20160728 JSSS Meeting

JPS:

Mukam karoti vacalam

Pangum langhyate girim

Yat kripa tamaham vande sri gurum dina tarinam

Paramananda madhavan

Sri Chaitanya ishvaram

Hari Om Tat Sat

Since I am writing a book on Prabhupa  in English, so I will speak in English and Sujetidriya will translate in Bengali. So the book is almost finished, but I think that there are a few pastimes thay I didn’t say. Anyway I will say once that I think I didn’t say but they have been said, I don’t know.

So the first part of the book was in Montreol. Actually I joined ISKCON in San Francisco. I was thinking I will go to India to go for a real guru but the devotees first and I saw an add for the rath yatra and that was nailed on a tree, “Festival of Chariot”, that looked interesting.

On the bottom it said. “Vegetarian Mail – 25 cent contribution.”  It was very cheap. So I was a vegetarian, I thought, “Ok, I will go and check it out.” And so I go to the Temple at 415, Fredrick Street. All the devotees were in the kitchen eating, pots were in the middle and they served themselves, so I thought well there was no one serving me, just maybe they are teaching the survival of the fittest. So I went and took Prasad and I saw that they were eating with their bare hands. I wasn’t used to that. Anyway I had some Prasad.

So I got a book, “Easy Journey to the Other Planets.”, and that was a very interesting book, so I saw a picture of Krishna sitting in the forest of Vrindavan. At that time I did not know that it was Vrindavan. I saw he was in the forest, he had his feet in the stream and he was playing a flute, his legs look very beautiful, he was blue in his colour, I felt so happy to see him, I thought I came to right place. I wanted to give my 25 cent donation but everyone was busy. Someone told me go next door and Garga Muni will take your money and he took my 25 cents and sold me a set of Bhagavatam. In those days one set was three sets of first canto. Anyway from there I went to Montreol and from Montreol I went to Los Angeles after I opened the Toronto temple. The Prabhupada… I made Jagadish Prabhu the temples president, then I went to LA.

So there I went with Prabhupada I went to a morning walk, and there were very few people with him. He stopped opposite one church, he said in the future our temples would be like this, there will be many congregational devotees and there will be a few devotees who will live in the centres. So he predicted that there would be a big congregational movement. So then he sent me to India. It was 1970. I joined ISKCON in 1968 and Prabhupada, he registered ISKCON 50 years ago in 1966 exactly on this day.

Hari bol (everyone)

Happy 50^th anniversary!

Happy Golden anniversary!

So then we had a place near Vivekanananda Road. So we were walking on Vivekananda Road with Srila Prabhupada and we were singing, “Jiv Jago Jiv Jago Gaura Candra Bole, Kato nidra jao maya pisachira kole.”

It was about five in the morning. So people were opening their windows and looking down, “who are these crazy people singing in the morning?”

“OH sadhus!” sadhus do these things.

So Prabhupada he saw one house with the name plate “PODDAR”, he said, “OH! I know him, let’s go in.” So he went in and he was in the waiting room. So one house domestic servant came. Prabhupada told him in Hindi, “tell the babu that we are here, then he went and five minutes later he came back.”, he said, “babu puja karta hain (the babu, he is doing his worship)”

So Prabhupada would say that these are the kanistha adhikaris. “When a pure devotee comes to the house, they leave the worship of Krishna and they greet the pure devotees of Krishna. So Krishna would be more pleased if he came and received us because we are representatives of Krishna.

Anyway after some time the babu came and he brought his children, asked  Prabhuapada to bless them. So like this Prabhupada, he blessed the children. Later we had the house in the present place. Prabhupada came. That time we had a brahman who was cooking, his name was Shanti Lal, and there was a labour he rolled the chappati and Shanti Lal, He cooked it. So like this Shanti Lal was cooking for deities. Prabhupada came, he looked at the food. He said, “this food is fit for ghost, wha…. !!” So then I researched what happened.

That day Shanti Lal didn’t cook, instead he had to for some relative’s death or something. So the labour was cooking. Prabhuapada by seeing the food said it is not Prasad, it is fit for ghost. So of course the food looked like any other day but Prabhupada by looking at it he could understand that it is not cooked by a pure person. That time I had different Ayurvedic medicines. There was one medicine which was actually made from conchshells in acid, mild acid, the name of that was mahasankha dhravuk. It was a mild acid and some of the floor of the Calcutta was red-oxide, and when this mahasankha dhravuk fell on the floor it turned that portion white. So one sanyasi liked the Indian Prasad, he took two plates- full, from one plate he would get full but he took two. He would eat one plate and he would say, “give me the acid, the sankha acid, then he ate the second plate.”

Then one grihastha and one sanyasi they would go to all the sweet shops in Calcuatta because in the West you couldn’t eat outside, but here in the sweet shops we were allowed to eat. So they would research all the sweet shops were, where was the white misthi doi, where was the red misthi doi, the sweet samosa made by special paneer and K.C.Das Rasogalla, they would know every sweet shop in Calcutta. This street then down that street then on the ally. One had carbuncle which is a multi-headed boil. So this were the old days in Calcutta.

Prabhupada one day he sent me to G.P.O, said, “send this letter by acknowledgement due. You have to do it yourself.”

So I went to the Calcutta G.P.O, general post office, there were thousands and thousands of people there, one sign said “registered mail” There was a big line, I waited in line, I got to the counter, I said, “I want to send this letter by registered acknowledgement due.”

“You have to wait in that line. They will weigh letter, then you get the stamps.”

So I waited in the other line, they weighed the letter, told me that you need that much stamps. I waited in the old line, the I got to the counter, the letter weighed this much, I needed stamps.

“Go to that line to get the stamps.”

Already one hour went by. Then I went to the other line, then I got the stamps, I was going crazy, I started to chant loudly, “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Hare Hare.”

After getting the stamps I went back to the line again, I got to the counter.

“where is your acknowledgment due card?”

“Hai Hai… where do I get that”

Outside there is a guy. So actually I had to go on another line, then go to the guy who will …25.18… the card to the letter. Then I had to wait again in the registerd mail line. Three hours went by for one letter. Finally the guy said, “OK, here is your receipt.”

That’s how I was trained up in India. In the West you go to one counter and you get everything but here you have to go to so many different counters.

Then I went back to house and Prabhupada asked me, “did you sent the letter?”

“Yes, here is your registered acknowledgement due receipt.”

I don’t know if Prabhupada knew what I had to go through. But that was a nice training for me.

Transcribed by : Sadananda Krishnaprem Das

Mayapur