Dinatarine devi dasi Remembers Srila Prabhupada

Following Srila Prabhupada

Interview DVD 06

Dinatarine: I had received an inheritance in the spring of 1974. I was in Bombay at that time, and Giriraj Brahmacari came and said that there was an apartment becoming available and we had to buy the apartment so that the people would leave. So I was able to give part of the money to help buy that apartment. It was an amazing apartment with this beautiful gray very cooling granite, and it had wide open verandas and porches so a wonderful cross breeze came through. So with the combination of the granite and the cross breeze, it always was cool in there even if it was very hot outside. Srila Prabhupada liked those rooms very much. He lived in that apartment the whole time he was in Bombay. One of the salient features of the apartment was a big open roof. Srila Prabhupada would go up there and sometimes cut kerala and dry them on the roof in the sun. So Palika and I had an idea to make him a wonderful asana up there, and we arranged to have big white pillows made and a big white seat for him and put them in front of a neem tree on the roof. Srila Prabhupada would go up there every evening, and he loved to sit on that asana in many different poses. Sometimes he would sit horizontally with his legs over one pillow and his head over another, and sometimes he would sit cross-legged and sometimes up with his knees drawn up. And it appeared to me at that time that he was extremely robust in health and very jolly in his mood. Things were progressing in Bombay nicely at that time. He would sit up there and whoever would come, they were destined to see the most wonderful aspects of Srila Prabhupada’s personality, his character, his nature, his eloquence, his gracefulness, his aristocratic bearing. So many aspects of him were in full display.