. We invite everyone to participate and connect through our website, which shows darshans, kirtans, and festivals loved by everyone. Krishna-Balaram Mandir is one of the most popular temples in the entire world, and daily thousands of pilgrims take darshan of the beautiful Deities, dance in the twenty-four-hour kirtans, take prasādam, and purchase many books.
The upcoming Krishna-Balaram Cultural Center is beautifully designed, with arches, columns, guest rooms, a Govinda’s restaurant, a gift shop, and other facilities that will enhance and complement the temple, samādhi and museum. In the museum, we’ve developed unique diorama exhibits that give a glimpse of how you were empowered to spread Vedic knowledge all over the world. The new project will be ready by next year and will have more preaching facilities, cultural halls, more than 110 guest rooms, a new Govinda’s restaurant and bakery, and a very large book and gift shop.
For your pleasure, we are also building a senior care building with thirty nice rooms for your elderly disciples and devotees who wish to retire in Vrindavan. There is a new brahmacārī ashram, and many new bhaktas are joining. They are eagerly studying, being trained for book distribution, and serving in all the temple departments. Your Bhaktivedanta Swami International Gurukula has grown and is now developing a university on campus.
Fortunately, the Honourable President of India, Srimati Droupadi Murmu, along with the Governor of U.P. and a number of other top government officials, recently visited the Krishna-Balaram Mandir. She offered flowers to you at your samādhi and then at your vyāsāsana in the temple. While taking darshan of Their Lordships, she offered lamps to Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Śyāmasundara. Our cultural department presented a wonderful Odissi dance, performed by international devotees, and the gurukula boys chanted auspicious mantras.
With extreme gratitude we pray to you for the strength to carry on keeping the temple neat and clean, distributing many of your books, distributing free prasādam to everyone, and continuing the dynamic, twenty-four-hour kirtan, which inspires everyone to sing, dance, and appreciate your Kṛṣṇa consciousness saṅkīrtana movement. We feel your presence very much in your samādhi as well as in the Krishna-Balaram temple. You are our most worshipable, beloved representative of the Supreme Lord. You are the best servant of Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī. Please bless us. Jaya Śrī Śrī Kṛṣṇa-Balarāma!
Your humble servants,
(written by Pañcagauḍa Dāsa, temple president)