Rūpanuga dāsa adhikārī

My dear Srila Prabhupada,

Please accept my most humble obeisances at Your Divine Grace's lotus feet. I remember that it took a while for your students to paint over the sign above the old storefront on Second Avenue, revealing "Matchless Gifts" to be actually "Hare Krsna." You Divine Grace brought this gift to the hub of the materialistic world, the lower East Side of New York City, the forefront of degradation-bowery bums, and the "drug revolution" around Tompkins Square and Avenue "A"-instigated by the frustrated intellectuals and other never-do-wells, the original hippies.

That early fall of 1966 I followed you back from your weekend chanting party at the Square. You held your classes, Srimad-Bhagavatam every morning at seven a.m. and the Gita, Monday, Wednesday and Friday at seven p.m., and led the kirtanas, passing out at the end of the program a little bowl of apples that you personally cut with a paring knife on the top of your makeshift lectern. You were our worshipable Deity, our Supreme Personality of Servitor Godhead. You sat upon you asana at the back of the store, leaning back against the fading cushion from some old over-stuffed chair. The front of your asana was decorated as an altar, with pictures of our parampara, flowers and two large candelabras, and it was draped with old candlewax spotted velvets. You were our worshipable Deity.

We knew little about Lord Krsna and less about Caitanya Mahaprabhu. At first, one of us called you "Mahaprabhu" to distinguish you as the greatest, but you stopped that and late let us call you "Prabhupada" instead of "Swamiji." We certainly weren't very advanced; rather we must have been examples of the kind of disciples Srila Jiva Gosvami said were necessary to accept in order to keep the Vaisnava movement going. The minimum was eight rounds and some of us couldn't even part with our shoulder-length hair, even after receiving initiation.

The storefront, about thirty feet long and thirteen feet at the widest point, was decorated with Belgian oriental-style rugs, some silk throws on the walls, and behind the vyasasana hung a large, round plywood sign of Radha-Krsna. The front of the store was partly occupied by two used mimeograph machines-ISKCON Press-upon which were printed the first BTG's and Easy Journeys. The stores didn't like to take them because they weren't sophisticated "glossies" and we didn't yet know how to distribute them on the streets or collect donations. Sometimes when we went out on the first street-chanting parties, the lady living a couple of floors up would dump water on our heads as we came out the front door. And the people in the back courtyard would yell out their windows when the smokey chanches from the lunch preparations billowed out the window of our tiny kitchen and drifted upwards into their apartments, True, the new days are just as good as the old days, but we relish the humble, sometimes humorous and certainly primordial beginnings under the personal guidance of Your Divine Grace.

After you sent some of the devotees to San Francisco and a few more to Montreal we held our weekly ista-gosthis on business and philosophical questions. There were only about twelve boys and one girl, but we all sensed that what was going on in that storefront was the most important thing happening in the world. Our faith was right and Your Divine Grace remains our most worshipable Deity, eternally.

I hope this meets you in good health.

Your most fallen disciple,

Rūpanuga dasa adhikari

GBC-Mideastern USA