I am a Calcutta boy!

Badrinarayana : When Prabhupada walked through the gorgeous building in Detroit, in the front lobby there was a painting of naked women bathing, and all the sannyasis were trying to be proper about things. Prabhupada looked at the painting, turned to them, and said, "Very nicely done." Then they came to a big polar bear rug that had the polar bear's head and teeth. Srila Prabhupada looked at it, gingerly put the tip of his cane in its mouth, lifted it up, looked at the teeth, and, wide-eyed like a child, turned to Jagadish Maharaj and asked, "They eat men?" Jagadish Maharaj said, Sometimes, Srila Prabhupada. Prabhupada put it down and made a wide berth to walk around it. It was sublime.

The man was asking close to a million dollars for the building. Prabhupada said, "Every room is worth a million dollars. Krishna engaged a rich person to build this building for us, and it's simply been waiting for us to pick it up." Prabhupada walked through the whole thing as if he could pull the money out of his bead bag. Price wasn't an issue when Prabhupada was talking about this and that, but actually, he had no money for this project. Outside there was a sunken garden, and Prabhupada and the man, who was very greedy, were peacefully sitting in the sun in the grotto area. Srila Prabhupada loved the building, and in his sublime, aristocratic way, Prabhupada said, "This building is perfect for our purposes. Every room is exquisite. It's exactly what we want. It's a very aristocratic building." The man could taste the money. Prabhupada said to him, "But we are not aristocrats, we are professional beggars. Therefore you should give it to us." I thought the man was going to have a cardiac arrest. Prabhupada toyed with him back and forth, and ultimately Prabhupada got the building. Ambarish gave half the money and Lekhasravanti gave the other half of the money. In this way, although Prabhupada had nothing but his desire, Krishna arranged the building, and Prabhupada picked it up. No one could believe the price that Prabhupada got it for. In fact, after the papers were signed, a neighbor called to say that the man was stripping the building. He was taking the mirrors off the walls, the doorknobs, the light fixtures because everything was very opulent. We stopped him and said, How can you do this? He said I can't help it. Your swami cheated me. Later on, we told Prabhupada the story and Prabhupada said, "Yes, I am a Calcutta boy." That man met his match in Srila Prabhupada.