Dhananjaya das Remembers Srila Prabhupada
Prabhupada Memories
Interview 01
Dhananjaya: At 5:00 a.m. on Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur’s Disappearance Day in December 1970, a stretch white Mercedes stretch limousine with blacked out windows came to our temple. The chauffeur, with his cap, his dark suit and his polished black shoes, had a piece of paper with my name on it. I was called out of the temple room. I identified myself and the chauffeur said, “I’ve been told to take you to the fruit and vegetable market.” I said, “Who told you to do this?” He said, “George Harrison is with John Lennon on a yacht on the Thames, and he remembered it was an auspicious spiritual master’s day, so he gave me 100 pounds. John gave permission to use his Mercedes and I’m to take you to the fruit and vegetable market to get fruits and vegetables for a feast.” While partying with his friends on a yacht, George spontaneously decided to do this. Srila Prabhupada wrote to me, “How is the preaching in London?” That year so many boys and girls joined our temple that the brahmachari and brahmacharini rooms were overflowing. About 65 devotees were living in a property meant for 10 or 12. I reported this to Prabhupada and he wrote back, “Contact our good friend Mr. George Harrison and ask him to help us to find a bigger property.” George Harrison happened to be in town at the time—that year he recorded the album later called “Living in the Material World,” which had an insert of a big color print of Krishna and Arjuna, the same picture that’s on the cover of Bhagavad-gita As It Is. When I visited George, I’d take him all his favorite types of prasadam, like deep-fried potatoes, cauliflower and deep-fried curd soaked in sour cream, samosas, cauliflower pakoras, different kinds of sweets like burfi, sandesh and Simply Wonderfuls, as well as the strawberry buttermilk nectar that we became famous for. I was seeing him once a week until he said, “If you keep bringing all this stuff you have an open invitation to come as often as you want.” Then I began visiting him three or four times a week and when I felt it was the right opportunity I said, “George, now we have so many devotees in our temple that we’re running out of space. Could you help us find a bigger place?” Without hesitating he said, “Sure. No problem. Visit different estate agents, see different properties and if you find something really good, call me and I’ll come with you to check it out.” George was an exceptional person, and he constantly thought about how to spread Krishna consciousness. For instance, although it’s a single album, his album cover for Living In the Material World is double—it folds out—because George wanted to put a set of japa beads, a bead bag and a set of instructions how to use them into the other slipcover to be sold along with the record. And a lot of the lyrics on that album are Krishna conscious. One of the songs, called “The Lord Loves the One Who Loves the Lord,” George was very clear for whom that song was meant. He said, “I wrote that for Srila Prabhupada.” George told me he got inspired when I interrupted him with my visits to his studio. Once he said, “Every time you come here I can’t get any recording done. This recording studio costs 3,000 pounds a day but when you come, I don’t get anything done. We sit down, eat prasadam and talk about Prabhupada and Krishna consciousness.” He loved distributing Prabhupada’s Gita to his friends, and we’d supply him with beads and bead bags so his friends could chant japa. He had the mood of giving to others the wonderful opportunity of Krishna consciousness that he had received from Srila Prabhupada and the devotees. When I asked him, “Why don’t you take initiation from Prabhupada?” He said, “I don’t need to, I’ve already got a spiritual name.” I said, “What do you mean you’ve got a spiritual name?” He said, “My name’s Hari’s son, son of Hari,” and then he laughed—that was his Liverpudlian dry humor. When I went with him to visit different properties, he would have one hand on the steering wheel, steering the car, and the other hand in his bead bag, chanting. Once in 1972 an older English devotee called Bhakti Pramode, who worked as a security manager for the world-famous Midland Bank, drove Shyamasundar, Prabhupada and me in his car to see one of the properties that I’d arranged for George to see. It was called Runnymede Farm on the banks of the River Thames. Runnymede is where King John, the King of England, signed the Magna Cart in the early 13th century. The farm hadn’t been used for three or four years and was overgrown. George came from Friar Park in his Porsche, walked around the property and said, “They should call this Runnydown Farm, not Runnymede Farm.” Bhakti Pramode was an intriguing person who loved to fuss around Prabhupada. He never called Prabhupada “Prabhupada,” but he called Prabhupada “Your Grace.” He would say, “How is Your Grace this morning? Are you feeling cold? I’ve got a travel blanket I’d like to tuck around your legs so you don’t get cold.” He also liked Scottish highland dancing. Once he and his wife, Yasodamayi, came for Prabhupada’s evening darshan at Bury Place when Bhakti Pramode was wearing his full highland dress kit—with a tweed jacket and a kilt and the sporran and the long stockings and the sgian dubh, that little knife tucked into the top of the stockings with a kilt. He and his wife paid their obeisances and sat on the floor. Since he was elderly—in his mid to late 50s— Bhakti Pramode couldn’t sit cross-legged properly. He had his knees up in the air and Prabhupada was looking straight up his kilt. Prabhupada said, “What is that you’re wearing?” He said, “This is a typical Scottish dress, Your Grace, because we’ve just come back from some highland dancing.” Prabhupada said, “You are feeling comfortable in that skirt, or would you prefer to sit on a chair?” because he was kind of exposing himself to Srila Prabhupada. Anyway, this Bhakti Pramode was Prabhupada’s driver. He drove Prabhupada to Ratha-yatra or wherever Prabhupada wanted to go and sometimes he would try to get Prabhupada to go on little tours around London. He wanted to take Prabhupada to see Londinium, the first city the Romans established where there’s still some Roman ramparts, and he showed Prabhupada Buckingham Palace and London Bridge. Prabhupada liked Bhakti Pramode. Anyway, there we were in Runnymede Farm. We walked up to the main house, which wasn’t a standard farmhouse but was a small stately home with impressive column pillars in the front, high vaulted ceilings and a beautiful staircase. George and the rest of us stood with Srila Prabhupada, discussing the possibility of moving onto this property. Prabhupada said, “Before we move in, we will build a bank beside this house,” he pointed to Bhakti Pramode and continued, “You will be the bank manager because you have some experience in banking.” Then Prabhupada pointed to George and said, “And George, you will deposit all your money in that bank and we will spend everything in Krishna’s service.” George, taken aback, said, “All my money will be. . . ?” We all laughed because what Prabhupada said was completely unexpected. By the end of 1972 nothing had happened. Prabhupada wrote to me, “Better to take the upper hand and begin very energetically attempting to get some place. Expending energy for Krishna, that is appreciated and not the actual result of our energy. But if there is lack of energy being devoted for some purpose, then everything will be delayed and possibly stopped. Better to seize the iron while the fire is hot, that my guru maharaj used to tell me.” Prabhupada presumed that the iron was getting a little cold. Then in January of 1973, in a freezing cold, miserable British winter, we got information about a property called Piggot’s Manor in Letchmore Heath, 17 miles from central London. This was the one and only time I didn’t go as a devotee, with a shaved head, dhoti, tilak and kurta, but went disguised with trousers, coat and hat. The previous property George and I had looked at was an amazing health spa outside of the city of Oxford with an indoor heated swimming pool, a beautiful conservatory, saunas and mud baths and more than a hundred acres of land. The asking price was 330,000 pounds. After George saw that property he said, “This is a bit rich for you people, isn’t it? You’re supposed to be renunciants. Even I would have a hard time remaining Krishna conscious in this environment.” Then we got the details on the Manor, which was being sold for 220,000 pounds—110,000 pounds cheaper than the previous property. This time George didn’t come but I phoned him from a pay phone in what is now the Manor temple room, and I described the details and the price. He said, “It’s a lot cheaper than the previous property. What do you think?” I said, “I think it’s a fabulous place.” He said, “All right, I trust your judgement. I can’t come to see it because we’re having some meetings in Los Angeles with Allen Klein, our financial advisor, about selling the Apple Company.” George gave me the names and phone numbers of legal people who could do the paper work to buy the property, and said, “Phone them up, tell them that you want to secure this property, and when the transaction is complete, I’ll come and see it.” The paperwork took about six months. George had set up a foundation called the Material World Charitable Foundation. He said, “The profits from the Living In the Material World LP album will go towards paying for that property, but it’ll go through my foundation.” And that’s what happened—the Material World Charitable Foundation paid for the property, and the agreement was that we would pay 10 pounds a year rent, which is called a peppercorn rent. It’s the absolute minimum that you can pay for a costly property. We acquired the Manor from a Scottish lady, Mrs. Ruffles, who was from Aberdeen, a city in northern Scotland. The story is that the Scots are quite mean, but even in Scotland, people from Aberdeen are called Aberdonians, and are considered extremely mean. Before we moved into the property, Mrs. Ruffles removed every single doorknob from every single door. She removed a pair of brass lion’s head doorknockers from the front doors to the house. She removed all the pelmets and siphoned off all the diesel fuel (for the central heating) from the tanks. Mrs. Ruffles took away all the coal for the fireplaces. When Prabhupada went on an inspection, there were a couple of doors we couldn’t open because there were no doorknobs or door handles or any way to open the doors, so we had to show him those rooms later on. When we showed him his quarters upstairs, with its huge living room, a huge old-fashioned bathroom and a comfortable bedroom, he was happy. He said, “Yes, this is a nice facility for the spiritual master.” All this time the Deities that had been sent from India were in our temple sewing room. Generally when there’s a new temple project, first we get the land and house and then the Deities come. But in this situation, the Deities came one year before we acquired Bhaktivedanta Manor. When Prabhupada came in the summer of 1973, he asked me, “Where are the Deities that came to England in 1972?” I said, “They’re stored in Bury Place.” Prabhupada said, “We will install those Deities in this property.” And that’s what happened. On Janmastami Day of 1973, Srila Prabhupada installed the Deities and he named Them Sri Sri Radha- Gokulananda. He had intended to call the community New Gokula, and the bliss of Gokula is Radha-Gokulananda. One of the first things George did when he returned from Los Angeles was visit the Manor. We took him on a tour of all the rooms because by that time we’d gotten door handles and doorknobs and we showed him the gardens and the lake and all the other places. George was curious about everything. He liked the Manor and thought it was a good value for the money. Then Shyamasundar brought George to the temple room and said, “Wouldn’t some crystal chandeliers look great here?” George said, “Yeah, that would be really nice,” and George bought a pair of beautiful chandeliers for 3,000 pounds—after he had just bought the Manor for us. When Prabhupada first came to the Manor in 1973, it was raining and at that time he told me three things. First, he said, “This property is like gold kept in a dark place. To appreciate the value of gold requires bright light, especially sunshine, because gold naturally shines. But if you keep it in a dark place, then who can appreciate it? Similarly, this is a valuable property. But because of the weather, who can appreciate it?” The British weather is typically raining and cloudy and miserable. Occasionally, for a week or two, it would be sunny and we have beautiful photographs and films from the Manor of Prabhupada sitting on the lawn on sunny days. Second, because he was shrewd, Prabhupada also said, “This property is like a white elephant. A white elephant is something rare and valuable, but it is expensive to maintain. Similarly, this property will be very expensive to run.” That turned out to be very true. And finally he said that he wanted the Manor to be famous for cow protection. He said that we should teach the British the importance of cow protection, go-raksya, and keep 150 cows there. At that time we had 17 acres of land and only 6 acres of it was an arable field suitable for cows. I said, “Prabhupada, it’s not practical to keep 150 cows on 6 acres of land because each cow requires at least one acre.” Prabhupada said, “So purchase 150 acres for the cows. What is the difficulty? But that’s the minimum number of cows you should keep. If you need to purchase another 150 acres for those cows, then purchase it.” We didn’t acquire more land until 1997, when we got permission to put in a new approach road and got another 55 acres with that, so now we have about half the amount of land that Prabhupada said we should have in 1973—and now we have 25 cows. Prabhupada also wanted us to buy a double-decker red London transport bus, drive it into the center of London, fill it up with people interested in the Manor, and bring them there for some time. Srila Prabhupada’s vision was always long range, and sometimes we have a hard time fulfilling it. There is no place in the UK where Krishna conscious cow protection is practiced. Prabhupada wanted us to be self-sufficient in ghee and milk, to sell ghee to the visitors, and for us to be engaged in handicrafts like spinning, weaving cloth, making brass Deities and so forth. I said, “What about the Indian community? Should we focus on the Indian community?” At that time Prabhupada said, “No, we don’t need to bother with the Indian community, they are already Krishna conscious. We have to focus our attention on the British community, they know nothing about Krishna.” Once, George came to see Prabhupada with Ravi Shankar. As he usually did, George offered his full dandavats to Prabhupada. Ravi Shankar had presumed that George was his own disciple, but George never offered his dandavats to Ravi. He only did that to Prabhupada, and Prabhupada immediately sensed that Ravi Shankar was a little envious. After speaking with George, Prabhupada said, “You must be hungry. Go to the kitchen and get prasadam,” and Prabhupada asked a devotee to accompany George. When George had left, Prabhupada talked with Ravi Shankar and that placated Ravi Shankar’s false ego. Their conversation centered on plane tickets, travel and the best airline to travel on because Prabhupada understood that Ravi Shankar was not interested in spiritual philosophy. So Prabhupada related to Ravi Shankar in a way that he could keep up the conversation. Prabhupada was expert at dealing with everybody. He knew George’s love for prasadam and he knew that Ravi Shankar needed attention. When George visited Prabhupada at the Manor in 1976 he said, “Do you think I should move into the ashram, shave up, and wear tilak and a dhoti?” Prabhupada said, “No.” At that meeting George came with Ravi Shankar’s niece, Laksmi Shankar, and had just made the musical arrangements and written the words for a song called “Krishna, Where Are You?” that she had sung. George played that song for Prabhupada. Prabhupada listened to it and said, “Yes, this is the mood of the six Goswamis. Krishna, where are You? I have not captured You. I would love to capture You, I would love to have You in my vision eternally, but You are always disappearing from my sight. This feeling of separation, called vipralambha, is very pleasing. Go on writing lyrics and music like this. This is your service to Krishna. It will not be good for you to live in the ashram. You can do much more preaching and reach many more people if you remain outside.” Prabhupada was very understanding. By 1980 we’d been living at the Manor, worshipping Radha-Gokulananda, for seven years and many Indian businessmen wanted to get involved. There was a lot of restoration and repair work to do and we needed a car park. But these businessmen didn’t want to give their money because they knew that George’s foundation, not ISKCON, owned the property. They would say, “Can we trust George? One day he could decide he didn’t like you Hare Krishnas anymore and say, ‘Get out.’ There’s no binding legal document and we’d have given donations for nothing. We don’t want to do that.” At the time Vicitravirya was the temple president and we had had the Manor property appraised by Lloyd’s Bank and Barclay’s Bank and we’d also been advised by our solicitor. Vicitravirya said to me, “Ask George how he feels about us and about this property.” I called George and he came over. I said to George, “We want to stay here and many people want to give sizable donations—10,000, 20,000 pounds or more—but they know that we don’t own the property. So what we want is either to pay rent and get a 100- year lease from you, or to pay for the property in installments over 10 or 15 years.” We walked around, and since by that time George was into gardening and identified himself as a gardener, he didn’t like how we hadn’t maintained the gardens. I’d seen his place, Friar Park, and over the years it was amazing what a wonderful job he’d done on his property. He’d learned the Latin names of every plant and herb. Our gardens were full of weeds because our qualified devotees were on the streets selling books, not gardening and weeding and trimming hedges and planting, and our place was a terrible mess. George said, “I’m getting a headache just walking around here. You haven’t looked after this place.” I was very nervous. He said, “Give me a week to think about it and I’ll let you know.” A week later he called and said, “I’ve spoken with Allen Klein, and what he’s come up with is this. You put 45,000 pounds towards the cost of the property and from my side I’ll put another 145, which makes a total of 190. And we’ll show that we sold the property to you at a loss. I know you can’t afford 190 but if you can come up with 45,000 within a week, the place is yours. Then I don’t need to think about it anymore.” He wanted to give the place as a donation but he couldn’t legally because a charitable foundation can’t donate property to another charity—there has to be some financial transaction. Since the property cost 220, through the books he was making a loss of about 30,000. But by 1980 the two banks had appraised the property at 1.5 million pounds. So we got the 45,000 pounds together, gave it to him, he signed the deeds over to ISKCON, and from that day the Manor belonged to ISKCON. The last time George associated with a large group of devotees was when he and his wife, Olivia, visited the Manor in the summer of 1997. We had invited him to a celebratory dinner a few days after we got permission to build the new approach road. This dinner was held shortly after we had another amazing fundraising dinner called “Prabhupada’s Dream”, during which guests and patron members of the Manor were invited to raise funds to buy the land for the approach road. That evening the target was to raise one million pounds. We rented a large circus tent with a stage, set many tables, and served a nice dinner. There was a positive response—within two hours we raised 800,000 pounds—but we were 200,000 short until Michael, an Irish businessman patron member who imported Indian clothing, so appreciated Prabhupada’s Dream of having 150 acres of land for 150 protected cows, that he pledged 200,000 pounds. Michael had only once before been to the Manor and at that time he had taken part in arati and heard a lecture, but that evening was the first time he had attended a special patron’s dinner and he pledged more than any other patron member. What he pledged was a substantial amount of money for anyone, especially for a person of non-Indian origin. It was an auspicious evening. George agreed to come to our second dinner, but we didn’t know if his wife would come. Both were invited but Olivia never attended our public functions. She wasn’t a great fan of the Hare Krishna devotees—she followed somebody else—and she left it up to her husband to go to such things. But this time she came. A Gujarati disciple of Shivaram Swami named Sruti Dharma and I went to the car park at the Manor to welcome them. They had brought rubber Welly boots with them because they were enthusiastic to walk through the fields to see where the new approach road was going to be built, and we did that. We walked from where the main gate would be all the way to the Manor property, which is about a half a mile. We stopped to talk along the way and George observed the fields, “How far does the property extend on this side of the road? How far on the other side of the road? Are you going to have any kind of hedges or trees so that the road doesn’t look ugly, so it doesn’t spoil the overall beauty of the farmland?” We got into the details and when we were returning George said, “If you want to have a successful business, I suggest you start a garden center.” In England, garden centers are usually incredibly successful. Families who’ve just moved into their home buy trees and shrubs, flowers and herbs. George said, “If you do that, I don’t think you need planning permission for this.” He’d put a lot of thought into this idea and as I said, he identified himself as a gardener first and a musician second. He said, “I’ll help you set it up and with whatever you need.” We were happy that he was so open-minded about our project. Then we took him to the temple with Radha-Gokulananda’s altar, Sita-Rama, Laksman, and Hanuman’s altar and the little Gaura-Nitai Deities between Them. George offered his full dandavats to the Deities, Olivia offered her pranams and they both took charanamrita. Then we went into the dining room. The history behind this dinner is that in 1982 the local District Council decided that it didn’t want to have the Manor as a public place of worship because the building hadn’t been planned as such. They wanted to close down the Manor. Our 15-year campaign to keep the Manor open was basically a freedom of religion case. During that time reporters were always interviewing the devotees. We were in newspapers, on television, and on the radio. At one time the Manor had been owned by Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital, an old hospital in London, for a nurse’s training college. Mrs. Ruffles had bought it from Saint Bart’s with the idea of turning it into a nursing home, but she couldn’t carry the financial burden and so she sold it. Then we moved in and suddenly festivals were going on with thousands of visitors and many cars were in the village. We didn’t want the villagers to be irate with our festivals—we wanted to take the strain off the village. After a long, hard battle, in 1996, the British Government’s Secretary of State for the Environment, John Gummer, announced on television that, “the government gave permission for the construction of an access driveway which by-passed the local village, plus full planning permission for the Manor to be used as a place of public worship.” Before that neither the government nor the District Council had recognized us. That was a great victory for us and that’s why we had this victory dinner, which was a nice feast cooked by my wife, Bala Gopala. Everybody who had been involved in the campaign—over 200 people—were there, all VIP guests including some MP’s, legal people, newspaper people and so on. Akhandadhi mentioned all the different guests that were present and praised and honored everybody. Finally he came to George and said, “We have to thank George because this would never have happened if he hadn’t agreed to donate this property.” George was an honored guest, but he wasn’t expected to say anything. But before he spoke, Olivia stood up and said, “I am deeply touched by what I’ve heard and seen tonight, and I feel impelled to say that George has got true friends here, and I feel happy for him. And I feel happy that I didn’t miss the opportunity to witness this amazing gathering.” This was the only time that Olivia had come to the Manor. Before, when I called George and she answered the phone, she would be rude. I used to pray that she didn’t answer the phone. She would try to stop me from intruding into their privacy by visiting her husband. Olivia didn’t like us until that evening. After she sat down, Shyamasundar and Mukunda presented George with a little Prabhupada murti with a Prabhupada hat and glasses and a bead bag and a little book rest and a miniature size Bhagavad-gita, a little vyasasana and a sannyasi danda, and a little pair of kartals and a little pair of glasses. It was cute. George cradled Prabhupada and said, “I’m going to take Prabhupada home with me tonight.” It really touched him. He said, “I didn’t want to say anything, but I feel I’ve got to. First of all, I feel ashamed that I never participated in this campaign.” George hadn’t given any support, either verbally or in the press or in any other way. He said, “But I was following it on television or in the papers. I knew what was going on. In the back of my mind I thought if it didn’t work out, if you had to close the Manor, you could move over to my place in Henley and take over Friar Park—that could be your new temple.” He was so moved by what he had heard that evening that he was talking from his heart. Everybody started clapping like anything. |
To view the entire unedited video go to Memories 09 - The English Yatra
Interview 02
Dhananjaya: At 5:00 a.m. on Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur’s Disappearance Day in December 1970, a stretch white Mercedes stretch limousine with blacked out windows came to our temple. The chauffeur, with his cap, his dark suit and his polished black shoes, had a piece of paper with my name on it. I was called out of the temple room. I identified myself and the chauffeur said, “I’ve been told to take you to the fruit and vegetable market.” I said, “Who told you to do this?” He said, “George Harrison is with John Lennon on a yacht on the Thames, and he remembered it was an auspicious spiritual master’s day, so he gave me 100 pounds. John gave permission to use his Mercedes and I’m to take you to the fruit and vegetable market to get fruits and vegetables for a feast.” While partying with his friends on a yacht, George spontaneously decided to do this. Srila Prabhupada wrote to me, “How is the preaching in London?” That year so many boys and girls joined our temple that the brahmachari and brahmacharini rooms were overflowing. About 65 devotees were living in a property meant for 10 or 12. I reported this to Prabhupada and he wrote back, “Contact our good friend Mr. George Harrison and ask him to help us to find a bigger property.” George Harrison happened to be in town at the time—that year he recorded the album later called “Living in the Material World,” which had an insert of a big color print of Krishna and Arjuna, the same picture that’s on the cover of Bhagavad-gita As It Is. When I visited George, I’d take him all his favorite types of prasadam, like deep-fried potatoes, cauliflower and deep-fried curd soaked in sour cream, samosas, cauliflower pakoras, different kinds of sweets like burfi, sandesh and Simply Wonderfuls, as well as the strawberry buttermilk nectar that we became famous for. I was seeing him once a week until he said, “If you keep bringing all this stuff you have an open invitation to come as often as you want.” Then I began visiting him three or four times a week and when I felt it was the right opportunity I said, “George, now we have so many devotees in our temple that we’re running out of space. Could you help us find a bigger place?” Without hesitating he said, “Sure. No problem. Visit different estate agents, see different properties and if you find something really good, call me and I’ll come with you to check it out.” George was an exceptional person, and he constantly thought about how to spread Krishna consciousness. For instance, although it’s a single album, his album cover for Living In the Material World is double—it folds out—because George wanted to put a set of japa beads, a bead bag and a set of instructions how to use them into the other slipcover to be sold along with the record. And a lot of the lyrics on that album are Krishna conscious. One of the songs, called “The Lord Loves the One Who Loves the Lord,” George was very clear for whom that song was meant. He said, “I wrote that for Srila Prabhupada.” George told me he got inspired when I interrupted him with my visits to his studio. Once he said, “Every time you come here I can’t get any recording done. This recording studio costs 3,000 pounds a day but when you come, I don’t get anything done. We sit down, eat prasadam and talk about Prabhupada and Krishna consciousness.” He loved distributing Prabhupada’s Gita to his friends, and we’d supply him with beads and bead bags so his friends could chant japa. He had the mood of giving to others the wonderful opportunity of Krishna consciousness that he had received from Srila Prabhupada and the devotees. When I asked him, “Why don’t you take initiation from Prabhupada?” He said, “I don’t need to, I’ve already got a spiritual name.” I said, “What do you mean you’ve got a spiritual name?” He said, “My name’s Hari’s son, son of Hari,” and then he laughed—that was his Liverpudlian dry humor. When I went with him to visit different properties, he would have one hand on the steering wheel, steering the car, and the other hand in his bead bag, chanting. Once in 1972 an older English devotee called Bhakti Pramode, who worked as a security manager for the world-famous Midland Bank, drove Shyamasundar, Prabhupada and me in his car to see one of the properties that I’d arranged for George to see. It was called Runnymede Farm on the banks of the River Thames. Runnymede is where King John, the King of England, signed the Magna Cart in the early 13th century. The farm hadn’t been used for three or four years and was overgrown. George came from Friar Park in his Porsche, walked around the property and said, “They should call this Runnydown Farm, not Runnymede Farm.” Bhakti Pramode was an intriguing person who loved to fuss around Prabhupada. He never called Prabhupada “Prabhupada,” but he called Prabhupada “Your Grace.” He would say, “How is Your Grace this morning? Are you feeling cold? I’ve got a travel blanket I’d like to tuck around your legs so you don’t get cold.” He also liked Scottish highland dancing. Once he and his wife, Yasodamayi, came for Prabhupada’s evening darshan at Bury Place when Bhakti Pramode was wearing his full highland dress kit—with a tweed jacket and a kilt and the sporran and the long stockings and the sgian dubh, that little knife tucked into the top of the stockings with a kilt. He and his wife paid their obeisances and sat on the floor. Since he was elderly—in his mid to late 50s— Bhakti Pramode couldn’t sit cross-legged properly. He had his knees up in the air and Prabhupada was looking straight up his kilt. Prabhupada said, “What is that you’re wearing?” He said, “This is a typical Scottish dress, Your Grace, because we’ve just come back from some highland dancing.” Prabhupada said, “You are feeling comfortable in that skirt, or would you prefer to sit on a chair?” because he was kind of exposing himself to Srila Prabhupada. Anyway, this Bhakti Pramode was Prabhupada’s driver. He drove Prabhupada to Ratha-yatra or wherever Prabhupada wanted to go and sometimes he would try to get Prabhupada to go on little tours around London. He wanted to take Prabhupada to see Londinium, the first city the Romans established where there’s still some Roman ramparts, and he showed Prabhupada Buckingham Palace and London Bridge. Prabhupada liked Bhakti Pramode. Anyway, there we were in Runnymede Farm. We walked up to the main house, which wasn’t a standard farmhouse but was a small stately home with impressive column pillars in the front, high vaulted ceilings and a beautiful staircase. George and the rest of us stood with Srila Prabhupada, discussing the possibility of moving onto this property. Prabhupada said, “Before we move in, we will build a bank beside this house,” he pointed to Bhakti Pramode and continued, “You will be the bank manager because you have some experience in banking.” Then Prabhupada pointed to George and said, “And George, you will deposit all your money in that bank and we will spend everything in Krishna’s service.” George, taken aback, said, “All my money will be. . . ?” We all laughed because what Prabhupada said was completely unexpected. By the end of 1972 nothing had happened. Prabhupada wrote to me, “Better to take the upper hand and begin very energetically attempting to get some place. Expending energy for Krishna, that is appreciated and not the actual result of our energy. But if there is lack of energy being devoted for some purpose, then everything will be delayed and possibly stopped. Better to seize the iron while the fire is hot, that my guru maharaj used to tell me.” Prabhupada presumed that the iron was getting a little cold. Then in January of 1973, in a freezing cold, miserable British winter, we got information about a property called Piggot’s Manor in Letchmore Heath, 17 miles from central London. This was the one and only time I didn’t go as a devotee, with a shaved head, dhoti, tilak and kurta, but went disguised with trousers, coat and hat. The previous property George and I had looked at was an amazing health spa outside of the city of Oxford with an indoor heated swimming pool, a beautiful conservatory, saunas and mud baths and more than a hundred acres of land. The asking price was 330,000 pounds. After George saw that property he said, “This is a bit rich for you people, isn’t it? You’re supposed to be renunciants. Even I would have a hard time remaining Krishna conscious in this environment.” Then we got the details on the Manor, which was being sold for 220,000 pounds—110,000 pounds cheaper than the previous property. This time George didn’t come but I phoned him from a pay phone in what is now the Manor temple room, and I described the details and the price. He said, “It’s a lot cheaper than the previous property. What do you think?” I said, “I think it’s a fabulous place.” He said, “All right, I trust your judgement. I can’t come to see it because we’re having some meetings in Los Angeles with Allen Klein, our financial advisor, about selling the Apple Company.” George gave me the names and phone numbers of legal people who could do the paper work to buy the property, and said, “Phone them up, tell them that you want to secure this property, and when the transaction is complete, I’ll come and see it.” The paperwork took about six months. George had set up a foundation called the Material World Charitable Foundation. He said, “The profits from the Living In the Material World LP album will go towards paying for that property, but it’ll go through my foundation.” And that’s what happened—the Material World Charitable Foundation paid for the property, and the agreement was that we would pay 10 pounds a year rent, which is called a peppercorn rent. It’s the absolute minimum that you can pay for a costly property. We acquired the Manor from a Scottish lady, Mrs. Ruffles, who was from Aberdeen, a city in northern Scotland. The story is that the Scots are quite mean, but even in Scotland, people from Aberdeen are called Aberdonians, and are considered extremely mean. Before we moved into the property, Mrs. Ruffles removed every single doorknob from every single door. She removed a pair of brass lion’s head doorknockers from the front doors to the house. She removed all the pelmets and siphoned off all the diesel fuel (for the central heating) from the tanks. Mrs. Ruffles took away all the coal for the fireplaces. When Prabhupada went on an inspection, there were a couple of doors we couldn’t open because there were no doorknobs or door handles or any way to open the doors, so we had to show him those rooms later on. When we showed him his quarters upstairs, with its huge living room, a huge old-fashioned bathroom and a comfortable bedroom, he was happy. He said, “Yes, this is a nice facility for the spiritual master.” All this time the Deities that had been sent from India were in our temple sewing room. Generally when there’s a new temple project, first we get the land and house and then the Deities come. But in this situation, the Deities came one year before we acquired Bhaktivedanta Manor. When Prabhupada came in the summer of 1973, he asked me, “Where are the Deities that came to England in 1972?” I said, “They’re stored in Bury Place.” Prabhupada said, “We will install those Deities in this property.” And that’s what happened. On Janmastami Day of 1973, Srila Prabhupada installed the Deities and he named Them Sri Sri Radha- Gokulananda. He had intended to call the community New Gokula, and the bliss of Gokula is Radha-Gokulananda. One of the first things George did when he returned from Los Angeles was visit the Manor. We took him on a tour of all the rooms because by that time we’d gotten door handles and doorknobs and we showed him the gardens and the lake and all the other places. George was curious about everything. He liked the Manor and thought it was a good value for the money. Then Shyamasundar brought George to the temple room and said, “Wouldn’t some crystal chandeliers look great here?” George said, “Yeah, that would be really nice,” and George bought a pair of beautiful chandeliers for 3,000 pounds—after he had just bought the Manor for us. When Prabhupada first came to the Manor in 1973, it was raining and at that time he told me three things. First, he said, “This property is like gold kept in a dark place. To appreciate the value of gold requires bright light, especially sunshine, because gold naturally shines. But if you keep it in a dark place, then who can appreciate it? Similarly, this is a valuable property. But because of the weather, who can appreciate it?” The British weather is typically raining and cloudy and miserable. Occasionally, for a week or two, it would be sunny and we have beautiful photographs and films from the Manor of Prabhupada sitting on the lawn on sunny days. Second, because he was shrewd, Prabhupada also said, “This property is like a white elephant. A white elephant is something rare and valuable, but it is expensive to maintain. Similarly, this property will be very expensive to run.” That turned out to be very true. And finally he said that he wanted the Manor to be famous for cow protection. He said that we should teach the British the importance of cow protection, go-raksya, and keep 150 cows there. At that time we had 17 acres of land and only 6 acres of it was an arable field suitable for cows. I said, “Prabhupada, it’s not practical to keep 150 cows on 6 acres of land because each cow requires at least one acre.” Prabhupada said, “So purchase 150 acres for the cows. What is the difficulty? But that’s the minimum number of cows you should keep. If you need to purchase another 150 acres for those cows, then purchase it.” We didn’t acquire more land until 1997, when we got permission to put in a new approach road and got another 55 acres with that, so now we have about half the amount of land that Prabhupada said we should have in 1973—and now we have 25 cows. Prabhupada also wanted us to buy a double-decker red London transport bus, drive it into the center of London, fill it up with people interested in the Manor, and bring them there for some time. Srila Prabhupada’s vision was always long range, and sometimes we have a hard time fulfilling it. There is no place in the UK where Krishna conscious cow protection is practiced. Prabhupada wanted us to be self-sufficient in ghee and milk, to sell ghee to the visitors, and for us to be engaged in handicrafts like spinning, weaving cloth, making brass Deities and so forth. I said, “What about the Indian community? Should we focus on the Indian community?” At that time Prabhupada said, “No, we don’t need to bother with the Indian community, they are already Krishna conscious. We have to focus our attention on the British community, they know nothing about Krishna.” Once, George came to see Prabhupada with Ravi Shankar. As he usually did, George offered his full dandavats to Prabhupada. Ravi Shankar had presumed that George was his own disciple, but George never offered his dandavats to Ravi. He only did that to Prabhupada, and Prabhupada immediately sensed that Ravi Shankar was a little envious. After speaking with George, Prabhupada said, “You must be hungry. Go to the kitchen and get prasadam,” and Prabhupada asked a devotee to accompany George. When George had left, Prabhupada talked with Ravi Shankar and that placated Ravi Shankar’s false ego. Their conversation centered on plane tickets, travel and the best airline to travel on because Prabhupada understood that Ravi Shankar was not interested in spiritual philosophy. So Prabhupada related to Ravi Shankar in a way that he could keep up the conversation. Prabhupada was expert at dealing with everybody. He knew George’s love for prasadam and he knew that Ravi Shankar needed attention. When George visited Prabhupada at the Manor in 1976 he said, “Do you think I should move into the ashram, shave up, and wear tilak and a dhoti?” Prabhupada said, “No.” At that meeting George came with Ravi Shankar’s niece, Laksmi Shankar, and had just made the musical arrangements and written the words for a song called “Krishna, Where Are You?” that she had sung. George played that song for Prabhupada. Prabhupada listened to it and said, “Yes, this is the mood of the six Goswamis. Krishna, where are You? I have not captured You. I would love to capture You, I would love to have You in my vision eternally, but You are always disappearing from my sight. This feeling of separation, called vipralambha, is very pleasing. Go on writing lyrics and music like this. This is your service to Krishna. It will not be good for you to live in the ashram. You can do much more preaching and reach many more people if you remain outside.” Prabhupada was very understanding. By 1980 we’d been living at the Manor, worshipping Radha-Gokulananda, for seven years and many Indian businessmen wanted to get involved. There was a lot of restoration and repair work to do and we needed a car park. But these businessmen didn’t want to give their money because they knew that George’s foundation, not ISKCON, owned the property. They would say, “Can we trust George? One day he could decide he didn’t like you Hare Krishnas anymore and say, ‘Get out.’ There’s no binding legal document and we’d have given donations for nothing. We don’t want to do that.” At the time Vicitravirya was the temple president and we had had the Manor property appraised by Lloyd’s Bank and Barclay’s Bank and we’d also been advised by our solicitor. Vicitravirya said to me, “Ask George how he feels about us and about this property.” I called George and he came over. I said to George, “We want to stay here and many people want to give sizable donations—10,000, 20,000 pounds or more—but they know that we don’t own the property. So what we want is either to pay rent and get a 100- year lease from you, or to pay for the property in installments over 10 or 15 years.” We walked around, and since by that time George was into gardening and identified himself as a gardener, he didn’t like how we hadn’t maintained the gardens. I’d seen his place, Friar Park, and over the years it was amazing what a wonderful job he’d done on his property. He’d learned the Latin names of every plant and herb. Our gardens were full of weeds because our qualified devotees were on the streets selling books, not gardening and weeding and trimming hedges and planting, and our place was a terrible mess. George said, “I’m getting a headache just walking around here. You haven’t looked after this place.” I was very nervous. He said, “Give me a week to think about it and I’ll let you know.” A week later he called and said, “I’ve spoken with Allen Klein, and what he’s come up with is this. You put 45,000 pounds towards the cost of the property and from my side I’ll put another 145, which makes a total of 190. And we’ll show that we sold the property to you at a loss. I know you can’t afford 190 but if you can come up with 45,000 within a week, the place is yours. Then I don’t need to think about it anymore.” He wanted to give the place as a donation but he couldn’t legally because a charitable foundation can’t donate property to another charity—there has to be some financial transaction. Since the property cost 220, through the books he was making a loss of about 30,000. But by 1980 the two banks had appraised the property at 1.5 million pounds. So we got the 45,000 pounds together, gave it to him, he signed the deeds over to ISKCON, and from that day the Manor belonged to ISKCON. The last time George associated with a large group of devotees was when he and his wife, Olivia, visited the Manor in the summer of 1997. We had invited him to a celebratory dinner a few days after we got permission to build the new approach road. This dinner was held shortly after we had another amazing fundraising dinner called “Prabhupada’s Dream”, during which guests and patron members of the Manor were invited to raise funds to buy the land for the approach road. That evening the target was to raise one million pounds. We rented a large circus tent with a stage, set many tables, and served a nice dinner. There was a positive response—within two hours we raised 800,000 pounds—but we were 200,000 short until Michael, an Irish businessman patron member who imported Indian clothing, so appreciated Prabhupada’s Dream of having 150 acres of land for 150 protected cows, that he pledged 200,000 pounds. Michael had only once before been to the Manor and at that time he had taken part in arati and heard a lecture, but that evening was the first time he had attended a special patron’s dinner and he pledged more than any other patron member. What he pledged was a substantial amount of money for anyone, especially for a person of non-Indian origin. It was an auspicious evening. George agreed to come to our second dinner, but we didn’t know if his wife would come. Both were invited but Olivia never attended our public functions. She wasn’t a great fan of the Hare Krishna devotees—she followed somebody else—and she left it up to her husband to go to such things. But this time she came. A Gujarati disciple of Shivaram Swami named Sruti Dharma and I went to the car park at the Manor to welcome them. They had brought rubber Welly boots with them because they were enthusiastic to walk through the fields to see where the new approach road was going to be built, and we did that. We walked from where the main gate would be all the way to the Manor property, which is about a half a mile. We stopped to talk along the way and George observed the fields, “How far does the property extend on this side of the road? How far on the other side of the road? Are you going to have any kind of hedges or trees so that the road doesn’t look ugly, so it doesn’t spoil the overall beauty of the farmland?” We got into the details and when we were returning George said, “If you want to have a successful business, I suggest you start a garden center.” In England, garden centers are usually incredibly successful. Families who’ve just moved into their home buy trees and shrubs, flowers and herbs. George said, “If you do that, I don’t think you need planning permission for this.” He’d put a lot of thought into this idea and as I said, he identified himself as a gardener first and a musician second. He said, “I’ll help you set it up and with whatever you need.” We were happy that he was so open-minded about our project. Then we took him to the temple with Radha-Gokulananda’s altar, Sita-Rama, Laksman, and Hanuman’s altar and the little Gaura-Nitai Deities between Them. George offered his full dandavats to the Deities, Olivia offered her pranams and they both took charanamrita. Then we went into the dining room. The history behind this dinner is that in 1982 the local District Council decided that it didn’t want to have the Manor as a public place of worship because the building hadn’t been planned as such. They wanted to close down the Manor. Our 15-year campaign to keep the Manor open was basically a freedom of religion case. During that time reporters were always interviewing the devotees. We were in newspapers, on television, and on the radio. At one time the Manor had been owned by Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital, an old hospital in London, for a nurse’s training college. Mrs. Ruffles had bought it from Saint Bart’s with the idea of turning it into a nursing home, but she couldn’t carry the financial burden and so she sold it. Then we moved in and suddenly festivals were going on with thousands of visitors and many cars were in the village. We didn’t want the villagers to be irate with our festivals—we wanted to take the strain off the village. After a long, hard battle, in 1996, the British Government’s Secretary of State for the Environment, John Gummer, announced on television that, “the government gave permission for the construction of an access driveway which by-passed the local village, plus full planning permission for the Manor to be used as a place of public worship.” Before that neither the government nor the District Council had recognized us. That was a great victory for us and that’s why we had this victory dinner, which was a nice feast cooked by my wife, Bala Gopala. Everybody who had been involved in the campaign—over 200 people—were there, all VIP guests including some MP’s, legal people, newspaper people and so on. Akhandadhi mentioned all the different guests that were present and praised and honored everybody. Finally he came to George and said, “We have to thank George because this would never have happened if he hadn’t agreed to donate this property.” George was an honored guest, but he wasn’t expected to say anything. But before he spoke, Olivia stood up and said, “I am deeply touched by what I’ve heard and seen tonight, and I feel impelled to say that George has got true friends here, and I feel happy for him. And I feel happy that I didn’t miss the opportunity to witness this amazing gathering.” This was the only time that Olivia had come to the Manor. Before, when I called George and she answered the phone, she would be rude. I used to pray that she didn’t answer the phone. She would try to stop me from intruding into their privacy by visiting her husband. Olivia didn’t like us until that evening. After she sat down, Shyamasundar and Mukunda presented George with a little Prabhupada murti with a Prabhupada hat and glasses and a bead bag and a little book rest and a miniature size Bhagavad-gita, a little vyasasana and a sannyasi danda, and a little pair of kartals and a little pair of glasses. It was cute. George cradled Prabhupada and said, “I’m going to take Prabhupada home with me tonight.” It really touched him. He said, “I didn’t want to say anything, but I feel I’ve got to. First of all, I feel ashamed that I never participated in this campaign.” George hadn’t given any support, either verbally or in the press or in any other way. He said, “But I was following it on television or in the papers. I knew what was going on. In the back of my mind I thought if it didn’t work out, if you had to close the Manor, you could move over to my place in Henley and take over Friar Park—that could be your new temple.” He was so moved by what he had heard that evening that he was talking from his heart. Everybody started clapping like anything. |
To view the entire unedited video go to Memories 39 - Dhananjaya
The full Prabhupada Memories Series can be viewed here and also at www.prabhupadamemories.com
Following Srila Prabhupada
Interview DVD 01
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Interview DVD 03
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Interview DVD 05
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Interview DVD 06
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Interview DVD 08
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