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Transcriptions of the Gurudasa: All glories to Srila Prabhupada. We were in London and Prabhupada asked that some devotees come to India. They were picking one or two devotees from various temples, and he asked that we come to India. We had a godbrother who was working in an airlines called Brothers Airline Service Corporation, known as BASCO Airlines, and we gathered together and it was 17 devotees who came. It was the second wave. First Tamal Krsna, Ramanuja, Subala went to Calcutta, and we had gathered together in Europe to come to India and we were very happy to do this. Prabhupada also asked us to bring equipment like slide projectors and film and even irons, and so we gave everybody a little film and a little of this so it wouldn't look like we were necessarily on a mission that this person had four rolls of film and this person… We gathered, and I remember Giriraja especially. I'm so happy to hear from him. He has always inspired me. Now, he just came from the Boston temple, and the Boston temple was known as the most austere temple. There was Jadurani and Satsvarupa and Giriraja, and we used to joke that the istagosthi was how to split up a garbanzo bean, that Giriraja would get the left half, Satsvarupa would get the middle and Jadurani would get the right half of the garbanzo bean. Sridhar Swami: (inaudible) what the garbanzo beans are? Gurudasa: A chickpea, channa. One channa would be discussed in the istagosthi. So now Giriraja, we're on this plane and the BASCO, Brothers Airline Service Corporation, was out of Aden, I think, and so it was scheduled that we would stop at every port of call in Arabia. So Giriraja sat next to me and he was chanting. I don't know if you've ever seen "Casablanca," the movie, but it was like a two-prop plane and there were animals in it, goats and chickens, and all sorts of various languages being yelled throughout the plane. Giriraja wouldn't look out the window because he said, "Maya is out there," and I said, "Have you looked in this airplane?" At that point, somebody had regurgitated in the aisle. Animals were bleeding. The cockpit was separated by a curtain. Now, Syamasundara came the next day with Revatinandan and Kausalya, they had a door on their cockpit, but it was still BASCO. So now we get to Egypt, Cairo, after Aden and it was the day after their president, Nasser, was assassinated, so the whole airport was draped in black bunting and people were crying and beating their chests; and Giriraja, in his innocence, led all the devotees out on the tarmac for kirtan. I thought, "This is great, this is a chance for me to whip out my Super 8 mm camera and photograph the devotees on the way to India chanting in the airport." As I'm looking into the viewfinder, I see the Egyptian army running at us with bayonets on the ends of the rifles. Caitya-guru from within told me what to do again, and I put down the camera and went between the soldiers. I said, "We are singing the praises of President Nasser," and they said, "Oh, that's very nice." So then I was able to finish the filming. Actually Yadubara gave me the copy of that, I had lost it, and you could see at one point it's photographing, photographing, then suddenly there's a drop-off. So then it's Rama Navami, we get to Bombay. We arrived safely, by Krishna's grace, and we came here, and I remember the ride from the airport. I said that "These cars, it seems that the horn and the engine and the brakes are the most important thing, but especially the horn." I was wondering, "Why is the person honking the horn so much?" But then I saw that when the horn was honked that people would just automatically gravitate off the road. It was like there was some divine intervention in this chaos, there's somebody drying some dal but then the car misses them. It was very beautiful and I was feeling like "This is my mother country, I feel a softness here. America may be my father but this is like a mother, but does he have to drive the horn so much?" But years later I got the realization that Prabhupada…we were riding in Bengal and the horn broke of the car, and sure enough people didn't gravitate to the side, they nearly got run over. So Prabhupada had a thali in the car and he says, "Give me my thali and give me my cane," and he took his cane and banged on the thali, and then everybody gravitated towards the side and everything was all right. So then Prabhupada laughed and said, "They will think it is an American invention and copy it." Devotee: Charlie Chaplin. Gurudasa: Ah, Charlie Chaplin. Before we got to London, sometimes I would ask Prabhupada very brazen questions. Like the Back to Godhead had Nrsinghadeva on the cover so I asked Prabhupada, "Could we make Nrsinghadeva masks and bring it out on kirtan?" Prabhupada quoted the verse from the Bhagavad-gita, "'What great men do, others will follow,' certainly you can bring Lord Nrsingha masks out on kirtan," and to illustrate it, he illustrated it not with the Srimad-Bhagavatam or Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu, it was with a Charlie Chaplin movie and it was called, I think, "Easy Life." Prabhupada loved Charlie Chaplin. One time on an airplane, nobody else was watching the movie and they looked over at Prabhupada, what to do, and he was laughing at Charlie Chaplin. But the movie, the example was Charles Chaplin…and I'm going to use Prabhupada's colloquial language…Charles Chaplin was at the ball dance and he had tailing coats tails, and he was dancing vigorously but no one was paying it any attention until somebody went behind Charlie Chaplin and took the tailcoats and split them all the way up to the neck, almost all the way up to the neck. So then Prabhupada said, "Charles Chaplin went into the private room," the water closet, the bathroom, "and he saw that his tailing coats were half ripped, and so he ripped the tailcoats all the way up to the neck. Then he went out and danced again vigorously, and everybody thought it was a style and they all ripped their tailing coats up to the neck." So he used this as an example for how we can take Lord Nrsingha masks on sankirtan. So now we arrived here and it was very, very beautiful, it was Rama Navami. We stayed at a place on Marine Drive, Kailash Seksaria's, and they treated us very nice. But Prabhupada was still in Calcutta and so when we got to the airport, this man Kailash Seksaria, for some reason I thought he was a detective. He looked like a detective, he had a brown fedora and everything like that, and I said, "Where is your identification?" because he was starting to take the party of 17 away, and I was checking on the baggage and everything. So his identification was a telegram from Prabhupada that said, "Welcome to India, and I'm going to be joining you soon." So it was very nice here in Bombay, Marine Drive, tropical. But we were with a strong party, Dinanantha was there. So the first day we go out on sankirtan in Kalbadevi and this was great, we were chanting and sweating. But Kailash Seksaria sent his servants to accompany the sankirtan party with silver urns of nimbu pani. So here we were, Lord Caitanya's devotees chanting, and these servants in costume, in livery, in uniform, are standing there and waiting for us to finish and then give us nimbu-pani. So it was sort of a dichotomy. Then the next day we were invited to a gatherubg, and I call it "sadhus on card tables." It's a whole hall that's lined with all sorts of sadhus with every type of tilak and staff, and they were debating the aham brahasmi type of thing and it was kind of dry. Then they asked us to come up on the stage, and we chanted and the place…it just erupted into joy and it was like, "OK, we don't have to be dry anymore and we're singing, and these people are great and I'm glad they're here." Then Prabhupada came and we had a press conference. I remember Prabhupada was sitting in the room and he was feeding people that were looking in the windows. I was so glad to be with Srila Prabhupada again, and we were sitting quietly and he said, "You might have to go back to London, they are having some difficulty. But you are here now, let us see." But before I came close to him Prabhupada said, "The table can come here," and I thought, "He's treating the table like a personality." It wasn't an inanimate object, it was part of Krishna's consciousness. We sat very close with our elbows on the table, not too far from each other, and he said, "But now you are here, so let us stay for a while." And he said, "I want something special here in Bombay, and we will have that. But first there is a program we were invited to in Amritsar." So we went to Amritsar, and it was in the midst of an impersonalist gathering essentially. So I was asked to speak and I was giving examples of variegatedness in the spiritual world and how we choose personalism, that we don't just merge with God or just merge and become impersonal and faceless. I was giving the example that we make choices, that we choose prasadam rather than stool in the street, and I saw the audience bristle…and that we choose our partners. If we choose to get married, we choose our wife, we don't just take anybody in the street. So they asked me to stop speaking, and they took me to Prabhupada in the middle of the gathering and said, "Your disciple is saying that we should choose prasadam instead of stool in the street." They forgot the prasadam part, they emphasized on the stool in the street. Prabhupada said, "My American and European disciples use graphic examples." So after they left he said, "That was a good example, may I use it?" So then Giriraja took over, and he just took the baton. It was like he didn't really lessen it very much, although he's a little bit more tactical than me and they let him continue. That night I was making sure everybody had a place to sleep, and Giriraja and I had to sleep in the middle of all the impersonalists. So this man immediately sees me and says, "You know, we are one with God. We are one with God, the fire and the spark are the same." I said, "Well, a spark can't cook a meal." He said, "No, no, no, you don't understand. This thread and the blanket are the same." So I took his blanket and gave him his thread, and it was very cold in Amritsar. I said, "Pleasant dreams." So 20 minutes later he's shivering, he says, "Please give me my blanket back." I said, "No, the thread and the blanket are the same. You have your thread." So I said, "If you really want your blanket back, you have to bow down before my spiritual master the next day," and he did. So then our plan was to come back to Bombay after Amritsar. I was in the first-class compartment with Srila Prabhupada, and it was so nice that I could have this special time. He for some reason would benedict me to have time alone with him. So we were in the first-class compartment and two people come in with armoires and luggage and everything and they put it on two berths, and Srila Prabhupada was on one and I was on another and our baggage was on the seat that I was. So I was sitting between our baggage, and there's baggage on the top and Prabhupada's there. Kausalya brought wonderful prasadam to eat in the first-class compartment. After eating, Prabhupada laid down to rest and he said to me, "You must take rest too," and he motioned like that. So I'm thinking, "Does he want me to rest with him? Does he want me to put his lotus feet on my lap? What does he want?" So I just rearranged the baggage and said, "I could take rest here," because I didn't know what he had in mind, but I just did that. He said, "OK." Then we get to Delhi and I'm sitting there looking out the window, "Dudh! Dudh! Dudh!", "Pani! Pani! Pani!" People were walking around on the platform, "Chai! Chai! Chai!", everything. I'm thinking this is very interesting, a very nice place, and we're looking out the window. This man came in, a Mr. Gupta, and he said, "We can have a temple here in Delhi." It turned out he was one of the cheapest men in the world. He used to pray that his batteries would regain life so he could play his portable radio. He had a locked drawer of batteries and prayed that they would get some juice, he would not invest in new batteries. To show how frugal this man was, he tried to… Prabhupada said, "Who will you take with you?" We were on the platform, he says, "Get down. See what you can do. Who will you take with you?" So I said, "Kausalya, Durlabh," and he said, "No, I have plans for them for Bombay." "Bhanu and this person Gopal," because Gopal, he didn't get along with so many people, but I thought in a small situation he would turn out very good and he did. So Bhanu, Gopal, Yamuna, myself and Giriraja, we went; and this man, Mr. Gupta, in his frugalness tried to get all five of us on his Vespa motor scooter. So we were very humble and I kind of…I'm not the controller, but we did suggest that maybe we could get a taxicab. He takes us to Delhi gate, right on the gate, and there's actual weasels and monkeys and other species in our rooms. So we're in Delhi, but I was always thinking, "Prabhupada said that I have something special in Bombay." So after some time, I was also asked to come back from Vrindavan. I was sent there to go and…Prabhupada said, "Go get this palace." The Maharaja of Bharatpur had a palace, Laxmi Rani Kunj, that Prabhupada said, "I used to live down the street." So I did that. Then Tamal met me in Vrindavan, and we made tilak from the Yamuna River. And he softened and we rode to Surat, where there was a wonderful…the whole town turned out with banners and so many garlands that they would be above our head. We'd have to take them off, otherwise we couldn't breathe, and give garlands out. Then we came back here and we lived in the Sea Palace Hotel, Mr. Chaabria's hotel. We found Akash Ganga eventually. I think Kartikeya Mahadevia, somebody knew about it, and myself and Rishi Kumar were asked to stay back and get Akash Ganga while everybody else went to the Kumbha Mela. So we procured the Akash Ganga. Then Mr. Chaabria was going to the Kumbha Mela and I said, "Please ask Prabhupada if we could come to the Kumbha Mela," and he said yes. Then after the Kumbha Mela we came back, and we lived in the Akash Ganga. Madhudvisa Maharaja was there and Syamasundara and Revatinandan, Kausalya, Yamuna, so many devotees, and people were coming night and day and all sorts of adventures were happening. I remember Srila Prabhupada, one day Kartikeya Mahadevia was on the morning walk and he said, "I'm not afraid of dying but I'm afraid for my family," and Prabhupada said, "Then you have not overcome the fear of death." One man one day attacked Srila Prabhupada verbally, and Srila Prabhupada just glanced at him and this man started shaking and shaking; and then we just put him in the hall outside. Then eventually he regained his consciousness and went away. So then after some success with the pandal…we had a very, very nice pandal program in the middle of Bombay. Now, I thought, what would be a good…was it here or Delhi? I forget which pandal but I thought, "What would be a good advertisement to get people to come?" So I thought, "Well, what about a rupee note?" But that's very crude and people may misunderstand that. So I made the advertisement for the pandal in the form of a telegram because people like to get telegrams and they pay attention to telegrams. So we had a telegram with Prabhupada with his danda on it and then the advertisement on a yellow background, red lettering, and many, many people came to the pandal program. Grand feasts. Radhanatha Maharaja came there and joined from that, and it was very lovely. Then we found out about this Mr. Nair's offer for here. This is not too well known, and in a sense I maybe shouldn't say anything because it might have influenced why it took so long for him to decide. There was a way that we would be sent to some people who were hard to become life members to see how good you were. So Giriraja and I went to Mr. Nair's office; and I don't know what negotiations went on before and how much had gone on or whatever, but this was after a while, it wasn't the initial meeting. He jumps up and he said, "I'm Krishna! I'm Krishna!" Well, you know, that doesn't make us feel too good. So I said, "Do you have 16,108 wives?" And he said, "Yes, I do! I do!" I said, "Can you support them?" He said, "Yes, I do!" and he was ranting, "I'm Krishna! I'm Krishna!" Please don't think that I'm like this, I'm mostly nonviolent but…really, I am, even though Syamasundara has been reminding me of all the times I was standing up for my convictions in India…but everybody has those glass paperweights, and he had a glass top of the desk. So I just took it like that and dropped it on the desk and it went…it didn't shatter the glass, but it got him to be quiet. And then we left. So meanwhile, Prabhupada asked me to register the society in Bombay, register the society. What do I know about that? We got the basis from actually the Aurobindo Society, the aims and objects. It was legalese. It wasn't what spiritual things to do, but it was like allowing for if you're going to buy some land that you can do that and distribute film, writings. It allowed how to register a society. So one of the segments was "The Founder-Acharya shall be A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada." So now comes the lesson in impersonalism that I wasn't aware of. The next segment was "The Founder-Acharya shall have full veto power." Now, I didn't see anything wrong with this but Prabhupada said, when he read over what we had done and drafted, he said, "Who is the Founder-Acharya - you?" and he mentioned a few others. I'm not going to mention their names here now, but…"You?" I said, "No, no, Prabhupada, I just left it out," and I started crying a little bit. He was strong, he wouldn't relent. He said, "This must be changed." So I grab it and take it to the man who was in charge of making the amendments. We had a Board of Directors, some mill owners and everything, and I went to them and got them to sign what was needed for the amendment, that "The Founder-Acharya A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami shall have full veto power." Well, the man wanted baksheesh, "No, I'm not going to do this." So I got angry again and this time I smashed his desk with my fist and said, "I have a press conference tonight and I just left Mr. Kane, head of the CID, and he's coming to the press conference." I said, "Do you want me to say that you don't know the law, you're incompetent, or you want a bribe - which one of those?" And he said, "Oh, I'll sign it, I'll sign it," and he signed it and I brought it to Prabhupada. Now, this took…it was on the weekend, so in between the Friday and the Monday Prabhupada would not look at me because I was the impersonalist, I didn't do it right, and he really wouldn't look at me. He can be very transcendental, but this time he'd be coming around the corner and I'd come out like this and he wouldn't look at me. "Here I am," and he'd look the…he was expert at not looking at me. So after I finished it and got it amended, and I was crying, my tears were on the document, I said, "I really didn't want to be Founder-Acharya," and he said, "I know that, but I could think that." So it was a lesson in personalism. So then I was sent to Vrindavan. Finally we got the land and Mr. Nair passed away, and I was back here and I happened to be in the signing of the document that gave this land. Mrs. Nair was there, and it was such a lovely meeting, it was like Prabhupada was…she said, "I really didn't go along with my husband, I didn't want him to do that," and he said, "You are like my daughter," and she went there and he patted her on the back. It seemed to me that it had the flavor of another age. It's like there was some recording secretary and he had a powdered wig on, and the pens became like quills and plumes. It seemed to be like another age and it was meant to be and it came together, and so the document was signed. I was here for a while, and the only thing that was built at that time was the partial skeletal of one of the floors of I think the second guesthouse. From seemingly nothing, look what has transpired. Such first-class hospitality, such first-class arrangements and making you feel at home in this great family after not being here for so many years, 25 years, and really done so well and with such great service attitude. So in a small way, I'm very glad to have been a part of this. Srila Prabhupada has really done it all because sometimes people say, "Well, how did you make so many sacrifices and do this and that?" It wasn't due to any great scriptural knowledge or great determination or tapasya. It was simply because we wanted to see Srila Prabhupada smile at the end of the day. "What news, Gurudasaji?" "Well, I dropped a gold ball on Mr. Nair's desk today" and whatever the news, and all we wanted to do ever, all we ever wanted to do is to please Srila Prabhupada at the end of the day and see his oceanic smile. So thank you, Prabhupada, for allowing us to become somewhat Krishna conscious. Thank you very much. He's giving me the sign either to wrap it up or continue. I think he wants me to continue. My book, OK, thank you. The book is called "By His Example: The Wit and Wisdom of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami." I thought it was needed because a lot of the books that were written about Srila Prabhupada showed his great organizational skills and his great scriptural knowledge, but it didn't necessarily show how personal Prabhupada really is. When you're with Prabhupada and he has his knee up and his hand behind his head and he's lying in a relaxed position, so many times his humor would come out or his compassion. Many times he would be teaching, like "Did you get a receipt?" "Oh, no, we didn't get a receipt." He would say, "Oh, you American boys and girls never were taught anything." He would always forgive us in the end. He would always forgive us, his so compassion. I remember in San Francisco he was having trouble getting his visa and someone wanted to adopt Srila Prabhupada, Nandarani and Dayananda, and Prabhupada said, "Well, that's all right, but they will say what are you doing with such an old son?" Constantly his sense of humor would come out and his compassion, and so I decided to write a book that showed Prabhupada's personal nature to share with everybody a chance to get a taste of Prabhupada that wasn't an official type of interaction or some lecture, to show Prabhupada's easygoing and inventive side. One time he was at a place and the microphone was loose, and so he took his sacred thread and tightened it. A lot of times he would separate himself from being a great devotee. We were at a place and everybody was coming up and offering gifts and things and he said, "Just see how they treat the saintly people." It wasn't that he was a saintly person, it was that he was just showing an example. So I decided to write a book that would show Prabhupada sometimes behind the scenes and all the great feats that he did. So it's also the story of Krishna consciousness from the early days in San Francisco, and they were quite spontaneous then. Prabhupada was spoon-feeding us. There were no books, there was no movement, there was three or four temples, there was a mimeographed Back to Godhead, and the strangest menagerie and array of creatures coming into the temple. We had nicknames for them - Rabbit and The Three Wise Men. I met one of The Three Wise Men years later. We would give them something to do. They came in with blankets and were completely in another world, spaced someplace, and we would say, "Why don't you go and wash the windows?" and they did but they'd step in the plants on the windows, they were completely in another world. So we just had them chant. There was a man called Rabbit and things like that, and we were a young family. Brother David of the Children of God was living downstairs, and his altar burnt up. Jayananda was very important. He would take Prabhupada on the morning walks. So I was going on the morning walks, I always went if I could. Even when I was president in London, I would make sure that everybody got a chance to go on the morning walk but I would always go. So one day I decided not to go, and Prabhupada comes down the stairs and says, "Gurudasaji, are you coming on the morning walk?" I said, "Yes, Prabhupada," I changed my mind, and he said, "Thank you very much." Coming back from the walk, Prabhupada forgot to put his mittens on the base of the stairwell. Usually he put them on the base of the stairwell and then walked up the stairs and he said, "Just see how I make mistakes." To Prabhupada that was a mistake, that he didn't put his mittens on the bottom of the stairwell. So Prabhupada was very, very tolerant in San Francisco and he literally spoon-fed us until we suddenly became a movement, because there was Rabbit and Israel, a man with a sikha down all the way, and people playing trumpets, and there was a small dwarf person playing a kettledrum, and Hayagriva was making kelp horns, and great kirtans, and Prabhupada was up there just spoon-feeding us. There were no books, and someone once asked a question about Lord Caitanya. "Oh, this is a great question." We were that young. I remember the first person to bloop, to go away, was someone named Ravindra-swarupa. He said right there in the middle of the kirtan…and the kirtans would go on for long times, an hour and 20 minutes. Again, we didn't have…the earliest we got up was 7:00 three times a week for the morning program. There was no mangal arati or anything like that at that time. There were no Deities. Syamasundara carved the first Jagannatha Deities after Malati found Lord Jagannatha in Cost Plus and Prabhupada bowed down and said, "We must make these," and Syamasundara carved Them. So Prabhupada sat on the altar and just to show you how eclectic it was in those days, Hari dasa made a totem pole and put it to the right of the altar, with eagle noses and wings. I used to remark how Prabhupada wasn't concerned about any show bottle because he'd go like that with his nose on the altar, and I said, "He's really special." Then he'd eat an orange and then he'd throw it and it would whap the totem pole, whap! And it used to make me laugh, it would hit the eagle right in the nose, whap! Then Hari dasa, in his divine wisdom, painted the Panca Tattva as women in Hawaii. So Prabhupada comes up to the altar and he sees the Panca Tattva as women and he went, "Ah," and he called Hari dasa and then he painted it proper. So this was the type of thing. We had Lord Jesus on the wall, and Brother David had his own eclectic altar in he basement, and totem poles, and the Panca Tattva, and Prabhupada sitting on the altar. Then finally we got a vyasasana. So now Prabhupada's on the vyasasana and Ravindra-swarupa, we turn around, we hear him sobbing in the middle of the lecture, and Prabhupada stops and Ravindra-swarupa said, "I want to reach God directly. I don't want anybody in between." So Prabhupada said, "Come here my boy," and Ravindra-swarupa crawled on all fours and put his head in Prabhupada's lap and Prabhupada, in the middle of the lecture, patted his head and said, "I just want you to be happy." Then Rabindra-swarupa cried for a while, and then he bolted up and left the temple with the door open and left; and it was like a person from our family left. It wasn't sneaking out in the middle of the night, it was leaving right there in front of us, and we were all crying. And just to add some salt to the wound, Rabbit followed him out and left too and closed the doors. So then after a while we learned a little more, Prabhupada made some more books, and we went to London and it was still like that. Prabhupada was like our father, spoon-feeding us. So that's what my book is about. It takes in San Francisco, a lot of the early history, stories of the movement. It takes in this story here of Bombay, some of the things I just told, and Delhi and Vrindavan. Then more nectar along the path, some more of Srila Prabhupada's humor and aphorisms and things like that and photos I rendered, and hopefully it will be out in a few months. I wrote it by just putting down titles of stories, of events, of jokes, of things that reminded me of Srila Prabhupada, and then I filled it in. But actually the book was written really as a thanks to Srila Prabhupada for all the kindness he's bestowed upon me, all the forgiveness. He treated me like his young pet son. He would always really be very kind to me and, like I say, forgive me. One time he said, "If I don't forgive you, then Krishna will forgive you. And if Krishna doesn't forgive you, Radharani will." So thank you, Srila Prabhupada, and thank you all very much. Devotee: Do you have a webpage? Gurudasa: Torchlight will have a webpage. I'm getting a webpage, I'll have one. Thank you. Devotee: E-mail? Contact you about your book, how are they going to order your book? Will it be printed in India? Gurudasa: Yes, they're going to be printed in India. Thank you. Oh, there's one more story you reminded me of. See, he's saying, "Where's your e-mail page? Where's your website?" I never was a great businessman; and just before this was signed with Mr. Nair, he was still alive, Prabhupada says to me, "Go to see Mr. Nair because you're charming and you get along with everyone." So I'm out the door and he says, "But wait, you don't have any business sense." He says, "So Tamal Krsna should go, he's got lots of business sense, but he doesn't get along with anybody." He said, "I'm the only one who can do it," and he was the only one who could do it. Jaya, Prabhupada. So I have some preview booklets of the first two chapters of the book, and so I can give some out and you can share. And then you could either order a book through me now before it happens and I'll personally sign it, or you can go to the webpage of Torchlight, or you can contact me, [email address removed], and I'll make that available. It really is a nice book, scientifically speaking without pride, edited by Syamasundara. |