Bahushira: After Prabhupada’s disappearance I began helping Satsvarupa with the Lilamrta by interviewing people in India who had known Srila Prabhupada. One of them was Acharya Prabhakara Misra, Prabhupada’s first disciple. Acharya Prabhakara was clean-cut, well behaved and articulate. His demeanor impressed me. He had an M.A. and Ph.D. and was a very cultured Sanskrit scholar and teacher. In Jhansi Prabhupada had told Acharya Prabhakara, “I met you here because I saw you in a dream and I knew I was supposed to come here.” Prabhupada and he would do bhajan together, they’d hold Ratha-yatra festivals, and they’d have programs in villages in the area.
Acharya Prabhakara said that on Krishna Janmastami in 1954, he had to go to Delhi. When he came back to Jhansi, he took a little rest, woke up at 1:00 a.m. and heard Prabhupada ecstatically playing mridanga in the temple room. Prabhupada was chanting in total bliss. Acharya Prabhakara went upstairs and saw Prabhupada bouncing around the temple room doing kirtan. Prabhupada was wearing a kadamba flower garland that went all the way down to his feet. Kadamba flowers are very rare in Jhansi and when they are available they are usually the size of a golf ball, but the ones on Prabhupada’s garland were big – the size of tennis balls. And he said the atmosphere and aroma was aprakrt – nonmaterial. It was surcharged and smelled like the heavenly planets.
Acharya Prabhakara wanted to ask Srila Prabhupada, “Where did this garland come from? You can’t buy it in a market.” But Prabhupada wouldn’t answer. He just kept doing kirtan, bouncing around the temple room chanting. The next morning Acharya Prabhakara asked Srila Prabhupada, “Where did you get the garland, why did it smell so much, and why were you feeling so blissful?” Srila Prabhupada told him, “I was chanting to Krishna and feeling some love for Him, and He appeared and gave me this garland. I went to touch His feet, and He disappeared. Because of that, I was dancing around the temple room.” Prabhupada was crying.
Acharya Prabhakara was very believable and I felt that what he said was valid. He also said that sometimes Srila Prabhupada’s mood was to do kirtan intensely. He would chant on and on and on – for three days straight without eating and sleeping. Ordinarily we never hear about Srila Prabhupada chanting for two or three days straight. We hear that sometimes he wouldn’t eat for long periods, especially near the end, but remarkably, in Jhansi, he was doing kirtan for a long period of time without eating and sleeping. And the result of his bhajan was that Krishna appeared.
