Tulasi das Remembers Srila Prabhupada

Following Srila Prabhupada

Interview DVD 10

Tulasi: On the way down from L.A. to San Diego, Jayatirtha was falling asleep driving. So Prabhupada wouldn’t let him drive anymore. So Jayatirtha got me to drive him, a one-hour drive. But, of course, in those days none of us slept much. So I remember I’m driving, I’m about halfway down. I look in the back, Prabhupada, his head was tilted back and he was asleep. A few minutes later, I think it was Brahmananda sitting beside him, he was asleep. Jayatirtha sitting shotgun, I looked over at him a few minutes later, he was asleep. I was going through all these things to keep my eyes open, and I was pinching myself and doing all this stuff. I was falling asleep with my eyes open, and all of a sudden I heard this…and Prabhupada starts a kirtan. Then gradually all the others woke up in the car and we had this really nice kirtan, the four of us in the car, and he led the kirtan. Jayatirtha sent me to South Africa in 1977. What a gift. Hadn’t a clue what South Africa was. Anyhow, I went there in January. I just had been married. My son was born that year, and we had a farm with maybe 15 devotees. Prabhupada had been to South Africa with Pusta Krishna and they had done all these really marvelous festivals all over the country, and the place was high potential. So we took an old barn or work shed and organized the devotees, and I went out on sankirtan and we raised all kinds of money and built a temple and got big Gaura-Nitai Deities at Mayapur that year. So it was only six months, we had this enormous festival where Partha Sarathi…what a brilliant preacher, Partha Sarathi. He would preach all over the Indian community, he organized all the…we had 20,000 people come out for this festival. And Ranjit, he was my right-hand man and like my scribe. He would write letters. So he and I, we wrote Prabhupada and sent pictures of the opening and everything for Janmastami. When Prabhupada was…that was near the end. And when Prabhupada was in bed, they read the letter to him and showed him the pictures. And Prabhupada said when he thought of devotees like me, his heart swelled with pride.