Bhargava: The first time I saw Prabhupada was in Boston in 1972, about a month before I took initiation. I’d read Prabhupada’s books and enjoyed them, especially the old Bhagavatams. Although they had spelling and grammatical imperfections, their perfection was in sincerity. I read those books and thought, “Gee, I don’t know so many of the details, but I know that God could never overlook someone this sincere.” I trusted Prabhupada’s sincerity. I saw Prabhupada at the airport when he came off the plane onto an open, outdoor ramp. It was magical and dramatic. It was the end of the day, and there was a beautiful, golden sun on Prabhupada. The devotees gave him a huge, heavy lotus garland, and Prabhupada turned to the bunch of reporters there and posed. That started to bring out my cynical side. Being a photographer, I know how much people enjoy being photographed and being the center of attention. I could read it in their eyes. But when Prabhupada turned to face the photographers and pose there wasn’t a lot of ego in it. He was like a diplomat from Krishnaloka posing. That impressed me. The devotees had rented a room for Prabhupada at the Sheraton, but he decided that he didn’t want to go there. He said, “These hotels are like brothels.” Instead he went to the temple even though it was small, noisy, and crowded. (Devotees had come from New York and Montreal.) Prabhupada’s room was bare. It only had a thick foam pad and a little dais for him to sit. But he was happy. For him it was much more than a fancy hotel suite at the Sheraton. He wanted to be with Krishna and the devotees. That impressed me too.
When I first started photographing I was using single-lens-reflex Canon cameras. On these cameras the mirror goes up and makes a loud noise when the picture is taken. So Prabhupada asked me not to take pictures while he was speaking. He said, “No more ‘Cut, cut’ while I am speaking.” Later on we got a little bit more prosperous, and I got Leica cameras that don’t have the flapping mirror. The next time Prabhupada chastised me he said, “No more ‘Chhh, chhhh’ while I am speaking.” He had a fine sense of hearing. I was photographing Prabhupada in London, Amsterdam, and Paris, but I didn’t really have close contact with him. I really wanted some personal attention. Part of me was like a student of philosophy, and part of me was like a little kid. Before I left I went into Prabhupada’s room at Bury Place and said, “Prabhupada, I am leaving to go back to America to work on your books.” Prabhupada didn’t really know me. He just saw me photographing, and we had exchanged a few words. I expected Prabhupada would be a little gentlemanly and distant. Instead Prabhupada recognized me. He said, “You are leaving, ohhh,” as if he was really disappointed. It was like I was part of his family. That shocked me. Then Prabhupada got up, walked across the room and put his garland on me. That shocked me too. Prabhupada had an ability to look through you and see your subtle body, your mind. He could see many aspects of you that you couldn’t see or that you could see but wouldn’t want anybody else to see. Psychically you stand naked before him. He sees it all, and he still loves you. Beyond that, he sees you as you can’t even see yourself. That was the feeling I had, that he was seeing the impurities of my mind but it was okay. He saw me not as my body or mind but on a deeper level, and he loved me. That really touched me.
I said, “Prabhupada, sometimes I fight with my God-brothers. Is that bad?” He said, “No, not necessarily.” I asked, “Prabhupada, sometimes I have problems, and the spiritual master isn’t there, and it’s too detailed for the scriptures. What should I do?” And he said, “If you chant Hare Krishna very nicely, all the answers will come from within.” That was a timeless answer.
Prabhupada was sitting on the lawn at Bhaktivedanta Manor speaking on “What is a spiritual master?”. Yadubara was filming, and I was the soundperson because Visakha was away on a preaching engagement. The Manor is located near a little airport, and every time a plane would go overhead, Prabhupada would stop speaking, and Yadubara would stop filming due to the noise. This happened a few times. Then Prabhupada looked at me and said, “Your machine is useless, and you are useless.” I was devastated. Prabhupada was intense even though he was physically tiny. We were so emotional over him. We had great love for Prabhupada, and we felt great love coming from him. We felt that he cared about us spiritually. We didn’t want to displease Prabhupada, and he set high goals for us. About a year went by, and I was finally with Prabhupada in Mayapur. I said, “Prabhupada last year you said I was useless,” and Prabhupada said, “You are not useless. Everyone has some use.” He humbled me. Part of the spiritual master’s job is to break the false ego of the disciple, because due to false ego we think we’re the center of the universe. The more rooted we are in that mentality, the more distant we are from Krishna consciousness. It’s a thankless task for the spiritual master to break the false ego of his disciple. Prabhupada did it in little ways.
Another time we were walking in Paris, when Prabhupada turned to the devotees and said with a serious tone, “I want you to all become Krishna conscious philosophers and to defeat the rascal philosophers and scientists.” A week or so later I was in Prabhupada’s Bury Place room with Prabhupada and Kulashekar, a nice, outgoing devotee. His parents, quiet country people, had come to see Prabhupada. Kulashekar had been taking 8mm films of Prabhupada, and he was going to show Prabhupada the films. He went to get his parents so they could watch also. When he went out, I looked at Prabhupada and said, “Prabhupada, these materialistic scientists and philosophers are so strongly entrenched. How will we ever change them?” I don’t know how I got the nerve to ask a question like that. Prabhupada looked at me and said, “Whether they change, whether they do not change, still I will go on with my propaganda work.” You could almost feel the earth shake when he said that. It was that powerful. His determination was incredible.
Nitai asked Prabhupada about preaching. Prabhupada explained that you find that little spark of interest that somebody has in Krishna, and you fan that spark. You help that spark grow. It’s personalism. Prabhupada was teaching personalism. He was teaching us to deal with each person as an individual. We should know and respect where they are starting from and try to bring them to a deeper level.
Before he was a devotee, Maharati had been a butcher and a boxer. Maharati didn’t speak English. When he was initiated in the temple in Paris, he went to take his beads from Prabhupada, but Prabhupada pulled the beads back and said, “So, you will not kill any more animals?” Somebody translated. Maharati was a big guy, and Prabhupada, sitting on the vyasasana, was tiny. But Maharati was shaking in his dhoti. When he understood what Prabhupada had said, he gasped. Prabhupada gave him his beads and said, “Your name is Maharati, one who can fight with many thousands of warriors.” Prabhupada could shake people up, but he did it with love. For him the basis of Krishna consciousness was love. We rationalize our illusions and are blind to our imperfections. We tend to think that what we do is perfect. But the spiritual master sees through our illusion.
In South Africa I agitated Prabhupada by taking photographs during his lecture. When Prabhupada spoke he used wonderful, expressive hand mudras, and I was photographing those mudras. He only used them when he spoke, so that was my only opportunity to capture them. But I distracted him, and he would get irritated with me. He said I broke his train of thought. Unfortunately, I was impulsive and I did it repeatedly. When Prabhupada was in South Africa, the first editions of the Fourth and Fifth Cantos of the Srimad-Bhagavatams arrived. Prabhupada was very pleased. It was beautiful to watch him open the books and delicately handle them. The Bhagavatam was Krishna for Prabhupada. The Bhagavatams weren’t his books. He had such respect for them. It was like he was dealing with a Deity. That impressed me. I was snapping away taking pictures because it was like Christmas morning for a kid when Prabhupada got new editions of his books. I snapped one time too many, and Prabhupada snapped. He got on my case, and I sat down next to him and said, “Prabhupada, I am such a fool.” He said, “If you are fool, then go away, that is my order.” I was so emotionally attached to Prabhupada, that I took his words heavily. I walked out of the room. That night Prabhupada had a very prestigious speaking engagement at a university in Johannesburg, but I thought that Prabhupada didn’t want me to go. So I put down my camera and my flash and I walked out of the temple. I was feeling devastated. When I look back at it now, I think I was a little crazy. I was so emotional that I was thinking, “Should I commit suicide? I displeased Prabhupada. Should I go to Prayag and commit suicide there? Should I exile myself and just stay here for the rest of my life doing some humble service?” My mind was going back and forth like that. I walked for about four hours, from about 6:00 p.m. to about 10:00 p.m. Then I came out of all this emotional stuff. I realized, “Prabhupada never excommunicated me for taking too many photographs.” After another half-hour I found a telephone, called the temple, and Pusta Krishna came and picked me up. I was feeling bad. The next morning Prabhupada called me in and asked me, “Why didn’t you come to the engagement last night?” I said, “Srila Prabhupada, I thought you said I shouldn’t come.” Prabhupada said, “I never said you shouldn’t come. And even if I did say that you shouldn’t come, you still should have come.” I felt a lot of love from him. Then he suddenly changed the mood. He started speaking about the importance of his books. He mentioned how Srila Bhaktisiddhanta told him they could rip the marble out of the temple and sell it to print books. He talked about the importance of printing books. But I was feeling so overwhelmed by anxiety and embarrassment at what had happened the night before that when Harikesh came into the room, I crawled out. That evening there was another engagement at the same prestigious university. An Indian Life Member who was a photographer said to me, “What happened to you last night? Prabhupada was really worried and wanted to know where you were.” When I heard that, I felt even worse. But I felt good at the same time. I felt bad because I had put Prabhupada in anxiety, but I felt good that Prabhupada appreciated me. He noticed that I was missing. Of course, that night I took pictures with a telephoto lens from a long distance away.
I remember in Bombay, Prabhupada was speaking with an Indian gentleman. Prabhupada mentioned that he had a son that was mentally unbalanced. I never had heard that before. Prabhupada said that when this boy was a teenager he wandered off one day and was never seen again. Prabhupada knew well the suffering of the material world.
Every now and then I would get a little depressed. Once, while kirtan was going on in the Manor, I drifted into depression. I was moping, moving back and forth slowly while everybody else was dancing in ecstasy. Prabhupada looked at me and motioned for me to dance too. I suddenly felt a wave go through me, and I started dancing like a wild man. Prabhupada reached out to his disciples. There were 150 other devotees in the room, but he reached out to me in that way and to every other devotee in some way or other. Everyone had a personal, special connection with Prabhupada. Another time I was lamenting and feeling depressed while I was in Prabhupada’s room. I thought, “Prabhupada is going to chastise me or feel that he’s wasting his time on me.” But in fact, Prabhupada was sweet to me. He could see how fragile I was, and he talked to me just like he’d preach to a new devotee. He told me to be patient and to follow the four regulative principles. He said that everything would work out. I was impressed that someone so learned and educated could also be so sensitive toward others.
Prabhupada said that there are two kinds of siddhis, or perfections, namely sadhana siddhi and kripa siddhi. One attains sadhana siddhi when one follows the rules and regulations of devotional service with the aim of pleasing Krishna and, by the mercy of Krishna, becomes perfect. Prabhupada said, “Sometimes someone is not able to follow all the rules and regulations but has an overwhelming desire to perform some great service for Krishna. That person may also become perfect by the mercy of Krishna.” Prabhupada gave the example of a ship’s cabin boy who went to India for the British East India Company, but later on, because of his political and military exploits, was influential in bringing large parts of India into the British Empire. Due to that service, the British Empire made him a Lord.
Once in Bombay, Nitai was massaging Prabhupada on the roof, when two GBCs were having a conflict. One of them was gloating because he’d gotten something on the other. Prabhupada got upset. He said, “I give them a little power, and they fight. The actual way to manage is to get people to love you and then they will do whatever you want.” That was an interesting insight about how Prabhupada thought. Just after that, I was looking for something to do, and I asked Prabhupada. Prabhupada got angry with me. He said, “What do you think I am a questionand- answer machine? Someone to answer questions all day long? Read my books.” So again I crawled out of his room. I was devastated. Downstairs Nitai was laughing about how Prabhupada had blasted me. But I was upset, because Prabhupada’s reaction was so unexpected. However, when I look back, the politics hurt Prabhupada’s heart, just as it hurts our hearts. On one level he couldn’t be there for everybody. He was trying to train his disciples, and when we screwed up I think it took years off Prabhupada’s life. Maybe it’s my speculation, but he cared, yet what could he do? He had so many disciples.
A man named Tarun Kanti Ghosh, who was the Chief Minister of Bengal, came to see Prabhupada. His grandfather was a good friend of Bhaktivinode Thakur’s and was also a famous writer in India who wrote exquisite plays on Lord Chaitanya. His expressions and descriptions were totally masterful. Anyway, his grandson had become the Chief Minister of Bengal and loved Prabhupada. He told Prabhupada, “You alone are preaching the real dharma of India. Tarun Kanti Ghosh opened up to Prabhupada and told Prabhupada his problem. He was running for office, and he complained that, “There are too many political parties.” Prabhupada said, “Democracy is no good.” Tarun Kanti Ghosh was stunned. He said, “Oh, because there’s so many political parties?” Prabhupada said, “No. Democracy is no good.” Ghosh didn’t know what to say. The spiritual master has to speak the truth, and Prabhupada felt that democracy was an inefficient form of government. Tarun Kanti Ghosh realized that Prabhupada’s statement was not open to debate. It was right on. Afterwards, Tarun Kanti Ghosh sat down next Prabhupada and put his head on Prabhupada’s lap. Prabhupada rubbed his head, and Ghosh enjoyed getting his head rubbed. Here was a big, powerful politician, the equivalent of a governor, who enjoyed Prabhupada rubbing his head.
