Prabhupada decided to restrict his weekly temple visits to Sundays. For the devotees, Sunday became the high point of the week. Sunday was the focal point of the devotees' preaching because all week they would invite people to the weekly festival and all week Tamala Krsna would consult with Prabhupada about the feast menu or the observance of various Vaisnava holidays. Prabhupada also suggested plays the devotees could perform.
When Prabhupada would arrive on Sunday, everyone would be waiting for him outside the temple, and they would begin singing and dancing as Prabhupada's car pulled up. As soon as he stepped out of the car, devotees garlanded him. Beside the temple hall was a little room to hear Prabhupada talk about Krsna or single out devotees and ask how they were doing. He was like a king among adoring subjects, a father of a family of sixty sons and daughters.
The atmosphere of the Sunday program was festive. More guests were coming than ever before in any of Prabhupada's other temples. The devotees so enthusiastically invited new people that gradually the Sunday feast attendance rose to two hundred.
Leaving his little room, Prabhupada would enter the temple hall, where he would lead the singing, accompanied by the devotees and guests. On one such occasion, during the kirtana, Prabhupada began to dance in a large circle around the room, moving slowly, majestically, his arms raised, inducing everyone to join. As he walked and danced the devotees and guests lined up and followed behind him. He stopped in front of each picture on the wall and danced with his side-to-side step, his arms upraised, robes swaying. Then he continued circumambulating the room. Among the guests that Sunday sat two old ladies in wooden chairs in the back of the room. When Prabhupada came before, them, they were smiling and nodding, enjoying the show. But Prabhupada looked at them, raised his hands in the air, and called, "Stand up! Stand up and dance!" And they arose, started dancing,, and followed him all around the room.
After the kirtana Prabhupada would sit and watch the devotees' play -- "Narada and the Hunter" or "Prahlada Maharaja and Lord Nrsimhadeva" -- or he would watch Visnujana's puppet show. Then he would join the devotees for the Sunday feast.
Tamala Krsna: Srila Prabhupada would eat with the devotees in the temple room at every feast. He would instruct us to first feed all the children. Srila Prabhupada said, "Children should be fed first." Then we would all take. Later, after we would finish eating in front of him, he would instruct, "Give him more of this and more of that." I would always sit toward the front. Then he would distribute his maha plate.
Silavati: Devotees would line up along the steps and the walkway to Prabhupada's car. Prabhupada would come out and he would be smiling. All the devotees would bow down and then kneel as he came by, and he would put his hand on everyone's head as he went by. Everyone was just waiting for Srila Prabhupada to touch their head. And if he would miss someone when he went by, then that person would run around and get at the end of the line -- somehow or other, so that Srila Prabhupada would touch your head. I know he knew what was going on. He was just smiling. And sometimes he would just make a point to touch everyone's head as he went by, and sometimes he would only touch two or three people in the whole line. It was just a game that we all played. Then he would get into the car, and everyone would just converge on the car. Then after he left everyone had something to say like, "Did you see him do this?" and "Did you hear him say this?" Everyone was so happy about Srila Prabhupada. We would always talk about him. He was the center of our lives.
As a representative of the Los Angeles devotee community, Tamala Krsna visited Prabhupada daily. Prabhupada was especially interested in the sankirtana party. The traveling chanting party Prabhupada had requested Tamala Krsna to form had been holding kirtanas in the streets of San Francisco and Seattle. Upon their arrival in Los Angeles, Prabhupada asked them to stay as a part of the new Los Angeles center. Now, every day more than thirty devotees were going downtown, distributing Back to Godheads and chanting for eight hours. Besides organizing the daily sankirtana, Tamala Krsna also maintained relations with police and city authorities. It was a success. Los Angeles was leading ISKCON in this new sankirtana practice, and repeatedly Prabhupada stressed this as the most important function of ISKCON.
Because Tamala Krsna was Prabhupada's man for organizing the devotees, Prabhupada carefully trained him in managing. Sometimes Prabhupada would show Tamala Krsna a letter he had received, asking for his response. Tamala Krsna would suggest a reply; then Prabhupada would explain the particular answer this letter required.
Prabhupada usually ate his lunch alone, but one day he invited Tamala Krsna to have lunch with him. When the prasadam was served, Tamala Krsna asked, "How should we eat, Prabhupada? Which thing should we eat first?"
"In eating," Prabhupada replied, "there is no hard and fast rule." But Tamala Krsna watched his spiritual master take prasadam, knowing there was an art to it. Whatever Prabhupada would eat, Tamala Krsna would also eat, bite by bite. Prabhupada encouraged him to eat to his full satisfaction.
After eating and washing, Srila Prabhupada said, "Now let us talk a little." The printers in Japan, he explained, had agreed to take a contract for printing Back to Godhead -- on the condition that ISKCON order a minimum of twenty thousand magazines a month. "They are first-class printers," Srila Prabhupada said, "so you just give me a guarantee. I want you to take five thousand magazines a month for Los Angeles. If you do, then I will arrange for San Francisco, New York, and London to each take five thousand. You just give me this guarantee."
Immediately Tamala Krsna promised Prabhupada to distribute five thousand magazines a month. It was an important moment. "Now," Srila Prabhupada said, "I can take the initiative to print such a big order. Otherwise, I could not do it.""
Biographies and Glorifications of Srila Prabhupada Gita-nagari Press- Prabhupada-lila-Satsvarupa dasa Goswami- One Hundred and Eight Rosebushes, 1968
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