14 July, 1975
Philadelphia
My Dear Jayapataka Swami:
Please accept my blessings. I am in due receipt of your letter dated June 25, 1975 and have noted the contents.
The Gurukula and poor feeding programs should be developed and it will make us very popular. The wrestling is all right. The program for Nitai Cand to visit the villages and preach and make men join is very good.
Make everything green there. Why not install your American sprinkler system? I have seen in Denver a very nice arrangement in the park for watering the grounds. You have got your own pumping water, so it will be easy for you. There you have got enough water.
Move the dirt from the pukur. It is not nice. I have sent to Bhavananda Maharaja the photos of how it should be done. It may be cleared and the dirt put along the sides where we shall make rooms at a high level for the flooding. The lake water should be clear. What is a charan on the front gate?
I have asked Jayatirtha that Ranadhira may immediately go to Mayapur.
I hope this meets you in good health.
Your ever well wisher,
A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami
ACBS/bs
Back in the ’90s I decided to dedicate my life to a true ISKCON project, one that could not be taken away, Sridham Mayapura. At my own expense I traveled to Mayapur to meet with the two GBC in charge: Jayapataka and Harikesh. I made a proposal presentation to establish a tree nursery for Mayapur. Based upon a number of extended tours of India I had determined that there were no professional large tree nurseries in the whole sub-continent! Indian nurseries had a very limited selection of small to medium trees, and no large, high quality, high branched trees at all. If Mayapur was to have landscaping of an international standard, we needed to grow our own trees. This would also allow the introduction of trees like Avocados, Macadamias and many other superior varieties then unavailable in Bengal. The nursery was to be to highest western standard.
My proposal was enthusiastically received, and official GBC resolutions to buy 20 acres of land and fund the nursery were passed. At my own expense, I moved to Mayapur and rented accommodations to live there. We managed to find twenty acres of land directly across the Ganga on high ground that did not flood. The land was bought and I had a tall wall built around the whole property(a necessity in India). During this wall construction phase, I did extensive research and drew up development plans for the nursery. This dealt with things like irrigation, propagation facility, necessary equipment like tractor and cultivator, workforce, sources of plant germ-plasm, etc. So almost a year after my arrival, I completed the master plan, including a very spartan budget and submitted it through Jayapataka Swami for Mayapur GBC approval. The big-shots, for some reason, decided to hold their meeting in London, and I was not invited. Later I heard through a third party that Abhiram, that pompous aristocrat, had made an offhand comment that he figured that the nursery served no purpose as, when needed, mature trees could be bought cheaply “somewhere”. The project was unceremoniously canceled.
Aravinda dasa, probably their eyes went green with greed and envy. You didn’t mention what happen to that piece of 20 acre land now. What have they done to it ?
Hare Krsna.