770725 - Letter to Ghanasyama and Gurudas from Tamal Krsna

July 25th, 1977

From: Tamal Krishna

My dear Ghanasyama Prabhu and Gurudas Maharaja,

Please accept my most humble obeisances at your feet. His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada has received your BBT library report sent from Greece and acknowledges this with thanks, instructing me to reply you.

I read your report from beginning to end. Your report is unquestionably the most nectarean of all reports His Divine Grace receives. It has become a regular weekly, or fortnightly feature of His Divine Grace’s program, and when He hears that it has arrived, He waits with great anticipation to hear it. Generally I read your reports to Him after He takes lunch. He settles back in His prasadam seat, having taken some of the Lord’s prasadam, having just been garlanded with fresh flowers, His head smeared with cooling camphor sandalwood paste. With closed eyes Srila Prabhupada drinks in your opening prayers, and then floats in an ocean of bliss and He hears descriptions of your one successful battle after another. Your reports are so nice that Prabhupada simply laughs, smiles, nods His head, or exclaims with great surprise at a particularly wonderful sale. During the last report, His Divine Grace did not say one word. At the end, after the description of the bookshop that took over 1000 of His books, I requested His Divine Grace to please dictate a reply to you. All that He would say is, “My hearty congratulations.” Actually the situation seems to me to be in a very small scale like the message sent by Krsna with Uddhava for the gopis. The service of the gopis was so first-class that Lord Krsna felt completely unable to repay them for their loving devotion to Him. Therefore He sent a message through Uddhava that you please be satisfied by your service. In a similar way the service which you are rendering to His Divine Grace through the topmost transcendental book distribution preaching is so exalted, that I get the feeling that Srila Prabhupada feels very much indebted to you. He no longer can find words to thank you enough for the service you are doing. Therefore this letter cannot be filled with quotations from His Divine Grace because practically He was speechless throughout your report. Thus, you will have to satisfy yourself simply with the service which you are doing. That service of book distribution is the perfection of life and do doubt one feels fully fulfilled while performing it. Please be satisfied in the ecstasy of book distribution and know that your activities are giving His Divine Grace more life force.

Looking forward to your next report with great anticipation and hoping this meets you well; protected by the mercy of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu.

Your servant,

Tamal Krsna Gosvami

Secretary to Srila Prabhupada

His Grace Ghanasyama das,

His Holiness Gurudas Swami

c/o ISKCON Geneva