Srutadev das Remembers Srila Prabhupada
Following Srila Prabhupada
Interview DVD 04
Srutadev: So I was greeting the Deities and offering to the Deities, and Prabhupada came up and paid his obeisances to the Deities and then walked back to give his morning class. I had always been trained that you never leave the Deities alone. So even though I wanted to go listen to Prabhupada, I felt as the pujari it was my duty to stay there. So I was staying there, and about 30 seconds later Bhavananda comes running back down to where I was and said, “Oh, you are here? Good. Prabhupada wanted to make sure someone was with the Deities.” So that really struck me that here everybody is chanting, “Jaya Prabhupada! Jaya Prabhupada!” and he’s going up, getting flower garlands, getting worshiped, but he was thinking, “Oh, is somebody with Radha and Krishna?” That was really nice, both to see that Prabhupada was thinking like that and then to feel that I had understood Prabhupada in that way. So one morning Prabhupada gave a lecture, and after the lecture one Indian gentleman came up to Prabhupada. He had just purchased a small book, one of these small Krishna Consciousness Topmost Yoga System was out, and he asked Prabhupada to autograph it. So I was standing right next to Prabhupada, and Prabhupada smiled and said yes. So the gentleman handed him a pen and Prabhupada autographed the book. So then another gentleman, seeing the opportunity, took a book and asked Prabhupada to autograph it and Prabhupada autographed it. So I was standing right next to Prabhupada. So another man, the third man, he pulls out of his pocket a little notepad and with a pen and he asked Prabhupada for his autograph. Prabhupada looked at him and smiled and said, “No book, no autograph.”
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