Although I have become accustomed to, and even gotten to like, kerela, nim is still a bit hard to take. I laughed, "Who can eat two leaves of nim?"
"No, if you practice," Prabhupada smiled, "it is not impossible."
Parivrajakacarya Maharaja mentioned that nim trees don't grow in Iran.
Srila Prabhupada made another of his unusual observations. "No tree. In the desert, where is tree? All desert. All this Middle East, desert. So they can be allowed to eat meat. Otherwise, what they'll eat? So everyone must eat something. So if there is no vegetation, if there is no sufficient, they can be allowed."
Parivrajakacarya described a visit he had made to some villages in the south of Iran. "The tents of nomads who kept sheep, that was their life. They had a tent and they had hundreds of sheep, and they would move the tent every month."
Prabhupada was interested to know why they kept changing.
"Because they're desert people. The sheep eat all the little green, and then they have to move on. All they had to eat was the milk of sheep and goats and sometimes when they would camp near a farm they would have vegetables. Sometimes. And then the meat of the sheep."
"And these dates. In the desert the date tree grows," Srila Prabhupada said. "Sometimes they eat camel also. Do they not?"
"Yes."
"They cannot be strictly vegetarian; it is not possible," Prabhupada said. "But even they eat meat they can chant Hare Krsna, there is no harm."
Parivrajakacarya did also point out that nowadays the government is irrigating the land and all kinds of vegetables and grains can be grown, so now people cannot use the excuse that they have to eat meat.
Prabhupada had another alternative. "They can have rains from the sky by chanting. The rain will fall from the sky. Who can check it? Krsna gives the water from the sky. Yajnad bhavati parjanyo."
Parivrajakacarya said that 2-3,000 years ago, this region was a very thick forest. But since then it has become desert, and the rain has stopped.
This was because the yajna had stopped, Prabhupada told him. Then he added yet another one of his insights as to why the moon could not be desert: "The thing is that the more people become sinful, they'll be disturbed by this natural atmosphere. Therefore I'm surprised that moon planet is inhabited by pious inhabitants, how there can be desert?"
- From "A Transcendental Diary Vol 4" by HG Hari Sauri Prabhu
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