Victorious in everything he did
Radha Kund: The next evening Prabhupada played the kartals in a two-four beat, which we had never heard before. With his eyes closed he sang, “parama koruna pahu dui jana, nitai gaurachandra.” Only Dhirakrishna and one or two others knew the song. All the rest of us were dumbfounded to hear this concert from Srila Prabhupada. Prabhupada came out of his samadhi, looked around, and said, “You don’t know this song? Tomorrow you’ll know this song.” He put the kartals down and started class. We all felt strange. The next day, Balavanta and Rupanuga, the head men there, gave us copies of the song. When Prabhupada sang the first stanza we sang along with him. Then Prabhupada stopped, because Paramahamsa Swami, who was playing the mridanga, had no idea how to play the two-four beat. It was altogether different. Prabhupada said, “Give me the mridanga.” This was the first time Prabhupada had played the mridanga in years. It was a spectacular moment in life and also an exclusive that Prabhupada was going to play the mridanga. But since it was humid in Atlanta, the mridanga had a horrible plap, plap, bang, bang sound. It had no tone. Dhirakrishna went off and brought Prabhupada a high-quality mridanga. But it too had a plap, plap, bang, bang sound because of the humidity. In front of all of us Prabhupada performed a miracle. He put that mridanga in his lap, and just by the tapping of his hand, sri mridanga came into tune, and then he started to sing again. Prabhupada was our hero. He conquered the mridanga, and he had a look on his face that he had figured it out. Everyone was roaring. Prabhupada was victorious in everything he did. It was so cool.
Source: Remembrances by Sidhanta Das – Folio Vedabase
