P. L. Sethi: Prabhupada was so merciful. I have seen that he is loving to everybody. He had so much love for the devotees. One Christian boy came to the temple, this Hare Krishna Land, and there was a tree of papita. He took some papita from the tree and as he was leaving, a devotee caught him and he brought that boy to Guruji and said, “This boy is stealing our papita.” And Guruji said, “What will he do with the papita?” The devotee said, “He will eat it.” Then Guruji said to the devotee, “If you will take that papita, what you will do?” He said, “I will also eat that papita.” “Then what is the difference? He will eat papita and you will eat papita.” From that day, this Christian boy’s parents became devotees. Prabhupada saw no difference between the devotee and the Christian. He is equal as a human being. “He will eat the papita and you will eat the papita, then what is the difference?” So Prabhupadaji said to that boy, “You want more? If you want more, take more.” So every time Guruji was always giving, saying that make more prasadam, more and more prasadam. If they will eat prasadam, they will chant Hare Krishna. Their mind will be purified if they take Krishna prasadam and they will become a devotee. So the main thing that Guruji wanted to teach everyone is that we are not different. Whether your skin is white, whether your skin is black, whether you are Hindu, whether you are Muslim, whether you are Christian, no difference. One thing in common in all of us is that we are the soul, we are the sons of Krishna and we want to return to Krishna. Simply chant Hare Krishna. No knowledge is required, no need for someone to be a professor, a spiritual master, a scientist, an engineer. Only simply you chant the maha-mantra and your situation will increase and you will be with Krishna. Mrs. Nair came to my home with her lawyer and Guruji was sitting upstairs. Then Mrs. Nair told the lawyer, “You please sit here. First I will take time with Guruji to discuss the case we have put upon ISKCON and ISKCON put upon me. Then I will call you.” And Mrs. Nair went upstairs and she sat about five minutes there. Five minutes, only five minutes. She was so impressed with Prabhupada that she came back and told the solicitor, “I surrender to Guruji. Please you can go. I will pay your fees. I will pay your fees, but you go. You can go.” In the same day, we came to live in this house and Guruji said, “A sannyasi cannot live in a grihastha household, so I am going.” So Guruji went to Chataya yath where Mahatma Gandhi stayed and was built by Sumati Morarji. Around 12:00 p.m., two or three devotees came to say that “Mrs. Nair went to Guruji and he is calling to you.” So when I went there, Mrs. Nair was sitting outside the Chataya yath and she was weeping. So I went and she said, “You please ask Guruji to forgive me for the whole trouble that I have given to the ISKCON devotees.” Then I went to Guruji, and Guruji said, “If the man who forgets his own path in the morning but he comes in the evening to his house properly, he has not forgotten the path because he came at last to his place.” I went to Mrs. Nair and said, “Guruji forgives you.” And Mrs. Nair was with the registrar who registered the documents. Guruji got up from his asana, and Mrs. Nair put all the documents to this Hare Krishna Land at the feet of Guruji and said, “Please forgive me”. Guruji said, “You will not get any trouble from today.” Otherwise, she was always seeing in her dreams her husband’s soul and could not sleep the whole night. But after that she became all right.
Source: Remembrances by Sidhanta Das – Folio Vedabase
