CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

PRABHUPĀDA’S TRAIN, THE Kalka Mail, pulled into Delhi Station. Prabhupāda and his two disciples had tickets with reserved seat numbers – but no car number. So while Prabhupāda waited with the baggage, Acyutānanda and Rāmānuja ran from one end of the train to the other looking for their car.

After they had found their seats and boarded, Acyutānanda untied Prabhupāda’s bedding and spread it open on the upper tier. Prabhupāda climbed the little ladder, sat comfortably on his cotton-stuffed quilt, and opened his Sanskrit Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, while Acyutānanda and Rāmānuja took their seats. It would take around twenty-four hours to reach Calcutta.

Near the end of the journey, a group of educated Bengali gentlemen struck up a philosophical conversation with the Swami. “We do not worship any form,” said one, speaking fluent English in a loud, deep voice. “We have a marble oṁkāra that we worship, and we sit and pray to that.”

“That is also a form,” said Prabhupāda. He was reluctant to attack their philosophical position directly.

“We practice karma-yoga,” the gentleman went on, not heeding Prabhupāda’s previous point. “Because in karma-yoga you can stay within your position.”

“But karma-yoga is not full surrender of the soul,” said Prabhupāda. “One must come to the stage of bhakti.”

“Oh, no,” the man protested, “emotionalism is very harmful. Karma-yoga – ”

Śrīla Prabhupāda exploded: “Karma-yoga is for the fools!” Silence.

Another man, not with the Bengalis but seated beside them, spoke up. “Obviously Swamiji is a learned scholar,” he said. “You shouldn’t argue like that.” The Bengali that Prabhupāda had shouted at got up and moved to another seat. Later, he came back.

“Are you insulted?” Prabhupāda asked him.

“No, no, no,” he replied. “But I have never heard anyone say that about the teachings of the Gītā.”

The Bengalis then talked with Acyutānanda, lighting their cigarettes and smoking freely before him, although they had not dared to do so before Prabhupāda (it wasn’t proper to smoke in front of a sādhu). Bengalis, Acyutānanda told them, citing one of Prabhupāda’s examples, were very sorry that East Pakistan had been cut off from the rest of Bengal. But Kṛṣṇa consciousness could elevate people to international, universal consciousness. Then there wouldn’t be any such division. The Bengalis appreciated Acyutānanda’s remark, though they continued to blow smoke in his face as the train rattled over the last miles to Calcutta.

Prabhupāda was greeted at Calcutta’s Howrah Station by relatives, mostly from his sister’s family, and by devotees of the Goswami Math. About fifty people were on hand. They offered Prabhupāda flower garlands and sandalwood paste and then escorted him and his disciples into a car. Acyutānanda and Rāmānuja noticed that although Swamiji’s sister was shorter and more rotund than Prabhupāda, her facial features were strikingly similar. Her name was Bhavatarini, but Prabhupāda told them to call her Pisimā, “aunt.”

As Prabhupāda rode through the streets he saw many images of goddess Kālī, ten-armed, riding a lion. Calcutta was observing the biggest religious celebration in Bengal, Kālī-pūjā, a month of festivities in honor of the goddess Kālī. Throughout the city, brass bands and radio music blared, and there were decorative lights, stages, and tents.

When Prabhupāda arrived at Pisimā’s house in south Calcutta, his relatives seated him and performed an ārati ceremony in his honor, reverently offering him the traditional items: incense, a flaming lamp, flowers. They also bathed his feet. He sat smiling within the crowded room of relatives, who were proud of his having journeyed to America on behalf of Lord Kṛṣṇa.

As Prabhupāda’s family members sang Hare Kṛṣṇa kīrtana, from outside the room the ladies of the house began singing a high, shrill whooping sound. Acyutānanda and Rāmānuja were startled.

Pisimā had prepared a large feast, much of it cooked in mustard seed oil, for the homecoming celebration. And Prabhupāda satisfied her by honoring the prasādam, even though he wasn’t feeling well and was tired from the train ride.

Soon after the festivities Prabhupāda and his disciples retired. Again his health wavered – this time because of his sister’s heavy cooking – and he felt a strain on his heart. He sent for an Ayurvedic doctor, who taught Acyutānanda how to do a very gentle massage to help circulation and restricted Prabhupāda from sweets.

One evening as Prabhupāda spoke – “My only qualification is that I have unflinching faith in my spiritual master” – a large firecracker exploded right outside the door. The audience smiled tolerantly. “Yes,” Prabhupāda said, taking the explosion as confirmation of his words, “it is glorious.”

One night Prabhupāda explained that according to Bhagavad-gītā, demigod worshipers are less intelligent. People worship Kālī for material rewards, he said, but since all material things are temporary, such worship is inferior to the worship of Kṛṣṇa. Kālī is not able to grant the worshiper liberation from birth and death.

“Which is better?” Acyutānanda asked, “the worship of the Christians and Jews, which is mostly impersonal, or the worship of the non-Absolute by the worshipers of Kālī?”

“Worship of Kālī is better,” Prabhupāda said, “because the worshipers are in the Vedic system. They are more likely to bow down to Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa or chant Hare Kṛṣṇa than a Christian or Jew. There is a chance that they will become Kṛṣṇa devotees in the future, if they lose their material attachments.”

When Haridāsa Mahārāja went into a separate room, Prabhupāda turned to Acyutānanda: “He wants us to go to his temple. But to go there I will have to go onto a ricksha and then onto a tramcar and then onto a train and then another ricksha.” Aware of Prabhupāda’s weak condition, Acyutānanda began shaking his head negatively.

When Haridāsa Mahārāja returned, Acyutānanda said that Swamiji couldn’t come to his maṭha. “Who are you?” Haridāsa Mahārāja said angrily. “You are just a brahmacārī! You should risk your life!”

Acyutānanda replied, “I will risk my life, but I can’t risk my spiritual master’s life.”

Haridāsa Mahārāja left insulted. “Don’t worry,” Prabhupāda said. “He is just very talkative.”

Prabhupāda paid a visit to B. P. Keśava Mahārāja, the Godbrother who had awarded him the sannyāsa order in 1959. Prabhupāda sat on the floor and spoke in Bengali to his Godbrother, who was very old and apparently on his deathbed. Prabhupāda had Acyutānanda sing for Keśava Mahārāja. Keśava Mahārāja requested Prabhupāda to visit his āśrama, Devananda Math, in Navadvīpa.

Śrīla Prabhupāda had wanted to return to the U.S. as a permanent resident, but his students in America hadn’t been able to get the necessary clearance from the U.S. immigration department. The devotees in Boston had gotten in touch with a few Harvard Indology professors but had obtained no signed statements about Prabhupāda’s importance. All the ISKCON centers had written formal letters inviting A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami and had presented copies to the U.S. immigration office. But unless the devotees could produce something more impressive, like a government recommendation or a university’s offer for him to join their faculty, Prabhupāda could not become a U.S. resident.

On October 13 Prabhupāda wrote to his disciples in Montreal:

Rather than wait indefinitely for permanent residency, Prabhupāda decided to apply for a visitor’s visa. He went with Acyutānanda to the U.S. Consulate on Harrington Road. There, in the middle of Calcutta, they entered a small piece of America, with everything shiny, new, and efficient: air conditioners, stainless steel water coolers, electric security doors, U.S. Marines, and American flags. Sitting before the secretary of the Consulate, Prabhupāda looked small and humble. “I want a visa to see my students in America,” he said softly.

“Do you have any letters?” the secretary asked. Acyutānanda handed over the letters from the temples. The secretary reviewed them and quickly gave Prabhupāda a four-month visa. While leaving the building Prabhupāda remarked, “I will just get anything, and then it can be extended.”

On October 19, Prabhupāda wrote Hayagrīva regarding his imminent return:

And on October 22 he wrote Umāpati:

On October 24 Prabhupāda traveled with Acyutānanda and Rāmānuja to Navadvīpa. Although the local train took four hours, the lush Bengal countryside gradually revealed its heavenly beauty, and Prabhupāda’s health seemed to improve just from the pleasant journey. By the time they arrived at Navadvīpa, Acyutānanda and Rāmānuja were also feeling relief from the rigors of Calcutta; for the first time in weeks they could open their eyes without blinking through drops of perspiration.

A large kīrtana party of brahmacārīs, mostly members of Keśava Mahārāja’s Devananda Gaudiya Math, met Śrīla Prabhupāda at the Navadvīpa train station. The brahmacārīs were meticulously neat, with their robes all dyed the same shade of saffron, their Vaiṣṇava tilaka markings bold and distinct, their heads smoothly shaved, their śikhās precise. They offered Prabhupāda and his party aromatic garlands made from flowers resembling lotuses and gathered around Śrīla Prabhupāda with worshipful enthusiasm. Also present were a few of Śrīdhara Mahārāja’s disciples, waiting with rickshas to take Prabhupāda and his disciples to their guru’s āśrama. Although between the two groups there was an unspoken competition for Prabhupāda’s presence, he had previously agreed to go to Śrīdhara Mahārāja’s place. He promised the members of Devananda Math that he would visit them next.

A kīrtana party greeted Prabhupāda at the outer gates of Śrīdhara Mahārāja’s āśrama, chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa and playing karatālas and clay mṛdaṅgas. Prabhupāda entered the temple, offered obeisances before the Deities of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa, and then went to see his Godbrother.

Śrīdhara Mahārāja was very old, his sight failing, his joints stiff with arthritis. He stayed mostly in his room or sometimes on his veranda and moved only with slow, rickety motions. He was an austere and kindly Vaiṣṇava and smiled heartily on seeing Prabhupāda and his disciples. In fluent English he began praising Prabhupāda’s preaching in America, repeatedly using Prabhupāda’s phrase “Kṛṣṇa consciousness.” Swamiji’s work, he said, was the fulfillment of Lord Caitanya’s prophecy that Kṛṣṇa consciousness would one day spread all over the world. He laughed and smiled and praised the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement with no trace of jealousy.

“So you appreciate this phrase, ‘Kṛṣṇa consciousness.’ ” Prabhupāda smiled.

“Yes,” Śrīdhara Mahārāja replied, “and the disciples of Swami Mahārāja also.” And he turned towards Acyutānanda and Rāmānuja. “With very little effort your preaching will go far.”

The boys were astonished. This was really something to write home about: sitting on the roof of a temple in this jungle paradise with old Śrīdhara Mahārāja appreciating Swamiji’s work as the greatest work on behalf of Lord Caitanya, and Swamiji sitting relaxed, grinning, and making humble replies! It was the high point of the trip.

Vyāsa-pūjā day, the observance of B. R. Śrīdhara Mahārāja’s birthday, was October 27. His disciples had erected a paṇḍāl on the temple road, and about a hundred people attended. Śrīdhara Mahārāja sat on his vyāsāsana, and Prabhupāda and other sannyāsīs, all wearing flower garlands, sat in chairs next to Śrīdhara Mahārāja. Prabhupāda spoke in Bengali. Some of Śrīdhara Mahārāja’s disciples, inspired by Prabhupāda’s preaching about the glories of spreading Kṛṣṇa consciousness in the West, delivered speeches in English as Vyāsa-pūjā homages to their spiritual master. Śrīdhara Mahārāja, also speaking in English, gave a very scientific lecture on Kṛṣṇa consciousness and the senses. Afterwards Prabhupāda told his disciples, “He has very high realizations, but he is keeping them to himself.”

Every morning before dawn Śrīdhara Mahārāja sent out a party of brahmacārīs to perform kīrtana in the villages. On Prabhupāda’s request, Acyutānanda and Rāmānuja joined them, leaving before sunrise and returning at dusk. Although Prabhupāda and Śrīdhara Mahārāja usually remained at the temple, one day they got into a ricksha and accompanied the chanting party through the streets of Navadvīpa.

The festival at the Devananda Math was a big affair. In contrast to Bhaktisāraṅga Goswami’s āśrama in Calcutta, where only widows had attended, B. P. Keśava Mahārāja’s Devananda Math had about two hundred brahmacārīs and twenty sannyāsīs. Some of the brahmacārīs, however, were not full-time but were attending school outside; so the āśrama’s atmosphere was a little like that of a social club. But when the kīrtana and the circumambulation of the temple began, seven hundred people took part. The impeccably dressed sannyāsīs – whose every piece of saffron cloth, including their cloth-wrapped daṇḍas, was dyed exactly the same shade – danced back and forth before the Deities. A dozen sannyāsīs danced in a group, their daṇḍas moving together, dipping and rising, forward and back, to the delight of the brahmacārīs.

Prabhupāda sat on a dais with other dignitaries and spoke to the festival audience. Acyutānanda, on Prabhupāda’s request, spoke a few words in Bengali, bringing laughs and applause. Śrīdhara Mahārāja spoke gravely in Bengali. A sannyāsī from the Devananda Math, speaking for their absent leader, B. P. Keśava Mahārāja, proclaimed in empassioned tones that although Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s movement had been predicted to spread throughout the world, no one had known how it could be possible. Now, thanks to the work of Bhaktivedanta Swami, it was happening.

After a large feast in the evening, Prabhupāda’s party returned to Śrīdhara Mahārāja’s āśrama. Śrīdhara Mahārāja intimated to Prabhupāda that the Devananda Math emphasized quantity whereas his own āśrama emphasized quality. Curious as to what this meant, Acyutānanda wanted to ask Prabhupāda. But the time didn’t seem appropriate.

On the train, Acyutānanda timidly put forward the question that had been on his mind: “Swamiji, what did you and Śrīdhara Mahārāja discuss?”

“Oh, many, many things,” Prabhupāda replied. “But if I were to tell you now, you would faint.” After a silence Prabhupāda added, “Still, I offered him to be president of our Society. I knew he would not accept. He is keeping things within him. Anyway, this is all beyond you. Do not have any ill feelings towards any of my Godbrothers. They are all great souls. There are just some differences on preaching and spreading. Even in your mind do not feel any ill will towards them. At the same time, do not mix very thickly with them.”

Acyutānanda suggested, “Maybe if these two sannyāsīs had each other’s qualities combined …”

“Ah, yes,” Prabhupāda said, “now you have understood me.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda’s intention in coming to Calcutta was simply to prepare to leave for America. He had his visitor’s visa already, but he thought that if he stayed in India a little longer, in San Francisco Mukunda might be able to secure permanent American residency for him. He went to his sister’s house to spend his last days in Calcutta there, but after only a few days he felt that the Rādhā-Govinda Deity – the Deity he had worshiped in his childhood – was calling him.

When Prabhupāda had been no more than an infant, his servant used to take him and his cousin Subuddhi Mullik on a perambulator, wheel them into the temple courtyard, and take them before the altar of Rādhā-Govinda. And as soon as Prabhupāda could walk, his father would hold his hand and take him before the Deity every day. Sometimes Prabhupāda would go alone and stand for hours gazing upon Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa, who appeared very beautiful to him with Their slanted eyes and fine dress and ornaments. It had been for the pleasure of Rādhā-Govinda that as a child, beginning at the age of five, he had performed his miniature Ratha-yātrā festival.

Just two weeks ago, when Prabhupāda had been staying at his sister’s house, his health had prevented him from going to north Calcutta to see the Deity; so he had gone to Navadvīpa without taking Their blessings. But now, although still weak and although preoccupied with traveling to the U.S., he felt that the Deity was calling him.

For the past 150 years, the Rādhā-Govinda temple had been maintained by the aristocratic Mulliks, a branch of Prabhupāda’s own family. The Mulliks had owned the entire block on Harrison Road (now Mahatma Gandhi Road), and rents from the block-long building opposite the temple had financed the opulent worship of Rādhā-Govinda. In those days the Deities had been worshiped on a gorgeous altar in the large kīrtana hall, and They had been dressed in silks and ornamented with gilded and bejeweled crowns and necklaces. All the pious Vaiṣṇava families of the neighborhood would visit; and on Janmāṣṭamī, Kṛṣṇa’s birthday, even British gentlemen and ladies would come.

But today the Mullik family possessed only remnants of the European art and furnishings that had once filled their homes and temple – relics from an age of former grandeur. And the worship of Rādhā-Govinda had pitifully deteriorated.

Śrīla Prabhupāda was pained to see the neglect. No longer were Rādhā and Govinda the center of the Mulliks’ lives. The Deity worship still continued – conducted by paid brāhmaṇas – but few people came to see. The main attraction now was the golden deity of the goddess Kālī on the large altar in the kīrtana hall. Rādhā and Govinda, “in the family” for many generations, had been relegated to a small upstairs room in the Mullik compound. Their dress was no longer elegant, Their valuable crowns and ornaments had disappeared, and there were no large kīrtanas as before. Only a paid brāhmaṇa came in the morning to rub sandalwood pulp on Their shining bodies, dress Them carefully in whatever simple clothes remained, and place jasmine garlands around Their necks while a widow or two watched the silent proceedings.

Kṛṣṇa consciousness was dying in India, dying from neglect. At least it was dying here in Calcutta. And in many other places in India, even in Vṛndāvana, the impersonal philosophy prevailed, and grand old temples had become residences for pigeons, monkeys, and dogs. Sad as it was, it only reinforced Prabhupāda’s conviction of the need to return to the fertile ground in the West. Although here in India the spirit of devotion was dying, in the West it was just beginning to grow – in New York, San Francisco, Montreal, Boston.

If pure Kṛṣṇa consciousness were dying in India, then why shouldn’t it be transplanted in the fertile West? There it would flourish. It would spread worldwide and even back to India again. When India, bent on following the West, saw the materially advanced Americans taking to Kṛṣṇa consciousness, she would reevaluate her own culture.

Prabhupāda saw a Kṛṣṇa conscious revolution beginning in the United States. He didn’t consider himself its creator; he was the servant of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Lord Caitanya’s desire was that every Indian help to spread Kṛṣṇa consciousness worldwide. Unfortunately, the very verses in the scriptures that prophesied a worldwide Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement were a puzzle even to most of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Godbrothers. They admitted it.

But soon they would see. There was great potential in the West. Prabhupāda had shown many of his Godbrothers the newspaper articles – “Swami’s Flock” chanting in Tompkins Square Park, “Ancient Trance Dance” at Stanford University – and he had brought some disciples with him. These were only beginnings. Much more had to be done.

And who would help? B. P. Keśava Mahārāja was dying. Śrīdhara Mahārāja couldn’t come out. Who else? Most Indians were impersonalists, nondevotional yogīs, or demigod worshipers. As Śrīla Prabhupāda stood before the Rādhā-Govinda Deity, explaining to Acyutānanda and Rāmānuja how he had worshiped Them in his childhood and how They had been his first inspiration in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, he understood deeply that he must take Kṛṣṇa consciousness all over the world, even if singlehandedly. Of course, he was not alone; he had disciples. And they were opening new centers even in his absence. He would have to return to them very soon and supervise his growing movement.

The Mulliks were glad to give Prabhupāda and his two followers a large room in the temple compound for as long as they wanted to stay in Calcutta. Prabhupāda set up his usual arrangement: a mat on the floor, a low table for a desk, and beside the desk his few possessions. Here he could study and write, receive guests, or rest. Daily some local women brought Prabhupāda and his disciples simple prasādam in a tiffin.

The Kālī-pūjā celebrations drew large crowds into the main hall before the Kālī deity, and Prabhupāda gave regular lectures there from Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. He also spoke in the homes of various Mullik families. The hosts, members of the dwindling Bengali aristocracy, would offer Prabhupāda and his disciples Rādhā-Govinda prasādam: cut fruits, water chestnuts, minced ginger, and soaked, salted mung beans.

Most of those who came to visit Prabhupāda in his room were not really interested in spiritual life, but they wanted his blessings. There was a local brāhmaṇa whose occupation was to go from shop to shop carrying a few flowers, a cup of water, and a brass container with sandalwood paste and kuṅkuma powder. Using this paraphernalia, he would offer a blessing to the shopkeepers every day and receive a few paisā in payment. Knowing Prabhupāda to be a Vaiṣṇava, the brāhmaṇa came to see him to receive a spiritual benediction. The man’s forehead was decorated with both Vaiṣṇava tilaka (two vertical lines) and Śaivite tilaka (three horizontal lines). After the man left, Acyutānanda asked, “Swamiji, who was that?”

“He is a hired brāhmaṇa,” Prabhupāda said. “When he goes to the Vaiṣṇavas he gives them blessings, and when he goes to the Śaivites he gets money. He has to make a living.”

Another man came, asserting that he wanted to teach Prabhupāda’s disciples Hindi. He asked Prabhupāda to help him get to America, but Prabhupāda told him, “You must take sannyāsa. Then I will bring you to America.” After two visits, the man stopped coming.

A Mullik relation, a small, bald, bright-eyed man, came by one day carrying a book entitled Interesting Studies. He posed philosophical questions – simple queries about karma, jñāna, and bhakti – but then would interrupt Prabhupāda and answer them himself. Finally when the man asked one of his questions, Prabhupāda replied, “So what is your answer?” The man gave a general answer. But later, when Prabhupāda began explaining that Lord Kṛṣṇa, the speaker of Bhagavad-gītā, is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the man interrupted: “You may call God ‘Kṛṣṇa,’ call Him ‘Śiva,’ call Him – ”

“No,” Prabhupāda said. “Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Lord, and all others are demigods.” The man became a little nervous and quoted a popular Bengali impersonalist who taught that all gods and all methods of worship are the same.

“He’s an upstart,” Prabhupāda said. “That is not the teaching of the Gītā. What is this other teaching? It is all utter confusion.”

“If you go on speaking like this,” the man said angrily, “I’ll have to leave this place. Please don’t criticize this paramahaṁsa.”

“Why not?” Prabhupāda said. “He is a concocter.” The man got up and left, calling out, “You don’t know Kṛṣṇa!” as he left the room.

Prabhupāda turned to Acyutānanda and Rāmānuja and smiled: “Every time you introduce Kṛṣṇa they say, ‘Why only Kṛṣṇa?’ But that is what Kṛṣṇa says. Mattaḥ parataraṁ nānyat: ‘There is no truth superior to Me.’ These rascal impersonalists have ruined Bengal.”

One day a man gave Prabhupāda a two-hundred-rupee donation, and Prabhupāda immediately asked the pūjārī for an old set of Rādhā-Govinda’s clothes, gave the clothes to some of the temple ladies along with the two hundred rupees, and asked that the ladies make gold embroidered dresses for Rādhā-Govinda. “Rādhā-Govinda are taking care of us,” he said, “so we can take care of Them also.”

“I don’t know, Swamiji,” Rāmānuja replied.

“No,” Prabhupāda said, pointing to the pictures. “What is the difference in this picture?”

“Oh, she’s a devotee.”

“Yes,” Prabhupāda said, “but what else?”

“Oh, she has a shaved head.”

“Yes.” Prabhupāda smiled. “A devotee has a shaved head.”

“Do you want me to shave my head?”

“Yes.”

Rāmānuja shaved. But within a few days he began growing his beard and hair back. “From now on,” Prabhupāda told Acyutānanda, “no more cheap initiations. They have to know something.”

Rāmānuja hung on. Prabhupāda wanted Rāmānuja and Acyutānanda to remain in India after his departure and continue to try for the American House in Vṛndāvana. Rāmānuja wrote his own impressions to his friend Mukunda in San Francisco.

Knowing that Swamiji would soon be returning, the devotees in America began to increase their entreaties, each group asking him to come to their particular city. On November 4 Prabhupāda wrote Mukunda, “As you say that my absence is being felt now surely more deeply than ever, so I also feel to start immediately without waiting.” And to Mukunda’s wife, Jānakī, he wrote, “Every minute I think of you and as you asked me to go to San Francisco while returning from India, I am trying to fulfill my promise. I am thinking of going directly to San Francisco.” At the bottom of the same letter to Mukunda and Jānakī, Acyutānanda added a health report:

Prabhupāda decided not to wait any longer on the chance that Mukunda might secure him permanent residency. “I want to return to your country, where there is good air and good water,” he told Acyutānanda one day. “Every day we are receiving letters that the devotees want me there. I thought that in my absence they might deteriorate, and I was reluctant to even come to India. But now I see that it is growing. There is need for me to go and supervise the expansion. So I want to go back.”

The only impediment now seemed to be a delayed P-form, a clearance from the Bank of India required for an Indian citizen traveling abroad.

Just to make certain that Swamiji would come first to San Francisco, Mukunda sent a telegram to Calcutta: “SWAMIJI. BRAHMANANDA AND I AGREE YOU START IMMEDIATELY. ADVISE EXACT ARRIVAL DATE. MUKUNDA.”

Prabhupāda had planned his route through Tokyo, intending to stop for a day “to probe if there is any possibility of starting a center.” In Tokyo he would let Mukunda know by telephone his arrival time in San Francisco. But three weeks passed while Prabhupāda continued to wait for his P-form.

Meanwhile, he received good news from New York. The Macmillan Company’s interest in Bhagavad-gītā was real; the contract was being drawn. Pleased with Brahmānanda, he wrote to him on November 11 explaining his visions for distributing Kṛṣṇa conscious literature.

As Prabhupāda’s mind turned more to the preaching that awaited him in America, he assessed what he had done so far, what he would do, and the process by which he would do it.

On November 12 Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote to Kṛṣṇā-devī,

And the health notes from Acyutānanda continued to arrive.

On November 20 Prabhupāda dispatched by boat to New York more than eight hundred copies of the first three volumes of his Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. And on the next day his P-form finally cleared. Immediately he booked passage on Pan American Airlines and sent a cable informing Mukunda that he would arrive in San Francisco on November 24 at 12:45 P.M.

But again his departure was delayed – this time by a strike by the Communist Party in Calcutta. Businesses closed. Cars, buses, rickshas, and trains stopped running. Riots broke out. There were murders and assassinations. Meanwhile, Prabhupāda remained at the Rādhā-Govinda temple.

When Prabhupāda received news of quarreling in the Los Angeles temple he replied to Nandarāṇī:

At the end of the first week of December the strike ended, and Śrīla Prabhupāda again booked passage.

When the day for Prabhupāda’s departure finally arrived he gave last instructions to Acyutānanda and Rāmānuja.

“Just pray to Lord Kṛṣṇa that I can go to America,” he requested Acyutānanda.

“How can I?” Acyutānanda replied. “You’ll be leaving me.”

“No,” Śrīla Prabhupāda replied, “we’ll always remain packed up together if you remember my teachings. If you preach you will become strong, and all these teachings will be in the proper perspective. When we stop our preaching, then everything becomes stagnated, and we lose our life. Even here in India people think that they know everything, but they are wrong. There is no end to hearing about Kṛṣṇa. God is unlimited. So no one can say, ‘I know everything about God.’ Those who say they know everything about God do not know. So everyone will appreciate you. Do not fear.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda spent his stopover in Tokyo mostly in going to his hotel and checking into a room, bathing, resting, eating, and returning to the airport the next day in time for his flight to San Francisco. But he did speak with a government secretary, explaining that Kṛṣṇa consciousness was a universal philosophy for reviving a person’s original, eternal consciousness. And he explained the crucial need for Kṛṣṇa consciousness in human society. The secretary, however, said he felt certain that the Japanese government wouldn’t be able to help a religious movement.

Prabhupāda was annoyed. This supposedly educated man was so ignorant as to mistake Kṛṣṇa consciousness for merely another sectarian religion. Prabhupāda wanted intelligent men to try to understand Kṛṣṇa consciousness and understand that the Gītā was actual knowledge, transcendental knowledge, beyond the inferior knowledge of the senses and the mind. But he had his plane to catch. Japan would have to wait.

No one knew or bothered to inquire into what he was doing. They didn’t know that anxious young hearts were awaiting him in San Francisco, or that the Macmillan Company in New York wanted to publish his English translation of Bhagavad-gītā, or that he had spiritual centers in two countries, with plans for expansion all over the world. Prabhupāda sat patiently, chanting often, his hand in his bead bag, depending on Kṛṣṇa as the hours passed.

After a ten-hour flight the plane landed in San Francisco. Standing with hundreds of other passengers, Prabhupāda gradually made his way to the exit. Down the long attached tunnel, even before he reached the terminal building, he could see Govinda dāsī and a few other disciples smiling and waving on the other side of a glass partition. As he entered the terminal building he moved towards the glass, and his disciples dropped to their knees, offering obeisances. As they raised their heads he smiled and continued walking down the corridor while they walked alongside, only the glass partition separating them. Then they disappeared from his view as he walked down the stairway towards immigration and customs.

The downstairs area was also glassed in, and Prabhupāda could see more than fifty devotees and friends waiting eagerly. As they again caught sight of him, they cried out as a group, “Hare Kṛṣṇa!”

Swamiji looked wonderful to them, tanned from his six months in India, younger, and more spritely. He smiled and triumphantly held up his hands in greeting. Devotees were crying in happiness.

As Prabhupāda stood in line at the customs inspection point, he could hear the devotees’ kīrtana, the glass walls only partially masking the sound. The customs officials ignored the chanting, although the connection between the saffron-robed passenger and the joyful chanters was not hard to see.

Śrīla Prabhupāda waited in line, glancing now and then at his chanting disciples. Since he had already sent ahead the eight hundred books and several crates of musical instruments, he had only one suitcase to place on the table before the inspector. Methodically the inspector went through the contents: cotton sārīs for the girls, silk garlands for the Jagannātha deities, karatālas, saffron dhotīs and kurtās, a coconut grater, and little bottles of Ayurvedic medicine.

“What are these?” the inspector probed. The little bottles looked strange, and he called for another inspector. A delay. Swamiji’s disciples became perturbed by the petty-minded customs inspectors’ poking through Swamiji’s things, now opening the tightly corked bottles, sniffing and checking the contents.

The inspectors seemed satisfied. Prabhupāda tried to close his suitcase, but he couldn’t work the zipper. Another delay. The devotees, still anxiously chanting, watched as Swamiji, with the help of the gentleman behind him, managed to zip his suitcase closed.

Swamiji walked towards the glass doors. The devotees began chanting madly. As he stepped through the door a devotee blew a conchshell that resounded loudly throughout the hall. Devotees garlanded him, and everyone pressed in, handing him flowers. He entered their midst as a beloved father enters and reciprocates the embrace of his loving children.