Going to USA, ”It was all by chance.”

Srila Prabhupada Thakur says, ”So I took the opportunity, that “Why don’t you ask your son to sponsor me?” I wanted to go to America.”

 

Prabhupäda: It was all by chance. I was for a few days guest at his father’s place in Agra. I did not know that his son is in America. So he was talking about his family. He was little sorry that his eldest son went to America to study electric engineering, and he was entrapped by an English girl there, and he married and settled there and did not come back. In this way… So I took the opportunity, that “Why don’t you ask your son to sponsor me?” I wanted to go to America. So I did not know how seriously he took it. But I simply told him that “Why don’t you ask your son to sponsor me at least for one month? So I am thinking of going to America.” Then that was talking, beginning and end, that’s all. I did not know that he took it very seriously. Then after two, three months, some documents came. I was receiving my letters in a postbox. So when I left Delhi I used to keep my key of postbox with some nice bookseller, Atmaram, he was manager. So he opened that, he got that documents. That is No-Objection Certificate, sponsor, and everything. I was out of Delhi. Then when I came back I took it. So everything was there, that sheet [indistinct] taken from the Indian Consulate, No-Objection Certificate and everything. Then I applied for a passport. In this way I had to go there. So Gopal was unknown to me, but his father was…, his father was known to me, mother was known to me. Then his agent got me on the bus. So on the bus went to Pennsylvania. Nine hours on the bus. And I took a little chipped rice, [laughs] and whatever I had with me. So I got down from the ship about one o’clock. Then I had to wait for the bus till five o’clock. Then at five o’clock the bus started. About two o’clock, three o’clock in the morning, I went to Pennsylvania, and just in front of the bus Gopal was standing with his Stationwagon. So he took my luggage, and from there thirty miles off, the Butler County. So I went there. Then at night he took my bedding and… The next day, he had no many rooms in his apartment, he arranged for my stay in the YMCA nearby them.

 

>>> Ref. VedaBase => Room Conversation – September 9, 1976, Vrndavana

(Photo at Gopal Agrawal’s Apt. in Butler, Penn. USA, 1965)