Srila Prabhupada's Kadamba garland

The following narration is from the visionary Memories series of Sriman Siddhanta das Adhikary. It is the remembrance of Sriman Bahushiras das Adhikary given in DVD 44 and in vol. 3, p. 334 of the book Memories-Anecdotes of a Modern-Day Saint.

After Srila Prabhupada’s disappearance, [Patita Pavana das] asked if I’d like to assist Satswarupa’s Lilamrita project by interviewing people in India who had known Srila Prabhupada. One of them was Acharya Prabhakar Misra, Prabhupada’s first disciple. Acharya Prabhakar Misra was clean-cut, well-behaved and articulate. His demeanor impressed me. He held a MA and PhD and was a very cultured Sanskrit scholar and teacher. In Jhansi, Prabhupada had told Acharya Prabhakar. “I met you because I saw you in a dream and I knew that I was supposed to come here.” Prabhupada and he would do bhajan together. They’d hold Rathayatra festivals and they’d have programme in villages in the area.

Acharya Prabhakar said that on Sri Krishna Janmashtami in 1954, he had to go to Delhi. When he returned to Jhansi, he took a little rest, woke up at 1:00 am and heard Srila Prabhupada ecstatically playing mridanga in the temple room. Prabhupada was chanting in total bliss. Acharya Prabhakar went upstairs and saw Srila Prabhupada bouncing around the temple room performing kirtan. Prabhupada was wearing a kadamba flower garland that went all the way down to his feet.Kadamba flowers are very rare in Jhansi and when they are available they are usually the size of a golf ball. But the ones Prabhupada was wearing were big, the size of tennis balls. And he said that the atmosphere right down to the atoms in the room was not material, aprakrita. The place was surcharged with the fragrance of the heavenly planets. Acharya Prabhakar wanted to ask Srila Prabhupada, “Where did this garland come from? It is not available from the market.” But Srila Prabhupada would not answer. His Divine Grace just kept on performing kirtan, bouncing round the room and chanting. The next morning Acharya Prabhakar asked Srila Prabhupada, “Where did you get the garland, why did it have such a rich fragrance, and why were you feeling so blissful?”

Srila Prabhupada told him, “I was chanting to Krishna and feeling some love for Him. And He appeared and gave me this garland. I went to touch His feet and He disappeared. Because of that I was dancing around the temple room.” Srila Prabhupada was crying.

Acharya Prabhakar was very believable and I felt that what he told me was valid. He also said that sometimes Srila Prabhupada’s mood was to performkirtan intensely. He would chant on and on and on for three days straight. We hear that sometimes he wouldn’t eat for long periods, especially near the end of his manifest lila, but remarkably in Jhansi, he was doing kirtan for a long period of time without eating or sleeping. And the result of his bhajanwas that Krishna appeared.

Hare Krishna