Bhargava das Remembers Srila Prabhupada

Prabhupada Memories

Interview 01

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Bhargava: The first time I saw Prabhupada was in Boston in 1972, about a month before I took initiation. I’d read Prabhupada’s books and enjoyed them, especially the old Bhagavatams. Although they had spelling and grammatical imperfections, their perfection was in sincerity. I read those books and thought, “Gee, I don’t know so many of the details, but I know that God could never overlook someone this sincere.” I trusted Prabhupada’s sincerity. I saw Prabhupada at the airport when he came off the plane onto an open, outdoor ramp. It was magical and dramatic. It was the end of the day, and there was a beautiful, golden sun on Prabhupada. The devotees gave him a huge, heavy lotus garland, and Prabhupada turned to the bunch of reporters there and posed. That started to bring out my cynical side. Being a photographer, I know how much people enjoy being photographed and being the center of attention. I could read it in their eyes. But when Prabhupada turned to face the photographers and pose there wasn’t a lot of ego in it. He was like a diplomat from Krishnaloka posing. That impressed me. The devotees had rented a room for Prabhupada at the Sheraton, but he decided that he didn’t want to go there. He said, “These hotels are like brothels.” Instead he went to the temple even though it was small, noisy, and crowded. (Devotees had come from New York and Montreal.) Prabhupada’s room was bare. It only had a thick foam pad and a little dais for him to sit. But he was happy. For him it was much more than a fancy hotel suite at the Sheraton. He wanted to be with Krishna and the devotees. That impressed me too. When I first started photographing I was using single-lens-reflex Canon cameras. On these cameras the mirror goes up and makes a loud noise when the picture is taken. So Prabhupada asked me not to take pictures while he was speaking. He said, “No more ‘Cut, cut’ while I am speaking.” Later on we got a little bit more prosperous, and I got Leica cameras that don’t have the flapping mirror. The next time Prabhupada chastised me he said, “No more ‘Chhh, chhhh’ while I am speaking.” He had a fine sense of hearing. I was photographing Prabhupada in London, Amsterdam, and Paris, but I didn’t really have close contact with him. I really wanted some personal attention. Part of me was like a student of philosophy, and part of me was like a little kid. Before I left I went into Prabhupada’s room at Bury Place and said, “Prabhupada, I am leaving to go back to America to work on your books.” Prabhupada didn’t really know me. He just saw me photographing, and we had exchanged a few words. I expected Prabhupada would be a little gentlemanly and distant. Instead Prabhupada recognized me. He said, “You are leaving, ohhh,” as if he was really disappointed. It was like I was part of his family. That shocked me. Then Prabhupada got up, walked across the room and put his garland on me. That shocked me too. Prabhupada had an ability to look through you and see your subtle body, your mind. He could see many aspects of you that you couldn’t see or that you could see but wouldn’t want anybody else to see. Psychically you stand naked before him. He sees it all, and he still loves you. Beyond that, he sees you as you can’t even see yourself. That was the feeling I had, that he was seeing the impurities of my mind but it was okay. He saw me not as my body or mind but on a deeper level, and he loved me. That really touched me. I said, “Prabhupada, sometimes I fight with my God-brothers. Is that bad?” He said, “No, not necessarily.” I asked, “Prabhupada, sometimes I have problems, and the spiritual master isn’t there, and it’s too detailed for the scriptures. What should I do?” And he said, “If you chant Hare Krishna very nicely, all the answers will come from within.” That was a timeless answer. Prabhupada was sitting on the lawn at Bhaktivedanta Manor speaking on “What is a spiritual master?”. Yadubara was filming, and I was the soundperson because Visakha was away on a preaching engagement. The Manor is located near a little airport, and every time a plane would go overhead, Prabhupada would stop speaking, and Yadubara would stop filming due to the noise. This happened a few times. Then Prabhupada looked at me and said, “Your machine is useless, and you are useless.” I was devastated. Prabhupada was intense even though he was physically tiny. We were so emotional over him. We had great love for Prabhupada, and we felt great love coming from him. We felt that he cared about us spiritually. We didn’t want to displease Prabhupada, and he set high goals for us. About a year went by, and I was finally with Prabhupada in Mayapur. I said, “Prabhupada last year you said I was useless,” and Prabhupada said, “You are not useless. Everyone has some use.” He humbled me. Part of the spiritual master’s job is to break the false ego of the disciple, because due to false ego we think we’re the center of the universe. The more rooted we are in that mentality, the more distant we are from Krishna consciousness. It’s a thankless task for the spiritual master to break the false ego of his disciple. Prabhupada did it in little ways. Another time we were walking in Paris, when Prabhupada turned to the devotees and said with a serious tone, “I want you to all become Krishna conscious philosophers and to defeat the rascal philosophers and scientists.” A week or so later I was in Prabhupada’s Bury Place room with Prabhupada and Kulashekar, a nice, outgoing devotee. His parents, quiet country people, had come to see Prabhupada. Kulashekar had been taking 8mm films of Prabhupada, and he was going to show Prabhupada the films. He went to get his parents so they could watch also. When he went out, I looked at Prabhupada and said, “Prabhupada, these materialistic scientists and philosophers are so strongly entrenched. How will we ever change them?” I don’t know how I got the nerve to ask a question like that. Prabhupada looked at me and said, “Whether they change, whether they do not change, still I will go on with my propaganda work.” You could almost feel the earth shake when he said that. It was that powerful. His determination was incredible. Nitai asked Prabhupada about preaching. Prabhupada explained that you find that little spark of interest that somebody has in Krishna, and you fan that spark. You help that spark grow. It’s personalism. Prabhupada was teaching personalism. He was teaching us to deal with each person as an individual. We should know and respect where they are starting from and try to bring them to a deeper level. Before he was a devotee, Maharati had been a butcher and a boxer. Maharati didn’t speak English. When he was initiated in the temple in Paris, he went to take his beads from Prabhupada, but Prabhupada pulled the beads back and said, “So, you will not kill any more animals?” Somebody translated. Maharati was a big guy, and Prabhupada, sitting on the vyasasana, was tiny. But Maharati was shaking in his dhoti. When he understood what Prabhupada had said, he gasped. Prabhupada gave him his beads and said, “Your name is Maharati, one who can fight with many thousands of warriors.” Prabhupada could shake people up, but he did it with love. For him the basis of Krishna consciousness was love. We rationalize our illusions and are blind to our imperfections. We tend to think that what we do is perfect. But the spiritual master sees through our illusion. In South Africa I agitated Prabhupada by taking photographs during his lecture. When Prabhupada spoke he used wonderful, expressive hand mudras, and I was photographing those mudras. He only used them when he spoke, so that was my only opportunity to capture them. But I distracted him, and he would get irritated with me. He said I broke his train of thought. Unfortunately, I was impulsive and I did it repeatedly. When Prabhupada was in South Africa, the first editions of the Fourth and Fifth Cantos of the Srimad-Bhagavatams arrived. Prabhupada was very pleased. It was beautiful to watch him open the books and delicately handle them. The Bhagavatam was Krishna for Prabhupada. The Bhagavatams weren’t his books. He had such respect for them. It was like he was dealing with a Deity. That impressed me. I was snapping away taking pictures because it was like Christmas morning for a kid when Prabhupada got new editions of his books. I snapped one time too many, and Prabhupada snapped. He got on my case, and I sat down next to him and said, “Prabhupada, I am such a fool.” He said, “If you are fool, then go away, that is my order.” I was so emotionally attached to Prabhupada, that I took his words heavily. I walked out of the room. That night Prabhupada had a very prestigious speaking engagement at a university in Johannesburg, but I thought that Prabhupada didn’t want me to go. So I put down my camera and my flash and I walked out of the temple. I was feeling devastated. When I look back at it now, I think I was a little crazy. I was so emotional that I was thinking, “Should I commit suicide? I displeased Prabhupada. Should I go to Prayag and commit suicide there? Should I exile myself and just stay here for the rest of my life doing some humble service?” My mind was going back and forth like that. I walked for about four hours, from about 6:00 p.m. to about 10:00 p.m. Then I came out of all this emotional stuff. I realized, “Prabhupada never excommunicated me for taking too many photographs.” After another half-hour I found a telephone, called the temple, and Pusta Krishna came and picked me up. I was feeling bad. The next morning Prabhupada called me in and asked me, “Why didn’t you come to the engagement last night?” I said, “Srila Prabhupada, I thought you said I shouldn’t come.” Prabhupada said, “I never said you shouldn’t come. And even if I did say that you shouldn’t come, you still should have come.” I felt a lot of love from him. Then he suddenly changed the mood. He started speaking about the importance of his books. He mentioned how Srila Bhaktisiddhanta told him they could rip the marble out of the temple and sell it to print books. He talked about the importance of printing books. But I was feeling so overwhelmed by anxiety and embarrassment at what had happened the night before that when Harikesh came into the room, I crawled out. That evening there was another engagement at the same prestigious university. An Indian Life Member who was a photographer said to me, “What happened to you last night? Prabhupada was really worried and wanted to know where you were.” When I heard that, I felt even worse. But I felt good at the same time. I felt bad because I had put Prabhupada in anxiety, but I felt good that Prabhupada appreciated me. He noticed that I was missing. Of course, that night I took pictures with a telephoto lens from a long distance away. I remember in Bombay, Prabhupada was speaking with an Indian gentleman. Prabhupada mentioned that he had a son that was mentally unbalanced. I never had heard that before. Prabhupada said that when this boy was a teenager he wandered off one day and was never seen again. Prabhupada knew well the suffering of the material world. Every now and then I would get a little depressed. Once, while kirtan was going on in the Manor, I drifted into depression. I was moping, moving back and forth slowly while everybody else was dancing in ecstasy. Prabhupada looked at me and motioned for me to dance too. I suddenly felt a wave go through me, and I started dancing like a wild man. Prabhupada reached out to his disciples. There were 150 other devotees in the room, but he reached out to me in that way and to every other devotee in some way or other. Everyone had a personal, special connection with Prabhupada. Another time I was lamenting and feeling depressed while I was in Prabhupada’s room. I thought, “Prabhupada is going to chastise me or feel that he’s wasting his time on me.” But in fact, Prabhupada was sweet to me. He could see how fragile I was, and he talked to me just like he’d preach to a new devotee. He told me to be patient and to follow the four regulative principles. He said that everything would work out. I was impressed that someone so learned and educated could also be so sensitive toward others. Prabhupada said that there are two kinds of siddhis, or perfections, namely sadhana siddhi and kripa siddhi. One attains sadhana siddhi when one follows the rules and regulations of devotional service with the aim of pleasing Krishna and, by the mercy of Krishna, becomes perfect. Prabhupada said, “Sometimes someone is not able to follow all the rules and regulations but has an overwhelming desire to perform some great service for Krishna. That person may also become perfect by the mercy of Krishna.” Prabhupada gave the example of a ship’s cabin boy who went to India for the British East India Company, but later on, because of his political and military exploits, was influential in bringing large parts of India into the British Empire. Due to that service, the British Empire made him a Lord. Once in Bombay, Nitai was massaging Prabhupada on the roof, when two GBCs were having a conflict. One of them was gloating because he’d gotten something on the other. Prabhupada got upset. He said, “I give them a little power, and they fight. The actual way to manage is to get people to love you and then they will do whatever you want.” That was an interesting insight about how Prabhupada thought. Just after that, I was looking for something to do, and I asked Prabhupada. Prabhupada got angry with me. He said, “What do you think I am a questionand- answer machine? Someone to answer questions all day long? Read my books.” So again I crawled out of his room. I was devastated. Downstairs Nitai was laughing about how Prabhupada had blasted me. But I was upset, because Prabhupada’s reaction was so unexpected. However, when I look back, the politics hurt Prabhupada’s heart, just as it hurts our hearts. On one level he couldn’t be there for everybody. He was trying to train his disciples, and when we screwed up I think it took years off Prabhupada’s life. Maybe it’s my speculation, but he cared, yet what could he do? He had so many disciples. A man named Tarun Kanti Ghosh, who was the Chief Minister of Bengal, came to see Prabhupada. His grandfather was a good friend of Bhaktivinode Thakur’s and was also a famous writer in India who wrote exquisite plays on Lord Chaitanya. His expressions and descriptions were totally masterful. Anyway, his grandson had become the Chief Minister of Bengal and loved Prabhupada. He told Prabhupada, “You alone are preaching the real dharma of India. Tarun Kanti Ghosh opened up to Prabhupada and told Prabhupada his problem. He was running for office, and he complained that, “There are too many political parties.” Prabhupada said, “Democracy is no good.” Tarun Kanti Ghosh was stunned. He said, “Oh, because there’s so many political parties?” Prabhupada said, “No. Democracy is no good.” Ghosh didn’t know what to say. The spiritual master has to speak the truth, and Prabhupada felt that democracy was an inefficient form of government. Tarun Kanti Ghosh realized that Prabhupada’s statement was not open to debate. It was right on. Afterwards, Tarun Kanti Ghosh sat down next Prabhupada and put his head on Prabhupada’s lap. Prabhupada rubbed his head, and Ghosh enjoyed getting his head rubbed. Here was a big, powerful politician, the equivalent of a governor, who enjoyed Prabhupada rubbing his head.

To view the entire unedited video go to Memories 19 - Upendra, Visakha dasi, Bhargava, Sura

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

Following Srila Prabhupada

Interview DVD 05

Bhargava: Wherever you get people together there’s politics and I thought, “I’d better ask this question,” and I said, “Prabhupada, sometimes I have a question and it’s too detailed for the scriptures and the spiritual master isn’t around. What should I do?” He said, “If you chant Hare Krishna very nicely, all the answers will come from within.”

Interview DVD 06

Bhargava: Two French reporters came to visit Prabhupada. One was an older man, and one was a woman probably in her early 30’s. Prabhupada didn’t tell pastime stories. Mostly he preached about you’re not that body, a lot of philosophical things, but he didn’t generally tell so many stories. This woman was sitting there, and he starts telling her the story about how this demon kidnapped 16,000 princesses and Krishna finally came and killed the demon. The princesses approached Krishna because they were really attracted to Krishna, and Krishna looked at them and He said, “Come on,” and that’s how Krishna ended up with 16,000 wives. So as I’m listening to the story I’m thinking, “This is a pretty incredible story to tell a reporter, especially in the Western culture where everything is so rationalistic.” But he told that story, and when he quoted Krishna as saying, “Come on,” that reporter’s face lit up as only a woman who had some experience in the world of heartbreak could understand. And even though the number of wives may have sounded so incredible, that affection He had towards those princesses touched that woman’s heart and she just lit up. It was beyond the rational, it was just on the level of an appreciation of the loving heart of Krishna by this very intelligent, very sophisticated French reporter; and it was a very wonderful moment.

Interview DVD 10

Bhargava: Mauritius was developed by two devotees. It’s a small island off the east coast of Africa. Prabhupada said some very profound things in Mauritius. He was very serious with the young people who came to visit him. He didn’t like the idea of dependence on a cash crop. Sugarcane was the cash crop. His comment to those young people was “The first duty of a nation is to become self-sufficient.” And that was an extremely profound statement because if you look at the world situation and you look at so many of the trouble spots, it’s all about trying to exploit somebody else’s natural resources – like America and Europe trying to exploit the oil resources of other areas. And if each country would take that seriously, becoming self-sufficient, you wouldn’t have these major conflicts going on in the world. So when Prabhupada said that, it was extremely profound. When one of them asked, “What is your movement doing to help the world?” he said, “We’re taking animals and turning them into human beings,” and then he gave a very fiery lecture. Then at the end he told Brahmananda, “Take the tape of this and send it to Back to Godhead, and they should make an article out of this. The title of the article should be ‘First you make them human, then you talk about United Nations.’” Prabhupada really didn’t like being photographed, but he accepted it because it was useful for the publications. And he didn’t like being photographed when he was speaking, and he told me a number of times that it broke his train of thought. But I was very impulsive and very romantic, so I liked these shots where Prabhupada was speaking and he’d use his hands, these speaking mudras. At first I was using a Canon single lens reflex camera, and it’s kind of noisy. So he said, “No more ‘cut cut’ while I’m speaking.” Then later on when I was able to get a Leica camera, which doesn’t have the mirror that flops up, it has a much quieter shutter noise. And then when I photographed Prabhupada while he was speaking, he said, “No more ‘ch ch’ while I’m speaking.” So he could tell the difference between the cameras. He had a very refined sense of smell and a very refined sense of hearing. In South Africa, I set up a whole bunch of lights and I was photographing Prabhupada, and it irritated him because it was in a small room and I went overboard with all these flashes. I wanted to get really beautiful saturated color and everything bright. But I wasn’t discreet enough, and he got angry at me. Then the next day he got his books. These were joyous moments for Prabhupada, when he’d see the Bhagavatam manifest in book form. He was opening his books and he was looking at them, and he touched them with such delicate touch that you could see it wasn’t his book and he was just so happy that the Bhagavatams were coming out into the world. Because it was such a nice moment, I really wanted to catch some photos of it. I had a high-powered battery that didn’t really need any recharging on the flash, it was like an old press photographer’s unit, and I just fired off probably six or seven frames one after another. And from the day before and that day, it really irritated Prabhupada. So I said to Prabhupada, “Prabhupada, I’m such a fool.” He said, “If you are a fool, then go away. That is my order.” So I took it very seriously. I walked out of his room and then I put my camera down, and I went out of the temple at about six o’clock in the evening. As I was walking I was thinking, “Should I commit suicide? Should I drown myself in the Triveni? Should I exile myself here to South Africa and just do humble service?” Then about ten o’clock my mind cleared and I thought, “Prabhupada would never excommunicate me for taking too many pictures.” Then I got really embarrassed and I called up the temple, and I was out in the suburbs somewhere. I had walked for about four straight hours. They came and picked me up, and the next day I came back and they told me, “Prabhupada wants to see you.” This was the only time I didn’t want to see Prabhupada. I went into Prabhupada’s room and he said, “How come you didn’t come to the engagement?” I said, “Well, Prabhupada, I thought you said I shouldn’t come.” And he said, “I never said you shouldn’t come. But even if I said you shouldn’t come, still you should have come.” And the whole thing was just too emotional for me. I thought I had put Prabhupada through so much trouble just disappearing like that. Prabhupada spoke at Wits University for two nights in a row in Joburg, and the second night I went but I just took a few snaps from a distance with a long lens. This photographer who was an Indian man who photographed for the devotees down there, he was a Life Member, and he came up to me and he said, “Are you all right? Prabhupada was asking, ‘Where is Bhargava? Where is Bhargava?’” I had mixed emotions after I heard that. I was very happy that Prabhupada cared about me that much, but at the same time I felt very bad that he had to worry about me. After that, I was very standoffish about photographing him. I had come into South Africa in disguise. I had a shaved head, and I had to wear a cut-down woman’s wig and a safari suit that was two sizes too big. That’s all I could muster together before I left for South Africa from Mauritius. They would allow South African devotees to preach, but they didn’t like foreign devotees coming in because they saw them as potential agitators against the apartheid program. So I came in this way, and somehow or another I got through Immigration. It was a great miracle. Somebody had lost their passport, and they held everybody up for so long that they finally let everybody through without hassling too much. Anyway, when we were leaving the country, I left in a separate car and they asked us to wear these clothes that we had worn to disguise ourselves. So I went through Customs and Immigration in these clothes, and they didn’t care so much as we were leaving the country. So I went through ahead of Prabhupada, he didn’t see me in this outfit. And as I was waiting in the waiting room, Prabhupada came in. When I turned around, he looked at me and he saw me in this outfit and he bent over in a belly laugh laughing. I had never seen Prabhupada laugh like that. Then the laugh turned into a chuckle. And I knew he was laughing at how ridiculous I looked but at the same time, when it turned into a light chuckle, it was like the laughter was on two levels. The first level was how ridiculous I looked in that outfit. The other one was somehow he knew who I was spiritually, he could see my spiritual identity, and he was laughing at the material predicament I had gotten myself in in the material world, getting a material body. But it was done with affection, and it was a very touching moment. Anyway, I got Prabhupada to laugh, so that was nice.