Traveling Raktak's Diary
Guru-Lila (Part 6)
20th March 2016
On the way to Pune, three persons in the car, Guruji and Harsh Prabhu (behind the wheel) and myself-the famous (or infamous) Buffalo Headed Punjabi, Jai.
Harsh Prabhu is fired-up and is driving with high speed, Guruji is sitting next to him, and I am on the back seat. We passed through Khandala, a famous hill station near Mumbai, very beautiful views. Going, going and at some point, we made a few phone calls to some devotees to know the exact location of Pune temple, but still some confusion was there, but by Krishna's mercy, as we were entering Pune city, we saw a Bramhachari waiting on the roadside to get a lift to the temple, he was happy that he got a free lift with us to the Temple and we were happy that he saved us from the harassment of making more phone calls to find out the proper address for the temple.
In the backside of the temple, there is a multi-storied building, and many many devotees are living in that building. now, I can't remember that we were on which floor. So we entered the temple from the backside and the devotees took Guruji directly to his room, leaving me behind and it was very humbling experience, no one came there to pick me up for more that 15-20 mins and finally, somehow, I found the way.
It was Ajita Nitai Prabhu's house- a disciple of His Holiness Radhanath Swami Maharaj, house is very well built, beautiful and fancy.
There I also met with another god-brother for the first time -- Shriman Girivardhari-Gopal Prabhu, a nice and sober devotee and so many other devotees-mostly disciples of Radhanath Maharaj, they are all well-educated and well-behaved towards our guruji, and very humble as well, I have to learn from them.
Guruji took bath, shaving etc. He does not shave every day or every 2nd day or 3rd day, he says that let people know that I am getting old, he may shave once in a month or earlier if there is some important preaching program, but here in this video, you will see that he looks bright, he shaved yes, but lustre from the purity also, whatever is there inside, it appears outside.
I was very happy with the prasadam the host devotee family offered to guruji, it was opulent, but moreover, it was made with love and affection and served to guruji with the same mood, and needless to say that the dog of guruji got a plenty of remnants. Now here is my bold declaration: - I am ready to remain a dog life after life if guruji keeps giving me his remnants.
After sometime, we moved toward big pandal program, more than 15 thousands youths, program is by ISKCON Pune and Bhartiya Sanskriti Vidyapeeth, many big and prominent people are there. From ISKCON side, there were His Holiness Gopal Krishna Maharaj, His Holiness Loknath Maharaj, His Holiness Bhakti-Marg Swami and our dear guruji His Holiness Hanumat Preshak Swami Maharaj, you would see all of them in the video, also was there Vraj-Vadhus band (Param Das and Gaura mataji) and you would also see three maharathi disciples of Radhanath Maharaj----Radhe Shyam Prabhu-who is Pune TP and Gauranga Prabhu-he appears on Indian TV many times and Gaur-Gopal Prabhu-the famous You Tuber. They also asked guruji to lighten-up the lamp. You would also see that guruji is putting ear-plugs because of heavy blasting sound from the speakers, but I doubt if the ear-plugs offered him any help, but the funny thing is that Indian people had no problem from the sound, including our Swamis, it appears that we Indian bodied people don’t mind the sound, since we grow-up with it, but Westerns have really hard time with it.
I also remember many years ago during Ludhiana Rathyatra, guruji was trying to go away from that part of the procession where there was 50 Shahnayi Wala(the guys playing trombones) and big Indian drums. Anyway, altogether, the program was nice, we came back, host asked for more prasadam, but guruji politely refused and retired to his room, we were asked for Prasad, superficially, I said no but the host-Ajita Nitai Prabhu insisted and we happily surrendered, so four of us---Ajita, Girivardhari Gopal, Harsh and the Pretender took prasadam.
More in next episode, thanks.
yours servant,
Raktak Das
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DV-BQRpiz54
HpS - Hare Krsna! Jaya! So, sorry that you got left at the door when we arrived in Pune! Please forgive us!!! Next time bark loudly!
We shave every two weeks, the day after Ekadasi. Once Prbhupada mentioned it as an acceptable standard. Especially we do it because ourselves and our good father were surgically certified as mildly hemophelic. Our blood does not clot as fast as normal people. When you shave, even with best razors, there is always a little cutting and scratching of the skin. For normal people this heals quickly, but for us it is a little slower, so if we shave daily we start to get a rash then infections and we become prime candidates for skin cancer, so, all things considered, once every two weeks.
Thank you for these Diarys. They are very interesting to us!