Gauranitai das, Oct 17, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA: Thanks to Sampradaya Sun for posting my last article. Because of that, Sri Sri Gaura-Nitai and Jagannath are still on the altar. Now our Temple President wants to get rid of devotees. Vaishnava seva, Vaishnava ettiquette or just human decency, our Temple President Dhruva Maharaja dasa needs some enlightenment. Maybe the Sun readership can help with the following.
No lights for Tulsi Devi: Too expensive. The Tulsi who’s on the altar in the morning gets taken off at noon. She’s not allowed to go back on the altar and stays in the pujari room completely ignored and unattended until She’s put back in her room next morning, when another Tulsi is taken out. Our Tulsis are dying, but Dhruva doesn’t care. He said he will not put her lights on because it adds to the electric costs. Better to keep the lights off and let her die, so we can save on the electric. Winter’s coming so maybe it’s better to let Tulsi Devi die. It would cost electric to put on the heater where she stays.
Get rid of the female Prabhupada disciple: She’s getting too old, so we don’t want her around anymore. She’s been doing pujari service so many years and knows more than we do about most things, including deity worship. She’s also annoying. Sometimes she would tell us if we were doing something wrong with the Deities, like bringing the muchi garbage can on the altar to throw away the garlands that we just took of the Deities, instead of giving the maha-garlands to the devotees.
Dhruva Maharaja invited Bhaktin Isha with her son to come here from Chicago: He just told her to get out because he doesn’t want her son to be here anymore. She asked, “But I gave up everything to come. Where should I go?” Dhruva Maharaja didn’t care. He just told her to get out and told her by when to be out.
Maybe Dhruva Maharaj doesn’t want Americans to live in Gita Nagari. He’s from South Africa. It’s ok for Dhruva Maharaja’s wife to arrive after 6:00 am to dress Sri Sri adha-Damodar. I guess that’s ok because Mataji Parijata really runs the show here. When you’re the Temple President, you can’t kick out your own wife and tell her to go back to South Africa for coming late to dress the Deities.
Mataji Parijata’s parents came from South Africa to live at Gita Nagari. Dhruva Maharaja gave them the famous cabin that Satsvarupa Maharaja lived in.
And on October 4th, there was no Sunday Feast. The grihasta couple who was going to cook it told Dhruva they had to go out of town. They gave him enough time to find other devotees to cook a feast, but the solution was made simple – Don’t have a feast, so we didn’t. When everyone came for the feast we just told them there was no feast that day, so they all went home.
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