Gunamai devi dasi Remembers Srila Prabhupada

Prabhupada Memories

Interview 01

Gunamai: Prabhupada laughed and said, “How do you like your name?” I thought, “Fine. It’s nice.” Afterwards I realized that the reason he named me Guna was because I’m from Laguna Beach, but at the time it didn’t click. I was too much in awe. Then Prabhupada asked me to paint the Bhagavad-gita. I said, “How?” He said, “You have to become like Sanjaya. Sanjaya saw the whole battle in his mind as if it were on television.” I said, “Okay, I’ll try.” Prabhupada talked about how Jadurani didn’t know how to paint, but she did it, and Krishna instructed her and gave her the ability to do it. Prabhupada also wanted me to paint one of the two Kartamasha Deities he had. He told me how he wanted Kartamasha to be painted and the story of how he got the Deity. Then he said, “If you have any questions or you need to talk to me, just come up,” but I never did. There were guards around, and I was too shy to say, “I need to talk to Prabhupada.” I still beat myself on the head because I didn’t go.

I was amazed at how people came to Krishna consciousness from so many different walks of life. The main factor that brought us together was that everybody fell in love with Prabhupada. We didn’t really know him. In our eyes he was a man from India who wore strange clothes, but it was due only to Srila Prabhupada that all of a sudden devotees were doing odd things like wearing sheets. (In those days we wore sheets. We bought big bolts of either yellow or saffron polyester/cotton material and cut it up to make saris and dhotis.) My impression of Prabhupada was that everybody fell in love with him and were willing to completely change their lives because of him. Prabhupada said, “A devotee is one that when you see him, you think of Krishna.” In that sense Prabhupada was non-different than Krishna, because when we saw Prabhupada we thought of Krishna.

To view the entire unedited video go to Memories 25 - Sama Priya dd, Vrindabaneshvari dd, Kanka dd, Deva Didhiti dd, Bhavat and others

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