Laxmimoni devi dasi Remembers Srila Prabhupada

Prabhupada Memories

Interview 01

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Laxmimoni: Some of the women, myself included, had made some decorations for the top of the altars. There was a conch, club, wheel and lotus. It was quite an experience as it was the first time I was ever at a big temple with many devotees. When Prabhupada walked in he sat on the vyasasana and saw those decorations. He asked those of us who made the decorations to stand up and he thanked us. I thought that was so nice. It seemed like there were so many devotees there but he acknowledged us and he said, “Thank you very much.” Then out of the blue he asked the entire audience of devotees, “Is everybody chanting their sixteen rounds?” Everybody was just silent. No one said anything and then he asked again, “Is anyone fibbing, are you sure you all are chanting sixteen rounds?” A few hands went up here and there, “Well, maybe I’m not.” In particular there was a devotee, Bhaktadas Prabhu, who was on a ladder next to Prabhupada’s vyasasana in the doorway painting whose hand was also up. He said, “But Prabhupada, I’m working hard to make Krishna’s temple beautiful and sometimes I am only sleeping four hours at night”. Prabhupada said, “Then sleep two hours! But somehow or other you must chant sixteen rounds.” Then he said, “It’s not very difficult. Only an hour in the morning, an hour in the evening, what is so difficult?” And he said, “Maya is on the backside of Krishna. You do not have to go looking for maya. Simply you forget Krishna and maya is there.” When we were still in Buffalo we went to visit Srila Prabhupada when he came to New York City. He was in the loft on 26 Second Avenue when our contingent from Buffalo arrived along with one girl who had been kidnapped from her dorm by deprogrammers. She was an initiated devotee whose name I think was Satanandini. When Prabhupada saw her he had someone go to her to put tilak on her forehead and he welcomed her. He was so happy to see her. My husband was in New Vrindavan when Prabhupada had asked for someone to volunteer to be GBC of India. Jagadish Prabhu volunteered himself. I was pregnant and in Toronto at the time. I was so upset that he was going to go to India that I got in my car and drove to New Vrindavan. I went up the stairs and went into Prabhupada’s room, as I was really not happy. After I left I heard from the devotees there that Prabhupada said, “Yes, he must get her a nice apartment. She must have a nice place to stay in Bombay. Get her an apartment in Bombay.” And then he said to Brahmananda, “Just see, the power of a woman is in her tears. By crying she will get what she wants.” (laughs). Prabhupada was very concerned about us. In 1974 we went to Mayapur, which was basically the first Mayapur festival. At that time I was pregnant and Srila Prabhupada was so caring that he set up a whole tent where cooking could go on just for myself and the other women who were pregnant or had children. He had them make milk especially for us and bring it to us in a bucket. He was very concerned that we would be taken care of nicely. After Delhi Prabhupada went to Vrindavan and he would give lectures at the Fogal ashram. Prabhupada led a kirtan playing the mridanga with my son dancing in front of him. When the kirtan ended Prabhupada took off his garland and he instructed a person to give it to my son. Then he started the lecture, which can be found on the folio archive, by saying, “See this boy, he is dancing in front of me. He didn’t learn that in this lifetime. It must have come from a previous birth.” Then he started talking about Maharaj Pariksit and how in the womb he had seen Krishna when Krishna protected him. Then when he came out he was remembering Krishna from the very beginning. He was always looking for Krishna and he was worshipping deities from a very young age. So Prabhupada was also very personal with my son and me many times. We were in New York on Henry Street and Nirmal, who was only two years old, had a rash on his neck so I didn’t put any neck beads on him. The first thing that Prabhupada said when he saw him was, “Where are his neck beads?” I said, “Srila Prabhupada he has a rash on his neck.” He said, “Then put them loose but he has to wear neck beads.” Then the deity that is presently in Washington DC, Madan Mohan, a small deity, was in the room and there was a big tulasi plant. Nirmal immediately went over and he was looking at the deity and looking at the tulasi plant. Prabhupada said, “You like this plant?” Nirmal said, “Yes.” Prabhupada said, “You can take it. It’s yours.” Of course he couldn’t take it. It was huge. It was bigger than him. But it was a very sweet exchange. In Los Angeles I came with my third daughter, Nitai, who was in a carrier on my husband’s back and she started to cry. I took her from him and she stopped crying. Prabhupada said, “Just see. She is her mother’s daughter.” So he was very personal all the time, always very aware of the family and how it fit together and how important it was. He never discouraged. Even when I was doing deity worship we wrote him and asked, “We are doing deity worship and we have children.” Prabhupada said, “Just like a busy housewife finds time to take care of herself, put on her makeup, you have to find time to take care of your children and do your seva, do the deity worship.” He also told me that the children could start doing deity worship when they are ten years old. They can help by polishing the brass and they can make the garlands. Every time Srila Prabhupada came to America he would always go to Dallas. He was very interested in the children and he would be very delightful with the children. Very often they would go to his room and he would give them cookies or he would give them rasagullas that were quite messy. He would hand them out one by one. I have a photograph of my three-year-old daughter, Yugalapriti, during one of these exchanges. She had gotten two cookies because she would get a cookie and then go to the end of the line and then go up again and go to the end of the line for a third time. In the photograph of her with Prabhupada, both are pointing at each other. She was asking for her third cookie and Prabhupada said, “This is your last cookie.” Then Jagadish would introduce each child as they came up. He would then introduce, “This is so and so the daughter or son of so and so.” They were going on line to get whatever Prabhupada was giving out and Vaishnava, Bhagavan’s son and my son, Nirmal Chandra, were on line goofing around. When Jagadish went forward he said, “Okay, this is my son”, and they didn’t pay attention. Although Prabhupada was holding out what he was giving they weren’t conscious of it. He said, “Ah, just see. They are just like Jagai and Madhai.” (laughs) But he was always very receptive to the children and would try to reciprocate with them. There were so many times that Prabhupada just gave cookies to the children and they just loved him being there. Once we were in the backyard of someone’s house where Prabhupada was speaking. At the same time there were insects called chiketas that would make noise like a thousand crickets. The fan was also on and Prabhupada gave instructions for it to be turned off. We turned it off and when the noise continued Prabhupada said, “What is that noise from?” They told him that it was from an insect and Prabhupada said, “Oh, such a noise!” Every once in a while Pishima, Prabhupada’s sister, would go to Prabhupada’s room in Vrindavan and she would never go alone. She would grab another woman and take them with her. Even if there were other people in the room she still would never go by herself. She had a whole procedure where she would wash your hands with Ganga jal or Yamuna jal, depending on whether she was in Vrindavan or Mayapur, before taking you into Prabhupada’s room. On one occasion when I got the honor of accompanying her into Prabhupada’s quarters, Srila Prabhupada was speaking about how in Vaishnav culture you can always tell a person’s position by the way they dress. He was saying for example, the brahmachari wears saffron cloth and the sannyasi also wears saffron, but because he doesn’t have the piece in the back, you can tell he is a renunciate. The married woman wears sindur in the part of her hair and a widow is wearing white cloth. Then he said something about how a woman who parts her hair on the side, “That is another thing.” Then he said, “But our devotees they always dress simply.” So one mataji, one of my God-sisters said, “But Prabhupada, what happens if your husband gives you very nice silk saris? Aren’t you supposed to wear them?” Prabhupada’s response was, “You should wear them when your husband is around. Otherwise who you are trying to impress? Krishna is not impressed by silk saris.” So she made a face and Prabhupada saw that. He kind of said with his eyes, “What’s the problem?” Prabhupada then said, “Men should treat all women as mother”, and again she kind of scowled. So Pusta Krishna Prabhu, then maharaj, was there. He said, “Prabhupada, I think that statement, “Whenever I think of sex life I spit on it”, I think they think it means “Whenever I think of women I spit on it”. He said, “They call them mother but they don’t treat like mother.” Prabhupada thought for a second and said, “First let them become free of sex desire, then let them spit.” So that was also very strong. Prabhupada wanted us to be seen as mother, not just called mother. If you are from New York, you know being called mother is not a very respectful term. There’s another word that goes with it. But when Prabhupada said, “Mother”, he really wanted us to be treated like a mother and how a person in Vedic culture treats their mother is reverential. Having that feeling would make peace. It would make everything worthwhile. Prabhupada treated us that way all the time. And so there was never conflict. We never felt bad about anything. Even when Prabhupada told us to stand in the balcony in Los Angeles, and there was some kurfluffle, Prabhupada said, “Just tell them they can dance on the heads of the men. Then they will be happy.” I understood from Prabhupada that the tension comes because of the lack of protection or the lack of reverence that comes with that motherly exchange and you can’t have one without the other. My students were involved in deity worship and when I came to Dallas, the first thing they asked me to do was to take care of Radha-Kalachandji as the pujari. Radha-Kalachandji had been installed about a year before and as I was cleaning the pujari room I found some conchshell eyes. They were in a box and they were quite large. I asked some of the devotees, “What are these eyes doing here?” They said, “Well, Prabhupada originally wanted that Kalachandji should have conchshell eyes and we thought it looked really strange so we didn’t put them on.” To me I just couldn’t connect what that meant? That didn’t jive. Since Prabhupada was in Dallas, I went over to his room and said to him, “Srila Prabhupada, you know I’m the pujari here now and I found these conchshell eyes. I heard that you wanted the deities to have conchshell eyes so I just want to let you know that if you want me to put those eyes on the deities I will.” Prabhupada said to me, “Kalachandji’s eyes are fine just the way they are.” Somehow I felt like he really didn’t understand that his original instruction hadn’t been followed, so twice more I asked him the same question. I said, “Prabhupada, you know if you want me to put the eyes on Kalachandji I will.” Finally Prabhupada said to me, “But I am Prabhupada and I am telling you what I want. Kalachandji’s eyes are fine just the way they are!” I was so embarrassed and when I left, Jayatirtha, who was in the room said to me, “It’s like you wanted him to yell at you. I don’t understand what you were trying to do.” A few days later some devotees from Los Angeles came and they were doing a play about Krishna kidnapping Rukmini. They had an issue because Rukmini was not Krishna’s wife in real life. The script said that Krishna was supposed to pick Rukmini up by the hand to bring her up on His chariot. They were concerned that, “How could this man touch her hand if they were not married to each other?” When they asked Srila Prabhupada if it was okay, he gave an interesting response. He said, “Rukmini was no weak woman. She got on the chariot by herself and she was driving it while Krishna was shooting arrows off the back.” That was his answer. We got a telegram saying that Prabhupada was coming to Delhi, and Tejiyas, who was the president there, asked me to make a vyasasana. He said it would be easy because we were in India and they know how to do these things. I went around and ordered things in inches and they translated everything into centimeters. When I went to pick it all up, everything was completely different from what I anticipated. The pillow was too thick in depth and it was like an American football. It was purple with white squiggles on it. We were supposed to get a big wooden asana but it turned out to be like a cocktail table with tiny little squiggly legs. We were frantic and up all hours of the night trying to fix things by taking the cotton out and working with a hand crank sewing machine. When Prabhupada finally came we had to nail the cushions onto the wood since the bolsters would fall off because there were no sides. When Prabhupada walked into the room he looked at the thing for a few minutes. It seemed like forever. I was standing way in the back waiting to cry at any second because I was devastated by the whole experience. Prabhupada said, “Who has made this?” Tamal Krishna Goswami very kindly said, “Laxmimoni.” Then Prabhupada sat down and when he sat on the cushion, the cushion went ‘whoooof’. It flattened and made a sound like a whoopee cushion. I was standing there and he looked at me and said, “Thank you very much.” What I appreciate from that is that Srila Prabhupada first of all saw only the good. He saw the effort. He saw that I had tried and that I wanted to serve him. He saw that I had an interest in making him happy. Even though the material energy didn’t cooperate, he saw the effort. I also saw that Prabhupada wasn’t dependent on anything we could do to satisfy him. Prabhupada was completely satisfied and happy just to see that we were greeting him; that he had an asana and we had a temple with deities. He didn’t really need a big chair or a small chair or a purple chair. It didn’t really make any difference to him. He was happy. While we were there in Delhi, the house where we stayed had a tiny servant’s kitchen. It had numbers up on the wall with lights so that people could press a button in their room and the light would go on so the servant would know what room to go to. I didn’t know how to cook at all but somehow or other I got the service of cooking for Prabhupada. It was Nityananda’s Appearance Day so I asked the devotees if Prabhupada was going to eat breakfast that day and they said no because it was a fast day. But at 9 o’clock Prabhupada’s light went on. I went to Prabhupada’s room empty handed. Prabhupada said, “Where’s my breakfast?” I said, “Srila Prabhupada the devotees told me that it’s Nityananda’s Appearance Day so that you would be fasting”. He didn’t look happy. He said to me, “Fruit and milk is also fasting.” From that response I realized that Prabhupada did the needful. What had to be done for his service to go on he did it. We tend to be more constrained by rules and regulations and thus not be able to find the balance between not throwing the rules and regulations out of the window and at the same time not to live behind iron bars. Prabhupada didn’t have a hard time with that at all. In Los Angeles in 1974 I was pregnant. Jagadish was coming to see Prabhupada from Toronto because there was one boy who wanted to get initiated and he couldn’t cross the Canadian border because he was a draft dodger. So Jagadish had brought his letter for initiation into Prabhupada’s room. Prabhupada said, “You should perform this initiation ceremony. Do you know how?” Jagadish said, “No.” Then Prabhupada instructed someone, “You should give him instruction.” Then he said to Jagadish at that time, “You should learn how to do this ceremony.” He said, “Just like your wife is now pregnant. Before she was a young girl and couldn’t have children of her own. But now that she is mature, she is having children of her own. So in the same way you will become mature eventually and you will have children of your own and you will have to perform this initiation ceremony.” So he was telling him then that eventually this would be the way it will be done and that was in 1974. There was one devotee in Dallas, Nirnasha, who had cancer and was dying of leukemia in 1975. He was very skinny and could hardly do anything. Mostly he was just sitting in the temple and chanting. His parents came and wanted him to go and get some type of treatment that would allow him to live for a few more months. However, he was very reluctant to do it. Jagadish, who was serving Srila Prabhupada, went on behalf of the parents and told him that the parents wanted to take their son to therapy. He told Prabhupada, “They say that maybe they can give him a normal life, a little bit more normal life.” Prabhupada’s response was, “Normal life is life without death. Can they give him life without death?” He said, “The trees they are standing for five hundred years but what is the value of their life?” He said, “Better he just chants Hare Krishna.” Srila Prabhupada was so compassionate that he sacrificed everything. He renounced renunciation to come to America. We all say, “Let me go to Vrindavan, let me go to Govardhan, let me just chant and hear. But Prabhupada was in Vrindavan and he was just chanting and hearing and at sixty-nine years old went out of his way, struggled like anything to be able to come to America to give Krishna consciousness. I was always impressed with his tolerance because in the beginning we did such strange things. In Toronto we were cooking for the deities “little” prasadam because we had “little” deities so we were cooking “little” prasadam, “little” puris, “little” samosas. We wrote to Srila Prabhupada and he said, “What are you doing? Krishna eats like a hungry sixteen year old boy.” In Los Angeles he was watching devotees going in and out of the altar while the offering was being performed. He was asking what was going on? They were constantly bringing chapatis onto the altar because when Prabhupada would eat, they would bring chapatis back and forth so they would be hot for him. Similarly, we were bringing chapatis back and forth onto the altar. He said, “No, no, no.” When we were in Buffalo we were bathing the deities every two weeks. We would bring them into the office and put Lord Jagannath into a bowl of hot soapy water and dry them with a towel from the brahmachari ashram. When Prabhupada heard that he said, “Everything you are doing is very nice. You should just do it more often.” He tolerated us for so long until we got up to speed. Now most devotees see everything is beautiful; beautiful garlands and everything is so together but it wasn’t always like that. Prabhupada was so amazingly compassionate and tolerant and willing to do almost anything to give us Krishna consciousness. That was one thing that tremendously impressed me about Srila Prabhupada. I was also amazed by his relationship, his connection with Krishna. Krishna for him was everywhere. He didn’t need to construct a facility to have a relationship with Krishna. He constructed facilities for other reasons but for him he had a relationship with Krishna wherever he was and he was so relaxed about it. However, we were not very relaxed about it. It was very worrisome. Even now we are very detailed oriented and everything is a tense time. But for Prabhupada his relationship with Krishna was as natural as anything. And everything he did was very sweet. Once we were in Los Angeles in the garden during a meeting of pujaris. Lal Krishna Prabhu was there who was making jewelry at that time to sell to the deities. He wanted to start a business. Prabhupada told him he shouldn’t make a business selling things for the deities. He could only charge for the materials. There was also some tension because some people were thinking that Radharani should never have her hair show because Prabhupada had told us to bind her hair and that chaste women didn’t leave their hair loose. Lal Krishna was asking leading questions to Srila Prabhupada. He asked, “Isn’t it that Radharani is the most chaste woman?” Prabhupada said, “Yes.” Then he asked, “Chaste women never let their hair show, isn’t it, Srila Prabhupada?” Prabhupada said, “Yes”. Then he said, “So Radharani should never let her hair show.” Prabhupada said, “No.” And then Prabhupada closed his eyes, waved his hand over his head from left to right and said, “Sometimes Radharani likes to wear her hair like this.” And he said, “With flowers in it.” He opened his eyes and said, “Anyway, you should ask Srimati Radharani what She likes.” So that was Prabhupada’s relationship with Krishna. It was, “Let’s ask Krishna what He likes.” For us it’s not like that. But that was another thing about Prabhupada that was really wonderful in that Prabhupada was with Krishna all the time. He didn’t have to construct anything to be with Krishna. I was also impressed with Prabhupada’s sense of humor. Even if he got really angry with you about something, a few minutes later he’d be willing to laugh at it. Like when he yelled at me about the eyes, I was devastated. But the next minute he was on to something else and it really didn’t matter any more. Chant Hare Krishna and be happy.

To view the entire unedited video go to Memories 51 - Bhakti Vikasa S , Chaturatma, Laksmi Nrsimhadev, Laxmimoni dd, Urmila dd

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

Following Srila Prabhupada

Interview DVD 02

Laxmimoni: We were sitting in Srila Prabhupada’s room, and Prabhupada had just had an arati for his little Radha and Krishna deities. He had music of himself singing playing, and Prabhupada was playing kartals. We were sitting next to him. And then when the arati was over, Jagadish handed Srila Prabhupada a letter from Dharmaraj prabhu requesting initiation. So Prabhupada said he could get initiated. Then he turned to Jagadish and he said, “Do you know how to perform this fire sacrifice for the initiation ceremony?” and Jagadish said no, he didn’t know how. So Prabhupada instructed someone in the room to give Jagadish instructions on how to perform the fire yajna for the initiation. At that time he said, “You have to know how to do this ceremony because someday you will have disciples of your own.” He looked at me and I was in my eighth month of pregnancy and he said, “Just like before she was not mature, but now she has become mature and she is having children of her own. So in the same way, someday you will also have children of your own.”

Interview DVD 05

Laxmimoni: In Mayapur, Srila Prabhupada was always really concerned that the women had nice prasadam. He talked to me a couple of times about making sure there was milk every night and that I could go heat it. He made an arrangement so that there would be a fire set aside so that we could heat milk for the ladies who were nursing or pregnant. He wanted to make sure that we didn’t get sick and that we had good prasadam, especially milk. But it was real nice. We were staying right there, all the women, and Pisima. Pisima would never go into Srila Prabhupada’s quarters without another lady, so she would just grab you. But before she’d grab you she’d wash you off with Jamuna water; then she’d grab you and she’d ask you to come in with her. So some ladies who didn’t often get to be with Srila Prabhupada got to go in his room because they would go with her. Pisima couldn’t really understand what was being said because he was always speaking in English, but she would just like to sit and listen and see Srila Prabhupada.