The Gateway to Jagannātha Purī Dhāma

A lwAys E mbr A c E d by K åñë A

On his return, Çréla Gour Govinda Swami first stayed in the city of Cuttack. Then after a few days he came to Bhubaneswar and stayed at different times in two dharmaçäläs, called Dudwala and Dhalmia, near the Liìgaräja Mandir. He spent one week in each, as they both would not allow anyone to stay for more than one week; so, at the end of the two weeks he was out. Then one gentleman offered him a room, and he stayed there for about a week. This is how Çréla Gour Govinda Swami came back to Orissa, to the donated land in Nayapalli, Bhubaneswar, with two tasks to perform: one was to build a temple there, and the second was to translate Çréla Prabhupäda’s English translations and commentaries of the ancient Vedic scriptures into Oriya. He had no men, no money, no books; he had nothing, only the direction of his spiritual master.

A Great Saintly Person

In that year, in June 1975, Çréla Gour Govinda Swami paid a visit to the office of the Director of Public Instructions (D.P.I.), regarding the translation of Çréla Prabhupäda’s books into Oriya. There was one gentleman there, a Mr Mishra, who had been a former student of Çréla Gurudeva when he was Brajabandhu Manik, a school teacher at Angul High School, in the Dhenkanal District. He was a very sincere friend as well who had a tremendous depth of knowledge of the Sanskrit language and Çréla Gurudeva wanted to enlist his assistance in the translation of Çréla Prabhupäda’s books into Oriya. In the office of the D.P.I. was also a young man named Srutidhar Das*, who was interested in finding a spiritual master, but so far had not had any success in finding one.

*Srutidhar Das: was later initiated by Çréla Gour Govinda Swami in 1985 and given the name Çacinandana däsa. On first meeting with Çréla Gour Govinda Swami, Srutidhar was very impressed.