Sudama: I moved into the temple the day before Srila Prabhupada arrived. We went to the San Francisco airport, and I saw his airplane coming in, a TWA jet. Immediately I almost fainted as I cried without knowing why. Now I understand that the reason why I was crying was because I hadn’t seen him in so many lifetimes. But I wasn’t aware of that then. All of sudden I saw everybody getting on their hands and knees, and I thought to myself, “Oh, my God. What will my family think of this? Here I am on my hands and knees.” Then I looked up, and there he was. My life changed from that moment. I was initiated the next day. Tamal said: “Hey, everybody is getting initiated. You’ve got to get initiated too.” I said, “Okay.” It was like joining the country club or a fraternity. I didn’t know what it meant. He gave me the name Sudama. The next day he called me into his quarters. Govinda dasi was his head secretary and servant, along with Purushotam and Kartikeya, and he asked me what he had named me. I reminded him that my name was Sudama das, and he said, “What do you do, Sudama?” I said, “I am an actor and a dancer from a very famous dancing and acting family.” His eyes lit up and he said, “Oh, I played Hamlet once in Calcutta,” and he handed me a play that Hayagriva had just written on the life of Lord Chaitanya. It was two inches thick—much too long. He said, “I want your opinion. Come back tomorrow.” So I went back the next day and he said, “To communicate through creativity affects the heart of people.”
During the second darshan, Srila Prabhupada instructed me to use my talent to preach. I was enamored. I was eighteen or nineteen years old and on my way to India. He said, “Just see. India has come to you. Now you don’t have to go so far.” In fact, I didn’t get there for another six years. I had tickets in my hand to go to Bombay, but Lord Chaitanya had another plan. We went from San Francisco to Seattle and Govinda dasi noticed my talent for cleaning. I am always impeccable. And my chapatis blew up. Kartikeya, on the other hand, was very confused and not reliable. So Govinda dasi was pushing Srila Prabhupada to take me on board. That meant no brahmachari ashram, nor austerities in the sense of hanging out with neophyte God-brothers. I jumped at the opportunity and began my short but eternal career of looking after Srila Prabhupada.
Gargamuni had obtained an apartment for Prabhupada. It was a dump. Srila Prabhupada walked in with Govinda dasi. Govinda dasi had a very interesting, blessed relationship with Srila Prabhupada. She used to tell him, “This will never do.” That was part of the requirement of being a good servant for Srila Prabhupada. You had to be almost parental with him because his health was not good. Sometimes you had to have a heavy hand which, to most people, is not thought of with the guru. Srila Prabhupada, as a pure devotee, was so real that he identified his relationship with each individual devotee, and he expected you to respond. If you were going to debate, then he wanted to debate. If I wanted to cook for him and massage him and make his home clean, he would give me that facility until I didn’t want it any longer. Well, he comes into this place, and Govinda dasi said to Gargamuni, “This will never do. We have to find another location. Srila Prabhupada, what do you feel?” Prabhupada’s from Calcutta. Govinda dasi says, “No, no, no. I am sorry. I have to put my foot down.” So she and Gargamuni went to find another location while I stayed with Srila Prabhupada. As it happened, there was a television in this place. Prabhupada said, “Turn the TV on.” I thought, “Turn the TV on?” I had joined just a month before, and I was told when I joined, “Oh, no. We don’t do this, we don’t that, we don’t do drugs.” In fact, I remember having my last LSD experience on my way to move into the temple. So I said, “Okay,” and turned the television on. We were chanting. Somehow Prabhupada was always chanting. A washing machine commercial came on with stick cartoon characters. Prabhupada was almost on the floor laughing. He said, “Oh, you Western people. You make a box to wash your clothes, then you sell it for a lot of money and you have them assume characters.” Well, we watched. I laughed frightfully because I didn’t know if I should laugh or not. It wasn’t until later on that I understood what my position was in serving him. He was chuckling. He wanted me to change the station. He wanted more commercials. He thought that they were the most interesting, bizarre display of material life that he’d ever seen. That was my first experience with Srila Prabhupada that was not in the mood of awe and reverence.
One afternoon after his nap I was bringing him a little rasagulla and some drink. The sun was going down when I started to enter his room, which faced the backyard. The whole room seemed purple and gold. There was a certain energy in the room. Srila Prabhupada was chanting and crying tears of ecstasy. Well, we didn’t even have The Nectar of Devotion yet. I got alarmed, backed out of the room with the tray, went to Govinda dasi and said, “Govinda, what’s happening? Is Prabhupada OK? Is he having a fit?” She said, “No, no. That’s just Srila Prabhupada having a relationship with Krishna. That’s Krishna consciousness.” I said, “Wow!” I went back in five minutes later. Srila Prabhupada was still there, and this time he stopped me from leaving. He said, “Sudama don’t leave. I am crying because of the mercy of my Guru Maharaj. By his mercy I am allowed to see Krishna. I see Him right now over those grasses.” Oh, man. It was so heavy that I started crying. He said, “Why are you crying?” I said, “Because you are so powerful and merciful. I have never met a soul like you.” He said, “That is Krishna’s arrangement.”
At that time Prabhupada told me that he saw Krishna as a cowherd boy. I didn’t know anything about cowherd boys. I just knew Prabhupada. He was my life. If he said so, okay. He talked about how beautiful the grass was and how fortunate he was to have the mercy of his Guru Maharaj. That same week Purushotam, Himavati, Hamsaduta, Tamal, Dayananda, his wife Nandarani, and I entered Srila Prabhupada’s room. Again this is in the afternoon. Srila Prabhupada was sitting at his desk chanting while tears flowed down his face. We were not aware of this because we were just aware of ourselves. We paid our obeisances and sat up. There was Srila Prabhupada, crying. Hamsaduta said, “All glories to you, Swamiji,” and we all started crying. By the pure devotee’s mystic power, neophytes were allowed to experience this. We had no idea why we were crying. We just felt an overwhelming mercy. We fell down again and paid obeisances. Srila Prabhupada said, “Why are you crying? Sit up.” We said, “Srila Prabhupada, we are crying because you are so merciful.” “No, no,” he said. “It’s my Guru Maharaj. Without his mercy, I’d be nothing.” These were my first lessons in accepting a pure devotee of the Lord.
Srila Prabhupada told me, “Sudama, you were Japanese in your previous life.” In a year I had learned Japanese fluently and I was thinking and dreaming in Japanese. It was bizarre. In 1971 Srila Prabhupada arrived at the temple in Tokyo and was not pleased. I had a huge portrait of him in the anteroom where you take your shoes off. “Even you,” Prabhupada said, “have become infected.” I said, “Srila Prabhupada?” He said, “Yes, I can see it. I see so many discrepancies here.” He chastised me for two hours. I was crushed. Then he said, “You have not made devotees.” That was my worst nightmare, because that’s what I always heard from other GBCs. My peers would say, “Come on, Sudama. What are you doing over there?” The next day was Vyasa-puja. This was the initial Vyasa-puja that everyone follows in ISKCON today. We were taught this in Tokyo. Prior to that, we had it all wrong. Srila Prabhupada arrived at the temple. I was just improvising the ceremony. I didn’t know. Srila Prabhupada sat on the vyasasana. Some guests were there. He was angry with all of us. “How dare you bring me here. How you insult the spiritual master.” What could we say? You could have heard a pin drop. I was embarrassed. I left the room and cried. I had displeased him. I went back into the tiny temple room. He said, “All right, tomorrow we will observe Vyasapuja the correct way. I will instruct you. Now take me home.” Sure enough, that evening he told me what I had to get. The next day we did it just the way we have done it for years now. Then Prabhupada lectured on the spiritual master’s mercy. That evening he got a phone call from Hayagriva in New Vrindavan, stating that Vishnujana, Subal, Gargamuni, and Brahmananda had upset many devotees by preaching that Srila Prabhupada was the speaker of the Gita and that we Westerners were not qualified to worship Radha Krishna because we were mlecchas. Little did we know how insidious and power hungry and envious some of Prabhupada’s God-brothers were. Srila Prabhupada was relieved. He said, “Finally, the bubble has broken. I knew that my God-brothers were behind this.” Srila Prabhupada was the person who began the fructification of Lord Chaitanya’s prediction that in every town and village the Lord’s name will be heard. His God-brothers couldn’t even do it in London. They had to come back. Prabhupada sent eight white girls and boys to London to chant, and they turned on all of London, and all of Europe for that matter. Anyway, Prabhupada was glad that these devotees had done this, because he wanted them to go and preach. They couldn’t stay in temples, couldn’t lecture, and had to go preaching. And that’s what they did. They split up. Brahmananda and Gargamuni went to south Florida. That was their penance. Srila Prabhupada got ready to leave Tokyo to go to India. He said, “I have opened the West. Now I will take my dancing white elephants to India.”
My first lesson in making halava was at two in the morning when Hayagriva suddenly arrived from New York. Srila Prabhupada said, “Sudama, go make halava.” I had never made halava. Fortunately, I made it correctly, if not too sweet. Prabhupada told me, “Oh, Krishna likes this. I know you have made this very sweet. That is why He is Bala Gopal, because He is the butter thief. He takes from the kitchen. He likes the sweetness.” He said, “Sudama, you have a knack for this. You should make more sweets.” I said, “Yes, Srila Prabhupada, but I don’t have the patience for sweet making.” He said, “Yes, we have to preach in this age. Go out and chant Hare Krishna. Never mind rasagulla and rasa malai. Who has time for this?” Then he looked at me, Hayagriva, and Govinda dasi, and said, “But they are so nectarean. Hurry! Go make it.” So we all sat and ate halava at two in the morning.
Prabhupada said, “You should always have food ready when a friend or others come, no matter what time they arrive. If nothing is ready, then you make something.” He said, “That is the Vaishnava way.”
When we were in Hawaii, Prabhupada told me how Hawaii was conducive for spiritual advancement. Outside of India, Hawaii was the prime place for spiritual advancement. It was always a comfortable 80 to 85 degrees, with trade winds blowing. You could live with no shoes and just a pair of shorts, picking pineapples, bananas, and fresh coconuts. Of course, I never did that but he said that it was a perfect place for that. We talked about the Samoans and different races. He said, “Unfortunately these people must have the worst karma on earth. They eat pigs and look like pigs.” We were walking, and a Samoan family walked by us when he said this. I thought, “No, no!” But then I thought, “Wait a minute, I am with a pure devotee. I have God on my side in case they should get offended.” But they weren’t. Srila Prabhupada talked about what they looked like and how ugly they were and, literally using those terms, preached to them.
Srila Prabhupada saw me come in. I paid my obeisances, and he jumped all over me. “What is this? Why you have left? Why you are dressed like that?” He asked me all these questions for twenty minutes. I was sweating, crying, very upset, very confused, very on edge, very on trial in front of my Godbrothers, who were really strangers. I had gotten a temple that was too big, and my men had been stolen. It was the old politics game. Srila Prabhupada said, “I want to know one thing before I send you out of here. Do you still love Krishna? Do you believe in Krishna?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “All right. You will be okay.” Then he turned to everybody in the room and said, “This is disgusting. This is not how Vaishnavas behave. You knew that Sudama needed help. You knew that Sudama was crying out in maya, and you ignored him. This is not Vaishnava behavior. A true Vaishnava,” he said, “would have taken him by the hand earlier on so that this would never have taken place.”
I didn’t want to discuss death, although ninety-nine percent of our process is chanting Hare Krishna and preparing for the moment of death so that we can become liberated. In Berkeley, Prabhupada talked to me about his leaving, and I didn’t deal with it well. I didn’t want to hear it. As far as I was concerned, he was living forever, which he does. But he was talking about the position of the siksha and diksha guru. I was totally confused. I said, “Srila Prabhupada, all I know is you. Now you are saying there is another kind of guru. What is this?” “Wait, wait,” he said. He chuckled and told me, “When you do not see me here physically, always listen for me. I will instruct you through the bodies of others from time to time. Always listen for me.” I said, “What does that mean, Srila Prabhupada—if a dog barks?” He said, “Just what I said—anyone, it can be anyone.”
On a morning walk Srila Prabhupada told me, “If you think that you have become spiritually advanced and you start acting a role, you will become mad.” He instructed other people to read his books because he is in his books. I know that he is. I was just never a big reader. In Hawaii I went to him in tears. I said, “They all criticize me because I don’t chant enough Sanskrit. I don’t quote slokas.” Srila Prabhupada laughed. He said, “They sound like my God-brothers. Sudama, you speak from your heart. That’s all that counts. Krishna doesn’t care if you can’t quote slokas. You are a good preacher. You bring many people because of your heart.” I said, “I have only read The Nectar of Devotion twice, Bhagavadgita ten times, and that’s it. I can’t even finish the First Canto of Srimad- Bhagavatam.” He said, “So? You cook samosas. You chant beautifully, you have love for Krishna. What else is needed? Don’t make things so complicated. It’s very simple.”
