Nayanabhiram das: We took Prabhupada here for a stroll and he said, “This is just like Vrindavan,” and after that we called the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens “Brooklyn Vrindavan.” He was talking about how all this desire to make parks, urban parks and botanical gardens, things like that, it’s a sublimation of our desire to recreate Vrindavan. We actually did do that by having this tableau. The two girls that played Radha and Krishna, they were actually sisters, Indira and Ekayani. Indira played Krishna and Ekayani, her sister, played Radharani. They lived outside the temple. After the girl that played Krishna took a bite out of the fruit, then we took it as prasadam. At the time, Damodar, I think he had been an underground filmmaker before he joined the movement, and I was studying film-making at Columbia University at the time. So Damodar and I worked together.
Prabhupada gave us an instruction that he wanted a movie made of the Bhagavad-gita including battle scenes of the Mahabharat and elephants. He spent the whole session telling us how the movie should be made. Prabhupada said when the time comes he would direct it, and I never quite understood what he meant by that, maybe through Supersoul or whether he would do it personally. But he did speak at length about it. But he was very serious, and we took that instruction very seriously for some time. Damodar and I used to go out of the temple and watch normal movies because we thought that would help us. But maybe we rationalized that way, that we could only fulfill Prabhupada’s instructions by being cognizant with contemporary film-making.
Reference: Following Srila Prabhupada-A Chronological Series by Nayan Abhirama Dasa
