Oh, my goddesses of fortune have come, and they have brought my rice. Thank you. Thank you very much.”
Yamuna: The Punjab Mail was an old train by this time, and the First Class compartments were closest to the engine. Srila Prabhupada’s compartment had no air conditioning, of course, and the heat was unbearable—just unimaginably hot. And the closer you were to the front of the train, the more soot you were enshrouded in from the coal-burning engine.
So everyone was covered from head to toe with this black soot, even Srila Prabhupada. Before we left Amritsar, some Indian ladies had prepared lunch for Srila Prabhupada—parathas, a dry sabji, sweets, kachoris and puris. At one point in the journey I decided to see if there was anything he wanted, because sometimes when the train stopped, he would request something from the men selling their wares at the train stations.
So Kaushalya and I made our way to Prabhupada’s First Class compartment, and there we found him laying back just like a monarch—like a king, with one knee up, several pillows behind him, and a beautiful transcendental smile on his face. We offered our obeisances and asked if we could bring anything. Srila Prabhupada looked up with an almost childlike smile on his face and said, “Is there anything hot to eat?” “Would you like more of your lunch?” I answered.
He replied, “No. Not that. I would like some hot rice.” I didn’t know how to speak Hindi or anything close to it, but Srila Prabhupada had asked for rice, and it was our mood in those days to move heaven and earth in order to try to please him. It is difficult to express in words, but just to see a glance of approval from him meant so much to each of us. So I took on the responsibility that somehow or other I would get him hot rice.
Having no idea how I was going to bring this hot rice to Srila Prabhupada, Kaushalya and I made our way to the kitchen, only to find two small, filthy men standing over a gigantic coal stove and smoking bidis. Not only did they have soot and cooking oil smudged all over them, but also wore black, turmeric-stained shorts. With my lack of language skills, I substituted gestures to make the point that my Guru Maharaja wanted some “garan-chavo,” my mispronunciation of hot rice. They immediately laughed at my feeble attempt at Hindi, and we quickly realized that we had better find a conductor who spoke English.
Finally we found the restaurant manager, repeated our request, and he simply said, “No.” I calmly replied, “I’m sorry, but this is for my Guru Maharaja. There is no question of choice. I have told him I would do this, so I have to honor my word.” Again he simply said, “No. It is not possible.” So then we went to find the conductor and again explained the situation. This time I added that if I was unable to fulfill this simple request of my Guru Maharaja, I might as well jump off the train.
That got his attention, and I am sure he thought he’d better find someplace for these crazy ladies to make some hot rice, or she just might do it. So the conductor took me seriously and brought us back to the kitchen. So here we were in this train kitchen in front of a massive coal stove, amid all these ugly aluminum pots interspersed with various kinds of fish hanging from the kitchen roof. I had already seen in India how some people cleaned their pots by rubbing them with coal; so we cleaned out one of the pots as best we could, boiled the water, made the rice and then added ghee [clarified butter] at the end.
We offered a huge platter of very hot rice, with ghee, fresh lemon, salt and pepper, and carried it all the way through the train to Srila Prabhupada’s compartment. I knocked on the door, and he said “Yesss” in that way he had of making it sound like a question, or crescendo. So we came in, set down the hot platter, and said, “Here’s your rice, Srila Prabhupada.” And his eyes lit up just like big saucers, followed by a huge grin from ear to ear, and he said, “Oh, my goddesses of fortune have come, and they have brought my rice. Thank you. Thank you very much.”
And Srila Prabhupada ate so much of the rice on that huge platter. “This is just what I wanted,” he said. Along with the rice, he ate a small amount of kachoris, puris and pickle. And he was very pleased. For us, this was like climbing Mount Meru. We could not have felt happier—that Srila Prabhupada had given us an impossible task, and somehow we had accomplished it—and this gave him great pleasure, which in turn gave us great pleasure. It was simply a sublime experience.
Later, I reflected that perhaps Srila Prabhupada did not even want the rice, but rather wanted to test our determination to serve. By his mercy he allowed women close proximity to him on the World Sankirtan Party in those days. There was little separation. In our Vaishnava history this was revolutionary, and the effect it had in India was profound. In fact, it shocked India.
I felt at that time that whether male or female, we never took for granted what fortune we had been given in the form of Srila Prabhupada’s personal association. In looking back on the experience, I felt a combination of deep gratitude and a determination to somehow make myself more worthy of the personal association he gave me.
Yamuna Devi: A Life of Unalloyed Devotion: Part 1: Preparing an Offering of Love. Unalloyed Inc. Kindle Edition.
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