Chapter 31 – Hyderabad Days: Garbage Eaters and a Rose Petal Carpet for Prabhupāda

(Devotees chanting on the streets of Hyderabad, 1976)

Śrīla Prabhupāda flew from Delhi to Hyderabad on the evening of December 3rd, accompanied by his entourage, which included his personal servant, Hari Śauri Dāsa, his acting secretary, Jagadīśa Dāsa, and Haṁsadūta Swami. A small group of devotees, including Mahārāja, went to the airport with two cars to receive them and bring them to the temple. Mahārāja was fortunate to ride in the front seat of Prabhupāda’s car beside the driver, Rāma Śraddhā Dāsa, while Śrīla Prabhupāda and Hari Śaurī sat in the back.

That evening, the city was bustling. The large Muslim community of Hyderabad were observing Bakrid – a festival commemorating the unwavering faith of the prophet Abraham, who was prepared to sacrifice his son, Isaac, in obedience to the instruction of God. The main feature of the festival is the ritual slaughter of thousands of goats, whose meat is then shared among family and friends.

Narasiṅgha Mahārāja: During the drive, Rāma Śraddhā asked Srila Prabhupāda, “Yesterday was  a Muslim holiday and they kill thousands of goats on that day, so are they going to hell?”
Prabhupāda said, “Going to hell? They’re already in hell! If you ask me to kill a goat, I would think, ‘Oh, this must be hell!'”
Then he told the story about the saint who had benedictions for the butcher, the prince, the brahmacārī, and the sādhu. He blessed the butcher – “You don’t live, you don’t die – because your life is already so horrible because you’re killing so many animals, and don’t die either, because when you die, then you’re going to have to suffer for all these things.” It was a matter of perspective, Prabhupāda was saying that is hell, and that will perpetuate yet more hell and extra added interest.

When Prabhupāda arrived at the temple, there was a tumultuous kīrtana followed by a simple guru-pūjā.

Narasiṅgha Mahārāja: The guru-pūjā wasn’t very elaborate – we offered a lamp, some incense and some flowers were offered to him as the kīrtana was going on. And we all saw that during the guru-pūjā, Prabhupāda picked up some of the flowers that were offered to him and looked at them. You could see from a distance – these flowers should have been thrown away two days ago –  and we were offering them to Prabhupāda! He just shook his head as if to say, “When will they ever learn?”

(Śrīla Prabhupāda in the Hyderabad temple, 1976)

Śrīla Prabhupāda then went up to his room where he spoke informally with the assembled devotees and guests on various subjects – the importance of nāma-saṅkīrtana for ensuring nature’s cooperation in providing life’s necessities such as rain, the simplicity of spreading Kṛṣṇa’s message, and the great fortune of taking birth in India. He especially impressed upon his Indian audience that their countrymen had grown indolent in spiritual life and were now absorbed only in the pursuit of wealth. He told them that they had a 500 acre farm where so many people could live nicely and chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, but the Indians were not interested:

I have seen while coming from Vṛndāvana to Delhi, hundreds and thousands of young men, they are going to the factories on cycle, coming from distant place, at least twenty miles, twenty-five miles, and it takes two hours to reach the factory, or more than that. And there he works hard eight hours and then again goes back, two hours, three hours, on cycle. I do not know what kind of rest he takes. This is life. And if we request these young men that “You come here. You live here comfortably. You eat here sumptuously and chant Hare Kṛṣṇa,” they will not. Just see how unfortunate they are. Mandāḥ sumanda-matayo manda-bhāgyā hy upadrutāḥ (‘They are quarrelsome, lazy, misguided, unlucky and, above all, always disturbed.’ – Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 1.1.10).

This is Kali-yuga. All bad men, unfortunate and disturbed. This is the position. They will work so hard, they’ll catch daily passenger trains, Calcutta, Bombay, I have seen. They are actually hanging, and some of them are falling down, lost life, and coming from hundred miles away. But still, if you ask him that, “You come here. Live with us. Chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. Even with your family you can come…” We are doing that at Māyāpura. He will not. How strong sense gratification propensity is. This is position of Kali-yuga. They are making propaganda, roṭi, kapḍā, makhān (food, clothing, butter). So we are giving, “Come on – roṭi, kapḍā, makhān; you chant Hare Kṛṣṇa.”
“No. I want wine. I want meat. I want prostitute.”
This is going on. Simply they say, “roṭi, kapḍā, makhān.” But no, they want wine, woman and sense pleasure, that’s all. Roṭi kapḍā makhān is not difficult. You can get. But they want something more. You see how many advertisements for selling wine in your Hyderabad. Is that roṭi, kapḍā, makhān?

After Prabhupāda’s talk, as everyone left his room, Mahārāja took the chance to confront Haṁsadūta outside. Haṁsadūta could immediately sense that he was not pleased, but he tried to lighten the mood nonetheless.
“Mahārāja! Hare Kṛṣṇa! How are you? How was the collect in Dubai?”
But Mahārāja was not interested in empty pleasantries. He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a wad of cash, and handed it to Haṁsadūta.
“Here’s the four hundred dollars I borrowed from you. Oh, and by the way – I received that letter signed by Śrīla Prabhupāda. You know, the one you wrote!!”
Haṁsadūta didn’t even deny his misdemeanour. He simply shrugged. “Hey, man! What to do? I thought you were gonna rip me off!”
Without another word, Mahārāja turned on his heel and walked away, shaking his head in disgust at Haṁsadūta’s shamelessness.

The next morning, after maṅgala-ārati, Śrīla Prabhupāda was taken by car to a nearby park and went on his customary early morning walk, accompanied by his disciples. When he returned to the temple, he walked up to sit on his vyāsāsana, only to find a mess.

Narasiṅgha Mahārāja: All the withered flowers we had offered the night before were still there on the vyāsāsana, ashes from the incense were on the floor, the guru-pūjā plate was still there with the burnt-out ghee lamp we had offered and it was all tarnished. Nobody had cleaned up, and nobody had prepared the guru-pūjā plate for that morning. It was a total fiasco! Prabhupāda stopped, took one look at it, then turned and went straight to his room – no guru-pūjā and no class that morning. I was just a travelling sannyāsī, not one of the temple managers, so I was just passing through. But I was thinking, “Prabhupāda is right here and this happens! It’s like forgetting his breakfast or something. How do you do that? How do you forget? This is ridiculous!”

Later that morning, Śrīla Prabhupāda expressed his desire to inspect the premises and see how the work was progressing. Mahāṁsa Swami – an Indian devotee who had originally come from a Parsi family in Bombay – was in charge of the Hyderabad project, which included both the temple and the nearby farm. He and Mūrti Dāsa, an American devotee who was the temple architect, led Śrīla Prabhupāda and the accompanying sannyāsīs around the temple grounds.

(The Hyderabad temple under construction, 1976)

Narasiṅgha Mahārāja: When he went on his first tour of the Hyderabad temple, they showed him the brahmacārī āśrama, the offices, and there was a separate building connected by a stairway to the toilet facilities. Then finally, Śrīla Prabhupāda asked Mahāṁsa Swami, “Where are facilities for the ladies?”
Mahāṁsa smacked his forehead with his hand and said, ” Śrīla Prabhupāda, there are no facilities. We forgot! But we can tear this wall down, put up a wall here…”
Prabhupada said, “Never mind. It is good that you have forgotten. If some women join, they can go to the farm.” 

Since the temple was still under construction, there was always something that needed cleaning. A roster was posted on the noticeboard, and devotees would sign up to clean different areas – the kitchen, the temple room, the windows, and so on. Mahārāja volunteered to clean the steps of the brahmacārī āśrama and was the only sannyāsī to add his name to the list of cleaners. When Haṁsadūta and some of the other devotees noticed his name, they ridiculed him, but Mahārāja simply ignored them.

Mahārāja continued living on bananas and peanuts, and some of the temple devotees continued to call him an offender to prasādam. However, that day, Śrīla Prabhupāda asked Hari Śauri to bring him a plate of prasādam which had been offered to Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Madana Mohana, the temple Deities.

(The deities of Radha Madana-mohana, Hyderabad, 1976)

Narasiṅgha Mahārāja: Prabhupāda said, “Bring me some prasādam. I want to see what the devotees are eating? What do you offer the Deities? Bring it.”
So they brought a big plate of prasādam which was this sort of grey-yellow corn sludge. Suddenly he started ringing his bell and Hari Śaurī came running in. Prabhupāda yelled, “Call Mahāṁsa! Call!”
Prabhupāda was so loud that, myself, Haṁsadūta, and other devotees came running in. Everybody ran to his room. Finally Mahāṁsa showed up and Prabhupāda asked him, “What is this?”
“It’s prasādam, Prabhupāda.”
“Prasādam?
“Yes, Prabhupāda.”
“It is not prasādam. It is pig-food! It is garbage. You are all eating garbage!”
Then he just went on and on and on. He said, “Kṛṣṇa is not your garbage disposal! He will not eat whatever you put in front of Him.”
And I was thinking, “That is what I’ve been trying to tell everybody!” And it wasn’t just me – devotees like Rāma Śraddhā and others had been complaining about the quality of the prasādam, and so there had been this big controversy in the temple. Is it prasādam or not? Some devotees said it was, and some said it wasn’t – and now Śrīla Prabhupāda was vindicating us.
So, then Prabhupāda asked who was the cook and Mahāṁsa told him, “Prabhupāda – the cook is a hired brāhmaṇa.” Because the devotees were so busy, or did not have brāhmaṇa initiation, Mahāṁsa had hired a cook. In India, Prabhupāda didn’t mind that so much, as long as the brāhmaṇa was pukka – means, no smoking, no non-veg, no bad habits, clean and all these things. Of course, he preferred it that our own devotees should cook, but in certain circumstances, it wasn’t possible.
The Prabhupāda told Mahāṁsa, “He is not brāhmaṇa – he is a cheat!”
“No, no, Prabhupāda, he is not cheating. I’ve checked – he is not stealing anything.”
“He is cheat because he says he is brāhmaṇa, but he is rickshaw-wallah! Get rid of him!!”
Later it was found out that the cook actually was a rickshaw-wallah. Prabhupāda told Mahāmsa that he wanted the devotees to get first-class prasādam.

********

After the two guru-pūjā fiascos, Mahārāja was determined not to let it happen again. Although he only had $120 to his name, that evening he went into town and spent $100 (the equivalent of $550–$600 USD, or about 50,000 Rupees today) on the finest roses he could find, and hired two rickshaws to bring them back to the temple. Before maṅgala-ārati, he set to work plucking petals and stringing garlands.
As Haṁsadūta was preparing to accompany Śrīla Prabhupāda on his morning walk, he caught sight of Mahārāja busily threading roses and burst out laughing.
“What kind of swami are you?” he teased. “This is women’s work, man!”
Mahārāja ignored him, and Haṁsadūta walked off, still chuckling to himself.

Narasiṅgha Mahārāja: I didn’t go on the morning walk that day. Instead, I set up everything so that when Prabhupāda came back, there would be a proper reception and guru-pūjā. The temple was down an alley and when Prabhupāda came back from his morning walk, his white Ambassador pulled up outside, and all the devotees were doing kīrtana to greet him up on the steps where there are these two big marble lions. When Prabhupāda stepped out of the back of the car, he was met by a sky full of red rose petals! I had this big wicker basket full to the brim of petals and I was throwing them in the sky over him from five steps up – they were just trickling down on him. First he stood there at the bottom of the steps, and just smiled at me, then he started walking up the steps. I was walking backwards, and I kept throwing handfuls, making a red carpet of rose petals as he entered the temple room and walked towards his vyāsāsana. Then, when we got to the middle of the temple, I suddenly ran out of petals. Prabhupāda stopped, tilted his head, smiled, and lifted his right hand as if to say, “So? Now what?” But I had another basket ready at the side – I grabbed that and started raining petals on him again. Prabhupāda was beaming and began walking again, then I took him all the way to his vyāsāsana, which was also lavishly decorated with rose garlands.

The ārati paraphernalia was ready and it was all shiny. Prabhupāda sat down and I offered a big rose garland to him. I remember how all the devotees were crowded around – everyone was pressed up very close. I’d made over thirty rose garlands so everyone in the temple was able to offer one to Śrīla Prabhupāda. There were so many garlands that as fast as Hari Śauri could take them off, they were just piling on. Devotees were coming up and offering handfuls of petals. Prabhupāda sat there cross-legged, with his eyes closed, playing the karatālas, and there were so many flower petals on him that you couldn’t see his legs. They went all the way up to his chest – he was almost completely buried in them!

Now, sometimes after the guru-pūjā, when there were so many flowers, Prabhupāda would pick some up and throw them onto all the devotees. That day he didn’t do that. I was standing very close to Prabhupāda, playing a pair of karatālas and chanting with my eyes closed. All of the sudden I felt a heap of flowers fall on my head. “Huh!?” I opened my eyes to see Prabhupāda standing on his vyāsāsana. He had grabbed two big armfuls of petals, stood up, reached over, and dumped them on my head. Everyone was in shock – especially me! Haṁsadūta was leading the kīrtana, and seeing that, he was so shocked, he almost stopped singing! Then Prabhupāda sat back down, picked up his karatālas again, and carried on chanting.

Narasiṅgha Mahārāja went to Śrīla Prabhupāda’s room in the afternoon, where Prabhupāda was speaking informally with a few devotees and guests. Among the visitors were some college students, and one of them asked Prabhupāda a question about the ātmā:

Student: Where is soul?

Śrīla Prabhupāda: Hmm?

Jagat Guru Swami (Narasiṅgha Mahārāja): He is asking, “Where is the soul?”

Prabhupāda: Can you see? So soul is within the heart. When the soul goes away, you cannot explain what happened. You say “heart failure.” So why the heart failure? The nerves and the bones and the muscle and the blood, everything is there, and still, you say that “It stopped. Heart failure.” So just like machine is running, but somehow or other stopped, but you do not know what is the cause of stopping. The cause is that the heart, when it goes away, then the machine stops.

Student: God is within the soul also.

Prabhupāda: Yes. God is along with you. Īśvaraḥ sarva-bhūtānāṁ hṛd-deśe arjuna tiṣṭhati (Bhagavad-gītā 18.61). He is there.

(Śrīla Prabhupāda in his room in Hyderabad, 1976)

As the discussion went on and several questions were asked, one of the students inquired, “Swamiji, have you seen Kṛṣṇa?”

Narasingha Mahārāja: “Have you seen Krsna?” – this is a common question in India to sādhus. Prabhupāda told him, “Do you think we are all fools? What do you think?” He really challenged him.
“Are we following blindly? What is your idea? All these young people from America and Europe – they have given everything up for nothing? You think they have not seen Kṛṣṇa? They are all worshipping an idol?”
The student had eyes like plates and said nothing. Then Prabhupāda explained how the Deity is Kṛṣṇa Himself, and the devotees see the Deity as non-different. “You cannot see the Deity as Kṛṣṇa because you have no love for Him!”
Then, another student piped up – “Satya Sai Baba says…”
Prabhupāda didn’t even let him finish. “Sai Baba is not an authority!”
Then the student started back-tracking, “No, no – I don’t accept him, but…”
“Then why are you quoting him?”
Generally, Śrīla Prabhupāda was very kind to the foreigners, but when he would meet people of his own culture, and they would come with these mundane, atheistic inquiries, he was so heavy.

The next day, Prabhupāda and his entourage received an invitation to take lunch at the farm of Bhogilal Patel, who at the time was one of the richest men in India. Bhogilal generally resided in Bombay but maintained residencies in several states. He had initially come in contact with ISKCON through Girirāja Dāsa at Juhu, and when he heard of the world-wide preaching of Śrīla Prabhupāda, he literally shed tears of joy and immediately became a life-member. An elderly, pious Gujarati gentleman, Bhogilal had already met Prabhupāda a number of times and was very impressed with him and his disciples.

Bhogilal’s grape-farm in the Banjara Hills area was not far, and at midday, Prabhupāda arrived there with his disciples, one of which was Narasiṅgha Mahārāja.

Narasiṅgha Mahārāja: At that time, Bhogilal Patel was one of the richest men in Asia. He had one hundred and twenty-five vintage cars, and drove an antique Silver Cloud Rolls Royce. When we went for lunch, his bungalow was pretty modest, so I could not really understand how rich he was at the time.

We were sitting at this big dining room table and everything on the table – the thālīs, the bowls, the cups – they were all made of thick, thick silver. Not this cheap thin stuff you get nowadays. Śrīla Prabhupāda was sitting at the head of the table. Bhogilal was sitting next to him, I was sitting next to Bhogilal, and there was Mahāṁsa, Haṁsadūta, Tejiyas, Jagadīśa and Hari Śauri.

At that time, Prabhupāda was not eating so much, but at Bhogilal’s he ate a lot! He ate about eight thin chapattis, then there were about five different subjis, and the rice came right at the end – that’s the tradition in Gujarat. Compared to his usual eating habits, Prabhupāda ate about five times more than usual. In India, when you are invited to someone’s house, you can’t fast at their table. You cannot say, “Oh, I’m not eating.” If you take an invitation to eat, they expect you to eat.
In the middle of prasādam, Prabhupāda looked at his disciples and said, “This is how prasādam should be – it is so good that even if you don’t not hungry, you will stilll eat it.”

After finishing prasādam, suddenly Prabhupāda gave this huge belch and Bhogilal smiled and said, “Oh, Swamiji, the prasāda must have been nice, because that means you are ate heartily.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda said, “Yes, this prasāda is very nice – but these men eat garbage!” Then Prabhupāda said it again – “Before I came, they simply ate garbage!” Prabhupāda was still thinking about the prasādam fiasco at the temple. Bhogilal was confused and just looked at us, then he looked back at Prabhupāda, and said, “Swamiji?” He didn’t know what he was talking about.

I was sitting there thinking, “Actually, it’s true, Śrīla Prabhupāda. Before you came, all we ate was garbage! Before we met you, we were eating so much garbage, but you gave us kṛṣṇa-prasāda.”

In the evening, Śrīla Prabhupāda called for Mahāṁsa Swami and told him that he wanted to go to the farm the next day and stay for some time. Mahāṁsa hesitated, explaining that Prabhupāda’s room there was still not ready, but Prabhupāda remained firm. He then instructed Mahāṁsa to work in coordination with Haṁsadūta Swami and Tejiyas Dāsa – who had only recently arrived from Delhi – and to arrange a paṇḍāl program at the farm each evening to attract the local villagers. He especially stressed that there should be sumptuous prasādam distributed to all who came.

Narasingha Mahārāja: Actually, when Prabhupāda came to Hyderabad, he wanted to go to the farm first, but instead they brought him to the temple because there was no place for him to stay at the farm yet. Mahāṁsa was still working on it, so Prabhupāda had to stay at the temple for a few days.

Thus, early the next morning, Śrīla Prabhupāda, accompanied by Mahārāja, Mahāṁsa Swami, and other members of his entourage, left the temple and drove to New Naimiṣāraṇya, the new farm project outside of Hyderabad.