I ran into Shashi Patel this weekend at Bahulaban while waiting for a kirtan to start. Old timers will remember him as being involved with New Vrindaban design work back in the 80s. He has been the architect for over 50 temples since then including ones in Florida, Bangalore and Arizona.
It was interesting because he saw a lot and experienced a lot back in the day here so there were so many stories that came to mind.
It seems he is going to be involved with the renovation of Bahulaban. Bahulaban is the place Srila Prabhupada actually was at when he visited New Vrindaban. The Palace was under construction at the time, but the current temple and activity centers were all post Prabhupada era construction.
Bahulaban was abandoned at some point and is in a state of great disrepair. As about 250 of Prabhupada’s disciples went through initiation ceremonies there, it can be seen as a holy place. A holy place that NV has been around long enough that it needs to be restored. That is common in India, abandoned holy sites, but not so common here.
Adi Guru is putting together a team and overcoming so many obstacles to push this project forward. He was saying that since everything starts with the Holy Name, having a kirtan at Bahulaban on Gaura Paurnima was the way to kick off the active stage of the Bahulaban renovations.
The first step will be to fix up the altar and temple room and temple room addition. They were built onto the original farmhouse and are salvageable. The farmhouse itself will be torn down and rebuilt on the same original sandstone foundation.
It was enlivening to me that Sashi Patel had just been at an architects’ convention and that the stress had been on green construction, so he is all on board with making Bahulaban an example of it.
At Shashi’s request, a surveyor will be coming out next week to map out the Bahulaban area, locating the existing buildings on a map and plotting in elevation lines at 5′ intervals for planning purposes.
He designed Raghu and Jamuna’s house in New Vrindaban, an earth sheltered home, well known to New Vrindaban devotees as a wonderful place to have kirtan also.
March 12, 2009 at 3:13 am
What about the four story building beside the temple? Is it still there? There was a fire back when. Will it be renovated?
March 12, 2009 at 7:19 am
That is subject to opinion. Some feel that it should be razed but others, myself included, feel that even though it needs to be completely gutted, the walls are 12 concrete block with poured concrete columns and bond beams and that the shell would still be very valuable.
The fourth and third floors were wood and need to be removed, the 4th is already gone.
March 12, 2009 at 10:16 am
Dr. Patel? I was not aware that Shashi was a doctor.
March 12, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Correct I am not a MD ‘DOCTOR’ however there are many Patel ‘MD’ Doctors and so many take me as one of them.
In my profession of Architecture, after so many years of ‘Practice’ one can be referred to as ‘Doctor’ of ‘BUILDING’. I do not prefer that pre-fix.
I will appreciate the correction.
Also Correct.. 29 temples to… over 50
March 15, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Done and done, I was taking info off internet and a busy man like yourself has moved on. :-)