Mahotsaha: When Prabhupada was on the vyasasana, I took it upon myself to take his water in his lota when he was finished. That was my task. I took it to the kitchen and took that water and distributed it; and I was a bit greedy, I had most of it. Prabhupada, he was the real center for the movement in Australia. When he was here, everybody was there and it was so exciting. Everybody drove from everywhere to be there, and it was all around Srila Prabhupada. Even the people on the edge who were just interested visitors would get caught up in that enthusiasm, and I’m sure many of them joined as a result.
He would hold darshans there some evenings in his room, and he’d sit and talk and Prabhupada would display his usual erudite knowledge. But he had this compassion that he would hear everyone and consider. Even if you spoke, you could only feel foolish in front of Prabhupada; but he seemed to tolerate, and he had a lot of compassion. But at the same time, with the guests that would come, he would show a lot of interest but he would not tolerate the subject being moved. So he would be very quick to bring the subject back within the Krishna conscious domain. Even if he would insinuate that they were in illusion, he did it in such a way that nobody was ever offended. Prabhupada had this knack of speaking to people. So in Melbourne, I remember he spoke to one of the parents of a devotee and he made them feel extremely comfortable. But at the same time, Prabhupada was very strong in stressing that Krishna consciousness was for everyone and not just a sectarian movement but it was for everyone and it was a practical movement. Prabhupada had the skill of disarming people’s defense just through his purity and his straight speaking and his simple language, and it was understood by everyone. There was nothing duplicit in his language, it was straightforward.
