Jaya Sri Krsna!
Esteemed Professor et al,
Hope this meets you indominatable spirits and youthful health energy. We have accomplished our two assignments from our last phone call. First we sent you the ISBNumber and got a response from your mobile. Second we have written the first draft of our Publisher's Forward for the much awaited "Man-Making". We will include the draft below and do some more editing work on it with Dr. Ravi.
1. In general it is still challenging working here with our donkeys 68-years of age, the heat, building etc. but we see it as actually a perfect arrangement by Krsna and we continually are making progress in personal habits and improvement of physical resources to get the NIOS, ISKCON, work done.
2. We have purchased our ticket for India. It took us 3-hours of work! In the beginning we were coming back with quotations of up to $6,500 for the proposed trip but the final conclusion is that we will fly from Houston, Texas on the 30th of December and then connect with a Spice Jet flight on the 1st January morning to Tirupati. The 2nd is the ISKCON-Indian Christian Dialog of which we have been 90% confirmed as a participant. Then we, Radhika and myself, will travel to University of Madras for his and Kenneth's symposium on current life of the Bhagavata Purana. Scholars such as Srivatsa Goswami and others from Swami Narayana sect and well as academicians will participate. They were very enthusiastic to include your good self in this symposium, but in the end, with the time alloted to plan the program they decided that the Keynote Speaker should be someone with a more direct absorption in the topic. Did you want to contribute in any way to this symposium?
Then we are available until the 10-12 of February when there is a very crucial ISKCON: Guru, Sannyasi, GBC Sanga in Mayapura. We have pressure to visit the North-East again, Pune and of course work with Rama-giri-dhari Das and his Goloka Education. Of course, we are hoping for any direction from you in forming our plan for this time betweent 10th January and 10th February.
We return to Houston on the 14th of February.
Total price of the ticket ... $785.75! ... Jaya Sri Krsna!
3. We have been struggling for one month to contact Rama-giri-dhari Das and of course suffering mental panic, fear and frustration, but our intelligence was advising our mind to be peaceful. In the end, we had two phone calls with RGD and just as we thought, since our three weeks together in Houston, he has been struggling with his 30-employee software business that fell into disorder while he was away to the USA. Then Janmastami came and he was unavoidably drawn onto the three man managing commitee for the new Navi-Mumbai ISKCON Temple. He was sleeping from 3.30-5.30AM only for five days, but in the end his President and 60,000 visitors were satisfied. Now he has promised to get us immediate results on promoting our books and also push on the general development of NIOS and the Goloka Foundation in USA.
4. We are still having serious problems with all of our NIOS files on the computer. We have a back-up but it will not load onto the computer. We will work on this.
5. We are looking at this proposed Symposium on "Art and the Sacred", Peru 2018, as the main focus for our NIOS work. What do you think of this? All of the prestigious and active scholars who participated this year, Ambassador of India are all giving enthusiastic responses to this plan, which they suggested. Solaris should be the main tool for this development. The theme has to be focused since the topic is very broad. Ramon says a grant of $100,000 would not be impossible from a Peruvian bank and Beverly says that participation from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art is also very certain.
6. In our own writing we have started to read Jerald Larson's "Classical Samkhya" and have written a working Preface to our book on Samkhya. We are using a working title of "Dinner with Dr. Singh, Classical Indian Cosmology in Modern Necessity".
O.K.
We follow with the Draft of our Foreword, chant 4-more Japa malas and answer of mail.
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FOREWORD
Man Making
NIOS is very proud to be presenting its fourth book in the form of this “Man Making [ttd]”. We were able to start this publication series in co-operation with the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust and publish a beautiful, full-color illustrated, bi-lingual, edition of Srila A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami’s, Light of the Bhagavata. Light of the Bhagavata stands as an excellent presentation of Srimad Bhagavata, Canto 10, Chapter 20: The Rainy Season and Autumn in Vṛndāvana. NIOS has expanded this into a Symposium titled, Cultivation of the Human Spirit, which has been presented at many universities and prestigious cultural and academic centers throughout the world.
Then this series of three books: Pracyaprajnapradipa, Bharata sanskriti and now Man Making, which take us into the strict and awe inspiring world of Ancient Indian History and Culture as seen through the eyes of some of best current scholars in this field.
Besides these four books, several excellent and relevant movies with Oscar Natars, selected Director of the Year in 2015 by the community of Latin American critics, NIOS has also produced the first edition of what we hope to be its flagship Journal, Solaris. This was totally integrated with the Symposium on Psychology and the Sacred realized in partnership with the National Library of Peru in June 2016, and has received enthusiastic interest from all parts.
We hope to continue this work, do something very good for the world, and invite everyone to join us. The “Man-Making” of course touches with excellent papers on the most essential topic, Education. Without proper education, no other field of knowledge can flourish. These papers were originally solicited and many then presented at the formal release of “Bharata-sanskriti” in May of 2015.
Thank you,
Dr. Ravi Gupta
President, NIOS