Transcriptions of the
Bombay 25th Reunion Festival
Remembrances of Srila Prabhupada
in Bombay

Narayani dasi

Narayani: Mukam karoti vacalam pangum langhayate girim, yat-krpa tam aham vande sri-gurum dina-taranam. In 1972, Srila Prabhupada wrote a letter to Karandhar and he asked for 50 devotees to come to India because he was starting his projects here. So from every center, one or two devotees were being chosen to come to India. So my husband and I, we were in Dallas, and Satsvarupa Maharaja, he chose us to go to India along with Bhagavat prabhu. But Bhagavat never made it in 1972, he came later. So in those days we were very poor. We had to hitchhike from Dallas in Texas all the way up to New York. Hitchhiking is like you go out on the road and you put your thumb up and then you ask for a ride, and it was very far from Dallas to New York. But that's how we got down there in the first place anyway, so that was what we did in those days. So we hitchhiked up to New York and then the temple, they gave us these pamphlets to distribute on the street, "Who Is Crazy?" and also "Chanting the Hare Krishna Mahamantra." So we would sell them for 25 cents and we would get to keep 10 cents a copy. So in three weeks we made enough money for our tickets to India. It was $300 in those days, one way. Because we got the order from Srila Prabhupada to come to India, so we got a one-way ticket. But he never told us to go back, so we never went back because we were just trying to follow his order to the letter in those days. We didn't think, "Oh, should we go back?" We just said, "No, Prabhupada told us to come." So we're still here since 30 years.

So we arrived in Bombay in May 1972 and the Deities were in the tent; and it was just mangal arati time and that night the Deities' crown and jewelry…They had a crown and They had a flute, Krishna's flute had been stolen and we saw the Deities without Their flute and crowns. Panca-dravida prabhu was sleeping on guard, he was guarding the Deities, but evidently he slept through the theft because there was no door to the temple, it was just a simple tent. So the Deities were performing austerities just like the devotees. The conditions were very austere. I thought the roof was austere, even though Visakha didn't. I was up there with my mosquito net and my trunk, and she was up there very calmly writing articles. But I was…it was very hot, it was May, and as soon as you got here you would be sick within one week. All the devotees who were a week ahead of us were already sick, and then it took us a few days to get dysentery or whatever we were destined, urine infection I got, because the water, we had a clay pot of drinking water and it had a cover on it but as soon as you took the cover off all these mosquitoes would fly out. But we had nothing else so we had to drink it. And, again, the hut was indescribable. It was the prasadam room, it was the brahmacari ashram, it was the kitchen, it was everything. My first day eating prasadam I noticed the rats running across the roof and I was wondering if they would fall in my plate. It didn't happen to me, but it happened to Panca-dravida the first day I was there. It fell in his plate. So milk prasadam at night, we'd have milk and Krsna Book. But the first 10 minutes of the milk prasad, we'd have to take all the bugs out of the milk, the mosquitoes, whatever else varieties of bugs. So it was quite austere. After a week of this, they looked at us and they thought, "Well, these guys are too sick. We'll send them to Calcutta to be pujari." So fortunately, I thought, I went to Calcutta; and even though there was no water and there was no electricity, at least I had a roof over my head so I was very thankful for that. But unfortunately, I didn't escape the rats. The rats were still there.

So in Calcutta, I had more experience with Srila Prabhupada in Calcutta because I was the pujari there.

Devotee: You dressed the Deities here.

Narayani: Yeah, right, I'll tell you about that a little later. So in Calcutta, I used to do all the aratis - mangal arati, 12:00 arati, 4:00 arati, evening arati, wake Them up, put Them to sleep, everything, because everybody else went out to collect. Gargamuni was the president. Prabhupada used to call him Garga-money because he was very good a making money but he was also very frugal, he was very tight. So one time somebody stole my shoes and Gargamuni said, "Well, you don't need shoes, you're the pujari. You don't have to go out of the temple, you just stay with the Deities." So what could I say? It was a bit austere. Anyway, Prabhupada came to Calcutta many, many times. One time he came, it was in 1973 and I was the pujari but I also knew how to type and I was the only one who knew how to type. So Pradyumna, Panditji, came up to me and he said, "You want to come to Mayapur with Srila Prabhupada?" I said, "Yes." And he said, "OK, all you have to do is learn how to read Bengali." I said, "No problem. I'm coming with Prabhupada." Because Prabhupada said impossible is a word in a fool's dictionary, so we took that to heart. So I spent a couple of hours, I was looking at the book and I figured out the letters, and I was off in the taxi the next day with Srila Prabhupada to Mayapur.

So in Mayapur, it was 1973 in June and the construction was going on while we were living in the building. Prabhupada was also living in the same building. Some of the rooms had no floors, and none of the rooms had windows. They had doors, but there were no knobs. So you couldn't really keep the door closed. We tried. We had these big marble slabs and we put them against the door, but it was the month of Vaisyak so these huge rainstorms would come through, they'd blow the doors open and blow the marble slabs across the floor, and that's how we were living. Prabhupada had the habit that he would walk up and down the veranda of the building in Mayapur. So one day he was walking and he was looking in everybody's windows to see what they were doing. So one day he looked in my window and I was typing. I had this huge book of Caitanya-caritamrta in Bengali in front of me open, and I was listening on the earphones, Prabhupada was speaking. I typed actually the whole Adi-lila 13th Chapter to 17th Chapter for two months in Mayapur. So I had to listen, Prabhupada would speak the Bengali and I'd have to type it in English. I'd look at the book, read it in Bengali and transliterate it right on the spot. So I had to do the transliteration while I was listening to Prabhupada; and that's actually how I learned Bengali, by hearing Srila Prabhupada. So then one day he was walking around, he looked in my window and he said, "Oh, you know Bengali?" I said, "Yes, Srila Prabhupada," although just a few days ago I hadn't known one word. But I just wanted him to be happy, we just wanted to make Prabhupada happy. I said, "Yes, Srila Prabhupada, I know Bengali." So then he called me to his room and he said, "OK, you know Bengali?" "Yes, Srila Prabhupada." So he said, "I want you to learn how to type in Bengali." I said, "Yes, Srila Prabhupada." So then he sent me off and one brahmacari, I think his name was Sacidananda, was teaching me how to type in Bengali and I was typing. But I wasn't looking at the book. I said, "See, when you type you don't have to look. You can just learn where the letters are and then you can just type without looking." So then the brahmacari said to me, "Oh, now I understand. Prabhupada said to me, 'You learn from her. You teach her, you also learn from her. Prabhupada knows.'" So I was teaching him how to touch type in Bengali, he was teaching me how to type. So Prabhupada, when he called me in his room he said to me, "Now we will write many books together," and I had visions of me traveling with Prabhupada and being his secretary, but unfortunately it never happened. Two months later in Calcutta they heard the news Gargamuni was coming, all the pujaris left the temple. So they made me the pujari. So I had to go and be the pujari in Calcutta because everyone was afraid. He had a reputation. But I wasn't, I said, "No problem." So anyway, I was sent to Calcutta to be the pujari.

I just was remembering in Bombay, I have to get back to Bombay now, that in the beginning when it was so austere here, I did a little research besides my own experiences. Actually one experience I had when I first came was Harikesa, it was raining over the Deities and he put his raincoat over the Deities' head. So you can imagine what the conditions were like, that even the Deities weren't that much protected from the rain. So Tamal was saying to Srila Prabhupada about this Juhu, he was saying, "We're Westerners, we can't live like this, we need doorknobs and running water," and Prabhupada said, "Don't you want to be purified?" So what could we say to that? So Prabhupada, he always appreciated devotees' austerities here in Bombay and all over India. He would always talk to Dr. Patel on his morning walks in Juhu, and I remembered this conversation from hearing it on the tape, that Dr. Patel was criticizing the devotees a little bit. He was saying, "Oh, they're always getting sick," because he's a doctor and he was concerned for the devotees' health. He says, "They're so unclean and they're not cleaning their hut properly and there are so many mosquitoes," and Prabhupada said, "They tolerate. Actually they tolerate because they think, 'I am not this body. Let the mosquito bite my body.'" Prabhupada said that to Dr. Patel. He says, "These devotees, they tolerate." But Dr. Patel, he said, "No, you hypnotize them." Prabhupada said, "No." He says, "Maybe you think they've become weak, but look how they're dancing in kirtan. Look how they're dancing." One time I was walking in the hut and I saw Giriraja, who was a brahmacari at that time, and he was lying on the floor underneath a table. So I asked Giriraja, I said, "What are you doing down there?" And so he said, "Oh, I have very high fever, I have malaria, and this is the only place I can sleep with nobody stepping on me." So this was our austerity, this is a fact. Calcutta was also like that. I had a little partition off the kitchen and no peace. The rats, cockroaches, devotees. Anyway, that was it. We learned to tolerate. First we tolerate, and after the years go by we appreciate the devotees. First we tolerate. When we're young devotees we're not so advanced, so we would often fight. Eventually we would start tolerating, and now we are appreciating devotees. So from time to time we used to visit Bombay to renew our visa. And after we came back here, it must have been '75, Mr. Sethi, he had built rooms for the devotees on top of these tenants' buildings. So at least we had a nice room to stay in, but the food was very bad because there was a shortage of rice in India. For weeks and weeks and maybe even months there was no rice for the devotees and all we had to eat was this Ekadasi kittri every day, and it was very bland and very unpalatable. But, again, we had to tolerate.

One time Srila Prabhupada, he was going on his morning walk and I remember running and running to catch up with him. I was just running and running, he was way ahead. And then as soon as I caught up, he stopped his morning walk. I was offering obeisances, he stopped, he greeted me, he said, "Hare Krishna." I don't remember anything from the morning walk except that Prabhupada stopped everything and acknowledged my presence. Because I was just thinking, "Who am I? I'm just some insignificant devotee out of thousands and he's the pure devotee world preacher, and he has enough time just to notice that I'm there." So it really touched me, that incident.

Sometimes I would help with the Deity worship here also in Bombay, and it was very austere because, as they said, the Deities were in a tent and it was in a field and there was a big huge wind. So you try to do arati and the ghee wicks were always blowing out. It was very, very difficult to get through all the Deities without lighting the ghee wicks at least five or six times. Then one time I dressed Radharani when Prabhupada was here, and that particular day at greeting the Deities Prabhupada stopped and he said, "Who dressed Radharani today?" So, of course, then I said, "I did," and Prabhupada was so pleased. So this was the perfection of our lives. Calcutta the same thing, he was always reciprocating with us and he appreciated our austerities.

So why did we do it? I was thinking back, why did I stay here in India despite sickness, despite lack of proper food, we were getting kicked out every six months for visa. I saw many countries in the first 10 years I was in India. We were in Nepal, we went to Burma, we went to Malaysia, we went to Pakistan twice. Often we were the first devotees there, and we simply went there for visa to get back to India. But it was very difficult to stay in India in the early days. So I was thinking, why did we do it? Because I was thinking, well, no matter how many austerities we did, Prabhupada did more. We couldn't compete with Prabhupada. He would get up earlier, he would do more preaching, he would walk faster. One time I tried to figure out when I was on a walk with Prabhupada, how is it that he's much older and I'm much younger and I'm puffing and I'm huffing and I'm trying to keep up and I can't? How is he doing it? I couldn't figure it out. But I guess you can't figure out the activities of the pure devotee. It's very, very difficult. Actually in Calcutta in one lecture Prabhupada said to us, "I know the austerities you're doing. Sometimes I know you don't even get milk to drink." And he said, "But I'm very grateful because you are preaching here and I cannot do it, you are doing it for me." So he was very, very grateful, and that touched us. We felt this was worth all our problems. Any austerity, we forgot everything when Prabhupada said that to us. One time in Calcutta, one year he said, "This year you don't have to do caturmasya because you're already doing enough austerity as it is." So this was Prabhupada.

So I just have one little excerpt here from a conversation of Tamal with Srila Prabhupada. In 1977, the temple was nearly completed and Prabhupada was staying here, and Tamal Krsna Maharaja said to him, "Everyone is appreciating how wonderful this project is, all of Bombay." And Prabhupada said, "So many obstacles one after another." And Tamal Krsna said, "Krishna would not leave." And Prabhupada said, "No, that was my request, please sit down here and I will do everything." And Panca-dravida Maharaja said, "Practically Giriraja has also not left either." And Prabhupada said, "Yes, he has not trembled in any circumstance. That is his qualification. Nasty, hot, mosquitoes, you also lived here. No gentleman can live here." So Panca-dravida said, "Yes, I lived here, Prabhupada, so many rats." Prabhupada said, "Rats, mosquitoes, so much inconvenience." And Tamal said, "No, you were also inconvenienced. You had to move." Prabhupada said, "No, for me you made very nice arrangement wherever I live. But I know how you were living in that hut with all these rats, all the water dripping, mosquitoes." And Tamal said to Prabhupada, "You always said we were so trained, we would even live on the roadside." And Prabhupada said, "Yes, you are so trained. You don't care for the palace or underneath the tree." And Tamal said, "Formerly we were living like that as hippies, and now we live like that just to serve you." So when Prabhupada was here, then we were just living for his service and for his pleasure. So now also we're living like that, for his pleasure. So we pray that we will continue like that, and we're thankful that all the devotees are here and we can share our realizations with them. Thank you. Hare Krishna.