Gaurangi's letter: Raghunatha (ex Swami (!)) was speaking to me last week & somehowyou came up in the conversation & he said "You remind me so muchof him (Raghunatha Anudasa) -- you have the same sense of humor!" He'ssaid it before actually. He's got a lovely baby boy now called Krsna Shakti& he seems to have calmed down a lot. For one thing, I don't feellike running & hiding every time I see him like I used to! Raghu's reply: Children of the Ashrama It is good to hear about Raghunatha's re-transformation as a nice guy.When he first went to Vrindavan Guru-kula, he was on e of the more favoredteachers among the kids. He was fun. He was an excellent story teller --reading from Time mags. With his little purport lectures and great storiesfrom movies, or personal experiences, etc. His powerful, muscular, 6'1"frame and strong personality, naturally made him a very commanding kindof guy -- especially to a kid of only 13, 14 or even 15 years old -- whichI was in our first encounter. He seemed in many ways more attentive toand demanding about the kids needs then others like Dhanudhara (now Swami),the principle at that time. He could also be a real charmer, something that surprised me. He wasseemingly one of the most serious, first class, and meanest (as tough)brahmacaris I had met. But my, when he got around the kids mothers, hewas the nicest guy in the world. He would have them in smiles or just laughingand all. What amazed me even more was how he could soothe resentments anddismiss all allegations about the guru-kula. He could usually even handlethe terribly incriminating accusations made against him. Between him andthe rest of the teachers, they always managed to convince the parents ordevotees that the "few" excessive "isolated incidents" of abusive treatmentwere over and done with. On occasions though, if charm did not settle the matter, Raghunathawas sometimes known to resolve his differences by showing off what thoseeight years of Marine training had done for his build and arms. He wasmassive by devotee standards -- what to speak of India's. Though allowedto witness his dazzling displays of charm and see the great guy that heis, I did not originally get to know him as such. We first met upon my 3rd return to Vrindavan, India, while there forsome last schooling. The trip was part of my desperate and fading hopesto overcome an adolescence of illiteracy. Raghunatha had already been therefor about 4 months. Kids sometimes wishingly recalled what a nice guy hefirst was, but by the time we met; he had already been fully mutated. Accordingto Raghunatha "Prabhu's most recent accounts, it was Dhanudara and therest of the pack of teachers who skillfully crafted him into one of themost brutal, teacher-terrorist ever to bless the harsh history of ISKCON'sGurukulas. While he was in guru-kula, he blamed the misbehaved students for havingbrought about his monstrous transformation. I personally believe it wasboth teachers and students, plus a great # of other elements of the situation:the common attitudes of the movement & Vrindavan in those dayswhich certainly seemed to attract, welcome and encourage abusive marine-rejectlike people; to many students per teacher; lack of privacy for studentsand teachers alike; the hardships of India for most Westerners; too manydemands on many levels - 14 hour days with the kids, etc - for the teachersand students; and of course; Raghunatha's own unforgivable, outrageous,beastly outburst, etc. That "son-of-a-" marine sergeant is also most certainlyresponsible too. I clearly remember that second day of my arrival while comfortably (bya great contrast to the guru-kula) staying in the Krsna - Balarama Guesthouse. (I later found out, that some teachers considered my 4 day, guesthouse stay to be a rather contemptuous show of independence to the gurukula.) A daring friend sneaked out of the gurukula building (punishableby detention) just to worn me of sorts about this other "Raghunatha Prabhu",or "Big Raghunatha". Of course, I was concerned by this friends report,but I was desperate for an education. Vrindavan was my only option. "Public""Karmi" school still as yet had not even cross my mind as an option - notuntil I was 18. Before making this journey, I had also convinced myself, not to worryabout my sever spells of terror/excitement from the culture shock and disorientation.These spells were always multiplied by my oppressively despairing senseof loneliness and helplessness. This was further exaggerated because motherwas at best, hardly less than a months communication away. Then there wasthe common physical stress of India's harsh settings topped with sicknessfor most any visiting Westerner. It would all so splendidly gang-up togetherand clobber me like a whole bunch of jumbo sized, tidal waves. I made avaliant try not to worry about these things - ha ha ha, ho ho, hi hi, yearight. And now that I look back upon it, Vrindavan gurukula teachers alwaysseemed to have immensely enriched these "purifying" tribulations of myIndia stay. As my friend talked, I tried to pacify my fears and justifythe wisdom of this bold decision. It was only made in my grandest illusionsof being some stalwart devotee. I retreated into my fast, diminishing imageas this tough, daring, experienced "brahmacari" kid. I was "guru-kuli,"ready for any hardships, austerities and adventure. This was a seasonedresponse. This is how I dealt with such occasions when desperately stumblingaround for some sense of personal resourcefulness in confronting life'sendless adversities. Besides, what is there that I could not handle. "I have seen the worstof it" or so I thought. I had been through 5 years of Dallas guru-kula,plus 2 trips and 3 years of Vrindavan, India already. I was a seasoneddevotee and survivor of guru-kula, ISKCON and ready to confront any "last"tribulations that my "karma" could ceremoniously surprise me with. (Thewisdom of youth at its best - rush right on in no matter what you haveheard and know about the person, place or thing.) Hopefully and mistakenly,I thought I was therefore now tough enough for anything. I was not simply"a spoiled" "American boy", but a hardened "Vrindavan" guru-kula veteranseasoned by my experience from Dallas and the 2 previous trips to Vrindavan.I have learned since then not to bother daring "Fate" to test my manhood. Dallas Gurukula Dallas was traumatic from the very first minute and remained dramaticuntil the very last minute when finally leaving for Vrindavana. My welcomingparty was 25 or so brats from ages 5 to 12. Ironically enough, I wouldsoon come to hold them as my very dearest friends in life. They gatheredaround as a teacher went through my belongings and ridiculed this 7 yearolds stained, "karmi" underwear, long "hippie" hair (which it was - about2 feet actually), and my "karmi" photos of family and pets. Within days,lewd, exaggerated features started appearing on the photos - I am todaysure that it was Vrindavan's creative work. It was even worse when thephotos started missing simply to show-up circulated among the girls. Theteachers saved me from any further harassment for my peculiar belongingsand fashion. In a public assembly, they first confiscated most everything.For the most part they then re-distributed it or threw it away. It concludedwith a generous offer to shave me up. I made it quite clear I was not going to stand for any such "crew cut"with some freakish, wild-bush of hair exploding off the top of my head.The sikas in those days were really 'wild'. Well, Hiranyagarbha didn'tseem convinced and so I went and hid. They found me, thirsty, starved andterrified, a day and a half later in the corner of the 'book room' whichhad also served as my restroom. I was freaked. It took 4 men to wrestle me out and down the stairs tothe ashrama. Once there, each grabbed a limb. A fifth man (Hiranyagarba)proceeded to shave me after firmly viceing me into a headlock. My loudscreams only served as an emergency welcoming call for the entire templeof 200 kids and adults to come running on down for the fun. It was themost pitiful and comically embarrassing, spectacle ever made out of a "hair-cuttingceremony". The "brahmacaris" finally let go when the job was about halfdone. In classic dramatic cresendo, I turned over on my tummy, clenchedmy hair in a crying fit of rage and wailed out: "Oh, my beautiful hair."The concerned and bewildered crowd of devotees and kids finally broke outinto uncontrollable laughter. It took years before friends finally stoppedteasing me about it. I tried to use the incident to show off how toughI was, "Yeah, well it still took 5 guys to hold me down." To my complete horror, I had become one of "them". With that "buz-up"went my own sense of identity and superior to the rest of those "skin heads",as I called them. After that, like a student in any school and society,it was simply accepting and getting oriented to the lifestyle and rulesof discipline. The discipline went through very short spells of "easy-going"standards, to sudden radical measures of punishments. It was usually dependentupon the teachers of the time. One of the most notable undertakings wasthe "smarana (which means to remember in sanskrit) board". The smaranaboard treatment was a fanny "walloping" (as Devz put it) from a 1 inchthick, 2 feet long, 1 foot wide board. It came complete with 3 holes toallow for easy passage of air and handsomely architected with a handlefor a teacher's firm grip. The smarana-board was introduced with a very impressive "de-merit" system.It could also be counteracted by the later introduced (by some thoughtfulteacher) "merits". It was something that went like: 1 whack per 10 de-merits.My God, could I scramble up those de-merit "browny points" in a hurry.The teachers all had their own ideas of what made up "non-sense" or "offensive"behavior and how many de-merits it was worth. In Bhagavad-gita class, onecould get de-merits for talking with another friend, forgetting to chantalong in recital--which eventually ended up taking about an hour as werecited 3 or 4 chapters on the average; or failing to bring one's Bhagavad-gita.I especially hated when they started experimenting with a "monitor system".They did this by rotating some of the "older" kids to stare over the restof us. These young teens were to decide when we were "not chanting" orsomething. They always picked a kid who really enjoyed awarding me withall sorts of those little, check-marks. In another class, one would get de-merits for fighting in class - somethingI was always doing; having to use the bathroom before break; not finishingsome home-work assignment or "spacing-out". Spacing out was a broad term.It could include anything from drawing pictures in one's notebooks to playingwith some frantic, friendly, momma size, cockroach who decided to crawlon up in their day's field-trip or scurrying for shelter under our sarisor dhotis. They had thousands of those "flying dates" exploring our place. Of course, the asrama teacher was not going to be left out. They establishedtheir own terms as well: getting out of line, being late for mangal-arotic,playing with the girls (usually in some trivial way), sleeping - "nodding-out"during "japa" or Srimad-"Bhagavatam class", leaving one's shelf a mess(which really had to be quite messy. There was an extremely simple if notsloppy standard of neatness), not finishing all of ones prasadam, spendingtoo much time in or at the shower (should one have the rare chance fora "hot-shower"--anything not freezing cold. The hot water boiler was usuallyempty.), not showering after taking an "unloading" in the "stool room"or "wetting the bed". (Actually it was sheets not beds. We slept in sheets on the tiled, cementfloor in the basement. Some brilliant and caring "mataji?" decided on sewingthe 3 sides of the sheets to keep us from rolling out. And boy did we havesome real "steam rolling", rollers. Several kids were known to regularlyjourney over 2 or 3 friends in a single night of their restful sleeping.Every morning, most ended up at least 1 or 2 squares away from the 3' by4, painted and numbered boxes that designated our 20 or so sleeping spaceson the floor. To keep a uniform standard, sheets replaced the "sleeping bags". Sleepingbags seemed to expensive to buy for all the students. Also, we had so many"pee-ers". They kept water-logging their sleeping bags. These guys literallyflooded their areas so much that it also pee-logged those of their fortunatefriends sleeping nearby. Sheets were just much more practical for regularlywashing. As unbelievable as it may seem today, I can't remember ever beingcold or uncomfortable while sleeping under these rather simple sleepingarrangements.) Everyday offered new revelations to several more of the hoards of deviationsthat could translate into de-merits for our stockings of punishment. Itmust have worked because I went from 40 to 50 a week, to about 10. Rarely,did any of the teachers really give everyone a "point" each time they "step(ed)out of line". Rather, a system had finally been work-out. It allowed abroad range of activities for a teacher to choose from when they felt akids "attitude" needed to be "rectified". Of course, there were those "nerd-balls"that would mark all the little mistakes. The stress was not so much howmany swats we got. It was the paranoia that it created in many of us somuch of the time. This merit & demerit system introduced by Hiranyagarba &Dayananda (I think?) was one of the best discipline systems that I canremember Dallas ever having. It took the immediate punishing out of theteachers hands which in review seemed to have been quite valuable in manyways. It checked many cases of those (sometimes understandable) outburstof frustration by requiring a lapse of time before the punishment was given.It then had to meet with the principal's approval--since he was the onedoing the "whack(ing)". The punishments were much less personal becauseit was the principal and not the disgruntled teacher swinging the "rugby"bat. The principal could also better understand, Just how stringent was ateachers' discipline. This was a great extra precaution for monitoringthe teachers - a substantial safeguard if the principal happened to beeven half sane. It also allowed the students discipline to be dealt withas a one unit factor. This was better than having some hyper-kid (not tomention myself) from getting pounded on by every teacher they happenedto upset. Such "discipline cases" could then get "special attention". Oncein a while, this merit/de-merit system really proved a very meaningfulsystem of checks-and-balances in great contrast to the other faces of disciplinethat have shown up in guru-kula's history. Before and after this system, punishments assumed a variety of creativemeasures. For example; Hiranyagarbha's constant and really hard, free for-allbatting with the stick which were really mini boards. There was anotherteacher who locked kids upstairs with "monsters" in the pitch black and"haunted" attic. This I know was being done on occasion with Bhavatsastra.I will save the ghost stories for later. Sometimes it was under the stairs--lid-lockedin one of those big, plastic, trash barrels for those who were "reallybad". Not to worry, they put a few nail wholes in it for air. I rememberseeing Krsna-kumari put this little boy over her lap. It was in front ofthe co-ed class of at least 10 if not 15 or more kids. She pulled-up thedhoti of this 5 or 6 year old, and repeatedly slapped his naked "behind".He had a naked behind except of course for the "brahmin underwear" strapthat ran his fanny checks. What made it so outstanding in my mind was thisgreat little kids sense of "pride". He was "too proud" to cry in frontof the girls even though he was such a young boy. Of course, she kept onslapping away until he just finally broke down into tears. In the very early days, there are such reports as d.das': made to go throughthe day's activities with a dead cockroach pasted to his nose, crownedwith a paper hat and signs posted on his chest and back that read somethinglike: "I am a dog', 'a fool' and 'a liar' " It was supposedly a Dinatarined.d. special. One teacher was to have made a kid lick-up their own urinefor failing to "hold-it" until the end of class--though warned to do so.Raghunatha (the teacher from Dallas who was last staying in N. Vrindavanand married to Sulochan's wife), would beat the kids until they had bruisesthat would last for many days, if not weeks. It seems I remember that Visvaretawas known to do the same. One very resented requirement was the mandatory diet. For lunch, thatmeant everyone had to "honor" at least 2 cups of dahl, a ladleful eachof rice and subji, plus 2 chapatis. How seemingly yummy it may not havebeen was hardly an excuse for failing to honor it. Also, one had to bereally careful not to take "too much". Not finishing "every grain", meantsaving it for the next meal - we had 3 "meals" a day. There was breakfastin the morning which was usually the favored: oatmeal or some kind of hotcereal. Lunch at 1 p.m., "grossed out" some number of us everyday, forsome it was the sweet potatoes for example. For the evening, we had "hotmilk" and oranges - a real tummy settler. I remember one time when, Dwarkanathmade me fast for almost 3 days until I finally gave in to finishing thishorrible, gross, disgusting dahl. My most hated punishment fromMandaleswara were his long running favorite:snapping the knuckles with a cut, broom handle; or cupping the hand forslapping the ear. These 2 were generously given on a daily basis to atleast a couple students. It took a few times before getting less worriedhe was not really breaking the knuckles or hand. It does seem there wasone case of a child ending up with some broken bones. The ear slappingterrified me. One time, he cup-slapped me so hard with his wet hand thatmy ear actually went numb. It was deaf for several days. I think that reallyshook him up--at least enough to fade his cup-slapping out of his usualrepertoire for disciplining. He moved his slaps to the "cheeks". It seemedhe did have a genuine appreciation of me as a devotee. That meant a lotto me and was a great contrast to one of the more heavy handed teachersfrom my Dallas experience - Jitaparan. Srila Prabhupada had come through Dallas for a second or third timeand once again put a stop to their barbaric punishments. With it, wentthe "smarana-board". Well, the "older boys" (Jagaman, Jagadananda, Katyana,Markamangala, Stavya, etc.) managed to hide, destroy or throw-away some10 of them smaran-boards. Prabhupada's "instructions" had finally "puta stop to it". Prabhupada recommended that all a teacher should reallyhave to do is simply "show" the stick - a small bamboo "rod". If it requiredmuch more, it was probably a sign a child was not "engaged properly". AsPrabhupada saw it, it probably meant it was the wrong environment of studiesinstead of working with animals or working at some business or somethingmore suited to the child's own "propensities". Out went the smarana-board,in came the bamboo rod. Expectedly, it was used for more than simply showing-off.And so once again, the "older-boys" went to work hiding, destroying etc.,the "rod(s) of chastisement". Bamboo was not conveniently replaced in theU.S. Not to be left empty handed, cut broomhandles substituted. Jitaparana was in no way sparing with his broom handle. Nor did he bother"wasting time" as other teachers did, trying to "home-in" on the fannyor back. It could be a tricky feat since the kids would gyrate throughthese impressive and sometimes amusing modern dancing displays. These littledances of terror came complete with their own songs of pain and "fancyfoot work". Jitaparana was not even shy about flying this witch handlearound in public. One thing of great importance to him was that we satcompletely "straight" at all times. He would insist on this policy evenduring Bhagavatam class by pounding away on our spines when we "hunch(ed)over". Finally, Jagadish (now Maharaja and then "Minister of education")found the constant dull thud and resentful sighs of pain too distractingfor class. He took the bold step of telling Jitaparan to stop it. In Dallas Guru-kula, Jitaparan was a "hot drummer" on the Mrdanga andsoon realized that a few slaps of his hands alone could effectively doa stick's job. It would also get him in less trouble than a stick. Deplorably,each and every time he went to slap my cheeks, my damn shoulders wouldget in the way. I couldn't help it. It was like trying not to blink orsomething. Having my dear, "stupid" friends think that it was "pretty funny",didn't help the situation any. Instead, it turned into a spectacle as hewrestled me to the floor, sat on my chest, finally pinning my shouldersdown and out of the way. And about getting that slap, well he decided tothrow in a few extra. |