Memories of Aindra Prabhu

by Gopīnātha Dāsa

It's a little vague, because when I joined the New York temple, there were a lot of things going on. But I used to come to the Sunday feast, just for the prasādam, of course, because in those days we were not following any principles. So we were getting the munchies, coming to the temple, and filling our bellies with prasādam.

That's how it all started. And that's also how I met Aindra Prabhu, because he would do the bhajanas on Sunday, and often outside. And he knew that I was a musician.

So he engaged me from the beginning. So this is actually a very important point of the mercy of a vaiṣṇava, how Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī's mercy works through the devotee. Even though I was new, he engaged me, gave me the mṛdaṅga, start playing, even though I didn't know any systematic rhythms.

But because I had a feeling for music, I was able to improvise. But he really liked that, because I could really give him what he needed to crank up his kīrtana, to make it more ecstatic. So that's how it started.

So even though I didn't know it, I was engaged in bhajana at that time, which is actually the highest thing you could do. That's my realization. But at that time, I wasn't conscious of it.

New York temple, so many musicians join, but when it comes to summer, everybody goes out to play music, and when it's winter, they come back to join, to stay in the temple. So I wasn't like that, because of Aindra's mercy, I didn't go back out in the summer.

He gave me a taste for the holy name, for the chanting, playing mṛdaṅga, whatever, accompanying. So this New York temple, of course, is the best place to join, because you can see the difference between māyā and the spiritual reality. So Aindra, he was quite merciful in that aspect.

And I remember before this golden flatbed truck program started, Aindra was working day and night, trying to prepare this truck, it was a lot of work. He had all this plastic stuff, that he had to paint gold, complete design, because it was a whole temple that was going out on a flatbed truck. That means when we came out on hari-nāma, he had to build, set up the temple.

It's not that he just drove the temple in. All the parts that made the truck a temple, it had to be assembled. So it was a whole program, but it was quite ecstatic, because for the karmīs in New York, it was like, wow, a golden temple with Gaura-Nitāi, and devotees making bhajanas.

I was AWOL from the American Army when I joined in New York, so I had no choice but to hide out in the temple. And actually, I was on book distribution, and they caught me in Yonkers, and I gave my real identity. So what happened was they didn't want any Hare Kṛṣṇas in the army, so they let me go.

So Aindra, when I came back to the temple the same night, I was starving because I hardly ate anything. I mean, there wasn't much you could eat there. So Aindra said, "Kṛṣṇa is testing you. Everybody who joins a New York temple, they get the heaviest test."

Just look at Dhanurdhara Mahārāja, his parents sent the deprogrammers, they paid deprogrammers for him. But somehow he managed to get out of that situation by faking it. He was pretending that he was deprogrammed, so everybody started feasting and drinking, and then he ran away. And then later on, he came to the psychiatrist with his parents, and he started preaching about Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

I ended up taking initiation from Harikeśa Mahārāja, because he came to New York at the time. And so I ended up going to Switzerland to get initiated. But I didn't come back to New York afterwards. I ended up staying in Switzerland and in Germany. And Aindra kept writing letters or telling the devotees to try to get me there.

But I met Aindra in 1986 in Māyāpura, my first time in India. And I got the brāhmaṇa initiation during that time. And what was funny, he recorded some melodies for me on the harmonium, because he knew that I'm going to end up singing bhajana also. So he wanted me to start learning. And then he told me he had a plan to make a bus, like the Rādhā-Dāmodara bus, traveling around India, just doing kīrtana.

And then I heard somehow Kṛṣṇa changed that plan, which ended up being the 24-hour kīrtana. Because I heard he was doing bhajana every day in the temple at Kṛṣṇa-Balarāma Mandir, and some Bengalis, some devotees would participate. And then Kūrma Rūpa, who was my bhakta leader in New York, he was also in Vṛndāvana at the time, he came to Aindra and said, actually, it was Śrīla Prabhupāda's desire to maintain this 24-hour kīrtana. But because of mismanagement, the 24-hour kīrtana has disappeared. So I think Kṛṣṇa has brought you here to fire it up again. So that's why Aindra came there.

But afterwards, he used to write me a lot of letters, or not letters, but notes, to devotees in Germany, telling Gopīnātha not to come and help me. "When is he going to come?" And for me, it was difficult, because as a brahmacārī, I was not a good collector. So I was really dependent on the temple to give me the money to go to Vṛndāvana. Without that mercy, I would never have been able to join the 24-hour kīrtana.

But it all started with desire, because before Kṛṣṇa arranged for me to come to Vṛndāvana, I heard some cassette tapes, in those days we had cassettes. So there was a cassette tape of Nitāi, Nitāi Dāsa, he was singing this melody, that really touched my heart. The famous note, "Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare, Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare." I think he must have heard this melody before. But when I heard that, I was right in Vṛndāvana. I was putting Gaura-Nitāi to sleep, on the altar. So Gaura-Nitāi, they knew exactly my desire, because my heart was in Vṛndāvana, hearing this devotee sing like that.

Of course, there was some blackmailing before that happened, because when my guru was standing before the deities, Rādhā-Madana-mohana, I was standing behind him, and I was praying to Rādhārāṇī, to Kṛṣṇa, please let him know I want to go to Vṛndāvana and join the 24-hour kīrtana. And if you don't, let him know I will become the biggest māyāvādī you will ever see. And this way, I actually blackmailed Kṛṣṇa, but somehow he listened, and allowed me to come to Vṛndāvana. And that's when the real nectar started.

Of course, in the beginning, when I stayed in the 24-hour kīrtana, I was staying in the same room with Aindra, because there was a tight relationship, but somehow or other I couldn't stay there for long, because he was just an avadhūta, too much of an avadhūta. And I also didn't want to feel superior towards the other kīrtanīyas. I wanted to be with them, because I want to have the same relationship. I didn't want them to think that I am somebody more important, that's why I'm staying there. But the other reasons also, I want to have a closer relation with all the other kīrtanīyas also.

So Aindra said, "Oh, you're moving away from home, but close to home," because the kīrtana āśrama was right next door to him, there was a door. I still had the keys to the deities, to his room, so I could come into his room whenever I wanted.

Actually, there was only three months I was supposed to stay, but I extended my visa to six months. So Śacīnandana Svāmī, he came back to Germany alone, so indicating that my future was in 24-hour kīrtana Vṛndāvana. But after six months, I came back to Germany, and despite so much separation from the service I was doing there, where else in the world can you chant 24-hour kīrtana?

So then I wrote a letter to my guru, because he was at Siṁhācalam, Nṛsiṁhadeva temple in Germany. And a God brother of mine, Kṛṣṇadāsa, he advised me, just write him a letter. That's all you can do. So I was cooking for the deities, and I wrote him a letter stating the 24-hour kīrtana, just like Śrīla Prabhupāda. How many times do you find mahā-mantra in Śrīla Prabhupāda's purports? So many times you heard about 24-hour kīrtana in my letter.

So at one point, I gave up, because I know it was a preaching movement, nobody's going to give me a chance. So at one point, I got the letter back, and my guru wrote in the same letter. But I didn't believe it. His servant brought me the letter, you should read it, you should read it. So now I know he said, no, here's all preaching, preaching, and nobody's allowed to become bābājī in Vṛndāvana.

So then he said, read it, read it. He said, yes. So I looked at the letter, and the letter said, get an entry visa to India and stay until you can't stay anymore. Then I jumped up in the air, a couple of meters in the air, in the middle of the offering. Everybody was looking, is this guy crazy or what? And I said, "Vṛndāvana dhāma kī jaya." I was ready to go.

I have some līlās about some Śālagrāma-śilā worship, because sometimes I had to turn in some of my kīrtana hours to do some Śālagrāma-śilā worship, especially if I had to go to Delhi, because we were producing cassettes for selling, to get donations from the bhajana. So sometimes it would take me hours, because he had hundreds of śilās, because a lot of devotees would leave their śilās with him. We became like the babysitters for Kṛṣṇa. We had to take care of all the śilās. For me, it took me almost half an hour to offer arcana to so many śilās. But that was also a type of mercy.

But one śilā, one Śālagrāma-śilā, was not worshipped yet. I didn't know. So I offered arcana, and then later on, I heard, I just said, well, if you worship it, then it's your śilā. But then there was another devotee, his name was Prema-rasa. He was visiting with us. No, it's not like that. It's not like that. You cannot force somebody to accept it. Because in those days, I was only into doing bhajana. The only worship I would do, that was that, that was kīrtana. So that was a short part of that līlā.

But there were also some more really special līlās, I cannot really explain. He had a friend in New York. I remember this Indian devotee, his name was Pradīpa. And Pradīpa, he once asked me, hey, can you give me this Gāyatrī mantra, because I need it for my Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa, I have Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa deities. And innocently, I didn't have any idea. I said, okay, I'll give you the mantra. I know it. I wrote it down, just gave it to him. And then later, I told Aindra about it. You know what he told me? "You just gave him brāhmaṇa initiation." I said, wow, no, that can't be.

Aindra, he would complain a lot about having not enough manpower, the 24-hour kīrtana. Sometimes I helped him get some devotees from Māyāpura, because my guru, he was at that time responsible for Māyāpura. He had some connections, so I could send some Bengali devotees to join. But he did not always have the best relationship with the Bengali devotees. So at one point, they had left.

So then at one point, I told Aindra, seriously, I was actually serious. I told him, why don't you just initiate your own disciples, so you have enough people to do the kīrtana. And then he said, "This is not funny. You're coming up with these kinds of jokes." I said, this is not a joke. This is a solution, I said. And then he said, "Do you know, you can't go back to Godhead until you liberate everybody you initiate. So it's not a good idea," he said.

Śrīla Prabhupāda, he initiated one disciple, and he always had to come back for him, because he just doesn't surrender at one point. Śrīla Prabhupāda said, one day you're going to surrender. I came back for you five times already. So he gave this example. So then it was understandable. Of course, we want other people to go back to Godhead, but we should also be concerned with ourselves. You can't save anybody unless you save yourself, or learn to save yourself. You have to learn how to swim first, before trying to save anybody.

So that was a lot of things, actually. Since I'm in Vṛndāvana in my mind right now, I think there's another instance. Once somebody asked Aindra to come and do kīrtana outside of Vṛndāvana in a village, a special village. But Aindra had other things to do, so he refused. And they kept bothering him. And I was there with Ānanda Caitanya and myself. We were, at that time, prominent kīrtanīyas.

So Aindra said, "I want to send these two, Gopīnātha and Ānanda Caitanya." He said, no, we want you. They said, you are the king of kīrtana. So then Aindra said, "Yes, but the king, he could also send his prince." And when I heard that, I really felt good in my heart that he's actually giving me some faith in myself. You can do it.

So myself, Ānanda Caitanya, and a few other devotees, maybe five or six devotees, went to that village. We made a kīrtana. Even though we were only six people, it sounded like a hundred. We blew that village away. It was Kṛṣṇa's mercy. So he can empower you. I think he was the one who was empowering me to play mṛdaṅga back in New York. Because where did I have the idea what to play or when to play? I just played. So that's also an important point in the kīrtanīya. He can also empower his people to play more than they can. It's all Kṛṣṇa's mercy ultimately.

Aindra Prabhu, he was quite merciful in the sense that he used to bring me to Hari-Nikuñja, Vṛndāvana, in December, end of Kārtika, all the professional Bengali kīrtanīyas, they come to Hari-Nikuñja. And I heard even Kṛṣṇadāsa Bābā, the godbrother of Śrīla Prabhupāda, he used to go there also. And his godbrothers used to criticize, well, these people are professionals, they're just doing it for money. You know what Kṛṣṇadāsa Bābājī said? He said, yes, but I need a few good melodies to offer to Kṛṣṇa. And this is where I get them. So now we also know the secret where a lot of melodies come from.

So he used to bring me there to watch the professional mṛdaṅga players. Wow, they play some really good beats. Of course, I've also been trained by Bāblū in the basis of mṛdaṅga, but you also need some experienced mṛdaṅga players to show you how to use it in the kīrtana. So I got a lot of mercy through that, to try out all these different rhythms. So that was actually, that was the nectar, all this we could share with devotees.

And he always used to give me, I used to go to Rādhā-kuṇḍa every Ekādaśī to do bhajana with the bābājīs. And he always gave me the fare or the money to go there, because he knew it was important for my spiritual development to do kīrtana in other places also, the bhajana, to get association of vaiṣṇavas. So that was very nice of him.

He also encouraged it, because I used to go and devotees used to come with me, but at one point, I was going alone. To be steady in your bhakti, you have to be determined, even if you go alone, it's very important.

So there are a lot of these līlās. Oh yes, there was also a special līlā with his Śālagrāma. He told me that personally, Aindra, he really loved his Gopāla Śālagrāma, big Śālagrāma-śilā, painted with eyes, and looked very sweet. One day, Aindra, he was feeling so much love for his Śālagrāma-śilā, he said that he grabbed the śilā and wanted to put it to his head. And then Aindra said, "You know what happened? Well, shortly before I could put it to my head, he saw these two eyes from Gopāla, looking at him, you forgot to do your arcana." So then Aindra said, "Oh, sorry, sorry." So Aindra did his arcana. These were all personal things that were coming upon us. So he used a lot of these examples.

I mean, I remember one time, we were doing bhajana, a 24-hour kīrtana, and on a mṛdaṅga, sometimes I like to experiment or like to play all the rhythms. And one time he said, "Yes, you're just like the drummer from Jimi Hendrix, Mitch Mitchell. He always has to do a drum solo before he gets into the song, because to get it out of him, you have to get the passion out." And then I looked at him, and then he looked at me and smiled. "I knew that would get you."

One of the little līlās that are coming out automatically to my mind right now is Cāturmāsya. And I also did this tapasyā with him. It's a wonder that I could still become a gṛhastha after all that tapasyā. But it is like, we did the Cāturmāsya, but the real Cāturmāsya, eating after sundown, only rice and dāl cooked with water, with a little bit of ghī, no spices, no salt, no nothing, and eating directly from the ground, with your hands on your back, and bending all the way down.

And you can only go down one time. It means you have to eat everything, a handful, before you boil it, there has to be a handful of both, I think, mūṅg dāl and rice. So when you go down, you have to eat everything, and then when you finish, you can come back up and drink water, of course. But they say that through doing this, you get the realization, even human beings, that the activity of eating for human beings is also animal instinct, because when you eat like that.

And when I was doing that, I was doing it for four months, the whole Cāturmāsya, right next to Aindra, we would go down, eat, and then when we came back up, one day we came back up, we looked at each other and started laughing because we were so intoxicated. Can you imagine how intoxicated you can get by doing this kind of tapasyā in the holy dhāma, in Vṛndāvana itself? It was a transcendental trip, it was like my mind was just laughing. Aindra looked at me, I looked at him, we just started laughing like anything. What are we doing here?

And then at one point, my guru came to Vṛndāvana and he noticed I was getting skinny, so he told me, you got to eat, you have to eat. I said, yes, I'm just doing Cāturmāsya. He said, I don't care what you're doing, you have to eat now. So then I was forced to stop, and Aindra, he didn't like that. The guru was advising me on that, because he just was worried because I looked skinny.

Yes, of course, he spent a lot of time going to the, buying flowers. I don't know. In the end, people were bringing him the flowers but he used to go to the market all the time and he used to dream. He dreamed that he was in, that he was in New York buying flowers for Kṛṣṇa in Vṛndāvana, really strange dreams like that. He told me about it and I also dreamed a lot of Vṛndāvana shortly before he left also. So many times I was dreaming I was with him in Vṛndāvana and even while staying in Vṛndāvana, I used to dream that I was sitting down in Kṛṣṇa-Balarāma temple doing 24-hour kīrtana. It's like you completely get brainwashed.

I remember this dream. I was, I think I just came back from the West and I was doing bhajana in 24-hour kīrtana but it wasn't a dream and then I was sleeping in the kīrtana āśrama actually and then I also dreamed that I was on my way trying to reach Vṛndāvana and afraid to miss the plane or whatever. It was a complete stress situation and then when I woke up then I realized, oh, I'm in Vṛndāvana, thank God.

So, but then in another dream I was just doing bhajana and I seen devotees coming from the West, how they come to visit Vṛndāvana during the festival times, and that look in their eyes, like their eyes are glazing, wow, this is like Goloka, the first time you come in Vṛndāvana you get this really transcendental light that really lets you see this is Vṛndāvana. Okay, it may last a few days and then you're back in māyā, of course, but the idea is to maintain this.

So then when I was in that dream I looked at these devotees and then I was praying to Kṛṣṇa, please don't let me leave Vṛndāvana at least in my heart, because even if I have to leave with my body at least my heart will remain there. So it's a very important preaching point for the devotees, they should know this is the actual secret, the reason why I spent all those years in Vṛndāvana is actually to share it with devotees outside Vṛndāvana, of course, through bhajana and kīrtana, this is the first time I actually trying to do it like this in the interview, but this is a very important aspect because I heard about this, Lokanātha Mahārāja spoke to Aindra about this and this theory I had for a long time but didn't discuss with devotees very much because nobody would understand it.

But then when I heard that Aindra said to Lokanātha Mahārāja that in a dream he seen Śrīla Prabhupāda because he had stopped his book distribution back in America and he felt guilty but he was arranging this festival of India, so Śrīla Prabhupāda came in a dream, he said don't worry, what you're doing is also preaching, and in the end they had this one point which really satisfied me in my heart after all these years having faith in the holy name, he said that "The best goṣṭhy-ānandī is a bhajanānandī," and when I heard that, wow, that really hit me really hard, all those years I was feeling the same thing, one should be absorbing Kṛṣṇa before he can give Kṛṣṇa to others, so this is a logical thing, we are not only goṣṭhy-ānandīs, we are bhajanānandīs also.

When I visited Vṛndāvana after 12 years, I stayed away, you can imagine that's a long time, as soon as I met Aindra, a 24-hour kīrtana, he recognized me immediately, embraced me, asked me, "Oh, do you still play mṛdaṅga?" Of course, and then I played mṛdaṅga for him, it was more like a reunited type of thing, and then what happened was, I wanted to buy esrāj, but I didn't want to go to Delhi, I just want to spend time in Vṛndāvana, so I went to Aindra, said why don't you let me just give you a big donation, and you give me the esrāj, he said, "Yes, that's a good idea," so he gave me the esrāj, he put the money at the feet of Gaura-Nitāi, and then he said, "Yes, I have to look for it," because it was piled up somewhere, in the storage thing, because there hasn't been any people, esrāj is like a violin type instrument, I used to play for him, even in New York I did.

So what happened was, he found it, and then I thought, oh okay, the deal is finished, so before giving me the esrāj, he told me, "Can you record some esrāj tracks for my new CD?" I said well, I guess it wasn't that easy to get it, so then I sat down, then he gave me some melody, I never heard this before, I wanted this new composition, so esrāj is anyway supposed to play behind the melody, but still, it felt strange to try to accompany a melody that you don't know, you cannot make any guess, you have to really wait, until the next part of the melody comes, so I helped him with that recording, and then it was finished.

But then again, he invited me up to his room to talk, and he was talking about his hari-nāma revolution theory, which I was also convinced of, of all these years, I noticed that the hari-nāma and the kīrtana sort of becoming like the background, all kinds of philosophies, everybody wants to become a big brāhmaṇa, nobody wants to become vaiṣṇavas, I said this is completely māyā, I told Aindra, how is this possible, Śrīla Prabhupāda translated Bhagavad-gītā, so that people, devotees would perform devotional service, and all the other Bhagavad-gītās, they don't inspire that, they inspire you to go in the brahmajyoti, or become Brahman, or whatever, but it doesn't inspire you to service, and what is the best way to serve, you have to ask Kṛṣṇa, and that was the mahā-mantra, this Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra, so I told Aindra, I can't believe this, it was never this way when I joined, why is it this way now.

And then he said the same thing, about this hari-nāma revolution, it's actually where it's at, devotees, they have to take it up, take it seriously, because if they don't, it just gets in the background, other things come in the foreground, which is not so good, Śrīla Prabhupāda also said that, "If this happens, there will be no more Hari Hari bol," he said.

Back on this point, he also mentioned that, I've seen it a lot on YouTube, he said, because a lot of people think hari-nāma doesn't bring any finances, or stuff like that, which is an illusion, it does bring the finances, but we don't know how it's bringing the finances, because I remember that place, where Nṛsiṁhadeva temple was in Germany, the whole temple, they had 24-hour kīrtana marathon for one month, pūjārīs, cooks, everybody did, and they had to sacrifice their sleep sometimes, to be able to participate, and you know what happened, at the end of the month, they stopped at the end of the month, because they could only do it for one month, because they didn't have permanent people who could only do bhajana, so what happened after one month, one real rich man came, he gave a gigantic donation to the temple, so we should not think like that, hari-nāma is always giving prosperity, not only money, everything, he's giving everything.

Aindra, he had that humility, that I know. I mean, sure, he could become angry, and this, and that, but he did have humility, because I remember when we recorded, we recorded Cintāmaṇi Nāma. I remember, he didn't have a name, I thought of the name, Cintāmaṇi Nāma, it sounds cool. Cintāmaṇi stone, the story of the Cintāmaṇi stone, and connecting with the holy name. So, he accepted the name.

But then, I had one tune, I remember, I guess that was my only hit, the 24-hour kīrtana. You must have heard it before. Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare. So, that was my hit, but I say that those were the golden days for me, because this tune connects me with Aindra, because we had the best times together, we got this tune from Hari-Nikuñja, but singing this tune, and recording it, it was all a nice time.

But now, I remember what happened, when I recorded this tune, we didn't have anybody to play mṛdaṅga, and for me, to dub the mṛdaṅga in would be more work. So, the only solution was that Aindra played mṛdaṅga on this recording. So, I said, wow, he's playing mṛdaṅga, and I was like, this is quite, I felt obliged, and I was, wow, he never played mṛdaṅga for me, but in this case, he did.

Yes, as me, one time, I remember I was criticizing, when you stay in Vṛndāvana, sometimes they make this flat rice with kaḍhī, but it's horrible, it's so dry, to renounce, I used to complain about that, I complained about it, of course I was criticizing prasādam, because I broke one of my teeth on the stones that was inside there, so that's confirmed, but Aindra said, he said, "Don't criticize prasādam like that, I'll slap you if you do that," and I remember he once slapped a devotee, I was shocked, it wasn't funny, his devotee's name was Oṁ Tat Sat, he's a disciple of Lokanātha Mahārāja, a very dark devotee from South India, he plays kartālas, but he has problems playing kartālas slow enough, his mind is like, he can't control it, and one time, Aindra, he just lost it, he just slapped him, and then he started playing kartālas normal again, but I was shocked, I said, wow, I don't do that.

And he chastised Nitāi a lot also, because of these material desires that we have, I first said to my wife, she said, oh, it's not good to mention this, but somehow, I think Kṛṣṇa wants this, because it's funny, it's like Nitāi used to study a lot of Sanskrit, and then Aindra, he came with this heavy quote, "Yes, this Sanskrit doesn't help you control your genitals," he said like that, Nitāi, he looked away, like Indian devotee, of course, he was right, but he came at a very time that you don't expect it, and usually, he comes at that time.

I remember during Śrīla Prabhupāda's disappears, where all the Śrīla Prabhupāda's disciples, they make their speech, disappearance, I think, it's usually in Kārtika, so during the disappearance, I heard like that, that Aindra, he came up, and he said, this was really heavy, I don't know how he came into the subject matter, but he said, "Śrīla Prabhupāda said to the GBC, he said, the difference between me and you is, if I walk into a room full of pretty naked women, I don't get agitated," he said, and then when, of course, people, they were startled to hear this, but he often gave lectures also like that.

When I joined in New York, he once said that "When you become a gṛhastha, it's just perversion of you want to be Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa together," well, he's right about that, and I'm a gṛhastha, I don't feel any guilt about that, that's what gṛhastha means, if you see in India, when they marry, the man, he looks like Kṛṣṇa, and the woman is dressed up like Rādhā, it's like Lakṣmī-Nārāyaṇa, it's supposed to be like that, I mean, otherwise, what's the use of becoming a gṛhastha, if you don't have that sense, but because Aindra said that, people think, oh, this is too much, and he once said that in a lecture in Vṛndāvana, and it was a GBC gṛhastha, he felt offended, and then he said, don't let Aindra give any more lectures, you know what happened, that devotee, I heard, he fell down anyway, and Aindra was giving lectures again, so Kṛṣṇa arranges for that.

Of course, there are some harsh moments that I experienced that had also influence on my life, Aindra, he once called me into his room, he said, "Do you remember in New York, there was a devotee, his name was Vakreśvara Paṇḍita, he was a temple commander at the time?" So I said, I remember, yes, well, devotees, they wrote me a letter to ask me to forgive him, then I said, forgive him for what, then Aindra told me what he did, and I wish he never told me this, because it also had a bad influence on me, of course, that influence is gone.

But what happened was, he said, he threw, he had some special wood, he was saving to build his stage, flatbed truck, the golden temple stage, and there was a flatbed stage program, so Aindra was saving a lot of things, but Vakreśvara Paṇḍita, he threw it in the dumpster, and then Aindra, he knew about it, he went to the dumpster to pull it out, and then Vakreśvara Paṇḍita came, feeling guilty, because Aindra is pulling this wood or whatever was out of the dumpster, and then Vakreśvara Paṇḍita became aggressive, like start pushing Aindra on his chest, bullying him, pushing in his chest, and then Aindra, he became angry, he took a brāhmaṇa thread, and he said, "I curse you that you don't have any position again in any temple," and then that was the end of that story, and then later I heard his wife left him, he went completely down, and I think Aindra forgives him, because he's a vaiṣṇava, definitely.

But once he does something, he sticks to it till it's finished, that golden temple, that flatbed truck, I don't know, it took him months, before he could get it to work, and put it together, it was all, but yes, he definitely, he would chastise, I mean, when the time was needed, I remember he chastised Nitāi one time, it was really funny, because this is a special līlā, I also found it strange, one day I heard Nitāi, he's every day, he sits behind the harmonium, and what does he say, he says "Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare, Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare," that's all he would sing.

And then Aindra, one time he asked him, "Why are you doing this?" Yes, I want to just chant pure, all these rāgas, they are making me too much for my mind, and then Aindra said, "You're not chanting these rāgas for your mind, you're chanting them for Kṛṣṇa, it's for Kṛṣṇa, not for you," so then finally Nitāi was singing his usual routine, because it was also getting boring, this guy could sing some nice tunes, why is he doing that, why is he only singing this one melody.

So yes, Aindra, he was always arranging things, so it fits together, a lot of times he would tell Ānanda Caitanya, "Give the mṛdaṅga to me, and you got to sing," because he was better at singing at the time, or when I joined the 24-hour kīrtana, he noticed I like to sing rāga mālkoś, it's a pentatonic, like blues rāga, where the blues actually came from, so he said, "Okay, we'll put you in the evening and the night, because I know you'd like to get into this type of chanting," so he was taking care of it.

And we also cooked our own feasts a lot, in the āśrama, during special occasions, and I remember once I made some fried noodles for him, because I'm coming from an Indonesian family, so we have this Asian type of cooking, and Aindra said, "Well, this is 10 times better than spaghetti," he said, of course, the Italian devotees, they were insulted, they were thinking, no, this is the best, they would argue, no, we're the originals, I said, no way, he said, and yes, because they used to bring this to the āśrama, they would cook for us, Italian devotees cook spaghetti for us, or whatever, they used to call it Gandharvaloka, the devotees would come there, and take good care of us.

So yes, definitely, I remember he liked to, he used to buy this dried ginger, or fried ginger, with black pepper, and black salt, and he'd take it for his voice, because he had a lot of problems maintaining his voice, he had a whole medicine cabinet on his harmonium sometimes, especially in the winter, because to keep the voice warm, to keep it going, so yes, he allowed me, he gave me more freedom, because I remember Nepali devotee Ānanda Caitanya, he always wanted to take tablā lessons, but Aindra never let him, but when I wanted to take tablā lessons, he just let me go.

I remember some devotee, he gave me this cup that they offer to Kṛṣṇa, there's a oil, scented oil, and devotees, they laugh what I did with it, I took the scented oil and I closed one nostril and I sniffed it, like it was drugs or something, they were laughing, but then I realized, actually, we have to be desperate, just like somebody who's desperate, somebody who's hooked on it, we have to get hooked on Kṛṣṇa like that, because he's taking us out of the hellish streets of New York, somehow or other, and so many people, but not everybody gets that, and directly, directly next to Aindra playing mṛdaṅga, as a new devotee, as actually a bhakta, and this is quite unlimited mercy, we cannot grasp it, what he was on the planet, we cannot appreciate.

But when somebody leaves, and immediately, I was very shocked, of course, the year about 2010, I was just putting something on YouTube from kīrtana, and then some devotees say, oh, sorry with your loss, and I said, what are you talking about, what loss, I didn't lose anything, and then later on, I heard the news, and I was devastated, I was on my way to Bali, and then when I was in Bali, we also celebrated a lot, spoke a lot about Aindra Prabhu, and his bābā mood, definitely he was in that mood, but what we call the bābā mood, or whatever you want to call it, bhajanānandī.

I remember once he asked me, "Would you like to manage the 24-hour kīrtana, so that I can do my bhajana, just get absorbed?" I said, I would like to, but I'm not that kind of a manager-type of person, I'm also into bhajana, it's very important, your own bhajana, individual bhajana plays a big role, even as a preacher, so it's very important to cultivate that, but one thing for sure, he did give an example of the yuga-dharma, and of course, he also distributed books, and he did the service in the West, and I was amazed that he stayed in Vṛndāvana that long, I mean, I was there for some time, but the time just went by so fast, because there you don't have any conception of time, in Vṛndāvana, you only need to sleep maybe two, three hours, that's okay, you try this in the West, you'll be dead, it's like that, it's a sweetness, if it wasn't for this 24-hour kīrtana, what service would I do in Vṛndāvana, I mean, I would be afraid to do any service, all the reactions you can get, chanting the holy name, it's the only thing you can do where you actually feel safe.

Yes, this was the melody he wanted me to play esrāj for. Actually, I picked it up at one point. It's a very sad tune, but it reminds me a lot of it. I have to move the microphone back a little bit.