Aindra das Remembers Srila Prabhupada

Following Srila Prabhupada

Interview DVD 10

Aindra: Prabhupada came out to go from his quarters, which was up on the hill, down to the temple for greeting the Deities in the morning. So there was supposed to be some kind of a kirtan to usher him down to the temple. Somehow or other I had a mridanga in my hands, and I’m not a mridanga player either really. I remember when I first joined I would play this “bing-bing-bong-bong-bing-bing-flap-flap, bing-bing-bong-bong-bing-bing-flap-flap.” That was the first mridanga beat that I knew. And then there was, bing-kading-bonk, bing-kading-bonk, like that, simple beat. So I was playing one of those beats, and they had me leading the kirtan. I was just chanting the simple Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, and I was walking right next to Srila Prabhupada. And as I was chanting away at the top of my lungs trying to do the best I could, Srila Prabhupada turns to me with a smile and kind of cocked his head back a little bit, looking at me with approval, and he said, “Jaya.” That’s the only word Prabhupada ever directly said to me, yet that one jaya stuck with me. It was not just a jaya to me, but it was a jaya in relationship to my endeavor to do sankirtan, to sing the Holy Name, Hare Krishna, for the rest of my life.