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Wednesday, 20 March 2002, Greyhound Bus

I'm bouncing around on a Greyhound Bus. It's raining outside. It's been raining for days. It's half past twelve in the afternoon.

A minute ago the bus passed over a bridge from the northern tip of Manhattan to the Bronx. This is New York City, and I'm on my way to Connecticut.

At Port Authority Bus terminal, the bus terminal that's as big as an airport, they were examining the carry-on bags of everyone getting on the bus. The inspector eyed my Salagram Silas and asked what They were. I told him they were "fossils." They also passed a metal detector over everyone boarding the bus. These are new security measures in place since September 11.

In fact, when I purchased the ticket at the ticket counter, I had to show identification, and they entered my name into the computer. They do that for all bus passengers now, and they send that information to the FBI.

I said to the man at the ticket counter that I guess the FBI was spying on us all, and he said yes, but that it was better than having terrorists blow up the bus. I guess that's true. I wouldn't want that to happen to the bus I'm riding.

I stayed five days and nights at the Long Island temple, a little house in the suburbs of New York City. They have Gaura Nitai Deities there that go by the names Sri-Sri Nimai Nitai. The Deities were installed by Srila Prabhupada on one of the Radha-Damodar traveling sankirtan buses in 1976, and after the traveling bus party wound down, somehow those Deities came to Long Island where they are being worshiped every day.

A few people wrote to me complaining that the Hare Krishna RealAudio Website at http://www.ChantAndBeHappy.com wasn't being regularly updated with devotee classes. I started that website back in 1986 on the encouragement of Mukunda Goswami. He suggested we should have an Internet Radio station where people could listen to classes over their computers. (Click here to listen to this morning's class that I gave in Long Island.)

Thus the Hare Krishna RealAudio website was born, which initially was hosted at http://swami.simplenet.com. Later I purchased my own domain and moved it to www.ChantAndBeHappy.com. The website is managed by Anadi Krsna Prabhu and me and we put streaming classes, bhajans, and kirtans on it that people can click on to listen to over the Internet.

Lately I hadn't put much energy into it, but now I'm again regularly updating it. For now it's being updated with my classes, because I'm easy to record, since I'm always around wherever I am, and wherever I am I'm mostly the one giving the class.

In fact, I organized an archive of some of my older lectures and made them available on my Pilgrim's Diary website at http://ChantAndBeHappy.com/diary. As time goes by and opportunity arises, I'll put lectures of other devotees. There are already hundreds of lectures from devotees around the world available on that site, as well as about a hundred Prabhupada lectures. The older lectures are in RealAudio format, but the latest lectures I started posting in both Mp3 format and streaming Mp3 format (that you can listen to as soon as you click on the link).

New Rochelle, New York. That's where the bus is now. First stop north of the City. Gray skies. Wet and rainy outside. It's dry and warm on the bus. It's almost like I brought this weather with me when I came from England last week. It has rained or been cloudy every single day since I've been here so far, though the sun also peeked through a few times briefly a couple of days ago.

The other night there was a huge Harinam in Manhattan led by His Holiness Indradyumna Swami, but unfortunately, I missed the opportunity to go. From the reports, it was a very ecstatic Harinam. I have heard Indradyumna Swami is visiting the New Jersey temple in Towaco, which is about 10 miles from the place I grew up but a long way from Long Island.

We've been following the news of Tamal Krishna Goswami's unfortunate accident and passing via Chakra and www.mayapur.info, and also by receiving email from senior devotees. BB Govinda Maharaja was at the scene of the accident soon after it happened and said that the driver fell asleep and hit a tree on the left side of the road. Tamal Krishna Goswami was sitting on the left side of the vehicle (they drive on the left in India, and the steering wheel is on the right) and was killed instantly. He wasn't in a coma or unconscious, but was dead on the scene. Vrindavanesvari, a mataji who sat in the back seat right behind Tamal Krishna Goswami, also was seriously hurt and died shortly afterwards in the hospital. The others in the car survived the crash.

The car hit a tree and then flipped on its side.

A horrible accident. Suddenly I'm very wary about traveling in cars, especially cars driven by weary eyed devotees without enough sleep.

I've been working on my book a little bit every day. Those who want to know more about it can visit the book's website at http://www.TimeGods.com. I don't know how this book will be received by devotees. It isn't being written for devotees, though I'm sure devotees will read it and for the most part enjoy it. It's a science fiction novel about time travel and has a Krishna Conscious theme. It is the first time such a book has been written to the best of my knowledge. People keep asking me when it will be finished. Well, it was finished last December, but when I asked Hari Sauri Prabhu to review it, he made some complaints about the ending, so I've gone back to the drawing board and am rewriting the last third of the book. Anyway, there are some chapters available for you to read now, and you can find them at http://TimeGods.com. 

© CHAKRA 22 March 2002