Vrindavan Yatra—Reflections on Srila Prabhupada’s Disappearance Day

Giriraj Swami: I was sitting very eagerly listening to these wonderful narrations, especially Prthu Prabhu’s at the end, really captured the spirit of Srila Prabhupada. 

The story I thought to tell was more related to parents and how Srila Prabhupada dealt with them and dealt with his disciples in relation to them. But still, we are in Vrindavan, so I was based in Juhu and I had never come to Vrindavan. Once I came very briefly before there was any center here but I had never come after that and I had never been here with Srila Prabhupada. I was very involved in the Juhu project and we had a lot of challenges, a lot of enemies. Everyone else was coming to Vrindavan to be with Prabhupada, so one day I thought, “Maybe this is just in my mind that I can’t leave Juhu, that everything is depending on me, that something bad could happen if I left.” So I came by train and when I arrived I walked passed here and later one of Prabhupada’s secretaries or servants told me that Srila Prabhupada saw me through the window and said, “What is Giriraj doing here? Giriraj can never leave Bombay.” [laughter] So, he said, “Three days maximum.” So the secretary gave me the message and I was so mortified that I am not going to stay even three days I left after two days.

Coming back to my parents, they came to meet me in Calcutta and I was, like you described the difference between a Bengali son and his mother and father being different from Americans, well I was different. Before they came, Prabhupada said, because I was already thinking how to avoid them, so Prabhupada said, “You know when your parents come you should spend time with them. It is your duty.” So they came and basically they wanted me to go further from Prabhupada and I wanted them to come closer to Prabhupada. 

I brought them into Prabhupada’s room. It was the same room in Roy Castle, 3 Albert Road, and Prabhupada spoke to them very skillfully about how he had a pharmacy in Allahabad and one of his customers was Motilal Nehru and Motilal Nehru was a “made in England” man. Prabhupada said that if he had a medicine manufactured in India and the exact same medicine manufactured in England, with the exact same chemical composition, and the one from England cost twenty times more than the one from India, Motilal Nehru would take the one made in England. He had several sons and one was Jawaharlal Nehru and Jawaharlal Nehru was useless. You know how it is, Motilal Nehru would come into the pharmacy and they would talk. So he decided, “Let me give him to the freedom movement. He is useless in any case. Let him join the freedom movement.” 

In this very subtle way Srila Prabhupada was attacking my father’s prejudices. He certainly must have had the same prejudice that if it is made in England or made in America it is better. He probably had that typical sense of being impressed by big people in the material world, “Oh, someone is a prime minister. He is a big person,” and he is impressed by him.

Then Srila Prabhupada said that it was predicted that he, Srila Prabhupada, would become one of the richest men in the world. He just spun this web of very intelligent words around my father in particular and he was very impressed.

But then my father came to the point that they wanted me back. So it is funny because in retrospect I never thought of it in these terms before but in retrospect my father, he was a debate champion in college and a brilliant lawyer, so in retrospect I could see he was trying to weave his web around Srila Prabhupada, but it had absolutely no effect whatsoever. So anyway, he said to Srila Prabhupada, “We want to establish a trust for my son with a million dollars in it,” which was a lot then. Prabhupada said, “Yes, you can do.” And my father said, “But we want him to come home and sign the papers.” He said, “Yes, you can send the papers. He will sign.” [laughter] And my father had read the Bhagavad-gītā As It Is but like a lawyer looking for arguments he could use. And he said, “I read in the Bhagavad-gītā that you can be Krishna conscious at home.” [laughter] Prabhupada said, “Yes.” So he said, “What is the problem if my son comes back home?” He said, “Yes, but there is also the question of association. It is very important to have the proper association.”

My mother saw the direction things were going in and she began to cry. And Prabhupada’s sister Pisima was there. My mother was concerned about my health because I had become very thin, I had been sick, and I had become very thin. She was very concerned that I get enough protein because in those days people thought that if you don’t eat meat you wouldn’t get enough protein. That was the conception. So, Prabhupada had, he always had a jar with sandeśa or rasagullās so he had Pisima distribute them. He said to my mother that, “These sandeśa are made of cheese. They are very high in protein.” And he said to me, “You must eat two dozen rasagullā and sandeśa every day.” [laughter] Prabhupada was lightening the atmosphere but still my mother was not satisfied.

Then Prabhupada said, “All right, let him stay with me for six months.” They came in October. He said, “Now it will be cold in the West and I am in India. Let him be with me and after six months when I come to the West, I will bring him with him.” So I said, “Just see how intelligent Srila Prabhupada is. When the weather is good in India, he stays in India, and then when it is hot in India and the weather is good in America, he goes to the America.” And by now my father was getting very enlivened by Srila Prabhupada’s association. He said, “Actually he is very intelligent.” And Srila Prabhupada said, “Actually your son is intelligent because he has understood my motive to be where the weather is good.” And my father said, “No, actually you are very intelligent,” he said to Prabhupada. And Prabhupada said, “Well, I guess I must be intelligent, otherwise how could I attract so many intelligent young men like your son.” [laughter]

It was going well, by Prabhupada’s mercy it was going well, and it was concluded like that, I would stay with him for six months and then when he went to the West, I would come with him.

On the way out my father commented, “I can say two things about your master,” and in my father’s system of values, these were about the highest compliments that he could pay anyone. He said, “One, he is a brilliant organizer; and two, he really knows how to deal with people.”

So then as a very small epilogue, from Calcutta we went to Delhi for the first Delhi pandal, and Prabhupada had received an invitation to Madras, but he was going to bring some of his disciples, basically all of his disciples from Delhi to Vrindavan for the first time, but he wanted someone to go to Madras to accept the invitations. And I knew the secret of success was to please the guru so I volunteered, I missed the bus to Vrindavan and I went to Madras. In Madras I was living at different people’s homes and preaching day and night preaching. Incidentally I started to put on weight. So Prabhupada said, he wrote me or maybe he said it when he came, that, “You should take a picture and send it to your mother.” [laughter] He protected everyone—the parents as well.

But the preaching, although it is true, Prabhupada had his disappearance pastime here and it was a very memorable occasion—there were so many lessons—but my most vivid memory is just him sitting and preaching, and it could have been here, it could have been in Juhu, it could have been in Calcutta. Wherever he was, he just sitting and talking about Krishna. Reading about Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, especially Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Vaibhava, you really see that that is our line, that is the line of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, and that was really caught by Srila Prabhupada and manifest in the most extraordinary way which is unprecedented in history, and not only unprecedented in history but it will also be unequalled in the future. He was the one who took the order of Mahaprabhu: pṛthivīte āche yata nagarādi grāma. And we are the recipients of Prabhupada’s mercy. He has created our good fortune and so we have to share that with others.

Hare Krishna.