Aditya devi dasi Remembers Srila Prabhupada



Following Srila Prabhupada

Interview DVD 06

Aditya: For a very short time we had that flat for Prabhupada, and when he lived there he used to go to the rooftop every evening and give darshan and he’d chant his Gayatri. One time when he went up there he said, “I have two favorite places in the world, this Juhu and Hawaii. Why? Because wherever there are palm trees, that is paradise.” At that time, I counted all the trees. We had over 200 trees on the Hare Krishna Land, palm trees, and Prabhupada loved it there. The tenants that lived in the back side, they would line up along the road. As Prabhupada would come in, they would all be standing there ready to greet him and Prabhupada would smile and speak to every one of them. It was such a very nice thing. Sometimes as devotees we had a little problem with the tenants, but they all loved Prabhupada and they must have felt his love.


Dinanath was there and he was leading, and he would lead such a wonderful kirtan. Gargamuni had come from Calcutta with his tape recorder because he liked to make tapes to give to his Life Members. So Dinanath was going from one end of the temple to the other end of the temple and all the brahmacaris running back and forth with him doing an ecstatic kirtan, and Gargamuni was so funny chasing after him with his tape recorder and trying to keep it to his mouth and chasing this way and chasing…it was really a funny scene. And Prabhupada was sitting on the vyasasan laughing.


Another time in that same little temple room, Prabhupada came down to give the Bhagavad-gita class but Yasomatinandana was there. He had come from America, trying to settle in Bombay. So Prabhupada told him, “You give the class.” Just like that on the spot he had to sit in front of Prabhupada and give the Bhagavad-gitaclass, and he gave it in Hindi. And Prabhupada just sat on the vyasasan and smiled, he was so pleased with his class, and every once in a while he would tell him something in Sanskrit. Otherwise he just let him give the whole class all by himself.