Krsna Kanti das Remembers Srila Prabhupada

Prabhupada Memories

Interview 01

Krishna Kanti: I was working at a television station in Seattle when I started chanting Hare Krishna by listening to the Happening record album Srila Prabhupada had made in New York in 1966. Then I met Upendra and started visiting the Seattle temple because the devotees there were chanting Hare Krishna just like I was. Upendra told me, “You have to establish your relationship with your guru. You should write to him, and if you give him a donation for his Book Fund, that will please him.” So I started writing short letters to Srila Prabhupada and sending him $50 or $100. Then in the summer of 1969, I went to San Francisco for Ratha-yatra, and just before the festival I saw Srila Prabhupada for the first time. He was lecturing at the storefront temple in the Haight-Ashbury district. At that time, Ratha-yatra was a one-chariot festival and I saw Prabhupada sitting gloriously on the ratha cart. It was a long festival that ended in the Family Dog Auditorium. After that I had a little more time, so I drove Revatinandana and a few other devotees to Los Angeles. The second day I was in Los Angeles, the devotees said, “Since you’re new, you can go on a walk with Srila Prabhupada.” Almost everybody had lots of association with Srila Prabhupada. I’d had a shaved head for about seven days, I could barely tie my dhoti, and I was now going on a walk with Srila Prabhupada. I was about to meet him face to face. I was petrified. In all my looking and studying and trying to find spiritual life, I’d read about many encounters, Zen master encounters, and that’s what I thought was about to happen. I was going to get grilled on the Bhagavad-gita, I was going to be asked questions and I was going to make a fool of myself. The devotees took me to the house near the La Cienega Temple where Prabhupada was staying, and I waited for Srila Prabhupada, mortified. When Prabhupada came in and sat down, his servant said, “This is Bhakta Karl. He’s the devotee from Seattle who has been giving donations for your Book Fund.” Prabhupada looked at me, smiled, and thanked me. I was so put at ease. I felt, “Oh, I am in front of a real spiritual master. He is humble, he has no false ego, he’s so full of love for Krishna that he’s thanking a mere mortal person like me for giving a few dollars to his Book Fund.” I knew at that moment that I was in the presence of a truly pure devotee. He had dispelled my fears and projected ideas.

About 1974, Agnidev, some devotee musicians and I recorded the Gopinatha album. When Prabhupada came to L.A., Karandhar invited me to Prabhupada’s room to play the record for him. I was excited. Prabhupada listened to the record and when it was over he said, “Yes, that was very nice.” And he said, “What do you plan to do with this record?” Our idea was to try to use it on sankirtan, to distribute the record instead of incense. Prabhupada heard this idea and thought for a minute. He closed his eyes, bobbed his head, and then said, “Well, that would be okay as long as it doesn’t decrease the distribution of my books.” Prabhupada squeezed two of his fingers tightly together and said, “As long as it doesn’t decrease my book distribution by this much.” I was sitting to the side and I understood what he meant right away but Karandhar said, “What did you say Prabhupada?” And Prabhupada repeated, “As long as it doesn’t decrease my book distribution by even this much” as he again squeezed two of his fingers tightly together. We said, “Oh, yes, oh sure, Srila Prabhupada.” After we left the room, Karandhar and I never dared bring up that subject again. Prabhupada had seen into the future—later we had trouble because the sale of record albums destroyed the purity of sankirtan.

To view the entire unedited video go to Memories 31 - LA Reunion, Guru Krpa, Nanda Kishore

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

Following Srila Prabhupada

Interview DVD 03

Krishna Kanti: Somebody coming to the Sunday Feast program in Los Angeles owned a 16 mm camera and was a film student and apparently approached Karandhar about filming Srila Prabhupada. So I think it was Karandhar’s idea to have Prabhupada give Bhagavad-gita classes. So this was a staged situation. The idea was to film Prabhupada speaking Bhagavad-gita which would be applicable for the people in general and have something for television.

Interview DVD 10

Krishna Kanti: It was his first time in our studio. All our previous recordings were done in his room. And a lot of the devotees showed up, which made it a little more complicated because of all the extra energy. I requested Prabhupada to chant the Hare Krishna mantra because we had had him doing all these bhajans but we never really had any recording other than the original Happening record from New York in 1966 with Prabhupada leading Hare Krishna. So he accommodated me for about two or three minutes and then stopped the kirtan, and then went and did some other Vaishnava bhajan.

We tried to do the recording, and we stopped because the mridanga player couldn’t play properly the way Prabhupada liked it. So he was there showing us how to play mridanga. But most people would try to follow Prabhupada rather than keep a steady beat for Prabhupada to follow. And then I told him that we had the technology that he could overdub it later, which is what we had normally done on all the recordings up in his room. Whenever I recorded with him in L.A., as soon as the recording would end he would always say, “And so how long is it?” He would always want to know how long the recording was. There was never a retake, it was always one take.

We ended up having Prabhupada play the mridanga himself overdubbed with headphones, and that’s what we did. There it is. He would listen to the track that he had done with harmonium and singing with kartals. Listening to that on headphones, he would then play the mridanga himself. And many times when I watched him overdub mridanga up in his room, I was always amazed at how beautiful he played and how lucky I was to be in the room. I’d be the only one there watching him play mridanga so expertly. He had a touch, a golden touch.