Prabhupada World Tour 1972-1973 -- Following Srila Prabhupada Part 4 -- 1080p

This is the beginning of the construction of the first guest house at Mayapur. That was what you call the Lotus Building. It was designed in Calcutta by an architect named Mr. Gujarati who lived on the other side of the Pukor from Albert Road.

He designed that nice building and showed it to Prabhupada. He said, yes, this is a nice building. He said, build it. And this man, Mr.

Gujarati, he had lines in his forehead. Prabhupada said, oh, he said, you have natural tilak. It's a very good sign. We were still living up front in the straw house.

We lived up in that straw house for a long time, even when the deities were in this temple on the ground floor. That would be summer because that's Kalbhishak season with those big cyclones. it would be so hot and then these huge black clouds would come up and then it would just be this heavy downpour and then you'd have some you know freshness for a few days. When Prabhupada came to Amsterdam that was the time I met him the first time and so Prabhupada just came out of immigration and he saw me and he waved and it was very ecstatic I fell to the ground, paid my obeisances and I I laughed and I cried and had so many emotions at the same time, which was extraordinary. Normally you either laugh or you either cry, but you don't have these emotions at the same time.

Then he came to the temple and he gave a lecture. And the amazing thing of the lecture was, prior to that I could not understand Prabhupada's broad Indian dialect at all, particularly since English is not my first language. But the amazing thing was that as soon as he started talking, I could understand every single word, which was quite remarkable. I couldn't believe it.

I went later, put on a tape, and I listened to it, and there it was, I understood every single word. It was kind of a miracle. It was 1971, and there were so many hippies at the time, and everything was a lot more liberal and free. This is Vondelpark.

It's a very big park in Amsterdam. A hundred people turned up, actually. So Prabhupada did not give a class as such. He spoke very little, and he said that we should have kirtan and give them pashat, and that would be the best help that they can have at this point.

The Tanyan Shrath, which was the first place where we had a temple in Amsterdam, it was a garage in the street. Right behind was the red light district. And so Rabi transformed that garage into a temple room, and he actually built the altar. And the interesting thing about Amsterdam, because there were so many hippies, Mongol Arctic was always packed because they didn't sleep all night.

They used to hear the kirtan reverberated around all the canals in the streets. And they all used to come and dance and sing with us. I mean, dozens of them every day. And after that, they used to say for Peshawar.

So Amsterdam provided Peshawar for literally thousands and thousands of people coming because they were so attracted. We're the only temple in Amsterdam in those days. It was held in the late summer, of course, in August, and many non-devotees came, many young people, students. So just the scope of it, the dimension, and the number of devotees, number of non-devotees, it was sort of like a landmark event.

Everyone that was there felt it to be so, and even Prabhupada, that something new and greater was occurring. Srila Prabhupada was to come to Nubra Davin to conduct what he entitled the Bhagavad-dharma discourses. He was going to speak from Srimad Bhagavatam for seven days. The devotees at Nubrandhavan, under the guidance of Kirtananda Maharaj, were very, very enthusiastic to prepare the community for his arrival.

They worked hard, cutting down trees to construct a big pandal on the top of a mountain, the highest mountain of the area. That was to be the place where Srila Prabhupada would speak. Also, the devotees painted and renovated the house that Prabhupada was going to stay in, did so much landscaping, and especially they were working on building a brand new temple for Sri Sri Radha Vrindavan Chandra, which was to be inaugurated on the night of Janmasthami by Srila Prabhupada. Srila Prabhupada drove in a black Lincoln Continental into the Nubrandavan property.

It was ecstatic kirtana as devotees welcomed him. One thing that really made an impression on me at that festival was the loving concern by the sannyasis and senior disciples of Srila Prabhupada for all of us, preaching to us lovingly. we all sat together and ate prasadam you could walk up to anyone and ask a question and they would take the time to answer you and give you association the feeling that we were a family and there was Srila Prabhupada he was our father we all felt sheltered we all felt protected It was like a resurgence of energy and rededication. We all went back to our temples completely refreshed and rejuvenated and ready for whatever austerities we had to perform. Devotees, with very, very deep enthusiasm, stood and sat all around him very closely as he spoke his welcoming address, thanking the devotees for their hard work and their efforts and giving a basic message of Krishna consciousness.

Srila Prabhupada, through his words and through his smile, while sitting there on that Vyasa San, under a tree at Bahulavan, satisfied everyone's hearts. All of the hard work and intensive labor that was offered by the devotees over the previous several months was completely fulfilled. It all bore fruit when Srila Prabhupada smiled upon us and expressed his satisfaction to be with us at Nubrandavan again. Cooking for the deities and doing the artyiks, that was my service.

So one time Srila Prabhupada was there when I did the artyik. I had a wonderful realization. I turned around, I was dirty because I'd been cooking all day and then they pushed me onto the altar, and I was totally embarrassed. But I turned around to offer incense to Srila Prabhupada, and I realized that he was always there on the Vyasa sign, that it was absolutely no different.

And I still feel like that, that he's present, even though it would be nice to be able to see him more clearly. And so he was staying in the small house at Madhavan, and I was standing outside, and he came out. And I suspect he came out to pass urine, which I realized years later, but I didn't know it at the time, and I was just standing there. And he came out and I didn't pay obeisances.

I couldn't say anything. I just stood there like a deer in the headlights of a car and was totally terrified. But it was a wonderful thing because he smiled. You know, he was so gracious.

He smiled and made me feel so at ease and not like I had done something stupid or that I was, you know, somehow lacking. that he was so kind. He just stood there with me for a while and then he smiled and turned around and went back in the building. I mean, he's always been kind to me like that because I'm very shy and I don't ever put myself forward. So he would put himself out for me.

I had experiences like that with him where he would reassure me. That's what I felt like. Devotees from New York and various other centers brought van loads of boga for the festival. There was a kitchen set up right on the top of the mountain.

In the most primitive conditions with oil barrels, they made stoves. And many dozens and dozens of devotees volunteered, cutting vegetables, cooking with smoke billowing up into people's eyes. But it was such a beautiful sight to see devotees from all over America working together in these very primitive forests of Nubrandavan preparing prasad for Srila Prabhupada's Vyasa Puja feast. And one time Prabhupada was sitting taking a massage and then right in front of Prabhupada these two little kittens were wrestling and they actually rolled right onto Prabhupada's lap.

And so among the various zealous misconceptions that plagued us in our early days One that we had is that, you know, animals were so contaminated that it's horrible to even touch them. I was sort of appalled that these two kittens, they were cute, but they just rolled right under Prabhupada's lap. And I was thinking, oh my God, an animal touched Prabhupada. But to my surprise, Prabhupada just started petting them.

And Prabhupada said two things. He said, look, even here there is love. And what I immediately understood from that was that our original love for Krishna is so strong that even in the body of an animal or a cat, it still manifests in some way. And then Prabhupada said, if I put my head in your lap and you cut my throat, that is the greatest sin.

He said the greatest sin is that if someone trusts you and takes shelter of you, and then you betray them and cause them harm. It can be parents toward a child, it can be a man protecting a woman. Any situation where someone has sincerely trusted us and depends on us and then we betray them. This was such a unique altar arrangement here because they had Radha Damodara in the center, Jyotindra on the side, and Prabhupada on the left.

You know, I'm used to having the picture of Prabhupada on the left. We had Prabhupada in person on the left next to the deities. I'd never seen that before, that you had an altar where Prabhupada is sitting next to the deities in person. So that was real special.

And then I remember after the Vyasa Puja ceremony was time for the feast, they didn't close the curtains on the altar. I don't remember ever taking a feast where they didn't close the curtains on the altar. So this whole sequence of events, and then just looking around at that whole hillside, it was a panoramic scene of buses and vans and tents and just devotees and cows all over the meadows. And I just, it was just like a chapter of Krishna book, Come the Life.

Now, I think it was the same day, and I was down at the barn, and I was, you know, watching the Volkswagen go up the hillside, and the cows were all over that hillside, and they were decorated just like it's described in Krishna book, with you know patterns made from different minerals all different colors and different patterns and when Prabhupada looked out of the Volkswagen he smiled like you know I've never seen him smile except in that picture when in the Lilamrita when bridge stood up for the first time he's just beaming as Salya Agarwal ascribed to that oceanic smile and Prabhupada looked at of the cows, decorated like that, and he smiled like that. That little episode, it's just like one remembrance of how sweet the whole occasion was. And a devotee asked Prabhupada, what does it mean to have love for the spiritual master?

What does love of the guru mean? And so I was thinking, Prabhupada would say, you have all these feelings in your heart, and you, you know, feel this, and you feel that, and that's what I was expecting to hear. And Prabhupada said, love for the guru means you have taken initiation. You have made vow to the spiritual master and taken fire sacrifice.

You keep your vow. That is love. And when I heard that, I said, you know, again, that was one of those statements that Prabhupada would make with all the devotees, we were just taken completely by surprise at Prabhupāda's definition of love. It was not a feeling at all, but keeping our vow that we made to him when we got initiated.

And that is how we show whether we really have love or not. The next day was Vyāspūja, and Śrīla Prabhupāda, being very sensitive to the time, place and circumstance, gave this wonderful Vyās Puja address to describe the spiritual master and why the spiritual master is being offered so much honor and homage on this day, because after all there were many people there, scholars and journalists, etc., who were not familiar with this etiquette. So Śrīla Prabhupāda said, Kṛṣṇa is very big, He's a very big, big person. Prabhupada said, just like in this material world, if you want to please or even see a big man, it is very difficult to do.

He often used Ford and Rockefeller. So he said, just like Mr. Ford, if you want to please Mr. Ford, it's very hard, or even to see him, it's very hard.

But if you happen to see Mr. Ford walking his dog, and you give Mr. Ford's dog a two-cent lozenge, Prabhupada used the word lozenge, then Mr. Ford is very easily pleased.

So Prabhupada said, I'm the dog of God. It is very difficult to approach Krishna, but if you simply please His dog, Krishna will be pleased. And the day of Prabhupada's arrival, they needed volunteers to fix up the house where Prabhupada was staying, and I went up to help. There was, of course, a frenzy of activity, just as there always is, just before Prabhupāda comes in any temple.

And it was just an amazing sight to behold. And finally Prabhupāda arrives and all of the sannyāsīs come with him and there's about eight or ten sannyāsīs and they all file into the house. There's a few devotees hovering by the door and Prabhupāda sees us over there by the door and everybody else is inside the house. the big guns in the movement so to speak and Prabhupada motions that we should also come inside and so the devotees are outside the door they're sitting just on the front row right in front of Prabhupada and Prabhupada's talking about developing new Vrindavan one thing I remember he said is that new Vrindavan is non-different than Vrindavan in India and that he also mentioned that Tulsi is the spiritual barometer for a temple. And then just out of nowhere, he looks right at me and he asks, are you trying to understand the philosophy?

So I was so dumbfounded that Prabhupada was talking to me, I couldn't even say a word, I was just totally in a state of shock. But what I did appreciate is the way Prabhupada phrased that question, are you trying to understand the philosophy? That if someone just makes an endeavor to understand, that's sufficient. Prabhupada would be pleased just by somebody making an endeavor to try to understand.

Whether they understand or not, that's another matter, but just to try to understand the philosophy. Bhardaraj was leading, and after the kirtans started getting a little more lively, Vishnujan Maharaj took over the lead. Vishnujan kept kind of lovingly singing the Maha Mantra. All the devotees were starting to rock side to side.

And then Srila Prabhupada, He closed his eyes and he was starting to hit the cartels together with more and more force. At one point, which seemed to be the perfect crescendo of the chanting of Vishnu Jan, everyone was shocked when Srila Prabhupada interrupted Vishnu Jan and took over the kirtan. That had not been seen before. Prabhupada seemed to be in such an ecstatic mood that he had no choice but to take over the kirtan.

And at that moment, everyone went absolutely mad. There was a rush toward the stage, and I was right in front of Prabhupada, and we were kind of crushed into the stage, and everyone's arms, it looked like a thousand arms were outstretched to Srila Prabhupada. People started to cry. Shila Prabhupada's chanting was so beautiful it's it's almost like that the sky opened up love of God came down and it poured over all of us because at one point people could they were crying so much that they just started to whimper and and gasp I've never been to a kirtan like that before in my life never since and I think I cried for about an hour after that The day wore on, and we were fasting and chanting, and then nighttime fell, and, you know, the midnight RT, and after fasting and chanting, everybody's ready to break fast.

But Srila Prabhupada has the devotees open up Krishna book, because now he wants to hear about Krishna. It's the appearance of Lord Krishna. so Prabhupada sits up straight and his eyes are open and he's all ready to hear and we're all ready to eat basically so Krishna's pastimes are being read now it's 12.30, quarter to one one o'clock and everyone in the room except for Prabhupada is gradually being overcome by the forces of sleep and we finish the first chapter and then it continued into the second chapter and the prayers by the denigods for Lord Krishna were fairly weighty philosophical topics and you would see these dandas nodding like divining rods or like crossed swords crossing in the aisle as the sannyasis bearing them would gradually be falling asleep and then the rods would again split apart from one another as the sannyasis would jerk themselves awake and then the rods would gradually descend again as the devotees holding them descended towards sleep.

But Prabhupada was very staunch. He was there listening very intently. And at one point, I remember looking around the room and everyone in the room was asleep except for Prabhupada at one point. It was really incredible.

I was watching Prabhupada very carefully to see if he was going to fall asleep. And at one point, Prabhupada looked like he was starting to nod and he just leaned forward ever so slightly and immediately caught himself and sat back up straight. And with his right hand, he made a chopping motion, like, no, I won't fall asleep. And from that moment on, he was sitting there listening and wrapped attention.

Then suddenly, it's pitch black. The power had gone out. So I was thinking, what is Srila Prabhupada's expression going to be when the lights come back on? Is he going to be upset?

What is he thinking about? It seemed like a very long time that the power was off. And when the lights came back on, Prabhupada had this huge ear-to-ear grin on his face. And the words that he said were, So now Krishna is sitting on the lap of Mother Yasoda.

I think you are all tired, so we can stop here. And all the devotees started roaring. I remember Gayatri and several other of ISKCON's best bakers spending several days to cook a gigantic cake for Srila Prabhupada's Vyasa Puja. It was the most enormous cake I ever saw in my entire life.

And they were cooking everything on this very, very simple makeshift wood oven. the fuel was wood and they made the oven out of some sort of um big cans barrels and they would just make a little piece at a time a little piece at a time and they just as the days went on they were stacking it up and they it ended up a huge glorious incredible cake they brought it all the way up on the hill many devotees had to carry it and then they offered to sri la prabhupada and as Srila Prabhupada was eating it, it became prasad. So within moments, devotees gathered around the cake for remnants and they practically dove into that cake. Within a matter of seconds, this gigantic cake disappeared. This was a really glorious return for him to Vrindavan.

He just really enjoyed his disciples being there. and Prabhupada was really excited about going back there. I became his servant a month before and he had it planned out and he would give little ideas of what his plan was and that's what he said, he would be speaking in English because it was for his disciples, he said, not that he was going to speak in Hindi to the local inhabitants or abroad but he wanted to speak to his disciples and he was training them up in Krishna consciousness. We lived in Keshigat by the banks of the Jamuna and every morning we would attend Mangalarti in Keshigat and after that a Chutananda Swami would take a Sankirtan party and we'd go all the way to Ramanreti where the Krishna Balaram temple was under construction and then we'd walk back along the Parikrama path that followed the Jamuna river and go to the Radha Damodar temple in time to meet Srila Prabhupada there and Prabhupada would lead us in the Jaya Radha Madhava prayers and then he would speak on Srimad Bhagavatam, first canto, chapter two, Divinity and Divine Service.

And although we had heard what he was saying before, it was the basic Krishna conscious philosophy, in that atmosphere it had tremendous impact. I can't imagine how fortunate we were, that small group of us, to be in the most auspicious place, Vrindavan, and then within Vrindavan, in such an auspicious place where the Goswamis used to sit together, and to be there at such an auspicious time, Kartik, with Krishna's pure representative, Srila Prabhupada. It was simply Srila Prabhupada's kindness upon us that he made this arrangement to impress upon us this incredible philosophy of Krishna consciousness, so powerful, so important, so profound. So it was an incredible month and a month that I will remember my entire life.

Certainly it moved me very deeply. Once we were walking in Vrindavan along the road and it was just a couple of us and all of a sudden out of the blue Prabhupada just stops and he turned around and he looked at me straight in the face and he said, out. So Dinanath, you will become a pure devotee? Simultaneously, it was a question, but it was a directive too.

He was inquiring, but at the same time, he was giving me a directive. And I immediately answered. I said, yes, Sri Ramaprabhupada. Then, about a day later, we're walking again the same way.

He stops again, turns and looks at me, and he says to me, don't change anything. Turns back around, Keeps walking. Prophet's room at the Radha Damodara temple, you can see behind, there's like these little holes. It lets the wind come through.

And you can actually see behind in the courtyard. So Shyamazandar's daughter, Saraswati, was there, and she was pulling on the shirt of a little Bengali gentleman. And she was telling the gentleman, Who is Krishna? Do you know who is Krishna?

And the gentleman looked at this amused look on his face. Saraswati may have been four or five years old at the time. she was very young and Prabhupada was looking and we were looking and the man was amused that this little girl would ask him that and she told him Krishna is the supreme personality of Godhead and you should surrender to him and Prabhupada says just see she's a guru she's preaching about Krishna we were all sick with fever and dysentery because the conditions were very austere and I remember Vishakha and I we used to prefer to just jump in the Jamuna river even though it was completely pitch dark and we couldn't see anything we couldn't touch the bottom rather than go in the bathroom which was slimy and indescribable so then palpatine would give lectures in the morning on bhagavatam and in the evening a nectar of devotion at that time the courtyard was just dust and there was a lot of i remember rubble around and to me the temple looked like it was bombed out we couldn't even tell it was a temple the front of it it was all like crumbling and the inside there was rubble everywhere in the courtyard and it was dust but actually I prefer the dust because it was the original dust where the six Goswamis sat and Prabhupada did mention in his lecture how the six Goswamis used to sit in that very courtyard discussing Bhagavatam and Jiva Goswami would be sitting and writing his commentaries and another one would be singing the verses so we were sitting in that same place hearing Prabhupada discuss Bhagavatam.

And then after the evening, after devotion, Prabhupada would have Darshan in his room. And that time, he would just talk very informally. I remember him warning us not to associate with the Babajis. And he talked about Markatvairagya, that the monkey has many wives.

He's vegetarian, and he's renounced it, but he has many wives. So the Babajis are like that. He that we shouldn't associate with them. This pandal was organized for Srila Prabhupada.

This place was exhibition grounds in the center of the Hyderabad city. And for about ten days, Prabhupada gave lectures, morning and evening. These deities are Radha-Madhava that must be in the morning, starting by kirtan. So there were quite a good number of devotees, maybe at least fifty.

It was very successful. That was the most successful program of Sridhar Prabhupada in Hyderabad. Every day, not less than 5,000, sometimes 10,000 used to come, especially in the evenings. And morning, 1,000 or 2,000.

It was the beginning of our mission in Hyderabad. All the most important people attended as chief guests, and there was a committee also formed of some of the most important businessmen. So they were very impressed by this program. One gentleman, Mr.

G. Poularedi, was having a sweet shop in Hyderabad. He came forward to donate a piece of land measuring about 950 square yards in the center of the city. And now our East Khan Hyderabad is situated there.

At that time in Hyderabad, there had not been any rain for at least one year. In the last monsoon, there was no rain. But during our program there, in the last two or three days, the rain started. And Prabhupada mentioned, this is due to our kirtan.

It also came in newspapers that the Sankirtan is bringing rain. So I was greeting the deities and offering to the deities and Prabhupada came up and paid his obeisances to the deities and then walked back to give his morning class. Well, I had always been trained that you never leave the deities alone. So even though I wanted to go listen to Prabhupada, I felt as a Bajoran it was my duty to stay there.

So I was staying there and about 30 seconds later, Bhavananda comes running back down where i was and said oh you are here good prabhupada wanted to make sure someone was with the deities so that really struck me that here you know everybody's chanting jai prabhupada jai prabhupada he's going up getting flower garlands getting to you know getting worshipped but he's thinking oh it's somebody with rada and krishna that was really nice you know both to see that prabhupada had you know was thinking like that and then to feel that i had you know understood Prabhupada in that way. So one morning Prabhupada gave a lecture and after the lecture one Indian gentleman came up to Prabhupada, he had just purchased a small book, one of these small Krishna consciousness topmost yoga system was out and he asked Prabhupada to autograph it. So I was standing right next to Prabhupada and Prabhupada smiled and said yes.

So the gentleman handed him a pen and Prabhupada autographed the book. So then another gentleman seeing the opportunity took a book and asked Prabhupada to autograph that and Prabhupada autographed it. So I was standing right next to Prabhupada. So another man, the third man, he pulls out of his pocket a little notepad and with a pen and he says, ask Prabhupada for his autograph.

Prabhupada looked at him and smiled and said, no book, no autograph. We were in Hyderabad. At this time, I was torn between, you know, making my commitment to maintaining Brahmacharya and considering even going into sannyas and thinking about marriage. I knew in my heart that I wasn't, you know, the time wasn't right and I was young, but my spirit wanted it, you know.

It wanted to live a renounced life, but my body and my mind wasn't ready, mature enough for it. So it was tearing my being in different directions. So I couldn't sleep one night. So I got up and I walked down this building we were staying in, and I walked down the hallway, and I kind of like peeked my head in Prabhupada's room.

It was about 11 o'clock at night, and I peeked my head in, and I saw Prabhupada walking, pacing back and forth, up and down. So I kind of like wormed in or something, you know, slimed in, and offered my obeisances. And he was walking, and he looked over at me and waved to me, get up, come, you know. So as he's walking, he brings me over to him, and we're walking side by side, back and forth, you know.

And he said, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, you know. So he goes, yes. So I said, Prabhupada, you know, I'm thinking about going to Hrishikesh. He just became silent, he's listening. and he gave me a chance to explain he didn't ask anything I said think about going to Rishikesh to live as a brahmachari to go and live in an ashram to be around any women and things and I can dedicate myself to brahmachari life so after explaining my heart and everything he stopped and it was like time stood still and the earth stopped and everything and he just looked at me dead in the face and the eyes and he said please don't do that I wasted 12 years simply sitting in Vrindavan he said just tell everybody you meet about Krishna at that point I felt my problem was solved I didn't know what I was going to do personally but my problem was solved and I bowed down said thank you Prabhupada he started walking again I went to rest Palika and Jamuna and Malati in the kitchen.

They were preparing prasadam for Srila Prabhupada. And I was in the front room. And then Srila Prabhupada was in another interior room on the ground floor behind his desk. And his servant brought in a sadhu from South India.

And he sat down in Srila Prabhupada's room, but I didn't hear any conversation going on between them. It was like, why aren't they speaking to each other. And all of a sudden, I heard a huge verbal argument, you know, and they were screaming at each other at the top of their lungs in Hindi. And all of a sudden, you know, I was really concerned about what's going on.

And then all of a sudden, this guy storms out of the house. And for the next two weeks, Srila Prabhupada was so grave. And the lectures, if you listen to those lectures, he's talking about tattur varnam mayashristam gunakarma vibhagasah. Krishna has established a natural system of varna, an ashram, Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Sudra.

It is something that happens within society naturally, and people are judged to be in one of these categories, Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Sudra, by their qualities and by the work that they do. Never in this verse does Krishna mention anything about birth. So we found out later on that what this argument was about was this guy was coming in and saying, you can't do this. You can't take Malachas and Yavanas from the West, meat eaters, and convert them into Brahmins, give them the sacred thread, give them the sannyas, tridandi.

And of course this argument had been presented in different ways to his Acharya, his Guru Maharaj, Srila Bhakti Siddhanta. So this was a fight that was going on for a long time and Srila Prabhupada in the next two weeks quoted all the different verses from all the different shastras explaining that Krishna consciousness is a universal movement. It is not just for India. It includes the entire world.

They wanted devotees to come down from Calcutta and Mayapur for a pandal, you know, because they had no devotees there. So I took Radha Madhava from here and that other Lord Chaitanya, Taran Kanti Ghosh, had made for us. and we went down and set up the Pandal there. Prabhupada was looking at the deities and he turned to me and he said, is that Radha Madhava? I said, oh yes, Prabhupada, we brought them from Mayapur.

Anyway, he said, you should not take from Mayapur, he said, but what's done is done when you take them back. They're to stay there forever. This day, I was working in the kitchen under the supervisor of Panchita Vidasamy, cleaning and all the details. And it's already after nine in the morning and nobody came for Prasad.

So I asked Maharaj, why nobody is coming for Prasad? He said, in the temple there's a fire sacrifice. And I said, what is fire sacrifice? He said, Prabhupada giving initiation, after that they will come.

I said, what is initiation? so I was insist to come and see what is a fire sacrifice and initiation I don't know anything about that maybe that was three or four weeks I was there so he said okay you can go for ten minutes a lot of work to do in the in kitchen so I came and I stood in that side of the corner watching what is going on then Prabhupada saw me he said you come and sit down for initiation then Prabhupada asked me many question during that initiation first he gave me the beads then he said What is your name? I said, my name is Sekhar Kumar, but Giridhar Samy and everybody call me Haridas. He said, okay, keep that name, but you must follow the teaching of Haridas. Then he asked me, do you follow four principles?

Because I don't understand, I said no. Then Giridhar Samy said, Haridas, those not eating meat, not feast, not drinking, I said, yeah, yeah, those I know, those I follow. Then gave me the beads. And then he sent me back.

He said, now you go to kitchen and start working. The fire sacrifice is still not over. And when I gone back to kitchen to work and Panchadvida Maharaj got angry at me. He said, what took long time, you know.

He will send you for 10 minutes. I said, I just got the initiation. He said, then what you are doing? Go back there.

So I came back again. And that was like a climax of the fire sacrifice. In 1972 in December, Srila Prabhupada went to the house of one Vaishnava gentleman named Kartikeya Mahadevia. And this particular gentleman had some very nice apartment, luxurious apartment, fronting the ocean.

So Srila Prabhupada went to his place and stayed there. It's pretty spacious quarters. Quite a few devotees every night would come there. So we went to see Srila Prabhupada.

We had come back from a trip to South India. We had gone to Madurai, Coimbatore, Bangalore, several places. And Prabhupada says, someday I want to go there and see So Prabhupada says, please make arrangements to take me there someday I says, okay Prabhupada And then we told Prabhupada Well Prabhupada, we've been to some place in Coimbatore And we worked really hard And we were going to so many places And we were trying to make life members But we could hardly make any life members And we went to some other place And we hardly did anything We just sat in the room and chatted And we ended up making like 20 life members So we don't understand this Prabhupada said, well, you don't understand because you're too attached to the result. And then Prabhupada quoted that verse from Bhagavad Gita, that, you know, you do your duty, but don't be attached to the result.

And Prabhupada says, you leave the result to Krishna. And Prabhupada said, you leave the result to Krishna, act sincerely. And Prabhupada says, if you're very sincere, Krishna himself personally will see that you become successful. And Prabhupada says, but you have to understand, this is not simply about an amount of money.

He says, you do the service, and Krishna will judge. Krishna will decide. And then Prabhupada says, my Guru Maharaj one time told me that even if there's not so many people, we can preach to the wall. That doesn't matter.

We can preach to the wall. Prabhupada says, you just go on preaching, that's all. You just be sincere, preach, and Krishna will make it successful. The last day of the Pandal was a Sunday, and more people attended than ever before.

There's tens of thousands of people in the huge Pandal. Prabhupada lectured very strongly from the Vyasa-saan. And then when he finished, the kirtan began, as it did every evening. This kirtan was especially enthusiastic.

And then at one point, he got up off the Vyasa-saan and went before the deities, clapping. And then he started to circumambulate the deities with a very light step. He went around once, and then he went around a second time, and then a third time. And when he came before the deities, very gracefully, he put his arms in the air and he began to dance.

It was almost as if he was weightless. He danced so effortlessly. And everyone was electrified by this. Everyone in the audience was riveted on Srila Prabhupada dancing before the deities.

At that point, I was in the audience. I was photographing the Pandal program and it felt as if all the sinful reactions of all those people suddenly lifted. It was an extraordinary feeling. It was such a lightness there.

It's stated in the Nectar of Devotion that if you clap your hands in kirtan then the sinful reactions leave you just like birds leaving a tree when there's a sudden noise. They all fly off together And that's what it felt like. There's this burden of karma lifting all at one time. In spite of all the stories of Prabhupada, I, who had been an English major in college and read a lot of fiction, had always had an idea of there being a dichotomy between the author and his works.

So I just always had this keenness to meet Prabhupada, the author of this book, The Bug Would Get Another, that was coming out. And when Prabhupada came to Australia, What struck me was that whether Prabhupada was speaking before an audience of 600, 700 people or whether he was just in a room alone with me, he was basically speaking the Bhagavatam and the Gita. He was the Gita and the Bhagavatam. You know, you might think that someone would have a public persona, but then when they get back home, you know, there might be other topics of conversation.

But he would preach just as strongly to me as the only other person in the room as he would in a huge rented hall with a large crowd. That inspired me to launch a very, very deep study of Srila Prabhupada's books. And I think because I did that, and continue to do it to this day, I've never faltered in my faith in Krishna consciousness. We are sending about 25,000 to 30,000 rupees worth of books daily.

Actually, I didn't know about this movement until Mr. Dadlani came to my office. He was our neighbor, and he came asking whether I could make arrangements for Swamiji's stay in Jakarta. So I immediately told him, OK.

At that time, there were not many hotels, so I offered to give him our own building. We started to make preparation. We moved to another house and gave the whole building to Swamiji. There is Jinnah Trading.

So this was our house, actually. we had a shop down office and we were living upstairs on the second and third floor and swamiji's room was my room my bedroom so i was very happy that he could stay in my bedroom and bless it this is at the vip part of the airport in jakarta so we have this special area booked for a greeting of shiva prabhupada and there are representatives of the hindu indian community and the hindu bali means the balinese hindu community but living in jakarta they call themselves hindu bali so you have a selection of representatives greeting shiva prabhupada and presenting talks the vyasa sun we we got a frame welded together which could be unbolted and when it comes apart you can stack it on top of a car or a vehicle so this Dhyatasan appears here and also at Thakur Das Watwani's house and at the National Administration Building Lecture because we were disassembling it and moving it everywhere. When I was in the high school, this was about a year before Srila Prabhupada came to Jakarta.

The devotees came to the school auditorium and they did a massive kirtan whereby I was impressed and more curious to find out about them because it was the first time I was seeing Americans doing something like Hindu kirtan. And although I already had some little background about my own religion from my parents, but this was something different. And after they did kirtan, I tried to find out where they were staying, who they were. In fact, I found out that they were staying not far away from the school where I was going. it was Gandhi school and I went to visit them and ever since I always attended their morning kirtans plus the lectures and I even went in the evening time we had a small children's club that they started and I was chosen as the president so our activities were like make dramas from the Krishna book.

I was asked to be vegetarian. I was not vegetarian. So Amoghada said, you cannot help us in cooking until and unless you yourself become vegetarian. I asked them how long.

I mean, it would take me to become vegetarian first and then help you. So he said, at least a month. You have to prove to us that you will have no tea, no coffee, no onions no meat eating and i actually started doing that and soon after that i started chanting i remember i brought my car and drove him in my car and that car i kept with me for a long long time i didn't want to sell until it really broke down so i thought since he had sat in the car so i didn't want to sell it but finally the car i was getting old and giving a lot of trouble i had to sell it away that made my mother very very angry because she was seeing that i was becoming more and more krishna conscious and she was finding it difficult to cook separately for me so she even tried to make it hard for me like you have to eat what i prepare or not at all So when I was really hungry, I had to go in the kitchen and cook myself.

After I did that, my mother, I guess, felt pity about it, and she started cooking, actually, for me. After a while, only Amoghada stayed, and it was then that he saw my, perhaps, this is what he said, that I see some sincerity in you, and you want to see Srila Prabhupada. And I said, I do, but it sounds so impossible. Can we ask Srila Prabhupada to come here all the way?

And then he said, yes, why not? Because Srila Prabhupada always makes trips around the world, and soon he might come to Malaysia, and he will go to Australia. And looking at the position of Indonesia, it's somewhere in between, and we could ask him to stop by for a few days. So I said, how would I do that?

And he said, well, just write sincerely to him. I will help you out and I will send it to him. Shri Prabhupada always answers all the letters that come to him. I actually made a letter, but it was modified by Mogadishu on how to put the words like, please accept my humble obeisances in the beginning.

I did not know anything about that. And soon after that, the letter was sent. In hardly, I think, 10 days to 15 days, I got a reply from Srila Prabhupada. It was a full page that he wrote.

It was a very long letter, like, My blessings are for you, and if you have sincerely invited me, if Krishna decides, I could stop by for a few days. He did ask in his letter about how many devotees are there. Do you chant regularly? Do you have programs regularly?

What are your activities? He did ask about. I hope you're keeping well. And I would like to come and preach to the people there.

He did not stress so much on the Indians, but at that time there were more Indian devotees than the local ones. So this is at the house of Thakur Daswatwani. He had some pictures of Krishna posters that he bought from us in the hallway. And in this room where all the assembly is sitting, there's these big, huge paintings.

One of Sai Baba, maybe Shiva, but none of Krishna. Srila Prabhupada gave the lecture in Hindi. And the questions and answers session, one man got up who was from Arya Samaj. And Arya Samaj are very atheistic.

They deny the Bhagavad Gita. They deny so many things, that Kṛṣṇa has a form, that God has a form. So this man actually argued with Prabhupāda, kept arguing, and then Prabhupāda, he called him something. And I remember the whole audience was shocked, but we couldn't really understand because we're in Hindi.

As we know, devotees don't tolerate people who blaspheme Kṛṣṇa in that way. After the meeting, they wanted to invite Prabhupāda into the next room to eat. I said to Śrīla Prabhupāda, they'd like you to come into the next room for some prasādam. And Prabhupāda said, we can go now.

And I said, oh, yes, Śrīla Prabhupāda, we could go now. But actually, they'd like you to go into the next room and have some prasādam. And he said, we can go now. So I knew he wanted to go.

So I said, yes, Śrīla Prabhupāda, we can go. So we went out to the car and left. And they got very upset. But then the other thing is, which is seen in other times in history, that the disciple can take some blame instead of someone blaming the guru.

So everyone blamed me for escorting Prabhupada out of the situation there and said it was all my fault that Prabhupada didn't leave, but I misdirected or misorganized. So in that way, I guess it's good because instead of criticizing a pure devotee, they just criticized myself. This is my sister and me. We were at the exhibition for the book sale.

My mother changed a lot after seeing Srila Prabhupada. In fact, she told me that when she had a personal conversation with Srila Prabhupada, she had requested within her heart from Krishna to show whether this Swamiji who is sitting in front of me is actually a true Swami and an honest man. And she saw some light coming from Srila Prabhupada's eyes, some glitter, where she was very, very satisfied. And she told me about this incident after coming out from the conversation with Srila Prabhupada.

In fact, after that, I also joined the conversation with her and with Srila Prabhupada. and it was a very, very personal conversation where he had sat back comfortably and discussed about the old India times, and they were exchanging their own experiences. When seeing that, in fact, I was like looking at a sister and a brother talking to each other, and he told me about how during his young days he used to see his parents cook rice in the hot sand, And I said, Shri Prabhupada, it's impossible to cook rice in hot sand without fire. And he had laughed and he said, yes, what do you know, you know, because you're born in the modern age. Why don't you believe me, he said.

And I had to laugh and I said, of course, Shri Prabhupada, if you say so and if you've seen it, then it must be true. Then suddenly he asked us, so are there papadums here? What food do you eat? And we told him, both of us, that we cook Indian food.

We get all kinds of vegetables here. It's almost like India, my mother told him. And he asked about papadams again. And then I said, oh, Srila Prabhupada, we get giant papadams.

And he began to converse in Hindi with my mother. And he said, is she saying the truth? There are giant papadams? What do you mean by giant papadams?

And then my mother told him they are double the size of Indian papadams. And then he said, who makes them? And I had to explain to him, Srila Prabhupada, we have cooks. In most of the Indian homes, we have local cooks whom we train up.

Oh, so you train the cooks and they sell back to you the papadums? And I had to laugh at that. And I said, yes, Srila Prabhupada, because when they stop working and they get a little older, then they go back to their villages and start some business. and they end up making papadams. So they learn from you and they sell it back to you, he said.

I said, yes, Sri Prabhupada. So we had taken Sri Prabhupada's some of the papadams and given it to him. The other stories that he was discussing with my mom was how the Pakistanis, even Muslim, used to stay as neighbors with the Hindus in peace. he said we were staying even with one wall between us and my mother had mentioned that there were windows even in the walls that we could exchange sometimes food and other things that we cooked there was a lot of conversation between them in Hindi but he had also at that time told my mother so you should read my books And my mother told him, I don't read and write. I'm illiterate.

And he said, but you can speak Hindi and you can speak Indonesian, so you should learn English. And my mother told him, I'm too old. He said, it's never too old to learn. And she said to him, but Srila Prabhupada, I have read Mahabharata and Ramayana all my life.

And he said, they are very different from my books. and it's very important that you understand what you read because there are so many translations and they are very very misleading she had Ramayana and Mahabharata in Sindhi language in fact she used to get up very early in the morning and even since childhood I used to hear her recite those books so I guess that was the effect on me that I came to know about Krishna consciousness It was like every morning we used to hear her read those books. This is the gathering at the Lambaga Administrasi Negara. It's an auditorium beside the President's Palace in Jakarta. This is his first day lecture.

Kirtans were held in a very strong lecture, which was in fact recorded. All the lectures were in fact recorded. I had the opportunity of being with Srila Prabhupada every minute from the morning walks that he had around the place that he stayed during the first day. We went around Pasar Baru area, and he had in fact stopped by at one shop that had words written, Toko India.

Does Toko mean shop? I said yes, and he said, that's Indian person's shop? I said yes. And miraculously, at that moment when we looked up, there was an Indian lady folding her hands and paying her obeisances to Srila Prabhupada.

It was an odd time for Indians to get up at that time. That day, he had seen also a vegetable vendor. We could never pace up with Srila Prabhupada because his walks were very, very brisk and very fast. Despite his age, I was quite surprised. surprise.

And we were always left behind. So only Amoghadas used to walk by his side. So when he saw this vegetable vendor, in fact, he had to wait for me to catch up with him. And then he went ahead and asked, are those corns for sale?

And I said, yes, Shri Prabhupada. He said, could you bargain with him and buy some for my breakfast today morning? So I said, yes, Shri Prabhupada. And he said, do you know how to put them on fire with tamarind, salt, and with chili powder?

I said, yes, Srila Prabhupada, can you prepare them for me today? I said, yes. So I bought some, and we took them back to the place where he was staying. There I had no coal fire, so all I could do was put some salt and chili powder.

I had no tamarind, nothing else. I had put a little butter on it, and I had to bake it on a gas stove. When I had prepared one, he was already insisting, where is the corn? Amoghadas took it up to him.

I had to rush and prepare those corns. I think he had about three or four that morning. Amoghadas was quite surprised because it's very, very seldom that Srila Prabhupada eats corn. I was told later on from some other devotees that he said that's food for animals.

The next morning, in fact, we had gone to a very large park, and Srila Prabhupada always took his morning walks very early in the morning, so that park was in fact not opened. We were going to go inside the park to park the car, but the guard would not allow Srila Prabhupada to take his walk in that park. I had gone down to the guard to ask and tell him that this is a priest coming from India and he usually takes his morning walks and if he would permit us to just take a morning walk. And the guard totally refused.

So all Srila Prabhupada did was open his window, look at the guard and said, what has happened and the guard looking at Srila Prabhupada just was like hypnotized and immediately opened the gate for Srila Prabhupada to go in it was like a miracle and we were all surprised the upstairs level of genitrating and this is where Prabhupada would meet guests or the minister of Hindu Buddhist religion the family members this is our our house family gathering yes this is our family now she had just given birth to boy he told us to ask whatever we wanted i don't remember but it was quite interesting we were very impressed and he blessed all of us i remember one question he asked me whether i believed in god i told him of course i believe in god but he kept on asking from me do you believe in god this is my son when prabhupada arrived he arrived and stayed in this room and we were outside and then we were all kind of resting because it was quite an event for us and prabhupada only rested about a half hour after an international flight and then prabhupada we heard I heard him going around the whole room, quite a large room he was in, switching all the lights on and off, testing all the latches, everything, all the switches and different things around the room. It was interesting.

The next section shows Srila Prabhupada at the Hindu Bali temple at Rawamangalam. And they have a band, I think it was called the gamelan. It's a kind of music that plays percussion and gongs and different instruments. It's quite unusual.

It's an indescribable, unique sound that band has. When Srila Prabhupada arrived, they sat down all together and chanted the first line of the Gayatri Mantra out loud. Together, that's what they do. They sit and slowly chant the first line of Gayatri Mantra.

In Srila Prabhupada's talk, he talks about the Gayatri Mantra, the meaning of Gayatri. They played their own music to greet Srila Prabhupada, but also when he sang Jayaratamadava, which he would always sing before speaking, he directed them to play along with him as he sang Jaya Radha Madhava but their band plays in very minor keys and it's quite an amazing sound to hear Prabhupada chanting Jaya Radha Madhava and them playing those instruments at the same time it was very unique and then they walked Prabhupada around the outside they have an outdoor altar with a very high structure with a chair at the top, an empty chair and then all these kind of carvings of beings they bring offerings and they invite Lord Brahma, whoever they want to worship, to sit there. But Srila Prabhupada said they should have Radha and Krishna up there. Is it possible for only one person to be initiated?

Dhanamogada said, Krishna consciousness believes in quality than in quantity. And I have spoken to Srila Prabhupada and said that there is only one sincere devotee that I see worth getting an initiation from you, and he has agreed. so I myself I had gone inside the room and he had chanted on the beads and after chanting I had asked him the question Srila Prabhupada what can I do what is my duty after this do I have to leave my home and come and stay at the temple and he said no it's not necessary Krishna consciousness means you have to change your consciousness it does not matter where you stay you just have to chant and remember Krishna all the time that That is Krishna Consciousness. And I said, What is my duty? He said, If you speak Sindhi, then preach to the Indian ladies.

Read my books, chant, and be happy. As a filmmaker, it was an exciting time. This was my first 16-millimeter film, shot with a borrowed camera, in ten three-minute loads of film. And what better subject than Srila Prabhupada and the devotees in Mayapur during Gopurnima.

When the devotees came to Mayapur, then Prabhupada took us out on parikrama. He took us to the different temples and showed us Lord Caitanya's historical pastime places. And then he wanted us to go out every year. So here we're going to Srivasa Angam, where the original Sankirtan party was held and were dancing very enthusiastically at the place of the original kirtan in the garden of Srivas.

Prabhupada wanted the devotees to be engaged. In those days there wasn't so much interaction between ISKCON and the Gaudiya Mats, but once a year we could go and visit Lord Chaitanya's places and that was about the interaction that we had. There was a palpable consciousness that this was the fulfillment of Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur's prophecy that the devotees from the East and the West would meet in the birthplace of Lord Chaitanya and perform Harinam, Sankirtan, and this was it. There was an awareness, and the kirtan was beyond words.

This is the birthplace temple. Originally, the birthplace temple was actually a grass hut because Lord Chaitanya was born in a grass hut and then they changed it to a concrete replica of a grass hut and Prabhupada expressed his dissatisfaction that they couldn't have maintained it. It would have been nice to maintain it in its pristine form. Mayapur was a cow shed and a cement go-down and a construction site and the devotees were staying in tents.

It was very austere. This is the Lotus building, the first building. Prabhupada was very much involved in the whole construction. Every time he came, he wanted to see what was happening.

He'd go on a tour of the building, see how it was going. He was personally sending the money for paying for the construction. He would get donations and he would send it. When the building was partially finished and we already started to live in it.

Radha Madhava were in the Bhajan Kutia. Then we built this little kind of a shed just to the side of the Bhajan Kutia where the art is going on. There's a lot of people there because that was called Purnima Festival. But previously, no one was coming to Maipa.

The whole of 72, practically nobody came. And more or less, I knew everybody that was walking down that road. And there were no visitors. They were all just local people.

And one time, I saw some people walking down and I thought, oh, these are not local people because you can tell by the dress. So then they actually come in the property. And I thought, they're coming in for darshan. And I thought, I'll get a back to Godhead and see if I can give them a back to Godhead when they come.

So I run in the bhajan kutira and got a back to Godhead. I come out. Prabhupada was already standing there. He had come out in the bhajan kutira also.

And he was just standing in front of the deities. And he looked at me and he said, why are you not here? And he said, you see the guests are coming and there's no one here. The first people have been in about a couple of weeks.

He said, no one is here. He said, people are coming. He said, you should be here. I said, I just want to get back to Godhead, Prabhupada.

And I just come out. And then he was kind of looking at me. And he seemed to be saying, what are you making all these excuses for? He was kind of smiling.

I remember the first time I gave Prabhupada Chanamrita there. And my hand was shaking uncontrollably. And I was looking at my hand. I was thinking, why is it happening like this?

It never happened before like that. It was really just uncontrollably shaking. and he just kind of looked at me and smiled and he took the Charanamrita another time Prabhupada was sitting in the Bhajan Kutia just on the outside under the veranda with one of his godbrothers Damodara Maharaj and I went and I offered him Charanamrita and he was just sitting there the sun was shining and he just put his head back and he opened his mouth and then he let me pour the Charanamrita into his mouth and Damodara Maharaj, his godbrother did the same thing He just put his head back and opened his mouth, and I was praying, trying to read him. It was kind of a strange experience, because, you know, Prabhupada, he was our lord and master, the big father figure, protector and everything, and then he's kind of acting like a little baby.

You have to feed him. It was a new experience that I had with Prabhupada. Prabhupada really liked Mayapur. He seemed really relaxed in Mayapur when we would come.

I remember the one time we went up to his quarters when he first got there, And, of course, I'd follow him in, setting everything up. And he was just looking out his window. You know, the windows, of course, were on each side of his room. So he walked in his door, front door, and he just looked out his window.

And, you know, then it was just stretches of fields everywhere. It was wide open and very tranquil, very peaceful. And he would just chant, you know, and look out there. And one time he turned and he just looked at me and he smiled and he said, So, Sruthi Kirti Maharaj, do you like it here in Mayapur?

And I said, yes, Prabhupada, very much. The way his quarters were set up there, they had the padding, you know, across the entire room. So sometimes you could go in there in the middle of the day and Prabhupada would just be laying on the floor. And he'd have his feet over the big bolster pillows that were against the walls.

He would just move one out a little bit. So he'd just have his legs hanging over the bolster pillow. and he'd just be just relaxing and his morning walk was always right out right outside his room as soon as he'd go down the steps he was already on his walk right but he also always knew everything that was who was around who wasn't around who was missing the walk you know because sometimes if if he was going out get down to the bottom of the stairs and he would ask where's such and such you know where's this devotee where's that devotee one time he asked you know he said where's, I don't know who it was, he said, where's Stavodin? And someone said, oh, he's sick, Prabhupada. Prabhupada kind of chuckled.

And I said, yes, Prabhupada, I think he has morning sickness. And then Prabhupada laughed. He said, yes, that is the difficulty. He expected everyone to be up in the morning.

And he never, never minimized that. Always did the opposite, you know, even with the people that traveled with him, because we were the ones affected too by the so-called jet lag and stuff as he traveled around but he didn't he wasn't interested in hearing about it Prabhupada was so happy that we had cows he said this is very auspicious said if the cows are grazing on the land where we're going to build the temple then by passing cow dung and walking over the land it's going to make it very auspicious for the temple Prabhupada wanted us to feed the local villagers so we had even before we had a building we had a big pot for cooking and distributing prasadam. Prabhupada used to go on walks, and he liked to walk along the pathways in between the fields. He called these the little highways.

As he'd be walking, then the villagers would offer him respect and pay obeisances. It was a very informal, friendly environment with all the local villagers. Prabhupada would walk out in the fields, and then he'd look and say, here will be a spiritual city one day. I have seen that Prabhupada, morning walking time, one villager, he's taking some sabji, vegetables, to nearby market.

Then Prabhupada stops suddenly, and he says, why are you going? I have to sell this vegetable to the market. Then Prabhupada says, why not you are giving to the temple? You can serve Adhagavindra by giving your vegetables. then he has agreed he purchased all the vegetables big bucket he purchased and he told Jayapataka then Jayapataka paid his amount he told that vegetable man please you come every day and talk to the temple manager and give sabji vegetable fresh vegetables to the Radha Govinda he has all the time mind to give fresh flowers, fresh vegetables, fresh fruits.

I have seen also sometimes in Calcutta somebody purchase not fresh fruits. So he was very annoyed. Why you do not buy the fresh fruits for Aravindu? So I have seen same thing, fresh vegetables.

He likes to offer Krishna. Prabhupada was going on a walk and he called me because he said he wanted me to take the part of the material scientist then i said to him all right speaking as a scientist i said we will not argue whether a soul exists or not well we'll just take it as a given that a soul exists so my question to you is that we will create the right properties in our laboratory and in our test tubes so that your Krishna will send a soul into a test tube. Is that premise accepted by you? Is that acceptable?

Because I was thinking if I can get Prabhupada to say yes, then I'll say then we have created life. And then Prabhupada just said, you rascal scientist, you will not tell Krishna where he has to send a soul. Prabhupāda sometimes used to go for a morning walk there, from the Ganges. It used to take about almost 20 minutes to walk there.

At that time it was way, way over the other side. And one time actually they all took bath there. They were all sannyāsīs, I think, or at least brahmacārīs and sannyāsīs. And Prabhupāda said, you can take a bath if you like.

They said, Prabhupāda, we didn't bring any gamchas. He said, it's okay, no one's around. You can go in, you're coping. So everybody jumped in the Ganges.

And Prabhupāda went in also. He had a gamsa. His servant brought him a gamsa. And he also went in.

And then they started fighting, splashing and everything like that. And Prabhupāda said that, this is okay. He said, Lord Caitanya, he was also doing this. Then someone started to splash Prabhupāda.

Madhavi Samaraj, I believe. Mildly, in a playful way, but he was giving little splashes with his hand. But Prabhupāda said, don't become too familiar with your guru. He reprimanded him.

And Guru Kripa, and they were pouring water on Prabhupada's head with their hands, chanting Chintamani, prakara sadmasukha, chanting Chintamani prayers. Another time he said, if you build a road from our ashram to the Ganga, a nice road, he said, I will come every morning for a walk here. And another time he said, be careful, because the Ganga could come and take away all of our property. For several years, the Ganga was constantly changing course. then the course was devoted right over to the property but then the government took action they made some proper embankments there with bricks but it came very very close right up to the road but now it's gone back to a steady course which is a very good symptom because in the Nambadikta Mahapanya it's predicted that for several hundred years, about 400 years the Ganga will constantly do this actually flood the whole area and then after 400 years Bhakta Narottako mentions then she'll go back to a steady course again and then he said many many bathing ghats will be built on the Ganga and many many temples will be built and many household dwellings will come up and there will be of course the Bhutmandir a very astonishing temple will rise from which service to Lord Chaitanya will spread all over the world.

So now we're seeing this now the Ganga is more or less settled there are permanent ghats being made. This one's made one. Madhav Maharaj has made a permanent Ghat. And there's hundreds and hundreds of dwelling places now, all over the place.

We have our great house, the Parah. Then just outside the master plan of our project, there's so many houses. And the community members also of the Chaitanya Mahatma and Jogpe Gaudiya Mahatma, they're also building little houses. There's hundreds of little houses.

It's all predicted by Nityananda So these are good signs. One day it was a Govardhan Puja and we built a big mountain of rice and we fed many people. And the people took their leaf plates after taking prasadam and then they threw it behind the building. And then Prabhupada was living up on the second floor and we were sitting in the room together and then he heard dogs barking and kids shouting.

And so then he got up and walked back on the veranda behind his room and he looked over and he saw that there was this big pile of leaf plates of people that had eaten their meal and there was little scraps on the plates. So then there were some very poor children with sticks in their hand fighting off some very hungry dogs trying to get the scraps of food that people hadn't finished eating on their plate. And Prabhupada saw that how these children were so hungry that they had to eat the things that people threw away and how they were fighting with the dogs to get these scraps of food. Tears swelled in his eyes and he said, we have to see that nobody goes hungry within a ten mile radius.

The temple is the house of God. God's everyone's father. Krishna's everyone's father. So in the presence of the father, the son doesn't go hungry.

So like that we have to make an arrangement that people get fed. And so that was inspiration for regular prasadam distribution. And I remember one time watching Srila Prabhupada, while all the people from the villages were out taking prasadam, he would go to the little window in the hut and then look out and watch them. And then I would remember the verse, chatu vidhasri bhagavat prasadam, that the spiritual master is very satisfied if he sees the devotees taking prasadam.

And he looked very happy, he looked very satisfied. Prabhupada was trying to involve his God-brothers and work cooperatively with them. Especially he made a lot of effort with Bhakti Rakshak Sridhar Maharaj because they were very old friends. He used to come and visit Prabhupada in his house and stay at their guest house.

So he was inviting him to come even to the West and see the temple, see how the preaching was going on. But he declined. He said it was too far. So he invited him to come over to Mayapur.

So he agreed to come. So then Prabhupada had him share a seat on the Vyasa Sanh with him. And he was very accommodating and loving to him. Prabhupada invited all of his God-brothers to come.

And they were all coming. one at a time or two at a time throughout that whole morning and he spoke to everyone and he said exactly the same thing to everyone he said we're having some success in our preaching and so we have some good facilities now and he said and you are all experienced preachers you have been trained by our Prabhupada he said so I have all these buses coming right it's that time when they were bringing all those Mercedes buses he said I have many buses so I can give you all a bus and I will give you men and you just go out and preach he said if you have any problem in your temple for maintenance he said I will also give you men for your temples and to help you maintain in the temple he said it's only one condition he said that you distribute my books my books are to be distributed on these parties he said but you will lead you will preach unfortunately not one of them accepted his offer and Prabhupada really tried to get them to work together again. Yeah, the Hooghly is the Ganges River, which I really enjoyed because Prabhupada would stop sometimes and have intimate moments where he would look, you know, look at the water and you could just imagine that Prabhupada sailed down that water, you know, when he left.

He left from Calcutta, right? So, you know, that's the place. And now he's back here again with his disciples. In Calcutta, there were so many parks Prabhupada would walk in.

You know, back in the day when Prabhupada was growing up, he said Calcutta was their model city of what they wanted to create in India. They had many beautiful parks. You know, every few blocks there was another park. Of course, when we were there in the 70s, you know, they looked a bit different than they did, but he said it was a beautiful city.

That was their model, he said, of what they wanted to accomplish in India, everywhere, and they did it in Calcutta. Prabhupada used to take his morning walk quite often in a little park just around the corner to the temple. I think it's called Das Priya Park. And there was a lake in the middle of that park.

So Prabhupada would walk around that lake a few times. So on this one occasion, quite a large number of devotees came for the walk, maybe as many as 40. And Prabhupada was walking around, not saying anything, just walking around the park. And he would come back to the starting point where there was a little gate which he would go through, and then he would set off again.

And Prabhupada wasn't speaking anything, he was chanting Japa. So after about four times around, I was noticing that many devotees were kind of dropping up, going back to the temple for one reason or another. So I went on a couple more times around the park. It was going on quite a while.

So I was still following on. And it got down to the point where there was about six of us left. And we're going around, and suddenly Prabhupada stopped and turned around and looked at us. And he said, he said, oh, all the others have given up.

He said, just see how easily we give up. And then he was very silent and turned around and started walking again. And we followed him. Then when he came back to the gate, we went back to the temple.

I was in Srila Prabhupada's room with him in Calcutta. I was a temple president there, so I got access to Srila Prabhupada. So I went in, and one day I was just there with him alone, and for some reason I asked this question. I don't know why, but I did.

I said, Srila Prabhupada, when you leave us, who will succeed you? And he said, that will be revealed to you. And then he looked at me and he said, you'll become guru. And then he said, I want all of my disciples to become guru.

And then he said, Which is the verse that Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu spoke to the South Indian Brahmin. When he left South India and he was lamenting, what am I to do? And Lord Chaitanya said, whoever you see, tell them about Krishna. Whoever you speak to, tell them about the instructions of Krishna given in the Srimad Bhagavatam and the Bhagavad Gita.

And on my order, you deliver this land. So Prabhupada quoted that verse. He said, this is how this Krishna consciousness movement will be spread. I was one of the few foreigners who learned how to drive in India. mainly because I drove our vans I don't think there was very many others who drove Prabhupada in India Prabhupada usually had a driver but anyway we drove and Yadavari one day he accompanied us with Rupanuga it's just Rupanuga, me and you and there was very few of us so there was no talking or conversations but it was the best morning walks because of the area where we were in Calcutta.

This was Prabhupada's hometown. It was a little bewildering. There was all these neon flowers, neon decorations, plastic flowers, lots of electrical cords twangled and dangled. I remember at one point, there was a devotion that was there.

It hit me. what was going on was you know pure devotion to these deities and this family had been absorbed in devotion to these deities for centuries and the prabhupada was absorbed in devotion for these deities now so that suddenly you know the picture changed then i remember they sat us down and they were serving us prasad it was a beautiful bengali feast and it was served you know on banana leaves with such respect for Srila Prabhupada and their respect for Prabhupada was transferred to us. They were very, Prabhupada would use the word aristocratic, but they were very aristocratic. And their affection to Srila Prabhupada was definitely apparent, as was his towards them. At the Radha Govinda Temple, Prabhupada's childhood temple in North Calcutta, Prabhupada did a series of lectures in the evening.

The Malik family, which was the family he was related to who owned the temple in one of the great Zamandar families of Bengal during the time of the British Raj they lived across the street and of course Prabhupada was raised in their house they all came to the program the whole atmosphere it was like Prabhupada was the grandfather or the great grandfather and they were so respectful the way they came in, their heads were always covered, the way the women bowed down, the men were nicely dressed and standing in the background and everyone was very attentive to Prabhupada because he was their relative who was now world famous. Prabhupada's mood at this meeting was very familial, he was very gentle with everyone. It was just like family. There was a very loving side to this, the whole relationship between him and the Malik family.

And of course, those deities, Radha Govinda, were Prabhupada's childhood deities. This was the temple where he played as a child, where he had his Rathayatra festival, and he worshipped these beautiful deities that they have there still, Radha Govinda. They're the deities that Prabhupada said called him back to India. You know, in the 60s, he went back to India.

He said, Radha Govinda have called me back. And that's when he started all his major Indian preaching. Prabhupada came to Calcutta with Pradumna in 1973, April. And Pradumna came up to me and said, how would you like to come with Prabhupada and type Chaitanya Charitamrita?

He says, okay, tomorrow we're going to Mayapur. So you have to learn how to read Bengali and then you can come with Prabhupada. I said, okay, no problem. So he gave me a Bengali book.

I learned how to read Bengali, and I was off with Prabhupada the next day. Because we never thought anything was impossible, that if Prabhupada wanted us to do something, then impossible is a word in a fool's dictionary. So yeah, no problem. I learned to read Bengali, and I get to go with Prabhupada.

In Calcutta, it was a challenging place for us. Something about the temple, and at least at one period, everyone was sick. Everybody had dysentery and the service, you know, there wasn't enough people to do the basic service. So it was a challenge.

And Bhanuswami was there. And Bhanuswami, as I remember, is a nice Dikabhramachari. And through all of this, he never got sick. He never lost his focus.

He remained active. and when others were down in their attitude, consciousness, he was never affected by it. And at one point, he's the only person who was well and up serving. Prabhupada made note one day, and he said, just see, he said, this is the value of brahmacharya. He said, because he is brahmacharya, he is able to circumvent all the challenges of the world and continue steady in his service.

This is the value of brahmacharya. I get to have a private darshan of Srila Prabhupada. Of course, his servant was in the room and myself and Prabhupada. When I first came before him, you know, with what I thought was just like this huge life-ending problem, you know, my whole consciousness absorbed in being anxiety about this problem.

All of a sudden, when I got in there, the whole problem just like shrunk down to the size of the water and the hoofprint of a calf. This huge unsolvable anxiety just became insignificant. And there I was like totally embarrassed. All of a sudden it didn't seem like something that I should bother Prabhupada with, you know.

And I was so embarrassed. But here I am. I had disturbed him. And at that time Prabhupada communicated something to me.

You've probably heard from other devotees how sometimes Prabhupada would communicate without speaking. Prabhupada became a mirror. And I think that's a guru's function to be like a mirror to the disciple. he was like a mirror he was showing me my my spiritual situation and i had this like really esoteric like internal vision like for a few seconds of myself being this brilliant diamond-like spiritual spark within my heart but i was covered over with just like mounds and heaps and heaps of dirt and i also had a vision of sheila prabhupada sitting there the same brilliant spiritual spark only completely clear of any covering and and he communicated to me with that vision that that i was just like him but i was covered and that all i needed to do was to follow his instructions and i would become completely uncovered like him and that was such an intense realization and i thought how can i bring up my petty you know mundane problem and but like i said after I'd gone and disturbed and he was sitting there expecting me, then I did.

I blurted it out. The most significant thing about that whole experience was that internal mirror-like vision that he gave me of myself and himself. Winter of 1973, Vishnujana, Swami's bus had burned down somewhere in America and while Karanda and the BBT were building him a new bus, he came to sail down the Ganges and do Harinam Sankirtan and Prasadman distribution. And he had a slide show to show these villages.

And Vishnu Jan was amazing doing kirtan through the villages. I mean, people were asking us to take their children with us. And, you know, they were just in shock. And we'd have a program every night with a big slide show.

I mean, and show them London Rathiatra and San Francisco Rathiatra. They were blown away. You know, their Hinduism was actually, you know, spreading all over the world. because we were the first western hindus they'd ever seen and it wasn't just that we're a handful we represented this movement with temples and festivals all the world so of course who's the person responsible for all this is prabhupada i mean the villagers were just enormously impressed anyway it was we sailed down the ganges for 40 days and nights and we got stopped in northern bengal by a huge dam called faraka barrage so then we took trucks down to calcutta where we met Prabhupada. So we had some kind of, you know, a little camera with us, but somebody had a shaky hand.

It all came out looking like ghostly images. So we didn't have anything to show Prabhupada. But when we were reporting in the room about it, Vishnu, Jnana, Swami said that we had distributed 500 sets of japa beads. And Prabhupada looked very concerned, said, you cannot do that.

Now they think you are their guru. So he was a little upset that we didn't know these subtleties of Indian culture, that if you give someone beads and tell them to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, you've just given them harinam initiation, and that's how they see it. So I think there must be a lot of villages along the Ganges where they have this memory of this bronze god from the West who looked like Lord Caitanya and gave them initiation. Srila Prabhupada, one time, he singled me out in one of the darshans.

He said to me, Oh, my sister tells me you speak Bhagavatam very nicely. And so when he said that, I didn't know what to say because I never spoke Bhagavatam, what to speak of nicely. And so I didn't know, I was just completely bewildered and puzzled, you know, why he said that. But then it was in Calcutta that I had been reading Krishna book in front of Bhishma because Because it was Janmashtami in 1972.

And what we had to do, all the devotees were reading Krishna book from morning till night. And so when it was my turn to read, I was reading Ras Leela. And she was my only audience. There were hardly any people then.

There's nobody in the temple in Calcutta those days. So she was about the only one sitting in front of me. And I was reading in English and she didn't know a word of English. But I was being real dramatic, you know, Krishna left the gopis and they were crying.

And she was crying, and crying, and crying, although she didn't know any English. So she understood the mood of it. And then she must have told Prabhupāda that I speak Bhāgavatam. But then now, thirty years later, I thought about what Prabhupāda said.

And in Prabhupāda's lifetime, I never spoke Bhāgavatam, and even for twenty-seven years, when I was a devotee, I never spoke Bhāgavatam. But now I'm speaking Bhāgavatam. Just this year when I was speaking Bhāgavatam in Vyāchi, it struck me that Prabhupāda's words came true, even though I didn't understand what he, you know, what was he talking about. But then I thought, well, wow, pure devotee's words must be true, that it has to happen.

And even though I had no plan of ever speaking Bhāgavatam, but it happened anyway by Kṛṣṇa's arrangement. We were in Prabhupāda's room in Calcutta, and Nanda Kumar brought in a letter for him to sign. And Prabhupada looked at the letter, two-page letter, looked it over, and then grabbed the pen and goes, A, and then C, and then this big Bhaktivedanta, and then big capital Swami. And there was a life member there, and I was there looking at this, and we kind of looked at each other, you know, when we saw the signature.

And Prabhupada noticed it, and he looked at the life member, and he said, yes. When I was at Scottish Churches College in Calcutta, my professor witnessed my signature also, and he said, ah, that is a royal signature. So we went to greet Srila Prabhupada at the airport, and this is, of course, the very, very first time I ever saw him. So I was a little anxious, and I remember they rolled out a long red carpet and I remember my first impression for some reason I had expected him to be very tall I don't know why and I remember thinking oh he's so short but there was something so very regal about his carriage and then he went to sit down on the dais they had actually brought a little sort of wooden dais for him to sit on because there was going to be an interview it was a television interview and first there was of course the kirtan and then everyone sat down and of course all the people in the airport in the background wondering what's going on here and so I was just mesmerized watching him, it was like watching a performance for me a solo performance on the stage and he sat down with the greatest of elegancy and ease and someone offered him a silver goblet of water and I remember him holding it up and the stream of water flowed like a fountain right in his mouth and it was just so elegant and I just thought, wow.

You know, being in the theater profession for some years, it was like, boy, that person really has a lot of grace to be able to do that in front of all these people, just everybody's eyes on him with not even a string of nervousness or tension or anything like that. And then they offered him a plate of fruit and he very delicately just picked up a piece of fruit and just sort of popped it in his mouth and sat there and chewed it and everyone was watching him, and no discomfort, no nervousness or anxiety. He just finished eating that little piece of fruit, and then he was looking around, one after the other, at the faces, very peacefully and quietly, really looking, taking all the time that he wanted to. I was just, from a material standpoint, completely impressed.

One time I purposefully brought Prabhupada's vases of flowers back to his altar late because I knew that he would be arriving. So I was the only one left in his quarters, and I had dared to do that because I thought that was a good chance for me to meet Prabhupada face to face. So I came late with the flowers, returning them to his altar just as he was walking into his sitting room. So I placed him on the altar and then paid my obeisances.

And Srila Prabhupada was still standing. He hadn't sat down behind his desk. And he said, and what is your name? And I told him my name was Haripuja and that I had just gotten second initiation.

And I thanked him. And he shook his head like he did side to side. And he said, thank you. And then I left.

I was very happy that I'd got to talk to Srila Prabhupada face to face. The next day in his lecture, I can't remember it, but the idea was that Prabhupada had mentioned that even a sincere flower girl can make progress and go back to Gladhead. So, of course, I was thinking that he was recognizing me. I had just graduated from Yale University.

I had been living in the temple for three weeks, but I was always afraid that my ex-fiancee, who I had just ended the engagement a few weeks ago by slipping away to live in the temple, I was always afraid she would come to the temple and drag me out. So I prayed to Radha Govinda, Sri Sri Radha Govinda, Please, Krishna, get me out of this one, and I promise you never again." A few weeks later Prabhupāda came, and I was sitting in front of him as he gave a Sunday feast lecture, and Prabhupāda began to roar with great transcendental strength, that if you're optimistic about material life, you're an animal, if you're a human being, you must be pessimistic. While he was roaring like that, I felt this tap on my shoulder, and I looked. she was right behind me so all this is going on right in front of Prabhupada so I kind of looked at her and Prabhupada continued to roar and I didn't bat an eye I just turned right back and looked at Prabhupada and I could see out of the corner of my eye that she was about to burst out crying in the middle of the temple room like what's going on here here's my dearly beloved you know and now he doesn't even blink an eye at me he's just totally absorbed in this person So she left and Prabhupada went on to explain with less fire.

Material life, yes, everything is pessimistic, but in Krishna consciousness everything is optimistic. So after that I remember the kirtan we had for the deities and I remember dancing in ecstasy, thanking Krishna, I'm free, I'm free, Prabhupada did it, I'm free, I'm free. One time I was on a walk with Prabhupāda in Brooklyn, and it was one of those walks where Prabhupāda would drive to his destination and then walk and then come back. And as we were coming around the corner, just in front of the temple, Prabhupāda saw that there was a boy who was mailing a letter, but he was a small boy and so he couldn't reach the box and his father was picking him up, and the boy was dropping the letter in the box.

And Prabhupada saw this, and he just became absorbed in seeing it. Of course, how long does it take to bail a letter? It's only a few moments. But Prabhupada just became absorbed, and again it seemed like it was so much time.

His eyes became very wide, and became sparkly, and he seemed just as if he were remembering something. And I was thinking, what is Prabhupada thinking of? you know, something from his childhood or what. And the scene ended, and Prabhupada said, the little boy, by his own strength, he cannot do. But the affectionate father, when he helps, then it is possible.

We were going to do a performance for him the first evening of Krishna Kidnapped Rukmini, but I really felt that he could see into me there was nothing that I could hide then I was thinking oh my god I'm going to be playing the part of Princess Rukmini who's an expansion of the goddess of fortune and it's ridiculous what am I doing you know it's just going to be a farce but anyway it was planned and you know the show must go on so there I was and the scene opens with myself sitting on the floor by myself writing the letter to Krishna and I could feel my right knee beginning to shake out of nervousness. And then I remembered something my director said. He said, whatever comes up for you, just use it in the part. Find some way to integrate it into the role.

And then I just realized, well, she probably was in a very anxious state. I mean, here she was to be married to someone she didn't want to be married to and she was totally anxious. And also I noticed as my eyes went up, even though you don't really look at anybody, you still sort of have a feeling and as my eyes passed Srila Prabhupada sitting there and moved up just this ease came over me it was like he put this blessing on me or something and I just forgot everything and I just became Rukmini and was able to just play with total abandon just totally get into the part and then we finished and there was grand applause and everything and we went down to the dressing room and I was completely drenched with sweat and we were waiting just taking our makeup off and so forth and then Shruti Kirti came in and started telling us everything that Prabhupada said and I was real excited and everything he said Prabhupada said this is better than reading my books it's better than reading my books because it sticks in the mind because you have a vision And he said, seeing these is like windows to the spiritual world.

So people just don't hear it, but they actually have an experience. And then I got the wonderful compliment when he said, Rukmini, she was the best. And I thought, well, after all that anxiety I went through, and then he was actually pleased. And then, of course, there was a little part of me that thought, well, he's just saying that because he knows I need to hear it.

But then I also understood when you use whatever talent you have in Krishna's service, that is the best. So it didn't matter whatever I was thinking. And he actually wanted us to go with him and travel with him all over the world. I think his next destination was Africa.

He wanted to take us with him, and he said there should always be kirtan, lecture, performance, and prasad. It just didn't work out at that time. but I realized the importance of cultural events in the presentation of Krishna consciousness that Prabhupada really wanted. And Srila Prabhupada was working on one of the chapters or some of the chapters of Chaitanya Charitamrita. We had a recording device.

It was big. I mean, it was like, you know, several feet wide. So Srila Prabhupada would dictate Chaitanya Charitamrita and as soon as he was finished, Prajumna would bring it up to me and I would immediately transcribe it using this big contraption we didn't have a dictaphone, I would just like use the foot pedal, starting it stopping it, starting it, stopping it but we did it right away as soon as Srila Prabhupada was finished with it and then Prajumna would bring Srila Prabhupada the transcription back and Srila Prabhupada said that he was so encouraged because I was doing it so fast that it made him start doing two tapes a day that was my very best memory ever I was in Atlanta. It was summertime, I remember that, and I was walking up the street.

And a devotee opened the window and stuck his head out and yelled at the top of his lungs, Bala Vanta, Prabhupada's on the phone, which was just a shock of my life. So I ran with wings on my feet up and got the phone. He wasn't actually Prabhupada on the phone. It was his secretary on the phone at his request.

Prabhupada was in the room. and the secretary said, probably wants to know if you can come to New York right away. I said, of course. So I chopped everything and went and got on the plane and flew to New York and probably wanted to discuss politics. Actually, what happened is I wrote to him and suggested that I could run for mayor of Atlanta and it would be a good preaching platform.

And he wrote back with the most overwhelming enthusiasm I'd ever experienced. I took one step to him he took a hundred steps to me but the broad discussion I remember basically he said so what do they say about our program I said probably they say it's not practical he says yes it is not practical because they would not accept it if they would accept it it would be very practical there was one devotee we were discussing the God we trust party and the devotee said Prabhupada when we take over the government we'll outlaw all these religions Prabhupada said no why We only want to see that they are following their religion. Shepard was not for one religion taking over the government. He fully supported freedom of religion.

And in fact, he made it clear many times and told us that this is not a religion. This is a process of spiritual realization which is applicable to any religion. So yeah, he made it very clear that in terms of politics, We're not interested in changing people's religion or taking over the government for one religion as opposed to another religion. We just would like to see that the leaders of human society are enlightened personalities, whatever religion they come from.

And the Bhagavad Gita, Srimad Bhagavatam and the Chanting of Hare Krishna facilitates that process. When Prabhupada would come to the temple in New York, one of the first things that he would like to do was to speak with the artists and see what paintings had been done. Because his translation was such an important part of his service to his spiritual master, he was always very enthusiastic to see what progress we were making. And on one occasion, we were all sitting in his quarters, and the walls of his quarters were lined with the paintings.

And that was one of my favorite times. Maybe there were eight or ten of us that were working, doing the paintings for Bhagavatam at the time, and we had the opportunity just to sit with him and discuss each individual painting and he would make suggestions on them and corrections. Whenever I was painting, I was always listening to Prabhupada, either listening to Prabhupada chanting or Prabhupada's lectures. And from the time I went into the art department in the morning to the time I left, I always was listening to Prabhupāda, and sometimes I would be sitting there painting or just, you know, meditating on what I was going to be painting, and I would think how fortunate I was just to be able to hear Prabhupāda and just wishing that the whole world could hear the way I could hear and have that experience.

I remember one time I was doing a drawing of Lord Caitanya. It was a drawing for the painting for Chaitanya Charitamrita of Lord Caitanya dancing in front of the Ratha Yatra court. And all of a sudden I felt that I wasn't doing the drawing. I realized the drawing was being done by some power other than me and my hand was just, was being guided.

I remember when Srila Prabhupada came to Henry Street and we were so happy with everything, the way it was going. We thought we'd reached such a pinnacle in our development. And Srila The Prabhupada said, yes, everything is very nice here. Now go back to Manhattan.

And he said, Brooklyn sounds like a poor man's temple. So he sent Shamsundar, who happened to be traveling with him at the time, back into Manhattan, and he started looking for buildings. And Shamsundar started realizing we're talking about millions of dollars here. Anyways, we were left with the task after they left, and we started collecting happily for this monumental move.

And we were collecting and collecting over a period of months, and then even over a year, and it was a joyous crusade. But at one point, we were a little wary if possibly the money that was being collected would be diverted into maybe other activities. And so luckily, one day, we got a call from Srila Prabhupada, and he ordered that all the money we had collected all be sent to India, and that we could start collecting again for a New York temple. Some devotees, I don't know how they all felt about it.

I was elated. I knew that Srila Prabhupada was specifically, almost as if to say, sticking out his hand, reaching out and saying, give me the money. And we were, in effect, putting it right into his hands. So we felt really good about that.

And it turned out that all these wonderful devotees, their energies went toward the purchase of the Juhu property in Bombay. all the New York temple money purchased that and the extra money that was left over built the Lotus building the first temple building in the Sridhar Mayapur complex of course this Rathayatra became very famous because Prabhupada never sat in his Vyasa San which was there and walked and danced the entire way and what was the amazing thing was just days before and weeks before he had been very ill He was in Mayapur in Calcutta, and he asked the leaders what he should do because he was being invited to the Ratha Yatra in London, and he was also being invited, I believe, to Australia to rest and recuperate from his illness. And I remember he told them what you would do sometimes. He said, talk amongst yourselves and tell me what you think.

And I remember massaging him that day when he said that, and he said to me, he said, so, he said, what do you think? you know, should I go to London for the Ratha Yatra or should I go to Australia and rest? And I had been with Prabhupada about a year, so I already had an idea that he was going to go to the Ratha Yatra. That's what Prabhupada did, he preached. There's no possibility of him passing up such a big opportunity for preaching.

And I said that, I said, well, if you go to London, I say there'll be thousands of people there at the Ratha Yatra festival that you can preach to. Of course, if you go to Australia, that won't be there. And he just said, yes. He said, that's right.

So then later on in the afternoon, he called everyone, and he just told them, he said, we're going to London to Ratha Yatra. I picked Prabhupada up at Heathrow Airport in a helicopter and flew him into the front lawn. He landed in a helicopter. And the entire trip from the airport, it was storming.

And this little helicopter, I think it was just two passengers, just Prabhupada and I, was moving like, you know, really abruptly. I was getting sick. It was like being on the inside of a basketball or something, you know, rotating. And I looked over at Prabhupada thinking, oh, my God, he must be getting ill.

And he was just as calm as could be and just enjoying the ride. And we were just skimming over the treetops. at a very high speed and we landed there on the lawn prabhupada used to say to people i have arrived in a helicopter so we just ran back round to the lawn where they were going to land and yelled to everyone that he was coming because at the manor there's uh two small airfields nearby so there's actually quite a lot of small planes and noise from the sky and maybe it hadn't been noticed so we ran around telling everyone and just a few seconds later the helicopter landed and I don't know if it had been raining or what but the grass was very wet and we were running towards the helicopter and the pilot of the helicopter was flipping out because the blades were still turning and I was just so eager to get there to see Prabhupada again I just went flying I don't know if I tripped or slipped or what but I went face down on the grass and we could see Prabhupada just his head through the window of the door and when he came out he looked quite shaken and I heard afterwards that Prabhupada said I never want to travel this way again so when he arrived we were very worried that he wasn't feeling well here we are pulling up to the beginning of the parade I'm driving the car and Prabhupada is getting out.

I continued in this car through the whole parade following the cart in case Prabhupada needed to be taken to rest somewhere. I mean, here he is arrived from Calcutta overnight on the plane. He hasn't rested at all. So we figured, you know, either he can sit on the cart for a while and then get off and we'll put him in the car and take him somewhere to rest. but he surprised us all and never even got up on the cart to sit he danced and walked the entire distance for hours on a hot july day in london muggy day and then at the end he sat up on the lions at trafalgar square and talked and preached strongly what an effort our efforts pale by comparison.

My uncle, he left me 10,000 pounds in a will. Which is a lot of money in those days, 73. So there I was, I was a Brahmachari and I was initiated. But then all of a sudden Shama Sundar, the G.B.C. said, Mahavishnu, we want to put you in charge of Rathayatra.

So then I thought, well let me spend it on the Rathayatra festival. So there I was, I was spending like water. I was arranging for Big Panda in Trafalgar Square, publicity and all the buses in London, paying for a film to be made. I was walking around with the bills hanging out of my pocket.

As the procession began, all of a sudden, the sun burst through. So it had been like a very gloomy looking day. Suddenly the sun was just shining on the whole affair. And Prabhupāda took his coat off, and I'm right by Śrīla Prabhupāda.

You can see in that picture, I'm right there. I just put my arms out, and he put his coat on my arms. Somehow or other, Kṛṣṇa let me be right by Śrīla Prabhupāda during the whole procession. This was a victory for Prabhupāda, this Rathayatra going right down, make the main byways there in London to Trafalgar Square.

And, you know, Prabhupāda saw to it that it was a very grand event, and he just danced and walked the entire way, even though he was going to go recuperate somewhere from his illness because he was supposedly weak. During the parade itself, I was in the crowd distributing some of these magazines, and suddenly all the hairs on my body just stood on end. I felt so different, and I turned around to look behind me, and right behind me was Srila Prabhupada dancing. So I felt Srila Prabhupada before I saw him.

That's how strong of a personality he was. The Babis, I guess they could see that I was his assistant, his servant. And they said to me, you have to tell your leader to sit down because he's making too much of a commotion in the streets. We need to get order in the streets.

They considered it very disorderly, all this dancing around. And I ignored him once, you know, because I thought, I can't say anything to Prabhupada, you know. So then they kept coming up to me. This one officer kept saying, you know, you have to tell him, you know, you have to tell him.

And so finally I went up to Prabhupada. And he was just like us as he was dancing around and walking. And I went up to him. From behind, I tapped him on the shoulder.

And he turned around and looked at me and I said, Prabhupada, I said, they're saying you have to sit down in your seat. and he just kind of like just paid no attention at all and just spun back around and continued to dance you know so i just shrugged my shoulders i went back up to the bobby and i said if you want him to stop i said you tell him i said because he won't listen to me so and then he didn't go up and then they just they just let it go on and when those kids started to get going i was supposed to be directing the parade because i was like in charge of the whole thing and then then all the senior devotees were surrounding Prabhupāda in these huge kīrtans. And I couldn't do anything about it. They were all senior to me.

I was just a junior devotee. And then the police kept coming up to me and saying, when he jumps up and down and he looks at Jagannath on the Rathayatra card, then you're stopping all the traffic in London. Please do something. I'm like, what can I do?

Finally, at one point, he motions to us, and he wanted us, all the kirtan devotees, to come down off the rathayatra cart, he said, come on down. And so we came down and had kirtan with Prabhupada right down there on the street. Everyone came off the cart. And then we're holding hands and keeping a circle around Prabhupada to keep from anyone bumping into Srila Prabhupada.

And it wasn't until actually later on, when the Chaitanya Charitamrita was translated by Srila Prabhupada that we realized that this was all the same as in Chaitanya Charitamrita. We spent weeks advertising the Ratha Yatra this year. We called it London Summer Festival and we had stickers made, orange circular stickers, and we stuck them on every available surface, you know, lamp posts, shop windows. Somebody went on all the underground trains and stuck them on all the doors of the underground trains.

The whole of London was just covered in the things. We were surprised actually that more people didn't come. We thought, you know, there'd be a hundred thousand. Everyone directed Prabhupada towards the Vyasa Sun and he looked at it.

Then he looked around and then he just shook his head a little and started to walk. And then when everyone realized that Prabhupada was going to walk in front of the cart with everybody else, there was like a wave went through the devotees as they heard that this was happening everyone started to dance and it was quite amazing that there was this seemingly very small old man in the middle of all these tall young strong western men and he was completely directing them just with a flick of his finger they would lift off the ground and dance and spin and and do whatever and the the number of madangas that were being played and the vigor that they were being played with. It wasn't that the kirtan was particularly fast, but the way everyone was playing the madangas, their hearts were in their hands the way they were playing them to please Prabhupada with the kirtan.

And from time to time he would actually start dancing, jumping off the ground himself with his arms raised. And when that happened, the devotees just went wild. And it was as if we were flying. There was no ground beneath our feet.

There was no time, no space, no nothing. It was just pure joy and happiness and Prabhupada. At some points when he would look at Lord Jagannath, it was the face of a man in love, the way he looked at Jagannath. Sometimes the Rathayatra cart would fall behind the Kirtan party by quite a distance.

So Prabhupada would stop the Kirtan party in one spot and wait for the cart to catch up. he would sometimes raise his hands as if he was beckoning to Lord Jagannath to come and once the cart caught right up to the party then he'd move on again. That walk from Marble Arch to Trafalgar Square if you were just walking it without dancing or whatever it takes a good at least a half an hour just to walk normally but the Rathiatra procession lasts for about two and a half hours. During the Rathayatra, when we turned from Piccadilly to go down Haymarket towards Trafalgar Square, then the Rathayatra cart began to go out of control and the braking system was not working properly. So it was starting to accelerate down the hill and the devotees were sort of blissfully unaware of what was going on but the police could see that this was happening and the police started to get into anxiety so i remember one policeman approached one of the devotees in the in a mood of great concern asking who's in charge here who's in control and the devotee turned around and said krishna's in control and went back to the care When we arrived at Trafalgar Square, at one point Srila Prabhupada looked around, he saw a small street and he started to go down it.

This wasn't on the procession route. The whole procession starts to follow him. He was looking for a place to pass urine, and Lord Jagannath and the whole procession was going right along with him. This was another one of these events, you know, very special events like the opening of the temple of Vrindavan.

This was conquering London, you know, he conquered the British, Prabhupāda. We knew what he was when he was young, when he first met his spiritual master, right? He was into the Gandhi movement, you know, he wasn't into British rule. So now he came and took over Britain, that's what he did, you know, it's like right back in their face.

These are special triumphs I think that Prabhupāda really, really enjoyed. festival we made a lot of promises to the to the authorities regarding you know how we would conduct ourselves things we would and wouldn't do we set up these tents this is the one right with those yellow tents in order to secure these tents with with the lines you can see that come from them we just drilled holes into the cement and drove iron stakes you know pegs in there which was a total no-no for the authorities. But anyway, the festival went off. It was just really sensational with so many people. Prabhupada was very pleased, there was no doubt about it.

But the following year, they just absolutely would not give us any leeway for performing a festival. It took some time for them to regain their trust in us. There he is in Trafalgar Square, the center of the British Empire. Thousands and thousands of people.

This was Prabhupada's triumphant moment, looking out at thousands of people chanting Hare Krishna in Trafalgar Square. And I came down to Trafalgar Square to see the arrangements there. Everything was fantastic. We hide these beautiful palm trees.

It was like India, you know. It was a beautiful day. but I was totally exhausted by that time I couldn't focus on what was going on it just happened whatever happened, happened it did happen but I was very pleased in the Chaitanya Chaitanya Mita it says that Rathayatrakat seemed to be higher than Mount Meru and then Papa writes in the purple there was a gorgeous Rathayatra festival in London in 1973 three. The Guardian newspaper reported that the Rathayatra card seemed to be higher than Nelson's column and he put that in the purport of Chaitanya. But then it's in the Conversations books that they, Shamasundara said to Prabhupada that one devotee, Mahavishnu, he received some money from his aunt, actually it wasn't my aunt, it was my uncle, which paid for the Ratha Yatra Festival.

And Prabhupada said, he has spent his aunt's money well. The overwhelming memory of that festival is the dance, the dancing that just defied logic because you just kept going and going and going and and just wanted more and more and more, and just wanted it to last forever. I just felt like I had received so much mercy that day from Srila Prabhupada. And then after, you know, after he spoke, he wanted to go back.

And so we went to Beri Playsamchandra Jhova. I also went. He was so happy. He was very happy with the Rathiyatra.

He was very pleased that day. And he started talking about transcendental competition between the Gopis. He said, not like this mundane competition. Oh, you are doing better than me?

Let me smash you. No, you are serving so nicely. Let me try to imitate. He says, in this way ever increasing, ever increasing transcendental bliss.

I had volunteered to stay back to look after Radha Landanishwara. and I was feeling a bit like I was missing out on seeing Prabhupada. But he came back earlier than the devotees and I think he was with Shamsunda and they came in the temple room door and there was Prabhupada and the servant went downstairs to get something for him. He went to take darshan of the deities and so I got to take Prabhupada's slippers off and I remember having his lotus feet on my hands and feeling conscious how rough my hands seemed for his beautiful soft feet. But it was really lovely to touch Prabhupada's feet and it was a really special moment because there was no one there and somehow Krishna created that little moment in time when I got to be with Prabhupada.