Srila Prabhupada In My Life - ebooks - ISKCON desire tree

www.bcswami.comSo, my days were occupied either in Mayapura or in Calcutta. Often I had to go toCalcutta to take care of the purchasing and printing the books that I was printing for SrilaPrabhupada, collecting from Prabhupada’s early writings in Bengali. And I alsotranslated some old Back To Godhead articles and I was compiling a Bengali Back ToGodhead. That was the first Bengali Back To Godhead that we printed. In this way I wasvery much involved in various activities in Mayapura and in Calcutta. And I was waitingfor Prabhupada to come back to India, I was eagerly waiting, actually I was dying to havehis darshana.Then one day I got the news that Srila Prabhupada came back to India. Srila Prabhupadawas in Bombay. So I told Bhavananda prabhu, who was my immediate boss, he was incharge of me, and he was engaging me in the services those days. In a way I was his man.When I told Bhavananda prabhu, he was a sannyasi at that time, Bhavananda Goswami,so I told him that I wanted to go to meet Srila Prabhupada. And he told me thatPrabhupada’s health was not good, therefore Prabhupada was not meeting anybody.Besides that, in Bombay no one knew me. Therefore the chances of my being able to seeSrila Prabhupada were very, very bleak. So he said, “Listen, why don’t you wait, soonSrila Prabhupada will come to Mayapura and you meet him here.” And I also thought thatI already have so much to do, this printing books, publishing Back To Godhead magazineplus I was purchasing material and so much to do. I thought okay, I’ll rather wait for SrilaPrabhupada to come back.Then we got the news that Srila Prabhupada was going to Kumbha Mela in Allahabad. Atthat time Gurukripa Swami also was in Mayapura. He was the GBC of Japan and SouthEast Asia. He had a group of very fired up devotees, they are known as Nama Hatta.They used to mainly distribute books and collect in Japan. He collected a lot of lakshmifor Srila Prabhupada’s projects in Vrindavana, Bombay and Mayapura. So he decided togo to Allahabad with his boys and it was arranged that some other devotees also wouldtravel to Allahabad, to Kumbha Mela, to meet Srila Prabhupada. So I also was includedin that team. They were travelling by bus. A bus was arranged to drive all the way toAllahabad from Navadvipa. So one fine morning we went across the river, Jalangi,we…not Jalangi, river Ganges and we went to Navadvipa. From there we started ourjourney to Allahabad. We travelled through the day and at night we stopped in Benaresand the next morning we arrived in…noon time actually, late morning, we arrived inKumbha Mela in Allahabad.Kumbha Mela in Allahabad takes place on the confluence of Ganga and Yamuna. Thereis a vast tract of sandy land which is completely, otherwise completely empty and duringDuring Kumbha Mela thousands of tents are erected there for millions of pilgrims tocome there. We also had our spot, ISKCON area was there, and we drove to that place.Immediately upon arriving I just went straight to see Srila Prabhupada. SrilaPrabhupada’s area was… Prabhupada’s tent, Prabhupada had a large tent there. That areawas walled out with corrogated tin sheets and there was an entrance and at the entrancethere was a big bearded Western devotee guarding the gate. When I tried to go in, hestopped me and he told me that I couldn’t go and he asked me to come back in theevening. Srila Prabhupada would give darshana.www.iskcondesiretree.com