Sri Govinda das Remembers Srila Prabhupada

Following Srila Prabhupada

Interview DVD 07

Sri Govinda: The first temple in Chicago was on Halstead Street. It was a storefront, and that was run by first Rudra das and his wife and then later Bahulasva. That temple closed. At that time, I was temple president in Cleveland. Bhagavan decided to centralize his zone, so he closed the temple in Chicago and pulled all the different leaders back to Detroit for meetings to try to determine how things would be managed. I kept saying, “How can we neglect Chicago? Chicago is the biggest city in the zone. We can’t close Chicago.” Then one day Bhagavan just slammed his fist down and said, “Damn it, Govinda, just go to Chicago!” So we went with a couple of brahmacaris. Then we were collecting and doing some preaching. Then the traveling rock group was disbanded by Prabhupada, and they came to Chicago. So we had a lot more people there, and searching around we came upon this former YMCA building.