Prabhupada said: “You failed to present me with a superior description of God. I have His picture right here. You have not even a word to say. So you please accept Him as God right now.”
Caru das: In a letter to all temple presidents Karandhar wrote, “The etiquette is to invite the guru to your temple. It’s not likely that he’ll come, but invite him.”
As I was president in Sydney, I duly wrote a letter saying, “Please come and visit Australia,” and I was shocked when Prabhupada responded, “I’m coming, send two tickets.”
We had no money whatsoever. We sold Back to Godheads and made fifty dollars on a big day. Paying the rent was a major achievement.
Our temple was a storefront with a big window at a bus stop in Paddington, which was a trendy area. We held evening arati at six o'clock where 30 or 40 commuters, who were waiting to go home, could see it.
The temple was wonderful, but it wasn’t clean. We hadn’t changed the carpet from when it had been a store and we didn’t even know that carpets were dirty. We really didn’t know anything about devotional service.
The first two devotees in Australia were Bali Mardan and Upendra. Then Upananda joined and shortly thereafter Vaibhavi and I joined, and two weeks later the others left.
Upendra went to Fiji and Bali Mardan went to Hong Kong. While I was driving them to the airport I said, “Who’s going to be in charge?” They said, “You are.”
And a few months later Prabhupada came. At this time there were virtually no books. There was just that old blue Bhagavad-gita As It Is, and, to be honest, I couldn’t understand it.
Later, by listening to cassettes and taking notes, I understood the philosophy, but reading Bhagavad-gita was over my head.
When Prabhupada agreed to come, we let it be known that we needed three thousand dollars for two tickets, and a Baha'i guest, who later was initiated as Raghunatha, donated the money.
So, after the big Cross Maidan pandal in Bombay, Prabhupada arrived in Sydney with the Deities of Radha-Gopinatha.
Prabhupada was understandably appalled at our lack of knowledge but he said, “They are sincere boys and girls,” and he held an initiation ceremony.
I have always been good with the media and at my invitation three or four television stations crowded into our small storefront with their big cameras and lights, and a hundred people were in a room that could comfortably only fit forty or fifty.
Prabhupada installed the Deities and we got our brahman initiation. We didn’t know what a brahman thread was.
Prabhupada said, “Where are the brahman threads?” and we said, “What are brahman threads?”
So Vaibhavi went downstairs and got a ball of string, tied the threads together, brought them up, and we had our brahman initiation.
Prabhupada later said that he left the Deities in mleccha-desh.
During Srila Prabhupada’s visit in 1971, I booked him on a number of national television shows but we’d have to travel quite a distance to get to the studios and then they’d ask superficial questions for five or ten minutes.
After one interview Prabhupada looked at me, shook his head and said, “They do not know how to question.”
Another time Prabhupada and I were sitting in the waiting room to go onto a national TV show, and on a little TV we saw a graphic scene of a woman being violated in the woods.
Prabhupada was astounded— incredulous—that these kinds of things were displayed on a public medium.
He looked at the whole thing and then turned to me and said, “The world is going to hell,” and shook his head.
Once, Prabhupada was on the Mike Willesee Show. Mike Willesee was a famous, cynical, acerbic interviewer who would always verbally damage his guests.
Almost no one went away from the Mike Willesee Show without bleeding from several wounds.
Prabhupada sat between Mike Willesee and a picture of Krishna. Mike Willesee said, “This is your Hindu God?”
Prabhupada said, “No, this is God. Tell me whatever you’d like to about God as He’s described in your scriptures—His name, fame, qualities, and pastimes. If you’re saying that this is a Hindu God, then tell me about your Christian God, as much information as you’d like to share with me and the audience.”
Willesee said, “There isn’t much.”
Prabhupada said, “We have all the information in our scriptures and if you’re interested, we’ll show you that Krishna is not a Hindu God, He’s God, He fits all the qualifications, and you have to accept Him. You failed to present me with a superior description of God. I have His picture right here. You have not even a word to say. So you please accept Him as God right now.”
Mike Willesee was devastated. No one had turned him upside down like that before.
Sometime later, Prabhupada asked me not to book him more television engagements. Even though he was reaching a million people, the questions weren’t deep and the time was too short.
I canceled a couple of national shows because Prabhupada wanted to give Krishna consciousness in depth, even if to a smaller audience.
—Caru
Excerpt from “Memories-Anecdotes of a Modern-Day Saint”
by Siddhanta das
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