Madan Mohan Mohini: I’m just remembering back to 1972 Amsterdam. Srila Prabhupada was installing Lord Jagannatha, Baladeva and Subhadra, and most devotees know the situation that was occurring at that time. There were a lot of faux pas as far as the fire yajna went. I was watching Srila Prabhupada install the Deities and I was seeing Prabhupada’s concern that the Deities be taken care of nicely, that everything be first class for the Deities, and unfortunately it wasn’t and Prabhupada became very angry. And I was watching this. There were reporters there, there were guests, there were devotees. Prabhupada was not even concerned with what they thought. He was concerned that the Deities should be taken care of properly and that everything be first class. So that incident along with what happened in Paris… The next year was 1973 when Radha Paris-isvara were installed. I was also there and everything was first class. The fire yajna was very nicely set up, it was very opulent, Prabhupada was very pleased with that, and just his care and concern for the Deities. These two incidents in the beginning of my Krishna consciousness were the foundation for my own Deity worship. I’ve been engaged in Deity worship for over 30 years, and just to see Srila Prabhupada personally present serving the Deities impressed upon me so much how we must always take care of the Deities under any circumstance. I think this is something that I can never forget.
The temple was right off Kurfurstendamm, 153, so we were right in the heart of the city there. I mean you walk down the street and you had all the night clubs and theaters and restaurants. So we were right smack dab in the middle of Kali-yuga. Our little temple, the storefront, was right next to a restaurant and during mangal arati we could
hear them clinking glasses, drinking, and smell what they're eating, and it was quite abominable. And across the way there was like a night club or something and they had speakers outside on the roof. And when we went to sleep at nine o'clock at night, they would turn the speakers on, full blast. And then we'd get up in the morning while they were just ending their hoopla. So it was quite interesting. A lot of bikers were there. It was a pretty crazy scene to be right in the middle of that, but yet it afforded us to do a lot of preaching and book distribution and we knew that this was very pleasing to Prabhupada. It was so blissful.
Here's our altar. We didn't have Deities then, at least not here. We had small Radha-Krishna Deities in another part of Germany. Oh, this is the washing. We used to wash everything by hand. We were told this is how Prabhupada washed his clothes—by foot. And that's me making vases. And I remember when I went in the Kudamm on book distribution. You know, I had to learn German. I remember that it was a little bit difficult for me. But somehow or other, I managed to do book distribution and I remember hearing one tape of one devotee who was very enlivened in book distribution in those days. He was from America and I heard one tape of him about book distribution. It fired me up so much that I would carry books in English, in German, in all different languages, because there were people from all over the world there.
We tried to get Eka out of East Germany. It was very difficult to preach there and he was having a difficult time. You know, the phones were tapped. People were following him. We had one young American boy, army boy, that was coming to the temple in Berlin, and we asked him, “Do you have more than one uniform?” and he said yes. The American army boys were allowed to go through at the checkpoint—Checkpoint Charlie. And they didn’t look at ID. They just let them go through. So we rigged up this whole thing that he would wear one uniform on top of another, he would go to a certain place—it was a club— and they met in the bathroom, made sure no one was there, they had a password and the American army boy gave Eka an American army uniform to put on. Now Eka doesn’t speak any English. The only thing he spoke was ‘tanking up’ because whenever we would cook prasadam there he said he would eat for a week, because there were hardly any vegetables there in East Berlin. So he’d always say 'tanking, tanking-up,' and that was all he spoke in English. So they leave this club and they go through Checkpoint Charlie and the American army boy goes through but they saw Eka and they said “You haven’t been through here before,” and they put the gates down. Eka had taken off his glasses so he couldn’t even see. And of course they said, "Who are you?" and Eka couldn’t speak English. So they knew something was up, so they threw him in jail. But he said that when he was in jail, anytime they would ask him a question, he would answer, “Hare Krishna.” “How did you know them?” “Hare Krishna” “What’s your name?” "Hare Krishna,” “Where do you live?” “Hare Krishna.”
This devotee, we couldn't remember his name, but his father was in the police department and he was in cahoots with, I believe, a Catholic priest. Now, this devotee's parents did not like the fact that he was a devotee and they would try everything to get him out of Krishna consciousness. And it was due to his father that this whole thing happened in '74 when they came and raided the temples. They would put articles in the newspaper against the devotees, and of course people would read those and then we'd get a lot of flack on sankirtan. And even though we got a lot of flack on sankirtan, we still were able to distribute books. Some people were just curious. It made them curious about what
Krishna consciousness was really about. They had to find out. So despite the fact that all kinds of ill things were being said about Krishna consciousness and the devotees, and a lot of nontruths, still it brought people to the point of buying Prabhupada's books. The set up for the temple, there was one door and on each side were two huge picture windows. The curtains were open practically all the time. And it was like living in a fish bowl; people were always looking in,
especially during arati. Didn't matter if it was the daytime or the nighttime; people would
come and take a look and just couldn't believe what they were seeing. You can tell by this woman's face. "What is this?" I had an encounter, actually, with the Mafia one time There were a couple of men from Italy. I could tell they were from Italy. They were having a good time. They had money. So I went out and I asked them for a donation, "Take a book please." And they said, "Well we're going gambling, "but whoever wins, we'll come and give you the money and then we'll get a book." I said, "OK." But they came back and they gave me money, and then they said,
"We want you to meet our boss." And I turned around and there was this long limousine and they said, "Get in." I was scared to death. I didn't know if they were going to close the doors on me
and that was going to be the end. Anyway, I got in the very back and there was a gentleman that looked just like the books you read about and the movies you saw as a kid. The Godfather. He looked exactly like that. He was an elderly gentleman—I was scared—but he couldn't speak English. So here's the young man, who had been at the window, he brought me in, we were sitting in the limousine, and I'm trying to convince this man to take a Bhagavad-gita, a German Bhagavad-gita, an Italian-speaking man and I'm speaking English. So, I said some things. Somehow or other, he took the Bhagavad-gita and gave a very nice donation. And I was actually able to get out of the limousine and off they drove and I never saw them again. It was a very interesting experience; a test of faith, to say the least.
