Satsvarupa: While Prabhupada sat alone in his fifth-floor room in Dr. Mishra’s yoga studio, the lights suddenly went out. This was his experience of the first moments of the New York City blackout of 1965. In India, power failure occurred commonly, so Prabhupada, while surprised to find the same thing in America, remained undisturbed. He began chanting the Hare Krishna mantra on his beads.
Meanwhile, outside his room, the entire New York metropolitan area had been plunged into darkness. The massive power failure had suddenly left the entire city without electricity, trapping 800,000 people in the subways and affecting more than 30,000,000 people in nine states and three Canadian provinces.
Two hours later, a man from Dr. Mishra’s apartment arrived at the door with candles and some fruit. He found Prabhupada in a pleasant mood, sitting there in the darkness chanting Hare Krishna. The man informed him of the serious nature of such a blackout in New York City; Prabhupada thanked him and returned again to his chanting.
Reference: Srila Prabhupada Lilamrta Volume 2 – Satsvarupa Dasa Goswami
