Kesava Bharati Goswami: I had lived with Jayananda for two years in San Francisco, so we were very close. He was in preparation like normal, doing everything himself, superhuman effort to prepare the carts for the festival. So I came up the elevator in that skyscraper building, and I came around the corner and there was a bathroom down that hallway. I saw Jayananda and he was walking with his torso parallel to the ground, literally. I yelled out, “Jayananda!” and then I went running down the corridor. And before he got to his room, I came in front of him and I said, “Jayananda, what’s going on with your body, with your health? What is it?” And he looked at me, put his hands on both my shoulders and he said, “All right, I’ll tell you something, but you’ve got to promise me one thing – that you won’t say anything until after the Rathayatra.” And I said, “OK, Jayananda, I won’t say anything, please.” Then he lifted up his arm, and underneath his armpit there were huge lumps. And then he lifted up his other arm and his other arm was the same, these huge lumps. I said, “Jayananda, you have to take care of…” and he said, “You promised.” So I kept my mouth shut based on that promise. Of course, it turns out he had leukemia. It means that Jayananda was suffering like anything during the preparation of that Rathayatra, and then that famous picture of him pulling the cart in complete ecstasy. You look at his face, you could not have told that he was wracked with pain. That’s who Jayananda was – fixed in service to Srila Prabhupada.
