No one is safe in this world
Brahmananda das : The Prime Minister sent his personal limousine with an army officer as a driver for Prabhupada's personal use and Prabhupada, in the afternoon, he would go for rides. We were driving. I was sitting next to Srila Prabhupada, Pusta Krishna was in the front, and the roads were very narrow. And the sugarcane is very thick, and when you're making turns you can't see. We made one turn and head-on collision, just like that. There was no warning, nothing. It was a Volkswagen Beetle, a couple, a man and a woman, they were driving on the wrong side of the road. They were actually tourists from South Africa, they didn't know which side to drive on, and it was bad. The driver was unconscious. Pusta, his head went through the windscreen. Prabhupada was bleeding on his leg, his dhoti was torn.
Harikesa das : So then when they didn't come back for about an hour-and-a-half or two hours even, I was just going crazy, pacing up and down. We had no telephone, I was the only one there. And then finally when they drove up I run out and say, "What's going on?" Nobody said a word. Then Brahmananda said, "There's been an accident," he was bleeding. So then Prabhupada told me to make lye and turmeric, take lye and turmeric and mix them together with some heat and then to put that on. Prabhupada had it on his head and his neck, and I had to massage him for many hours at night because he had such a headache, he got such a bash in the head. He thought that could have been the end. He said it was Krishna's arrangement. If he hadn't put the cane in front of him, he would have been dead. Prabhupada, just before the accident happened, had just taken his cane and he was leaning on it. And when the accident happened, he didn't fly through the front of the car. It was a heavy situation, it was a real car accident. The car of the Prime Minister was destroyed. The car of the other person was totally destroyed.
Pusta Krishna das : When we arrived back at the house, we went into Srila Prabhupada's sitting room and Srila Prabhupada personally took that paste that Harikesa had made and smeared it on the areas we were in pain. Then he asked us to have a kirtan, and I led one kirtan. And he asked Harikesa to read something from the books. He picked up the Caitanya-caritamrita and simply opened the book, and he opened it to the first page of the disappearance of Haridas Thakur. And so we read from Caitanya-caritamrta for a while. After the accident, Brahmananda prabhu and myself were really sore. The next morning we were hobbling around, and Srila Prabhupada took the walk on the beach as if nothing had happened. Brahmananda prabhu and myself, we looked at each other and commented how resilient Srila Prabhupada is compared to us. On that morning walk, Srila Prabhupada commented how no one is safe in this world. People will drive long distances, living very far away from their work, and in so doing they risk death because of the fact that they have to travel so far.
Reference: Following Srila Prabhupada-A Chronological Series by Harikesa Dasa
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