Srila Prabhupad Reminiscent...

Just as I was about to get back to work after my lunch break, I got this wonderful emails from a mailing group I subscribe too, thought I would share it:

Trip to the US

Trivikrama Maharaja came in the afternoon to report that he will be flying to Hong Kong to begin his China preaching right after Srila Prabhupada leaves Los Angeles. He also brought what he said was the very first newsclipping of Prabhupada in America, printed in the Butler Eagle in 1965 just a few days after Srila Prabhupada had first landed in America. It had a wonderful photo of him looking innocent and humble, a saintly, scholarly person holding his Srimad-Bhagavatam. It was accompanied by a brief description of his activities and intentions, describing him as an "ambassador of bhakti-yoga."

Prabhupada was surprised and happy to see it and fondly recalled how he was first sponsored to come here through a chance meeting. He was full of smiles as he recalled the events. "So I did not say anything seriously, but perhaps he took it very seriously, Gopala's father. So he might have written to Gopala that 'Swami Bhaktivedanta wants to go to America. If you sponsor, then he can go.' So whatever the correspondence was there between the father and son, I did not know. I simply asked him, 'Why don't you ask your son Gopala to sponsor so that I can go there? I want to preach there.' So after some months, three, four months, the No-Objection Certificate from the Indian embassy in New York, Gopala sent to me, yes, that he had already sponsored my arrival there for one month. So all of a sudden I got the paper, No-Objection Certificate by the Indian embassy. After so much inquiry, I learned that so much inquiry was done and so on, so on. Then I tried to take a passport and paper process. So I got the passport. Then I approached that Sumati Morarji. She once gave me five hundred rupees in exchange of my Bhagavata book, so I approached her, that 'Give me one ticket.' They have got their shipping company, Scindia Navigation. So she said, 'Svamiji, you are so old, you are taking this so responsibility. Do you think it is right?' 'No, it is all right.' At that time, I was seventy years old. So all the secretary, they thought that 'Svamiji is going to die there.' Anyway, they gave me the ticket, one return free ticket by their ship. Then arrangement was going on. So there is another process to get a P-form sanctioned by the state government. So it was applied for. No sanction was coming. Then I went to the State Bank of India, the officer Mr. Bhattacari. So he told me: 'Svamiji, you are sponsored by private man. So we cannot accept it. If you are invited by some institution, then we could consider, but you are invited by a private man for one month, and, after one month, if you are in difficulty, and there will be so much obstacles and so on.' 'Well, I have already prepared everything to go.' So I said that 'You, what you have done?' 'No, I have decided not to sanction your P-form.' 'No, no, don't do this. You better send to your superior. It should not be done like that.' So he took my request and he sent the file to Chief Officer of Foreign Exchange, something like that. Anyway, he is the supreme man in the State Bank of India. So I went to see him. So I asked his secretary that 'You have got such file? You kindly put to Mr. Rao, 'I want to see him.' So the secretary agreed, and he put the file and put my slip that I wanted to see him. I was waiting. So Mr. Rao came personally. He said, 'Svamiji, I have passed your case. Don't worry.' In this way."

"So it is a great history. There was two days I was attacked in heart on the ship. So hardship."

Not wanting to miss any drop of the nectar of Srila Prabhupada's recollections of the momentous events, Trivikrama Maharaja prompted him to go on. "Then you had a dream?"

"Hmm," Prabhupada said thoughtfully, but a little reluctant to reveal anything further. I hadn't heard this kind of detail so I also wanted him to continue. "What was that, Srila Prabhupada?"

Prabhupada smiled bashfully. "That is... The dream was I must come here."

"It was some instruction that you got?" I asked, eager to delve but trying not to demand.

"The dream was that Krsna in His many forms was, bowing the row-what is called?"

"Rowing the boat?" I offered.

"Yes. And when I arrived in Boston I wrote that poetry." He continued for a few minutes describing his first year in brief, how he kept extending his visa and how another heart attack forced him to return to India because he thought he was going to die. When he boarded the plane he said that Brahmananda and the others were all crying, thinking he would not return. But six months later he did come back. And shortly after that this Los Angeles center was started in earnest.

It was wonderful to sit and hear him recall his efforts to spread Krsna consciousness, and again it drove home the great personal sacrifice he made, ultimately just for our benefit.

- From the "A Transcendental Diary Vol 2" by HG Hari Sauri dasa