Baradraj das Remembers Srila Prabhupada

Prabhupada Memories

Interview 01

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Baradraj: It was very important to me to have a good Sanskrit name. I liked the names of the initiated devotees, but I was worried that I would get a name that didn’t sound right, that didn’t mean very much. I knew that I had to accept it because Prabhupada knew my spiritual name, and he was going to call me by that name. But I was struggling inside on a completely superficial platform. My mind was distracting me. I was attracted to a particular name, “Madan Mohan.” I kept saying, “Madan Mohan. That’s a good name. I hope I get that name.” I had been in the temple for six months in Montreal, and I was using some ready-made beads, so I brought them with me to the initiation yajna. It was a beautiful scene and a wonderful experience. I had never witnessed so much grandeur and so much effortless grace. During the ceremony, Prabhupada took one’s beads, chanted on them, and then returned them. When my turn came I handed him my beads. He took them. They were not overly small, but they were on the small side. He looked at them with disapproval and said, “You couldn’t have gotten bigger beads?” At that moment I was thinking, “Beads?” I was already being demolished. I had no leg to stand on. I didn’t know what to say, so I was quiet. I may have shrugged. He was chanting on my beads, and I was thinking, “Madan Mohan, Madan Mohan.” The mind was going on as if it were on hold; waiting, waiting. Finally he stopped chanting. He handed me the beads. Before I took them, he said, “Is there already someone named Madan Mohan?” The devotees said, “Oh, yes, Prabhupada. There he is.” And with that: “Your name is Baradraj das.” My parents were horrified by the idea that I was going to marry in the movement, and they opposed my marriage. They refused to come. The day before the marriage, my mother wrote an angry telegram to Prabhupada saying that I had a history of mental illness. It was totally untrue. Well, maybe true, but not to my knowledge. I didn’t see the telegram, but I heard about it. Prabhupada called me in right away and said, “I received a telegram from your mother. She says you are crazy. Is this true?” I thought about it and said, “I don’t think so, Srila Prabhupada, but I suspect that she might be,” which was not a proper thing to say about one’s mother in front of Prabhupada. Prabhupada generally did not tolerate disrespect to one’s parents. Once he made Brahmananda bow down to his mother. But I showed a kind of independence in front of Prabhupada. I wanted him to know that my mind was set. The whole process was a way of cutting the bonds of worldly family influence, bonds that were stopping me from doing that which I should wholeheartedly do, guided by his wisdom and kindness. When I said, “But I think she might be,” he laughed. He said, “That’s all right.” Prabhupada said, “Can you draw a picture of Lord Chaitanya?” He wanted to see. A few days later, after the marriage, my wife Rukmini brought in her painting, and other paintings were there. Jadurani was there. Prabhupada looked at everything. I had done a drawing of Lord Chaitanya that was not finished. The figure of Lord Chaitanya was there, but everything else was just barely sketched in. I had put everything I had into Lord Chaitanya’s face, His expression and attitude. Whatever I understood to be right I put into the picture. Prabhupada looked at the other pieces of art. He looked at Rukmini’s painting and appreciated it. Then he noticed that there was a rolled up paper on the desk. He said, “What is this?” Someone said, “A drawing by Baradraj.” Prabhupada took it, and as he unrolled it from the top, the first thing he saw was Lord Chaitanya’s face. Prabhupada’s eyes got really big. His eyes were big to start with, but whenever he got excited about something they really expanded. He unrolled the whole picture. He had the biggest grin on his face. His teeth were showing. It was as if his whole face became the sun. He said, “Ah, the husband is better.” The first exhibits in Mayapur were completed miraculously. This was the first year that devotees came out in droves for the Gaura-Purnima festival. It was a wonderful year. Prabhupada came, and lo and behold, we had actually completed a series of exhibits which were arranged in a horseshoe shape in front of the incomplete Mayapur temple. The exhibits were in bamboo shacks. Everything was barely kept together with some cow dung and arrowroot twine. But to this day, I think that those were the most wonderful exhibits. They had such a vibrant, raw energy. I missed the beginning of Prabhupada’s first tour because I was getting things ready. All the devotees were there, and I was running to catch up. They started at the wrong end and were going backwards from the end to the beginning. The beginning exhibit was my work, and one of the last exhibits was Rukmini’s work. Her piece was of Lord Chaitanya fainting in ecstasy in front of Jagannath, Subhadra, and Balaram. Lord Chaitanya was like a stick in His transcendental, ecstatic condition. Prabhupada looked at it and was drinking its nectar. He was very affected and said, “Who has made this?” By that time I had caught up and I said, “Rukmini, my wife, has made this.” Prabhupada said, “Very, very good.” Then slowly he moved down to the next thing, came round, and finally came to the last exhibit, which was mine. It was of Nrisimhadev tearing Hiranyakashipu with Prahlad standing nearby offering prayers. Prabhupada looked at it and said, “Who has made this?” I said, “This is my work, Srila Prabhupada.” “You still have some learning to do. This is not yet perfect. The wife is better, I think.” He said, “An artist worships Krishna by his intelligence.” By thinking of Krishna and intelligently making decisions on how to portray Krishna, one engages one’s intelligence in worshipping Him. And by doing so, Krishna reveals Himself. Prabhupada was talking about how hard it is to judge a man’s qualifications. It is almost a gift to be able to judge another man’s qualities. It isn’t just a matter of comparing one man to another or of going by some socioeconomic standard. Prabhupada said, “My grandmother was expert at this. She was a simple woman, not educated, but everyone respected her talent.” He said that a number of boys applied for the honor of his sister’s hand, but it had to go through his grandmother. She decided who was worthy and who was not worthy. So, a well educated, wealthy young man from a good family was there, and she was drilling him. He was in his early twenties and a gem of a person. The grandmother said, “Can you ride a bicycle?” He said, “No.” She didn’t say anything. Afterward they came and asked, “Well, what do you think?” She said, “He is worthless.” Everyone was in shock. She said, “He has no drive. Any young boy has an opportunity to learn to ride a bicycle. He will get one even if it’s his friend’s. Anyone who has any kind of drive will learn. He has no drive. He is worthless.” Prabhupada and I discussed many things. I had just arrived in India, and I had a head full of ideas as I was charged with a dozen projects. I was totally overwhelmed. I walked out of Prabhupada’s room, and the first person I saw was Devananda Swami, who I knew from America and who I hadn’t seen for a long time. We offered obeisances and hugged each other. I was standing on the steps for about a minute talking with him, when all of a sudden, Satsvarupa, who was Prabhupada’s personal attendant at the time, came running towards me with a sense of alarm. He said, “Baradraj, please come. There is something Prabhupada wants to tell you. Please come back.” I told Devananda, “Please excuse me. I have to go. Prabhupada is calling me. We will talk later.” I had spoken with him for literally a minute. I ran back into Prabhupada’s quarters at the end of a long hallway, entered the room, and paid my obeisances. I looked up, and Prabhupada was looking at me very sternly. He said, “We have discussed so many things. You have so much to do. I don’t think you have time to stand around and talk.” He said, “Aravinda’s disciples were so enamored of his greatness that when Aravinda died, they didn’t know what to do with him. They were in a fog. They thought he was in samadhi. They let him sit there until he began to smell. Aravinda didn’t have intelligent disciples. His disciples didn’t know the difference between a living man and a dead man. What is the use of disciples like that? That is less intelligent. It is not your position to criticize other teachers, but it is okay to criticize their disciples. You can tell if they are less intelligent.” I had a predicament, an enigma, “What do I know about Krishna? How do I paint Krishna?” I had this struggle. “What’s my qualification? How is it possible? How can I look at what I am doing as a divine representation? And if I can’t, then what would it be to somebody else?” So I was sitting in front of Prabhupada in his room in San Francisco along with Muralidhar, a newcomer who had just started to paint. There were many different pictures of Krishna, posters and so on, in the room. Muralidhar was bewildered. He asked Prabhupada, “There are so many pictures of Krishna here. But they are all different. Can you tell me which one is most like Krishna?” Prabhupada looked at him as if he was totally crazy and said, “They are all Krishna. Each one of them is exactly like Krishna.” One time in Vrindavan he was recovering from a long illness, apparently. When he began to take his morning walks again the devotees were overjoyed. They turned out in great numbers to walk with him. Prabhupada was feeling very inspired. He would talk and was very animated, arguing strongly. He enjoyed the morning walk, but when he came back he was practically exhausted. He would lie down for the rest of the day. One morning he was thinking out loud. He said, “How is this? Now I am feeling strong, talking and walking, but then when I get back, I have no strength. Almost cannot move. What is that?” Brahmananda said, “It’s transcendental, Srila Prabhupada.” Prabhupada looked at him for a moment and said, “Yes.” After finding out that I spoke another language, Prabhupada said, “You can do this artistic, creative service no matter what language you speak. The image of Krishna speaks to anyone, anywhere in the world. It brings Krishna directly into their minds. This is not unimportant. This is great service. You should be convinced of this.” The artists were always anxious that they were not good enough. There was pressure on them to stop painting and go distribute books. “These people can only sit and paint; second rate citizens.” But Prabhupada said, “No. This is very important. Sometimes I think of it as even a more important service because it is not restricted. We have to translate our books into so many languages. It may or may not be a good translation. But the paintings are direct preaching.” There was a devotee named Patita-udharan, tall and lanky and very unconventional in many ways. He danced in his own way, he sang in his own way, and he talked in his own way. He obviously didn’t fit into the narrow category of a book distributor. After a nice, big kirtan in the temple, Prabhupada lectured and then suddenly said, “Are there any questions?” Out of the blue Patita-udharan said, “Srila Prabhupada, we are all eager to hear what will please you the most. There are so many different types of service that are dear to you. Will you tell us clearly what service is most dear to you?” Prabhupada said, “Chant Hare Krishna and become simply wonderful. Eat simply wonderfuls and become simply wonderful. That is all. Hare Krishna.” Unknown to me, Prabhupada was in the last few days of his life. I kept thinking that Prabhupada was going to blow us away by all of sudden saying, “Okay, enough of that. Now I am back to full life.” The day before, he had stopped my harmonium playing. I didn’t know whether I should play it again, because I didn’t know why he had stopped it. Perhaps the sound itself was somehow irritating. I chanted without a harmonium. But on one particular morning I ventured once more to play the harmonium. This time I played a tune that I hadn’t played for a long time. That tune is very special for me. It was one of the first unusual tunes that Prabhupada had recorded a long time before in Boston or New York. It was Prabhupada’s own spontaneous, unusual sound coming from his heart. It was early in the morning, and I began by playing that tune. I don’t recall Prabhupada stirring at all. There were days when he was completely motionless. We couldn’t tell if he was awake, asleep, or what. He’d been fasting for months, living on a little water and pomegranate juice. Yet every day he would set aside some time for dictation, even if he couldn’t sit up. They would hold the microphone to his mouth, and Prabhupada would continue dictating the translations and purports of the Srimad-Bhagavatam. He just kept on going. That morning he was motionless. Suddenly when I looked up I noticed he had motioned to Nanda Kumar, one of his attendants that he wanted to sit up. He sat up. As I was chanting, he began clapping his hands. It was in slow motion, but it was very definite. He was nodding his head in approval. It was such a reward, such a wonderful thing. It was the best reward I could have asked for.

To view the entire unedited video go to Memories 64 - The New Talavan Clan +3

The full Prabhupada Memories Series can be viewed here and also at www.prabhupadamemories.com

Following Srila Prabhupada

Interview DVD 05

Baradraj: So after struggling for almost a year with the whole process of learning, I actually got to the point where I thought, “OK, now I can do something.” So I made a diorama of Narasinghadev; Hiranyakasipu being ripped apart. I wanted to impress Srila Prabhupada with the pyrotechnics of it, so it was all very realistic. So this was the first exhibit of maybe 15 or so exhibits. Trying to hide my pride, I toured Prabhupada around the exhibits. We came to the first one, he studied it for some time, and then he asked whose it was and I said that it was my work. He said, “It is not yet perfect. You must study some more. Then you can go to the West and teach. But you have to study some more.” And that’s all he said. He didn’t elaborate on it in any way. He looked at other exhibits; there were several. At the end was the exhibit of Rukmini, Rukmini had made one too because we both studied together. It was a diorama of Lord Caitanya fainting before Jagannatha, and Prabhupada stood at it and was visibly moved and happy to see it. He said, “Who has done this?” I said, “Well, this is Rukmini’s work” And Prabhupada said, “The wife is better.” I felt, in a nutshell, humiliated, chastened, but grateful. I expected some encouragement, but it didn’t come then. It came later, though, when we completed the work in Vrindavan for the installation.

Interview DVD 08

Baradraj: I went to Jaipur, where the Deities were being carved, and I supervised the carving of the Deities, especially Prabhupada because the carvers, they were working from photographs, often not very good. So the man who was carving Prabhupada was having a really hard time. He was so frustrated because I kept trying to show him things and point out certain things on the photograph of Prabhupada, and they had to actually redo the whole carving at one point because some spot came up on Prabhupada’s head. The sculptor finally said, “Now you do it,” and he left, because I watched him so I started learning a little bit. So I took over for a little while. Finally the day came when all the Deities were finished, and I brought the Deities to Vrindavan on a train and then a tonga, then I took a rickshaw. This was early in the morning, 3:00 a.m. or something. Just as I started entering the outskirts of Vrindavan with all the Deities in Their crates, all the peacocks started crying. The hair on my head stood up from that sound. It was an amazing experience.