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WORLD April 2, 1999 VNN3491 See Related VNN Stories Gratitude For Contributions BY URMILA DEVI DASI USA, Apr 2 (VNN) — Dear Maharajas and Prabhus, Please accept my obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada! After reading Sri Nandanandana's letter on VNN regarding my husband and Bhusaya's letter on VNN, I felt it would be worthwhile to present another aspect of the situation. My husband and I have been living separately as vanaprasthas for the past three years. We have gradually decreased our communication with each other and are striving to live as renunciates. We are not in any way involved in each other's activities. I live under the protection of our son-in-law and two grown sons. First, I'd like to clarify Bhusaya's statement, "the woman he [my husband, Pratyatosa Prabhu] is presently living with". I understand that the mother of the teenagers for whom my husband is presently "baby-sitting", lives in another city called Grosse Pointe, with a female Alzheimer's victim whom she is caring for 14 1/2 hours a day, 7 days a week. She works from 8 p.m. until 10:30 am the next morning, every day. Her husband, who is currently in India, has approved of this arrangement. My husband has not been abusive with children. There was one time, in the front hall of the Detroit temple, when he slapped one girl rather hard because he regarded her as being disrespectful to me. (This was at a time when corporal punishment was allowed in gurukula.) He immediately apologized to the girl and her mother, and the next day apologized to the entire community, also voluntarily stepping down as the school's headmaster. He also decided on his own to have limited dealings with the students from that time on. It was because of this incident that he and our GBC requested me to become the principal, a service I have been doing ever since. As for Bhoumadeva's daughter, before the above incident, my husband had moved her out of the way in the temple room because otherwise the pujari was going to trip over her as she was offering obeisances. Bhoumadeva said that my husband pulled his daughter's arm and left a bruise. We didn't see any bruise, and we did our best to make sure that everyone felt reasonably satisfied. There was no report of any other physical abuse in the many years of the school there, in Detroit. Sri Nandanandana is a good and sincere devotee who writes enlivening books to preach Krishna consciousness. Not having any children himself, he was never involved even in a peripheral way with a gurukula. He has simply repeated what he has heard recently from devotees in Detroit who are understandably upset over my husband's very public agitating of people to take legal action against ISKCON for the many cases of sexual molestations of children which occurred in ISKCON gurukula ashrams. All of us in ISKCON owe my husband a tremendous debt. For the first years of the Movement, much of what Prabhupada said wasn't recorded--what to speak of recorded with good equipment. These tapes were treated as an ordinary commodity, with the devotees regularly listening to the original tapes. The tapes were stored and labeled improperly. My husband literally "rescued" the tapes, bought a professional quality tape recorder to travel with Prabhupada, and started the Bhaktivedanta Tape Ministry. We also owe him for having the courage to start the first day school in ISKCON, at a time when only ashrama schools were considered "real" gurukulas. He was criticized and humiliated at international gurukula meetings for his "compromising". Spending $70,000 of money he earned in his computer business, he built a gurukula building with room for sixty-four students on the property of Detroit ISKCON, while he and his family lived an adequate, yet simple life. In gratitude for his contributions that benefit all of us, I beg all the Vaisnavas to bestow their mercy and benedictions upon him. Your servant, Urmila devi dasi See Related VNN Stories | Comment on this Story This story URL: http://vaishnava-news-network.org/world/WD9904/WD02-3491.html
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