My beloved husband, the British devotee His Grace Adwaita Acharya Das (Alan Hole), departed on July 9th.
My husband joined the movement in Cardiff at the beginning of 1970. Kulashekar Das had started a temple there. He joined together with a rather large group of men named “the Cardiff boys.” They were my husband, who was named Adwaita Acharya Das, Narahari, Vichitraveria, Smarahari, Bhajahari, Gunanava and a few more. After a while, the temple in Cardiff was closed, and they all moved to the Bury Place temple in London to serve Radha-London Isvara. After a short spell in the Manchester temple, he decided to go to India.
He spent a year in India serving at different temples until Acyutananda Swami approached him regarding buying a bus suitable for the life-membership program. Having found a good vehicle Acyutananda Swami asked him to stay on as its driver. He spent a lot of time in South India, traveling with Acyutananda Swami, Saciananda Swami, and others, making a lot of Life Members for the movement. He often talked about this time in India and the amazing mercy of being able to go to Jagannath Puri for Rathayatra that year. But India can be hard on a penniless brahamachari and his health was not good. In 1976, he returned to the fairly new Bhaktivedanta Manor.
My husband and I got married at the beginning of 1977, and I moved to the Manor from the temple in London. Our son, Upananda, was born in March 1978, and our daughter, Radhika, in September 1979. In 1981, we moved to Worcestershire to assist the devotees who had started an incense factory called Plenty of Scents, producing Spiritual Sky incense. This was located close to the new temple, Chaitanya College, on the estate called Croome Court, where our son went to Gurukula.
My mother, who lived in Sweden, passed away, only 49 years old, in 1983, and in 1984, we moved to Stockholm to help my father, but also hoping the children would become bilingual. Here, my husband got work with a governmental peace research institute, and we stayed in Stockholm. He looked forward to his service of at least once a week going to the temple at Govinda’s at Fridhemsplan to hold a class or have a bhajan class. When the temple closed, he continued this service at the new temple in Bromma.
He was always a good cook and enjoyed cooking for the devotees. In his last few years before retirement, he worked at the Hermitage restaurant in Stockholm and, for one period, helped at the farm Almviks gård, working with the cowshed and also restoring parts of the temple room.
There are some recordings of him singing in different situations, but the one recording he seemed to be most proud of is a clip that can be seen on YouTube of him and some of the “Cardiff Boys” I mentioned above having kirtan in Dublin in 1973. Adwaita is the person standing up, starting the kirtan at the very beginning of the clip. It is called “Hare Krishnas in Dublin—Television Broadcast from 20 July 1973.” You can watch the clip here.
When he passed away, our daughter and I went through his computer, compiling all the poems and songs he had compiled throughout the years. He had also left instructions regarding donations to the cows and other projects he had saved up for. At the end of his instructions, he asked me to forward a short greeting: “Please, thank all the devotees for their patience and association, and wish them well in the pursuit of Krishna consciousness.”
He was initiated for almost 53 years and my husband for more than 47 years. He passed away at age 73 on July 9th while hearing Srila Prabhupada chanting.
Source https://iskconnews.org/remembering-his-grace-adwaita-acharya-das/
Comments