Manisha Kavadi from Maryland, with her parents Vasudha and Sharad from Texas. Visiting us for first time after hearing about our rudraksha grove and then discovering we also have a temple and more!

SSC Mauritius Mission

Click here for photos of the June monthly Ganesha homa

An unusual coincidence brought Shankaralingam Pitchaiah to our office today. The monastery, as most of you know, has a five acre organic noni field. We’re exploring producing our own noni juice, and spoke with a chemist at a lab in Honolulu (as testing is required). That chemist turned out to be Tai Khan, originally of Fiji, who knew about the temple and mentioned his friend, Shankara, would be on Kauai on Saturday. Shankara, Tai explained, was a microbiologist who could help me understand the testing requirements for noni. This turned into quite a boon, as Shankara and Arumuganathaswami discussed government regulations for half an hour, greatly increasing our knowledge of this previously opaque area!

He was accompanied by his wife Nagasundaravalli Ramakrishnan and his friend Lakshmanan Pitchaiya and his wife Shanmuga Sundari Subramanian, all from originally from Tamil Nadu.

Late this morning we were suddenly graced with the presence of Vaishnava swami Bhakti Purusottama Swami and his assistant from Sri Mayapur Chandrodaya Mandir in West Bengal, India. They were brought here by the Chakraborty devotee family near Chicago.

Swamiji is on a tour through many cities in USA, lecturing on Bhagavad Gita and Srimad Bhagavatam.

They had a wonderful time here, marveling at the atmosphere, environment, rudraksha trees which they had never seen before, let alone the blue fruit around the seed which is visible right now. Their website is http://www.mayapur.com

Bhakti Purusottama Swami on the left

Growing tomatoes on Kauai is tricky with all the fruit flies. Our Siddhidata Kulam team has tried many different varieties. Recently we started to get a few very good sized fruits coming on our current plants.