A Queens, New York Street was co-named for a Guyanese pandit, Shri Prakash Gossai, formerly of Handsome Tree, Mahaica, Region Five, last Sunday.

It is now Shri Prakash Gossai Way on 86th Street and 101 Ave in Ozone Park, Queens, where thousands of Guyanese and Trinis are settled. Ozone Park is an extension of Richmond Hill, Woodhaven and Cypress, all of which are settled by tens of thousands of Guyanese.

The co-naming of the street in Queens comes on the heels of the co-naming of two other streets in the nearby areas for Guyanese Pandit, Ramlall, and Little Guyana in Richmond Hill, so described because of the large Guyanese population settled in New York.
Some one hundred thousand Guyanese live in the greater Richmond Hill area which was first settled by Guyanese and Trinis in the 1970s. Some half a million Guyanese are settled in the USA.

Prakash Gossai Way is named in honour of the late Hindu priest, Shri Prakash Gossai. He was enormously popular in North America and the Caribbean for his explanation and interpretation of the Ramayana. He was also the most popular Bhajan singer in the West.

Gossai was a versatile singer and won Bollywood filmi singing contests in Guyana. He played the harmonium very well. Gossai was educated as a biologist at UG and worked at the medical laboratory in Georgetown before migrating to the US in the early 1980s.

He was employed briefly with Dr Vishnu Bandhu as an accountant and sales agent in a store in Brooklyn. Then he applied for and passed exams to obtain a licence as a high school teacher of Biology, in New York, in 1985. While waiting for his teaching licence, he accompanied Dr Bandhu and other religious figures singing at satsanghs and religious events in weekends and at weekday Hindu festivals.

After he became a biology teacher, he founded the Bhuvaneshwar Mandir in Brooklyn and then shifted location to Ozone Park, Queens. He was a popular pandit among Indo Caribbeans and nationals from India. Gossai also studied Hinduism and Hindi in India for a year. He escorted tours and pilgrimage to India annually for a few years.

The well-known pandit re-migrated to Guyana and was employed by the government around 2007. He suffered a massive heart attack in 2009 and his family airlifted him to Miami for medical treatment. He died shortly after his arrival in Miami. His body was flown to New York for final rites. Thousands from all parts of the globe came to pay final tributes to him.

Recently, his family petitioned the City Council to name a street in his honour near the Mandir he founded. Council member, Eric Ulrich, of the area championed the petition. It was approved by the Council and signed into law by the Mayor.

Among those in attendance for the street-naming ceremony were Brooklyn Borough President, Donovan Richards; Democratic Mayoral nominee, Eric Adams; community leaders, the Mayor’s Liaison, Rohan Narine; Pandit Santram Dukhbanjan; Dr Dhanpaul Narine; Assembly Woman, Jenifer Rajkumar; Council member Ulrich, and Pandit Bankim Gossai of London. Bankim is Prakash’s brother. Arun Gossai, Prakash’s son, presided over the ceremony.

Before the unveiling ceremony, there was a programme at the Mandir that included prayers, speeches, singing and dance items. Accolades were showered on the late pandit from community leaders and elected politicians.
The co-naming of the street to honour Indian Guyanese is a reflection of the growing influence of the Indian- American community in America.