The summer of 1972 was a challenging time for all of our small party. It was the first time in my life that I had undergone such insurmountable austerity. The heat was incredibly unbearable, and some people were going to the hospital with heat exposure. The temperature hovered around 115 to 125 degrees F, and we had no fans, no screens, no windows, sometimes very little water, and we were eating just some boiled dahl soup and chapatis as per Srila Prabhupada’s instruction. It was a daunting experience. So I would pray each day: Please my Radha Damodara, help me to conquer this heat. Become impervious to it. Deal with it as Prabhupada before me and as the goswamis do. Let me tolerate it better tomorrow than I have today. I often reflected on an instruction Srila Prabhupada gave me some months earlier in Calcutta. He must have foreseen me in this situation, for he chuckled as he said, “Yamuna, in Vrindavan, you must become fireproof. Sometimes the heat is unbearable there. You have already lived in London and become waterproof. So much rain was there. Now you must become both fireproof and waterproof. Then you can live anywhere and not be bothered.” So on the spiritual platform Vrindavan was one of the most glorious places to be in. We were surrounded by the lotus shelter of our acaryas and great Vaishnavas and Srila Prabhupada’s work. But on the material side, it was a whole new type of service, one that we had never engaged in before, and something that had to be learned quickly and under extremely difficult circumstances.