My dear and wonderful Guru Maharaja,
Please accept my respectful, grateful, shameful, and affectionate obeisances! All glories to Srila Prabhupada and acharyas like you!
Wishing you many many many more years of great health, and more and more happiness in pleasing Srila Prabhupada and the previous acharyas!
At the outset, I would like to congratulate you for surmounting yet another mountain - Covid-19! What is there in a list that you have not conquered by the grace of the Lord and Srila Prabhupada. So many many insurmountable challenges which would leave any other person crippled with hopelessness and despair, you have aced it like a pro! I feel all this and more is only due to your tremendous connection to Srila Prabhupada’s heart and feeling his presence everyday. As I write this, the whole world is gripped under the spell of this crazy pandemic. Health becomes a priority and people feel so down out of fear and also due to some of them facing real health catastrophes and finding no answer to handle it.
As I think over just pure bodily impediments which have come your way, a minimalist list would sound like the following… And how you have sailed over all of them - purely by your desire and His Divine Grace!
1. 1950 - a rare skin disease which you cured by chanting the names of the Lord.
2. 1989, Spain - Neck stab. You survived just by the width of a vein from the stab almost cutting your jugular vein. You lived through it simply by depending on Nrsimha deva and Srila Prabhupada!
3. 2008, Mumbai - Brain stem haemorrhage and a catastrophic stroke. Your one side motor functionality gone and the other side facial functionality affected. Can't speak properly. Can't walk. Can't use your one hand. Mouth slurs and lips don't close properly. Doctors hardly gave you a chance of survival...and even if you did, they said you would be a vegetable. You requested Krsna to allow you to remain in this world, and thus you had stayed back here with us. You proved all naysayers wrong. And over the last 13 years, you not just lived with such a debilitating illness but you did more than what a physically healthy person might do.
4. 2016, Kolkata and Delhi - Liver Cirrhosis and other breathing complications - Due to the transfusion you had received after the stab in 1989, the blood you had been given had hepatitis C and thus your liver got affected. What pain it would be to have had to have so many taps to take out the fluid from the stomach. You also had the gas formation in the stomach which led to your breathing getting affected. You were air ambulanced from Kolkata to Delhi where you spent months in the ILBS hospital recovering. I had seen you there at the ILBS. There was another senior devotee with me to whom you had showered such love and made him feel at home by communicating amidst the tubes. But still, by the mercy of Lord Nityananda Prabhu, you came through that as well. Not just that, these were the most hard times at Mayapur with Kali seizing your absence to create rift amongst the devotees. And you came through that crisis as well - both at the physical level and also resolving the conflict!
5. 2018, Chennai - A historic double transplant of the liver and kidneys. After evaluating all the options and due to doctors’ advice that you would need a transplant within 3-5 months, you chose to go for such a critical surgery. August 15 2018 - it was a real independence day for many of us who waited with bated breath with Hare Krsna maha mantra on our lips. You had written in the communication you had sent out - “If I get a B+ cadaver with good organs, then I may leave the critical situation and become normalized. I’m depending fully on Srila Prabhupada and Lord Krsna. I’d like to see the TOVP completed and the TOVP Exhibits manifested, finish the Krsna Caitanya Book, Prabhupada Memoirs (haven’t thought of a name yet), help with the Mayapur Masterplan, procure sitting places at holy places on the Navadvipa Parikrama, continue my normal duties (train younger devotees to take my responsibilities where possible), etc. But Krsna is independent and whatever He wants, He will do. Of course, Prabhupada said that prayers make a lot of difference so I appreciate devotees’ prayers.” . And amazingly, you sailed through this surgery and much to our happiness, after the surgery, you seemed to have gained good health. We are all so happy for you, Guru Maharaja!
6. 2019, Chennai - Cancerous growth on the forehead. Cancer too paid you a visit. In a lecture, you had said about how deep the cut was on your forehead to remove the cancerous cells. You came out victorious against that as well.
7. 2021, Mayapur - Covid-19 - Despite the best arrangements in Mayapur, and despite taking the austerity of living out the whole year of the pandemic in your residence, somehow Covid-19 got to you. As if the existing problems and tensions we all go through in our lives are not enough, the news of you getting Covid was like a kick in the gut! How much more a human body and spirit can take? For us, who were already heartbroken and crying at the loss of our beloved HH Bhakti Caru Swami Maharaj, you getting infected was unbearable. Sitting alone in my room in Sydney, away from home and familiar settings, all I could do was to chant and helplessly cry thinking of you, Bhakti Caru Maharaja and others. You have almost no immune system due to the immunosuppressive medications you are taking after the liver transplant, and with such a contagious disease, the servants also got infected and you were running short of experienced caregivers. It was sheer anxiety and tension. An anxious wait for the 2 weeks infection period to pass over.
Guru Maharaja, you beat Covid-19 as well!!! Wow! :) :) . High Five!!!
8. These are just some external known health struggles we know of. But so many other physical struggles you might be undergoing every single day since the stroke. Only you and the close circle of servants would know. I know you had dialysis, some infection in your feet which keeps recurring on and off, eyes which have to be medicated, etc. And you soldier along in your mission and services unperturbed by all this.
What an example you are, Guru Maharaja!!!!The example you have set is for the whole world to follow suit. An inspirational role model for ages and ages to come. Though I am very unworthy to tell that I am YOUR disciple and son, I can always look upto the example you have set. You have set an example for people to follow in the worst of their times - health crisis and near death situations. I shall always look up to you as the Sun, the Moon and the Pole Star - to draw inspiration and be Krsna conscious when health and other crises attack me. Thank you for your astounding resilient devotional example. Though I desire all this, in reality, I do get emotionally, mentally and physically tired. Many times I slump on my knees strengthless feeling too weak and tired. Guru Maharaja, please bless me with a spirit and attitude like yours. Please.
Guru Maharaja, your extraordinary initiative to visit our homes through zoom has been such a blessing. Thank you for visiting our humble small places and giving us your darshan. I was in Sydney for more than a year and on Saturdays, cooking prasadam for you, decorating the altar and eagerly awaiting your arrival was a sweet experience. In one such call, you very kindly and with a lot of love said - ‘Krsner matir asthu!’. Thank you for the blessing, Gurudeva! I shall take that as the shelter for my life.
Guru Maharaja, as a kid who grew up in the movement for the best part of my life, one prominent feeling I experienced for the good part of the last year or two is the feeling which Arjuna explains in the Bhagavad Gita 6.38 - ‘a lost riven cloud’. The feeling that I am neither spiritually placed nor materially properly placed. Find myself very lost and let down. Felt sad and angry many times. In many ways, I feel like your generation of Americans of the 1960s and 1970s who felt let down by the system and the promises of playing by the rules. I do not know how I may ever be properly situated in my spiritual standings again. On some days, I haven’t been able to keep my initiation vows as well. But all this apart, always I beg to remain - your ever loyal servant/son who would always try his best to serve you, devotees, your mission and the movement. Please pardon me as I go around finding myself and trying to make sense of this life and its uncertainties. Please be my protective umbrella and shelter all along as I - like a child learning to walk - fumble, fall down, get up, again fumble, again fall down, again get up and so on.
Thank you once again for being a powerful lighthouse in this dark night of Kali Yuga!
Hare Krsna, Guru Maharaja! May your presence, protection and guidance bring my ship home!
your ever servant/son,
with sincere appreciation, respects and gratitude,
Sri Nrsimha dasa