Gunarnava das : I’ve never seen a person draw something without having to erase anything. I remember him, Surabhi, he had these pencils in his pocket, and he said to me one morning, “Gunarnava, I’m going to do the artist’s conception. I’m going to draw the Krishna Balarama Mandir for the first time.” I remember we were staying in these little straw-roofed huts, very, very humble dwellings. He had a desk and a drawing board and an A3 sketch pad, and he opened it up and he started sketching and his pencil never stopped. He didn’t rub anything out, and it just manifested on this paper. When he showed Srila Prabhupada that design, Srila Prabhupada beamed. I was in the room. Srila Prabhupada said, “This is wonderful,” and he was so proud of it and he was showing some guests that were also there in the room. He said, “Ohhhhh, this is going to be the Krishna Balarama Mandir.“
Srutakirti das: Prabhupada was responsible for everything, and he pushed everyone to do as much as they could do and sometimes beyond our own limits. I remember Surabhi, who was in charge of it all, had to undergo a lot of chastisement. I would be getting Surabhi so many times towards the end of it, the last week, and I don’t know how much sleep he was getting. I know it wasn’t very much. Prabhupada would say, “Call Surabhi,” and he would tell him that this was wrong and that was wrong, and it was very intense.
Surabhi das: In all those two years that all these temples were built, two or three years, there was always this pressure on time, that it had to be done quickly, everything had to be done so fast. And there were always delays, and that was a kind of a disappointment. I really did my best, I tried my best. And I think at times there was an ego thing in me that I would feel that it couldn’t be faster but I could see that Prabhupada disagreed with me. These were moments that you could probably make a lot of spiritual advancement because you’ve really got to face yourself, you’ve got to accept the fact that no, it is too slow even though I could have had millions of reasons why including there was no money, including the electricity went down, there were blackouts. Whatever I would come up with, it would not register on Prabhupada, he would not accept that. It was “Now I have to surrender.” So this was my battle of surrender. It was always “There is a way to do it faster,” and then you have to find that out.
Reference: Following Srila Prabhupada – Remembrances by Yadubara dasa
