Deep, brown and beautiful eyes

Phalini Dasi: I felt that the person who wrote that book must be monumentally tall and then when I saw he was 5 feet 3 inches tall I was a little surprised. But then I noticed how he carried himself. He was very graceful, he was like a monarch, like a cakravarti. At the same time he was not only very noble and magnificent but he was also very soft hearted and personal. He would pat the ladies on the head as they were bowing down; everyone would bow down, I learned how to do that from the other devotees. And then we sat up and looked at Srila Prabhupada, his eyes were wet. Every time I saw Srila Prabhupada, which was a lot of times, his eyes looked like he was just starting to cry.

I always thought that Srila Prabhupada must be thinking so lovingly of Krishna that his eyes had tears in them. And his eyes looked so deep and brown and beautiful. He would look at each and every devotee in their eyes and he would sometimes pat the children on their head. We ladies were on one side of the temple room and the men were on the other side, Srila Prabhupada would come into the temple room, he would enter the temple room on the ladies side. We were very fortunate that we got to have Prabhupada’s darshana first and more intimately than the men.

Prabhupada would walk down a little aisle in between the matajis who were paying obeisances, then he would go to Sri Sri Gaura Nitai’s altar. In those days the Gaura-Nitai were quite tall, they were normal tall size but they were made out of papier-mache, which is a kind of a delicate substance and nonetheless they were very beautiful, very effulgent Deities. Prabhupada would go up to them and pray and then he would touch his danda on the floor and he would bow down and pay dandavats in front of Gaura-Nitai.

Then he would stand up and walk to Sri Sri Rukmini-Dwarkadhisha. He would do the same thing, he would appear to be praying to them for some time, then touch the floor with his danda, then offer dandavats. Then he would stand up again and walk to Jagannatha’s altar, pray for some time, touch his danda on the floor and pay dandavats. Then when he would stand up, he would walk very gracefully. Everything Srila Prabhupada did was absolutely graceful.

He would walk to his vyasasana, climb up so deftly, even though he was in his seventies, he was so graceful. Then he would sit down and pick up either his kartalas or his gong and he would start singing Jaya Radha-Madhava. We all participated and enjoyed very much hearing Srila Prabhupada sing Jaya Radha-Madhava. Then at the end when he would chant the prema-dhvani prayers in his deep resounding baritone voice, at the end he would always say "Thank you very much." I always thought Srila Prabhupada was thanking us for chanting Hare Krishna.