Giriraj Swami and Tamal Krishna Goswami’s brother and sister-in-law, Kalachandji das and Sraddhanjali dasi, shared memories and realizations of Tamal Krishna Goswami Maharaja via Skype with devotees in Israel.
“My understanding is that like everything else he did his entering academia was not out of a personal preference but out of what he saw as necessary for his service to Srila Prabhupada. And we can see that in the result of his dissertation, which is totally a glorification of Srila Prabhupada. I had been in academia for many years already, but it was like I was the tortoise and he shot ahead of me as the hare. But actually it was a great austerity for him as well. Although he loved to have his intellect engaged in many ways and he saw how he could use the university and academia to preach Krishna consciousness, it was not academia or the university in itself that appealed to him. When he first arrived there he was very excited to be engaged in that way. His letters from when he first arrived in Cambridge are full of excitement, exuberance, and energy. But his letters from shortly before he went to Mayapur are a very different tone. They express much more the austerities involved in that enterprise. He was known as such a strong and heavy guru, but I think by nature he was very much a man of the heart—very soft and loving. But to be a spiritual master required great strength. Engaging that aspect of his personality was as much a service as it defined his personality.”
—Kalachandji das