Dhanya Gaurangi Devi Dasi, a disciple of Jayapataka Swami, spoke about her work as a musician, counselor, wife, mother, and servant in the New Raman Reti community. Known publicly as Dhanya Rico and by her stage name Dhanya, she reflected on growing up between cultures, discovering kirtan on her own terms, and coming to see spiritual life and relational life as deeply connected. “The area that I’m most passionate about,” she said, “has to do with helping people figure out the ways in which spiritual life and relational life are interwoven.”
A Life Built From Many Rooms
Dhanya was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, a city she remembers as nestled in a valley beneath the Avila Mountains, with the ocean just beyond. Her childhood moved between her grandparents’ house, a Catholic school, and her father’s side of the family, who were part of Caracas’s Jewish community, a life shaped early by many expressions of faith and belonging.
Her father, a disciple of Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada and a performer well known throughout Latin America, filled the home with music, sound checks, and late nights when she would fall asleep at restaurant tables after concerts. Her mother, also involved in the arts, raised Dhanya and her younger siblings largely on her own after her parents divorced, and Dhanya credits her with teaching her what a grounded, loving home could feel like. “She liked being with us, and she really transmitted that to us,” she said.
That early awareness of relational fracture drew her toward counseling. Srila Prabhupada’s only visit to South America was to Caracas, and Dhanya said that fact, along with her father’s devotion to him, quietly shaped her spiritual identity before she consciously chose the path herself.
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