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By Deena Bandhu dasa<\/strong><\/p>\n Especially in the winter when it’s too cold to walk for long, I would put on my screen saver and chant while images of Vrindavan would go by. Several times Sanatan Goswami’s Samadhi near Madan Mohan Temple would appear. Sometimes painted white, sometimes, green, and now blue. And the pillars very large and clunky. I would sometimes muse, that wouldn’t it be nice to remodel Sanatan’s Samadhi, just like Rupa Goswami’s Samadhi and Bhajan Kutir in Radha Damodar is being done. After all, he’s the older brother.<\/p>\n One day, one devotee, who wishes not to be named, came to see me. He said he had a large donation and he wanted to see Sanatan Goswami’s Samadhi repaired and wanted to know if I could do it. I was completely amazed as just the day before I was thinking about this.<\/p>\n So then I went to see Govinda Bhakta Prabhu, who is an engineer and has been serving in the maintenance department of Krishna Balaram Mandir. I told him about the project and he was also amazed. He confided in me that years ago, he had been assigned to survey the seven temples of Vrindavan for New Vrindavan. While he was doing this, he also noticed the condition of the samadhi of our great acharya and was hoping some day it could be fixed up.<\/p>\n So I approached Sri Sanatan Kishore Goswami, the present Mahant of Madan Mohan and a good friend of mine. He was overjoyed and because he likes me very much, he gave me carte blanche to do whatever was neccessary. He mentioned that there would have to be some formalities to be done with the Achielogical Survey of India (ASI) as it is a protected monument under their jurisdiction. The fee for their permission was a little over a hundred dollars and, of course, the officer wanted almost as much himself. Anyway, that detail taken care of we began the work.<\/p>\n The ASI people advised us for various reasons, not to use marble and that the quality of the red stone that was used for Madan Mohan temple is not the same quality these days. You can see the evidence where the ASI has done some repairs on Madan Mohan Temple, it develops some whitish sheen on the stone and also begins to chip away. Their advice was for the pink stone for which Jaipur, The Pink City, is famous and it is the same stone that is being used on Rupa Goswami’s Samadhi. In fact we got the very same contractor to do the work. You can see the nice carving in the pictures.<\/p>\n We had planned to try and make the clunky pillars a little more graceful and smaller, and clad them with stone. But when we chipped the plaster away, we found underneath was bricks held together with mud only! Many cracks had appeared and it was obvious if we tried to clad anything with stone, the extra weight would probably bring the whole stucture down. Anyway, it was very huge and bulky and hid the beauty of the Samadhi.<\/p>\n By the time that Sanatan Goswami’s disappearance day comes next month, phase I of remodelling the actual Samadhi should be done. The front part will have to be done after the festival. Right now we are designing something more fitting and less imposing that will enhance the beauty of the Samadhi.<\/p>\n In a month or so, we should have a very nice Samadhi for Srila Sanatan Goswami. Those who come for Kartika will be able to offer their respects at the dust of his lotus feet in a completely remodeled Samadhi.<\/p>\n In service of Srimati Vrinda Devi, Deena Bandhu dasa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One day, one devotee, who wishes not to be named, came to see me. He said he had a large donation and he wanted to see Sanatan Goswami’s Samadhi repaired and wanted to know if I could do it. I was completely amazed as just the day before I was thinking about this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deena-bandhu-dasa","category-iskcon-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7389\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Hare](\"http:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/4343led.jpg\")
By Deena Bandhu dasa<\/strong><\/p>\n