by Kalachandji das
In July of ’76, the Rādhā-Dāmodara Party converged on Washington, D.C., for the 200th anniversary of American independence. Śrīla Prabhupāda was there, and though Aindra had been His Divine Grace’s initiated disciple for three years, he had never seen his guru mahārāja in person.
At first, he was surprised by Prabhupāda’s small stature:
“I had this conception that he was a monolithic entity, a singularly huge entity, a giant personality, because his voice was booming and deeply resonant, and he sounded like the absolute truth coming through the ages—a giant representative of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. So, I was feeling very reverential, ‘respectfully distant’ and all these things. Then when I met Śrīla Prabhupāda for the first time, I was totally shocked. His physique was so small in comparison with the picture I’d had in my mind. It seemed like such a contrast—the profundity of his writing, the power of his recorded voice, and his exalted position had inspired awe, made him seem superhuman.”
Aindra wanted to stay as close to Prabhupāda as possible, and whenever he could, he would join him on his morning walks, walking near Prabhupāda but just behind him.
Each morning, after his walk, Prabhupāda would stop briefly at his quarters and then proceed to the temple, accompanied by devotees, to greet the Deities. One day, while the devotees were waiting for Prabhupāda to come out his door, someone strapped a mṛdaṅga around Aindra’s neck and told him to lead the kīrtana. And just at that moment, Prabhupāda came out.
Aindra suddenly found himself walking just a few feet from his guru mahārāja.
“I wasn’t a mṛdaṅga player, really,” he remembered. “I wasn’t that good then (and I’m still not that good now), but I was doing the best I could, playing in my simple way, like how Akincana Kṛṣṇadāsa Mahārāja would play, chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa from the heart, which is my natural way of chanting.
“I was walking side by side with Śrīla Prabhupāda, just a foot and a half away from him, right by his side, very happily chanting away at the top of my lungs and banging on the mṛdaṅga. And he turned to me and sang along—‘Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa…’ I was only a step away, maybe a foot and a half from him, happily chanting, happy to be walking right beside him, chanting with him, and able to hear him chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, too.
“And then he just turned to me; cocked his head back a little in his typical, regal Śrīla Prabhupāda way, tilting his head in that Bengali fashion; looked down at me, even though I was a little taller than him; gave me a very positive glance of approval; and said just one word, which remains with me as my only hope: ‘Jaya!’ It was the only word he ever said to me in my whole Kṛṣṇa-conscious life, but that one word carried so much inspiration and potency. How did I get a ‘Jaya!’ out of Śrīla Prabhupāda? It was simple: I was performing hari-nāma-saṅkīrtana.”
“When Prabhupāda said ‘Jaya!’ I took that as a great inspiration, because he was saying ‘Jaya!’ in relation to my chanting, to my performing saṅkīrtana. ‘Jaya’ means victory, so I could understand that Prabhupāda was pleased with my meager attempt to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa and do kīrtana. I got lifelong inspiration from that to try to perfect my chanting of the Holy Names. I might not be doing anything else that gets a ‘Jaya!’ out of Śrīla Prabhupāda, but at least that much I did.
“And that’s been my whole idea ever since. It was not just ‘Jaya!’ to me; it was ‘Jaya!’ to my endeavor to do saṅkīrtana, to sing the Holy Name, Hare Kṛṣṇa, for the rest of my life.”
Usually, when Śrīla Prabhupāda was nearby, Aindra—like most of the devotees—was out distributing books. But one night a mahā-harināma, a big public kīrtana, was scheduled in downtown Georgetown. It would be like the kīrtanas he had experienced when he’d first met the devotees; he couldn’t miss it.
But his van leader wouldn’t allow him to go.
“Isn’t there any way?” Aindra pleaded. “For old time’s sake? For the inspiration it will infuse into my book distribution?”
The van leader told him that there was no higher service, nothing more important, than distributing Prabhupāda’s books. Prabhupāda had been clear about its primacy. “Regarding saṅkīrtana and book distribution,” he had written to Tamal Krishna dāsa in 1974, “both should go on, but book distribution is more important. It is bṛhat-kīrtana.” It couldn’t be interrupted for anything, the van leader insisted—not even kīrtana.
But on this occasion, Aindra pointed out, both could happen: if he stopped just an hour earlier than usual, he could still get to Georgetown before the kīrtana ended.
The van leader reacted as if Aindra’s response were an act of disobedience:
“I am your authority,” he asserted. “And I am saying that you are going to distribute your spiritual master’s books, not going out for hari-nāma. If you go to the kīrtana, you’ll be going against the orders of your authority; you’ll be engaged in vikarma, sinful action against the injunction of Vedic authority.” He claimed to be the representative of Śrīla Prabhupāda, who was the representative of all the ācāryas in the guru-paramparā, who represented all the Vedas.
Aindra thought, I should be humble. But when did humble become stupid?
He had read all of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books and given years of his life to distributing them, and he knew both their importance and the importance of surrendering to the guidance of one’s guru. He just thought the van leader was misapplying Prabhupāda’s instructions.
Chanting was the sine qua non, the necessary condition—the essence—of one’s devotional life. And Prabhupāda had spoken to him directly, affirming his dedication to kīrtana: “Jaya!” But now the van leader, Aindra’s most immediate authority, was holding him back.
“It was at this point,” Aindra recalled, “that I started to think, This is all a lot of BS. On one side, Śrīla Prabhupāda was saying ‘Jaya!’ because of my performance of hari-nāma-saṅkīrtana, and practically the same day the van leader was telling me that if I joined the hari-nāma-saṅkīrtana party, I was doing vikarma! I may not get the mahā plate for distributing the most books, I thought, but at least I can get a ‘Jaya!’ out of Śrīla Prabhupāda!
“I began having differences with certain managerial points of view. I continued to respect all of these people as devotees, but my point of view started to change drastically. We had a difference of opinion—big time.”
There was no question that Prabhupāda relished positive reports of book sales. And yes, he had directed that “if there is any occasion of necessity . . . we may assign everyone for distributing our literatures; there is no loss for that.” But he had also, in the very next sentence, stipulated:
“But it is always better if there are also some devotees chanting loudly on the street.”
“Aindra – Kirtan Revolution” Chapter 6